Henry Wan

AN ELEMENTARY PROPOSITION CONCERNING THE FORMATION OF CUSTOMS UNIONS

1‘ Introduction In the welter of inconclusive debate concerning the implications of customs u.nions, the following elementary yet basic proposition seems to have been almost lost to sight1 Froposition. Ccnsiaer any competitive world trading ewilibrium, with any number of countries and commodities, and with no restrictions whatever on the tariffs and other commodity taxes of individual countries, and with costs of trans- port fully recognized. Now let any subset of the countries form a customs unton. Then there exists a common tartrvector and a system of lump-sum compensatory payments, involving only members of the union, such that there is an associated tart

Some Theoretical Results on the Economics of Forestry

ridden competitive equilibrium in which each individual, whether a member of the union or not, is not worse oRthan before theformation of the union2 A detailed list of assumptions, and a relatively formal proof, may be found in section 2. Here we merely note that there exists a common tariff vector which is consistent with pre-union world prices and, therefore, with pre-u,nion trade patterns and pre-union levels of welfare for nonmembers. The proposition is interesting in that it contains no qualifications whatever

On the faustmann solution to the forest management problem

The general question of forest management can be stated as follows. Suppose the planner of a piece of forest land obtains utility in any time period from the timber content of trees harvested in that period. If the planner wishes to maximize the discounted sum of such utilities starting from any initial forest, what pattern of planting and harvesting trees should it follow? This paper provides a systematic analysis to answer the above question. In particular, the optimal solution is related to the Faustmann periodic solution and the sustained yield solution, which are prominent in the forestry literature.

Dynamic common property resources and environmental problems

Abstract This paper is concerned with optimal solutions to the forest management problem when future utilities are undiscounted. By examining asymptotic properties of such solutions, we find that (i) if the utility function is linear, then the Faustmann periodic solution is optimal; (ii) if the utility function is increasing and strictly concave, an optimal solution converges to the maximum sustained yield solution, which we characterize as a golden rule. These results may be viewed as a possible resolution to the debate in forestry economics about what constitutes an optimal policy in forest management.

Wage-setting institutions and economic growth

Problems of interacting common-property resources are set up as stochastic differential games. A class of models is solved where equilibrium closed-loop strategies keep harvest rates proportional to stocks. Corrective taxes, etc., are considered.

A class of trilinear differential games

Abstract Wage-setting institutions in several Asian and Latin American economies are compared and contrasted. The Asian economies have relied more on market wage determination, whereas the Latin American economies have encouraged institutions which push wages in key sectors up above market-clearing levels. Market wage determination, combined with exportled growth, has resulted in rapidly rising real wages in the context of full employment in the Asian

Asia-Pacific economies : a survey

This paper characterizes a class ofN-person, general sum differential games for which the optimal strategies only depend upon remaining playing time. Such strategies can be easily characterized and determined, and the optimal play can be easily analyzed.

Revisiting the Mitra-Wan Tree Farm

Why is the centre of international economic dynamism moving towards the countries of the East and South East Asia? Are there common elements that explain this success? Divided into two parts, the authors first consider the central debates concerning the development of this area, including: public policy and political economy; economic indicators and financial performance; industrial development and the environment; and democracy and development. The second half of the book considers the most recent developments of nine countries covering the four East Asian Tigers, four Asian states and the Peoples Republic of China.

HYSTERESIS OF LONG-RUN EQUILIBRIUM FROM REALISTIC ADJUSTMENT COSTS

The tree-farm model of T. Mitra and H. Wan (1985) contains novelties: a continuum of optimal cycles appear for small discounting and the cyclicality survives perturbations. To isolate the source of novelties, the author studies the simplest case: trees live naturally for two periods. This model specializes the general theory of multisector development under four conditions. It becomes a Ramsey type model, augmented by a cross-vintage constraint: the present acreage under trees, age n, must not be less than the acreage under trees age n + 1, one period hence. Novelties emerge when this constraint bounds the graph of the state-to-control correspondence. Copyright 1994 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.

A Differential Game Model of Oligopoly

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the hysteresis of long-run equilibrium from realistic adjustment costs. Much of the economic literature concerns problems of adjustment. Sometimes the adjustment process is assumed to be costless and of infinite speed. Sometimes the lag-structure plays a crucial role. Partly as an outgrowth of the lagged adjustment literature, the speed of adjustment has been assumed to be consciously chosen by firms and households in the light of the cost of adjustment. It is currently known that many traditional propositions concerning the behavior of individual firms must be either abandoned or substantially revised when costs of adjustment are allowed for. The chapter discusses the possibility of inter-industrial wage and marginal productivity differences and of the hysteresis of long-run equilibrium. Hysteresis depends on the non-differentiability at the origin of the cost-of-adjustment functions but does not depend on the special absolute value form.