Xinhua Gu

The impacts of gaming expansion on economic growth: a theoretical reconsideration.

This paper employs a general equilibrium framework to analyze the effects on economic growth of global expansions in casino gaming, which exports gambling services largely to non-residents. Both domestic and foreign investments in the gaming sector bring in not only substantial revenues but also positive spillover effects on related sectors and even on the entire local economy. However, an over-expansion of commercial gambling may lead to deterioration in the terms of trade with an adverse impact on real income. If this situation persists, it would not be impossible for immiserizing growth to occur. As a highly profitable sector, casino gaming may enable its operators to diversify out of this risk if they invest retained profits in non-gaming sectors to cash in on the spillover effects it has created. The gaming-dominant economy can then be directed on a more balanced and sustainable growth path, and will become less susceptible to business cycles. Indeed, economic experiences in the world’s major casino resorts are consistent basically with this argument for diversification. We believe that after the current global crisis fades away, economic growth and resulting surges in global demand for gambling services can provide further opportunities for the expansion of existing casino resorts and the development of new gaming markets.

Does Inequality Lead to a Financial Crisis? Revisited

Financial crises have been attributed to rising income inequality via its induced high household leverage as observed in the USA and similar economies. Alternatively it has been suggested this is not a general relationship since it was found that inequality had no bearing on crises in 14 advanced countries over 1920–2008; instead, low interest rates and business cycle expansions are found to be the only two robust determinants of credit booms leading to crises. Using a similar dataset, this paper provides no support for the generality of the above findings by embracing country heterogeneity. The paper shows that real evidence still points back to the inequality-leverage–crisis nexus for financialized economies. The implication is that finance can hardly be sustainable under rising inequality.

As Good as Married? A Model of Premarital Cohabitation and Learning

This article develops a two-sided search-matching model with imperfectly observed types and sequential learning. We use the metaphor of premarital cohabitation and assume that it is initiated to learn more about ones prospective spouse. We show that couples match within classes and that the classes of cohabiting and married couples partially overlap. Couples are more discriminating about whom they marry than whom they cohabit with. We demonstrate that cohabiting individuals eventually learn each others true type. We show that sequential learning during cohabitation reduces signaling errors and that the Bayes estimator of true type converges almost surely to true type. As noisy information is filtered over time, the risk of mismatch disappears and the aggregate matching pattern based on true types is restored.

A Theory of Financial Liberalisation: Why are Developing Countries so Reluctant?

This study treats capital flows as risky growth opportunities for both investing and host countries in a standard mean‐variance model. Differing optimal trade‐offs between growth and volatility on both sides of capital flows are examined on the basis of their different attitudes towards destabilising risk, different considerations of capital market openness and different levels of financial sector development. It is established that growth and volatility may have a positive or negative relationship in theory, but in practice, they are correlated negatively with each other. This negative correlation is significantly non‐linear after some normalisation and holds persistently not only for developing but also for developed countries. The study shows that one side’s push for financial liberalisation may come across the other side’s resistance to it. This conflict of interest can be resolved via negotiations for a compromise equilibrium at which both sides’ optimal trade‐offs are made internationally compatible.

The economics of taxation in casino tourism with cross-border market power.

This paper provides a theoretical proof that casino taxation may have great potential as a contributor to tourism efficiency under sufficient market power. We also examine empirical evidence for the economic efficiency of casino tourism in Macao even with a “high” tax owing to geographic market power. Both theory and evidence point to such power as a key factor that affects the ability of a tourism resort to pass along local taxes to gambling visitors. This ability makes all the difference between the good or bad effect of casino taxes on tourism development. The policy implication is that a gaming tax should be lowered to support casino businesses if it is inefficient, but can be raised to extract public revenues if it is efficient.

A Trade Based View on Casino Taxation: Market Conditions

This article presents a trade based theory of casino taxation along with empirical evidence found from Macao as a typical tourism resort. We prove that there is a unique optimum gaming tax in a particular market for casino gambling, argue that any change in this tax is engendered by external demand shifts, and suggest that the economic rent from gambling legalization should be shared through such optimal tax between the public and private sectors. Our work also studies the tradeoff between economic benefits and social costs arising from casino tourism, and provides some policy recommendations for the sustainable development of gaming-led economies. The theoretical arguments in this article turn out to be consistent with empirical observations on Macao realities over the recent decade.

A re-examination of experience service offering and regular service pricing under profit maximization

A firm may offer an experience service free of charge to attract more customers to buy its regular service. This paper provides an economic analysis for interactions between the capacity-constrained firm and its waiting-averse customers, generating certain managerial insights. Free services should be sped up to move customers onto the paid service if it is idle, or slowed down to hold onto customers and avoid exacerbating congestion in the paid service if it is busy. A lower price should be charged for the regular service as compensation to customers for service delay if more of them buy that service. When more customers arrive for experience services, a greater price reduction should be offered to attract them into the regular service if it becomes more congested.

The suspension of borrowing: an implicit penalty for loan default under imperfect information

ABSTRACT A credit seeker may be suspended from borrowing for a period of time due to a previous default. Such suspension is widely used in bank lending through credit check. Our work analyses the effects of suspension on the investment choice of borrowers under uncertainty and on the lending policy of banks facing asymmetric information. We show that suspension should be tightened at low loan rates, but loosened otherwise, to improve the repayment performance of borrowers. We also show that although credit rationing may not be completely removed due to imperfect information, the excess demand for credit or transitive waiting in the market can actually be attenuated by such efficient use of suspension. Our theoretical predictions are consistent with observed cyclical patterns of changes in lendingrates and suspension severity.

The role of financial systems for cross-country differences in the link between income and consumption inequality

ABSTRACT This article discusses why consumption inequality stays low despite high income inequality in the U.S; but income inequality is closely followed by consumption inequality in China. We show that different financial systems can play a critical role in shaping the cross-country different links between income and consumption inequality. This phenomenon is consistent with the cross-country different relationships between income inequality and saving rates. Consumer credit expansion in the U.S. makes inequality much less serious for consumption than for income, and this result holds to an even larger extent if more domestic credit can be financed by foreign savings. But this is not the case in China, whose financial system focuses only on investment and trade while neglecting liquidity constraints on consumption. Our assertions accord well with evidence found from the U.S., China, and other related economies.

Market structure and casino taxation in tourist resorts

This article examines the association of tax effects with market structure for casino gaming. We show that if market structure is uncompetitive, much of casino taxation falls on tourists whose demand is inelastic relative to supply. The tax is likely to be efficient under strong external demand if imposed on oligopoly casinos with a monopoly location in a cross-border market. The likelihood of economically ‘good’ taxation is greater under oligopoly than under competition but lower than under monopoly. Casino taxes should be lowered in a more competitive market with weaker external demand. Our prediction is consistent with the evidence found from casino tourism development in Macao with ‘high’ gambling taxes.