Effect of Feed-In Tariff with Deregulation on Directed Technical Change in the Energy Sector

In this study, we examine how a feed-in tariff (FIT) accompanied with deregulation in the energy sector affects the direction of technical change along the balanced growth path. A final good is composed of resource-saving (such as renewable) energy and traditional resource-intensive energy. The government introduces a FIT scheme for promoting resource-saving energy, while it deregulates the traditional energy sector for efficiency improvement. The implementation of the scheme positively affects directed technical change toward the resource-saving energy technology and economic growth. Meanwhile, the biased technical change leads to an upsurge in the surcharge. Associated deregulation not only accelerates the biased technical change but also drives the surge in the surcharge rate, unless the initial market structure of the traditional energy sector is highly concentrated.

Endogenous Education and Long-Run Factor Shares

We study the determinants of factor shares in a neoclassical environment with capital-skill complementarity and endogenous education. In this environment estimates of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor that fail to account for human capital levels will be biased upward. We develop a model with overlapping generations, technology-driven neoclassical growth, and ongoing increases in educational attainment. For a class of production functions featuring capital-skill complementarity, a balanced growth path exists and is characterized by an inverse relationship between the rates of capital-and labor-augmenting technological progress and the capital share in national income. (JEL D33, E25, J24, O33)

Growth and ideas in a perfectly competitive world: A complement

In this short article, I build an idea-based growth model with perfect competition in a representative household economy. I obtain significant findings that confirm Boitier (2019). First, a competitive equilibrium, increasing returns to scale, and innovations can be tenable. For that, firms must raise capital from shareholders, and the production function must show decreasing returns to scale in the stock of ideas and in labor. Second, the developed idea-based growth model admits a balanced growth path similar to the one provided in an idea-based growth model with monopolistic competition. Whether innovations are competitive or thrive under monopolistic competition does not constitute an engine-driving long-run growth. Importantly, this reconciles Romer (1990, 2015) with Boldrin and Levine (2008).

Directed Technical Change in Labor and Environmental Economics

It is increasingly evident that the direction of technological change responds to economic incentives. We review the literature on directed technical change in the context of environmental economics and labor economics, and we show that these fields have much in common both theoretically and empirically. We emphasize the importance of a balanced growth path and show that the lack of such a path is closely related to the slow development of green technologies in environmental economics and to growing inequality in labor economics. We discuss whether the direction of innovation is efficient. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 13 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The impact of budget deficit, public debt and education expenditures on economic growth in Poland

This paper investigates the relationship between economic growth in Poland and a few metrics of fiscal policy: budget deficit relative to GDP, the structure of public debt, education expenditures, and public consumption. We prove that with constant values of parameters of fiscal policy, over time the economy converges to the balanced growth path which is unique and globally asymptotically stable.Having calibrated the model with statistical data, we demonstrate that in the period of 2000–2016 economic growth in Poland was driven primarily by rapid improvement in the level of human capital (at a rate of 5.4% per annum), and secondarily due to the accumulation of capital (2.7% annually). If recent trends in fiscal policy are continued, the Polish economy will converge to the balanced growth path with GDP growing at 3.7%. This rate may be boosted, if fiscal policy is appropriately adjusted, for example by permanent reduction in budget deficit. We also analyse the effects of changes in the financing structure of public debt. Finally, we present several scenarios of increasing public and private spending on education.

PHYSICAL CAPITAL, HUMAN CAPITAL, AND THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF POLLUTION IN AN OLG MODEL

In a standard overlapping generations model, we show how the health effects of pollution impact the balanced-growth path (BGP) and the transition dynamics of the economy. The key driver is the differential between physical and human capital accumulation. The differential occurs because pollution alters the incentives to save and to invest in education via reductions in longevity and alters the effectiveness of education expenditures via impaired cognitive learning. Two predictions of the model are noteworthy. The first prediction is the existence of two stable BGPs with a separating saddle path. One BGP is desirable featuring high economic growth and low pollution, whereas the other should be avoided because it is associated with low economic growth and high pollution. The second prediction is that economic and environmental cycles may emerge, implying inequality between generations. These theoretical results are supported by empirical evidence and imply a role for government to steer the economy toward the desirable BGP and eliminate the cycles.

Reconciling Models of Diffusion and Innovation: A Theory of the Productivity Distribution and Technology Frontier

We study how endogenous innovation and technology diffusion interact to determine the shape of the productivity distribution and generate aggregate growth. We model firms that choose to innovate, adopt technology, or produce with their existing technology. Costly adoption creates a spread between the best and worst technologies concurrently used to produce similar goods. The balance of adoption and innovation determines the shape of the distribution; innovation stretches the distribution, while adoption compresses it. On the balanced growth path, the aggregate growth rate equals the maximum growth rate of innovators. While innovation drives long‐run growth, changes in the adoption environment can influence growth by affecting innovation incentives, either directly, through licensing of excludable technologies, or indirectly, via the option value of adoption.

Development priorities: the relative benefits of agricultural growth

Should agriculture or non-agriculture be a priority for development? We revisit this question using a two-sector, three-factor dynamic model with an asymptotic balanced growth path. The model allows a forward-looking assessment of development priorities based on lifetime welfare. A comparison of sector-specific productivity gains indicates that gains in non-agriculture are often more valuable, even when agriculture is initially the largest sector in terms of employment. We discuss the robustness of this result and how international capital mobility, capital intensity, demographics, the discount rate, and taxes on profits influence investment and structural transformation.

House Prices and Growth with Fixed Land Supply

We analyse housing costs and patterns of residential development over the long term in a dynamic general equilibrium. We show that in a growing economy the speed of travel improvements is crucial to the evolution of land and house prices. We derive a condition for the rate of change in transport efficiency that generates flat land and house prices on a balanced growth path. We present evidence that this condition was satisfied in many countries between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, but since then passenger transport improvements have slowed down with major implications for how house prices evolve.

The State of DSGE Modeling

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modeling can be structured around six key criticisms leveled at the approach. The first is fundamental and common to macroeconomics and microeconomics alike—namely, problems with rationality and expected utility maximization (EUM). The second is that DSGE models examine fluctuations about an exogenous balanced growth path and there is no role for endogenous growth. The third consists of a number of concerns associated with estimation. The fourth is another fundamental problem with any micro-founded macro-model—that of heterogeneity and aggregation. The fifth and sixth concern focus on the rudimentary nature of earlier models that lacked unemployment and a banking sector. A widely used and referenced example of DSGE modeling is the Smets-Wouters (SW) medium-sized NK model. The model features rational expectations and, in an environment of uncertainty, EUM by households and firms. Preferences are consistent with a nonstochastic exogenous balanced growth path about which the model is solved. The model can be estimated by a Bayesian systems estimation method that involves four types of representative agents (households, final goods producers, trade unions, and intermediate good producers). The latter two produce differentiated labor and goods, respectively, and, in each period of time, consist of a proportion locked into existing contracts and the rest that can reoptimize. There is underemployment but no unemployment. Finally, an arbitrage condition imposed on the return on capital and bonds rules out financial frictions. Thus the model, which has become the gold standard for DSGE macro-modeling, features all six areas of concern. The model can be used as a platform to examine how the current generation of DSGE models has developed in these six dimensions. This modeling framework has also used for macro-economic policy design.