Ryoji Ohdoi

Debt Policy Rule, Productive Government Spending, And Multiple Growth Paths

This paper constructs an endogenous growth model with productive government spending. In this model, the government can finance its costs through income tax and government debt and has a target level of government debt relative to the size of the economy. We show that there are two steady states. One is associated with high growth and the other with low growth. It is also shown that whether the government uses income taxes or government bonds makes the results differ significantly. In particular, an increase in government bonds reduces the growth rate in the high-growth steady state and raises the growth rate in the low-growth steady state. Conversely, an increase in the income tax rate reduces the growth rate in the low-growth steady state and there exists some tax rate that maximizes the growth rate in the high-growth steady state. Finally, the level of welfare in the low-growth steady state is lower than that in the high-growth steady state.

Productive Government Spending, Patterns of Specialization and Economic Growth in a Small Open Economy

Constructing a two-sector small open endogenous growth model with productive government spending, this paper examines patterns of specialization and the growth effects of fiscal policy. It is shown in this model that a change in income tax rate can cause a change in an equilibrium pattern of specialization. Because of this property, the relationship between the tax rate and the growth rate yields either a humped shape or a two-humped shape, depending on world commodity prices. We also show that the growth maximizing tax rate is not necessarily equal to the tax rate that maximizes the level of social welfare.

Debt Policy and Economic Growth in a Small Open Economy Model with Productive Government Spending

In this paper, we examine the effects of introducing constraints on government borrowing using a continuous-time overlapping generations model of a small open economy. We consider government placing constraints on the amount of government bonds outstanding by establishing an upper limit, or target level, for the ratio of government bonds to gross domestic product. We first show that there exist multiple steady states in the model small open economy. One is a steady state with high growth, the other a steady state with low growth. We next examine how changes in the target level for bonds affect economic growth rates at the steady states. If the economy has a positive amount of asset holdings, we obtain the following results. When the government runs budget surpluses, an increase in the target level for government bonds reduces the growth rate of the low-growth economy, but raises the growth rate of the high-growth economy. However, when the government runs budget deficits, an increase in the target level for government bonds raises the growth rate of the low-growth economy, but reduces the growth rate of the high-growth economy. If the economy has a negative amount of asset holdings, the results are ambiguous.

Financial infrastructure, technological shift, and inequality in economic development

This paper presents an overlapping generations model with technology choice and imperfect financial markets, and examines the evolution of income distribution in economic development. The model shows that improvements in financial infrastructure facilitate economic development both by raising the aggregate capital-labor ratio and by causing a technological shift to more capital-intensive technologies. While a higher capital-labor ratio under a given technology reduces inequality, a technological shift can lead to a concentration of the economic rents among a smaller number of agents. We derive the condition under which an improvement in financial infrastructure actually decreases the average utility of agents.