Xavier Raurich

Unemployment, growth and fiscal policy: new insights on the hysteresis hypothesis

We develop a growth model with unemployment due to imperfections in the labor market. In this model, wage inertia and balanced budget rules cause a complementarity between capital and employment capable of explaining the existence of multiple equilibrium paths. Hysteresis is viewed as the result of a selection between these different equilibrium paths. We use this model to argue that, in contrast to the US, those fiscal policies followed by most of the European countries after the shocks of the 1970s may have played a central role in generating hysteresis.

Aspirations, Habit Formation, and Bequest Motive

We analyze how the presence of endogenous preferences affects the altruistic bequest motive from parents to children. We will show that the existence of habits raises the threshold value of the intergenerational discount factor above which altruistic bequests are positive, while aspiration formation could push this value down. Therefore, the dynamic inefficiency of the economy with no altruism is not sufficient to prevent the bequest motive from being operative under aspiration formation. We also discuss the implications of public debt when the bequest motive is inoperative and preferences exhibit habit and aspiration formation.

Welfare Implications of the Interaction between Habits and Consumption Externalities

We analyze the welfare properties of the equilibrium path of a growth model where both habits and consumption externalities affect the utility of consumers. Our analysis highlights the crucial role played by complementarities between externalities and habits in order to generate an inefficient dynamic equilibrium. In particular, we show that the competitive equilibrium is inefficient when consumption externalities and habit adjusted consumption are not perfect substitutes.

Growth, unemployment and wage inertia

We introduce wage setting via efficiency wages in the neoclassical one-sector growth model to study the growth effects of wage inertia. We compare the dynamic equilibrium of an economy with wage inertia with the equilibrium of an economy without it. We show that wage inertia affects the long run employment rate and that the transitional dynamics of the main economic variables will be different because wages are a state variable when wage inertia is introduced. In particular, we show that the model with wage inertia can explain some growth patterns that cannot be explained when wages are flexible. We also study the growth effects of permanent technological and fiscal policy shocks in these two economies. During the transition, the growth effects of technological shocks obtained when wages exhibit inertia may be the opposite of those obtained when wages are flexible. These technological shocks may have long run effects if there is wage inertia.

Labour market effects of public capital stock: evidence for the Spanish private sector

This paper provides a new rationale for the positive effect of public capital stock on employment and wages. We show that higher levels of public capital reduce wages along the wage equation and enhance employment due to the resulting larger elasticity of labour demand with respect to wages. The estimation of a structural model for the Spanish private sector reveals that this wage channel is empirically relevant. We use the estimated parameters to simulate the recent incidence of the ratio of public to private capital stock on the private sector economic performance. We find (i) sizeable effects on employment, capital stock and gross domestic product, and (ii) that the wage channel is particularly important for employment.

Demand-Based Structural Change and Balanced Economic Growth

We analyze the equilibrium of a multi-sector exogenous growth model where the introduction of minimum consumption requirements drives structural change. We show that equilibrium dynamics simultaneously exhibit structural change and balanced growth of aggregate variables as is observed in US when the initial intensity of minimum consumption requirements is sufficiently small. This intensity is measured by the ratio between the aggregate value of the minimum consumption requirements and GDP and, therefore, it is inversely related with the level of economic development. Initially rich economies benefit from an initially low intensity of the minimum consumption requirements and, as a consequence, these economies end up exhibiting balanced growth of aggregate variables, while there is structural change. In contrast, initially poor economies suffer from an initially large intensity of the minimum consumption requirements, which makes the growth of the aggregate variables unbalanced during a very large period. These economies may never exhibit simultaneously balanced growth of aggregate variables and structural change.

KNOWLEDGE MISALLOCATION AND GROWTH

We develop a growth model where knowledge is embodied in individuals and diffused across sectors through labor mobility. The existence of labor mobility costs constrains mobility and thus generates labor misallocation. Different levels of labor misallocation imply different levels of exploitation of available knowledge and therefore different total factor productivity across countries. We derive a positive relationship between growth and labor mobility, which is consistent with the empirical evidence, by assuming aggregate constant returns to capital. We also analyze the short- and long-run effects of labor mobility costs in the case of decreasing returns to capital. It turns out that changes in mobility costs have larger economic effects when different types of workers have small rather than large complementarities. Finally, we show that different labor income taxes or labor market tightness imply different rates of labor mobility and therefore can explain differences in Gross Domestic Product across countries.

Population and Economic Growth Under Different Growth Engines

Abstract Using a growth model with physical capital accumulation, human capital investment and horizontal R&D activity, this paper proposes an alternative channel through which an increase in the population growth rate may yield a non-uniform (i.e., a positive, negative, or neutral) impact on the long-run growth rate of per-capita GDP, as available empirical evidence seems mostly to suggest. The proposed mechanism relies on the nature of the process of economic growth (whether it is fully or semi-endogenous), and the peculiar engine(s) driving economic growth (human capital investment, R&D activity, or both). The model also explains why in the long term the association between population growth and productivity growth may ultimately be negative when R&D is an engine of economic growth.

Consumption composition and macroeconomic dynamics

Abstract We analyze the transitional dynamics of an economic model with heterogeneous consumption goods where convergence is driven by two different forces: the typical diminishing returns to capital and the dynamic adjustment in consumption expenditure induced by the variation in relative prices. We show that this second force affects the growth rate if the consumption goods are produced with technologies exhibiting different capital intensities and if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is not equal to one. Because the aforementioned growth effect of relative prices arises only under heterogeneous consumption goods, the transitional dynamics of this model exhibits striking differences with the growth model with a single consumption good. We also show that these differences in the transitional dynamics can give raise to large discrepancies in the welfare cost of shocks.

Labor Mobility, Structural Change and Economic Growth

This paper develops a two-sector growth model in which the process of structural change in the sectoral composition of employment and GDP is jointly determined by non-homothetic preferences and labor mobility cost. This cost, paid by workers moving to another sector, limits structural change. Our model can explain the following patterns of development of the US economy throughout the period 1880-2000: (i) balanced growth of the aggregate variables in the second half of the last century; (ii) structural change in the sectoral composition of employment between agriculture and non-agriculture sectors; (iii) structural change process in the sectoral composition of GDP between these sectors; and (iv) wage convergence between the two sectors. We outline that the last two patterns can only be explained if labor mobility cost is introduced. Results reveal that mobility cost generates a misallocation of production factors. This implies a loss of GDP which amounts to over 30% of the GDP throughout initial periods according to the calibrated model. During the transition, the loss of GDP decreases and eventually vanishes. Thus, the elimination of the misallocation explains part of the increase in the GDP. Additionally, this study points out that misallocation introduces a mechanism through which cross-country differences in sectoral composition may account for cross-country income differences.