scholarly journals Productivity and Misallocation in General Equilibrium*

2019 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rezza Baqaee ◽  
Emmanuel Farhi
Keyword(s):  
Social Cost ◽  
Returns To Scale ◽  
Allocative Efficiency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Resource Reallocation ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Tfp Growth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Technical And Allocative Efficiency

Abstract This paper develops a general theory of aggregation in inefficient economies. We provide nonparametric formulas for aggregating microeconomic shocks in economies with distortions such as taxes, markups, frictions to resource reallocation, financial frictions, and nominal rigidities. We allow for arbitrary elasticities of substitution, returns to scale, factor mobility, and input-output network linkages. We show how to separately measure changes in technical and allocative efficiency. We also show how to compute the social cost of distortions. We pursue applications focusing on firm-level markups in the United States. We find that improvement in allocative efficiency, due to the reallocation over time of market share to high-markup firms, accounts for about half of aggregate TFP growth over the period 1997–2015. We also find that eliminating the misallocation resulting from the large and dispersed markups estimated in the data would raise aggregate TFP by about 15%, increasing the economy-wide cost of monopoly distortions by two orders of magnitude compared with the famous 0.1% estimate by Harberger (1954). These exact numbers should be interpreted with care because the data are imperfect and require substantial imputation.

Canada’s changing innovation landscape

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Razib Alam ◽  
Bonwoo Koo ◽  
Brian Paul Cozzarin
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Destination Country ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Patent Classification ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Our objective is to study Canada’s patenting activity over time in aggregate terms by destination country, by assignee and destination country, and by diversification by country of destination. We collect bibliographic patent data from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We identify 19,957 matched Canada–US patents, 34,032 Canada-only patents, and 43,656 US-only patents from 1980 to 2014. Telecommunications dominates in terms of International Patent Classification technologies for US-only and Canada–US patents. At the firm level, the greatest number of matched Canada–US patents were granted in the field of telecommunications, at the university level in pharmaceuticals, at the government level in control and instrumentation technology, and at the individual level in civil engineering. We use entropy to quantify technological diversification and find that diversification indices decline over time for Canada and the USA; however, all US indices decline at a faster rate.

Markets and communities: the social cost of the meritocracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Social Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Mobility ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Excessive Competition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Productive Traits ◽  
Deaths Of Despair

Abstract Critiques of the meritocracy have centered on its narrow definition and biased assessment of merit, its stigmatization of the unsuccessful, and excessive competition. This paper identifies a different mechanism that could have pernicious social and political consequences. Economic mobility sorts people based on certain ‘productive’ traits, separating them into classes, and thus alters social externalities. This sorting–separation–externalities mechanism can produce between-class polarization in social outcomes (e.g. alcoholism and drug abuse) and worsen aggregate outcomes over all classes, consistent with rising ‘deaths of despair’ in the United States (Case and Deaton, 2020, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press). When traits are endogenous, transition out of a caste-based society produces an initial burst of economic mobility which dissipates over time. Thus, a dynamic meritocratic society devolves into a static class-based society. I set out an alternative model called the ‘experimental society’, which is less susceptible to these problems.

Discounting and intragenerational equity

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Emmerling
Keyword(s):  
Discount Rate ◽  
Analytical Formula ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intragenerational Equity ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ramsey Rule

AbstractWe study the social discount rate, taking into account inequality within generations, that is, across countries or individuals. We show that if inequality decreases over time, the social discount rate should be lower than the one obtained by the standard Ramsey rule under certain but reasonable conditions. Applied to the global discount rate and due to the projected convergence across countries, this implies that the inequality adjusted discount rate should be about twice as high as the standard Ramsey rule predicts. For individual countries on the other hand, where inequality tends to increase over time, the effect goes in the other direction. For the United States for instance, this inequality effect leads to a reduction of the social discount rate by about 0.5 to 1 percentage points. We also present an analytical formula for the social discount rate allowing us to disentangle inequality, risk, and intertemporal fluctuation aversion.

College Quality and Wages in the United States

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Black ◽  
Kermit Daniel ◽  
Jeffrey Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Cost ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
College Quality ◽  
Using Data ◽  
As Effects ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Identification Strategy

Abstract We estimate the effects of the quality of the college a student attends on their later earnings using data from a cohort of US college students from the late 1970s and early 1980s. We rely on a linear selection on observables identification strategy, which is justified in our context by a very rich set of conditioning variables. We find economically important earnings effects of college quality for men and women, as well as effects on educational attainment, spousal earnings and other demographic variables. These effects remain roughly constant over time and result primarily from effects on wages, rather than from effects on hours or labor force participation. We find that, over the lower part of the range of college quality, increases in college quality (which entail higher expenditures per student) pass a simple social cost-benefit test.

scholarly journals Estimates of the social cost of carbon have not changed over time

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Tol
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Stationary Distribution ◽  
Social Cost ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Kernel Density ◽  
Social Cost Of Carbon ◽  
Almost Everywhere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Carbon Prices ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Some claim that as knowledge about climate change accumulates, the social cost of carbon increases. A meta-analysis of published estimates shows that this is not the case. Correcting for inflation and emission year and controlling for the discount rate, kernel density decomposition reveals a stationary distribution. Actual carbon prices are almost everywhere below the estimated social cost of carbon.

scholarly journals The Interaction of Wildfire Risk Mitigation Policies in the Presence of Spatial Externalities and Heterogeneous Landowners

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibtisam Al Abri ◽  
Kelly Grogan
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Social Cost ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
The United States ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Stochastic Dynamic ◽  
Fuel Treatment ◽  
The Social

The dramatic increase in the number of uncontrollable wildfires in the United States has become an important policy issue as they threaten valuable forests and human property. The derived stochastic dynamic model of this study is capable of determining optimal fuel treatment timing and level simultaneously and as a function of fire risk and fuel biomass dynamics. This study develops a stochastic dynamic model to evaluate the interaction of fuel treatment decisions for two adjacent landowners under various scenarios of misinformation about fire occurrence and spread. Findings indicate that a landowner tends to free ride on fuel treatment undertaken by his adjacent landowner. However, the study finds that the free riding potential of a landowner could be alleviated to some extent by having a neighboring landowner who is aware of fire spillover effects. In addition, the study reveals that the social cost resultant from free riding behavior is lower that the social cost associated with complete absence of fire externality awareness for both landowners. These findings imply that governments could introduce more effective educational programs to ensure that all landowners are fully aware of cross-parcel benefits of fuel treatment in order to align socially and privately optimal decisions, thus minimizing externality costs.

The Creationist Movement in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-88
Author(s):  
Kathleen C. Oberlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Effective Leaders ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tactical Decision ◽  
Historical Examination ◽  
Over Time

Through a close historical examination of archived newsletters (1963-2007) from four different creationist organizations, this chapter traces potential sites Answers in Genesis might have built instead to reach and influence a broader public such as a college or a research center among other strategies. In light of these available alternatives, it shows how the museum emerged over time when Young Earth Creationists shifted the focus of the social movement away from Old Earth Creationism, advanced effective leaders who reassessed previous movement actions, and adapted to the sociocultural as well as political environment of the 1970s and 1980s. It argues the rise of Answers in Genesis as an organization and its tactical decision to build a museum only came as a surprise because scholars were previously limited to examining political opportunities and legislation advanced by the movement.

“It’s not something I’ve really thought about ‘til now’”: The social aspects of U.S. emerging adults’ comics reading histories

2021 ◽  
pp. 096100062110542
Author(s):  
Robin A. Moeller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Social Cost ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Common

The common image of a reader is that of a person alone with a book, but reading is actually a social activity. The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which social aspects influenced a group of emerging adults’ comics reading when they were children and/or teens. Data was collected by surveying and conducting semi-structured interviews with 34 emerging adults in the Southeast region of the United States about their comics reading histories. The research findings describe who the participants felt had the most impact on their comics reading, as well as the extent to which the participants felt that they belonged to a community of comics readers. Significantly, the participants’ notion of comics readers as “nerds” emerged from the data, which the participants largely connected to gender, and which participant Lauren noted, “It’s not something I’ve really thought about ‘til now.’” The implications of these findings suggest that some of these participants felt that there was a social cost to comics reading. Suggestions for making comics reading more accessible for more readers are discussed.

The Transformation of the Republican and Democratic Party Coalitions in the U.S.

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Miller ◽  
Norman Schofield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
The Social ◽  
William Jennings Bryan ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Social Conservatives

Because the space of policies is two-dimensional, parties in the United States are coalitions of opposed interests. The Republican Party contains both socially conservative and socially liberal groups, though both tend to be pro-business. The increasing dominance of the social conservatives has angered some prominent Republicans, even causing a number of them to change party allegiance. Over time, the decreasing significance of the economic axis may cause the Republican Party to adopt policies that are analogous to those proposed by William Jennings Bryan in 1896: populist and anti-business. In parallel, the Democratic Party will increasingly appeal to pro-business, social liberals, so the party takes on the mantel of Lincoln.

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