Suchergebnisse

We model adjustment costs in a general equilibrium setting using a "transport sector". This sector provides services needed to re-allocate a factor of production across wo other sectors. A market imperfection in the transport sector causes adjustment to occur too slowly in the absence of government intervention. The government has a restricted menu of second best policies to remedy this imperfection. Given this restricted menu, the optimal policy choice depends on the government's ability to make commitments. The key to these results is our replacement of the black box of adjustment costs with an explicit model of these costs.

Increased population pressure and political decisions have led to more intensive agricultural practices in China. As in other regions of the world, these practices can damage natural capital. We use the Kalman filter and Chinese panel data to estimate an index of environmental productivity (natural capital), together with the parameters of environmental dynamics and the production function. These estimates show that intensive practices are likely to have had persistent, substantial, and statistically significant negative effects on productivity. Ignoring these effects can cause substantial misallocation of resources. The results illustrate the possibility of estimating sectoral environmental indices using data commonly available.

Increased population pressure and political decisions have led to more intensive agricultural practices in China. As in other regions of the world, these practices can damage natural capital We use the Kalman filter and Chinese panel data to estimate an index of environmental productivity (natural capital), together with the parameters of environmental dynamics and the production function. These estimates show that intensive practices are likely to have had persistent, substantial, and statistically significant negative effects on productivity. Ignoring these effects can cause substantial misallocation of resources. The results illustrate the possibility of estimating sectoral environmental indices using data commonly available.

We study a model in which management and a union bargain sequentially, first choosing a rule that will later determine the level of employment, and then choosing a wage. The government then chooses an output or an employment subsidy. An exogenous natural turnover rate in the unionized sector creates unemployment whenever the union wage exceeds the competitive wage. Government intervention can increase both the equilibrium amount of unemployment and worsen the intersectoral allocation of labour, because of the induced change in the endogenous wage. Unemployment weakens but does not eliminate the possibility of a "labour-management conspiracy".

Governments' desire to ameliorate environmental problems may conflict with other goals. Policy levels which balance different objectives can be altered by policy changes in other countries. A decrease in the importance of the pollution problem, or an increase in its global extent, increase the likelihood that tighter environmental regulations in one region induce laxer policies elsewhere. The transboundary character and the importance of environmental externalities also affect the amount of cooperation needed to improve members' welfare in a coalition. More global pollution problems require a larger coalition. However, the critical coalition size may be larger or smaller for more severe problems.

We analyze a model in which a government uses a second best policy to affect the reallocation of labor, following a change in relative prices. We consider two extreme cases, in which the government has either unlimited or negligible ability to commit to future actions. We explain why the ability to make commitments may be unimportant, and we illustrate this conjecture with numerical examples. For either assumption about commitment ability, the equilibrium policy involves gradual liberalization. The dying sector is protected during the transition to a free market, in order to decrease the amount of unemployment. Our results are sensitive to the assumptions about migration.

Polish economic data is assembled in order to assess the impact on the agricultural sector of the recent reforms. Evidence of recovery in this sector is slight, but the decline seems to have halted. Policy issues for agricultural reform are discussed, emphasizing regulation of the monopolistic input and processing sectors. The evidence for the existence and nature of these monopolies is reviewed. The goals of the chief regulatory body in Poland, the Antimonopoly Office, are summarized. A selection of recent models in industrial organization, dealing with entry, horizontal mergers, and vertical control, are used to provide a basis for assessing the direction of Polish regulatory policy.