Liutang Gong

Direct preferences for wealth, the risk premium puzzle, growth, and policy effectiveness☆

In this paper, we consider social status, the spirit of capitalism, fiscal policies, and asset pricing in a stochastic model of growth. With specific assumptions on the production technology, preferences, and stochastic shocks, we derive the explicit solutions to the growth rates of consumption and savings and equilibrium returns on all assets. We further demonstrate how fiscal policies, the spirit of capitalism, and stochastic shocks affect growth, asset pricing, and welfare.

Money, Social Status, and Capital Accumulation in a Cash-in-Advance Model

This paper presents an infinite-horizon model of optimal capital accumulation with the social-status concern and the cash-in-advance constraint. When the cash-in-advance constraint applies to both consumption and investment, money is not superneutral. If only consumption is subject to the cash-in-advance constraint, inflation increases capital accumulation.

Foreign Aid Reduces Labor Supply and Capital Accumulation

In an optimal growth model with foreign aid, foreign borrowing, and endogenous leisure-and-consumption choices, it is shown that a permanent rise in foreign aid reduces long-run capital accumulation and labor supply, increases long-run consumption, and has no effect on long-run foreign borrowing.

Military spending and stochastic growth

This study examines capital accumulation, military spending, arms accumulation, and output growth in a stochastic endogenous growth model. The analysis shows that higher (lower) growth in foreign military spending leads to faster (slower) economic growth in the home country if the home countryi¯s intertemporal substitution elasticity in consumption is smaller (larger); but more volatility in foreign military spending can lead to higher economic growth in the home country when its intertemporal substitution elasticity is large. In addition, shocks to output production may stimulate economic growth.

Optimal taxation and intergovernmental transfer in a dynamic model with multiple levels of government

In this paper, we study the optimal choices of the federal income tax, federal transfers, and local taxes in a dynamic model of capital accumulation and with explicit gamestructure s among multipleprivateage nts, multiplelocal governments, and the federal government. In general, the optimal local property tax is zero if the local property tax is constrained to be nonnegative, whereas the optimal local consumption tax is always positive. When the local consumption tax is chosen optimally, the federal income tax can be either positive or negative. For most reasonable parameter values, our numerical calculations have shown that with a positive local consumption tax there exists a reverse transfer from local governments to the federal government.

The Z-Transform Method for Multidimensional Dynamic Economic Systems

This article uses the Z-transform to develop a method for solving the linearised multidimensional discrete-time systems, which can be used to discuss the effects of policies on economy (including the welfare gains and initial effects on economy) raised by multi-sector perfect-foresight-discrete-time models. Our method is not restricted to the dimension of the dynamic system, and it can not only analyse the effect of permanent policy change on the economy but also can be used to analyse the effect of temporal policy change on the economy. As an application example, we analyse the effects of fiscal policy on the initial economy and social welfare in the discrete-time Uzawa–Lucas model.

A Note on Entrepreneurial Risk, Capital Market Imperfections, and Heterogeneity

Empirical evidence shows that entrepreneurs hold a large fraction of wealth, have higher saving rates than workers, and face substantial uninsurable entrepreneurial and investment risks. This paper constructs a heterogeneous-agent general equilibrium model with uninsurable entrepreneurial risk and capital market imperfections to explore the implications of uninsurable entrepreneurial risk for wealth distribution and aggregate activity in an incomplete market economy. It is shown that entrepreurial risk can substantially affect both the wealth distribution and the macroeconomy.

THE Z-TRANSFORM AND COMPARATIVE DYNAMICS IN DISCRETE-TIME MODELS

This paper develops a general technique for the computation of comparative dynamics in perfect-foresight discrete-time models. The method developed here is both applicable and general; it can be used to analyze the effects of the perturbation of parameters on endogenous variables and the welfare of an economic system derived from more general multisector models. It is neither restricted to the systems dimensions nor restricted by the assumption of distinct eigenvalues in the system.