Review of Economic Studies198754(2), 325open access
In a dynamic economy land and capital serve not only as factors of production but as assets which individuals use to transfer income from workinq periods to retirement. Static models of international trade based on the specific-factors model incorporate only the first of these. Once the second is recognized the supply of capital and evaluation of land can be derived from underlying intertemporal optimization behavior.
Journal Article Fiscal Policy, Inflation and the Accumulation of Risky Capital Get access Jonathan Eaton Jonathan Eaton Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 48, Issue 3, July 1981, Pages 435–445, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297156 Published: 01 July 1981 Article history Received: 01 December 1977 Accepted: 01 October 1980 Published: 01 July 1981
Journal Article Price Variability, Utility and Savings Get access Jonathan Eaton Jonathan Eaton Princeton University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 47, Issue 3, April 1980, Pages 513–520, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297302 Published: 01 April 1980 Article history Received: 01 November 1977 Accepted: 01 August 1979 Published: 01 April 1980
While foreign investment augments the capital stock, it also affects land prices. If it causes land values to rise, then the resulting capital gain benefits current landowners, but the perma nent effect can be to reduce welfare. Other things equal, more-crowde d countries have higher land prices and lower steady-state welfare, b ut their net foreign indebtedness depends on technology, savings beha vior, and the interest rate. Even when it does not affect the domesti c capital stock, a land tax raises steady-state welfare. Copyright 1988 by American Economic Association.
Foreign investment affects land prices as well as domestic capital. A permanent increase in net foreign investment can reduce steady-state welfare if a consequence is higher land values. Other things equal, more crowded countries have higher land prices and lower permanent welfare, but their net foreign indebtedness depends on technology, savings behavior, and the interest rate. Even when the domestic capital stock is not affected, a land tax raises steady-state welfare.
We develop a Ricardian trade model that incorporates realistic geographic features into general equilibrium. It delivers simple structural equations for bilateral trade with parameters relating to absolute advantage, to comparative advantage (promoting trade), and to geographic barriers (resisting it). We estimate the parameters with data on bilateral trade in manufactures, prices, and geography from 19 OECD countries in 1990. We use the model to explore various issues such as the gains from trade, the role of trade in spreading the benefits of new technology, and the effects of tariff reduction. Copyright The Econometric Society 2002.
Governments often seek influence beyond their borders. One way is through what Thomas Schelling (1960, 1966) calls brute force, taking direct physical control. Less extreme methods are to promise rewards for taking desired actions, or to threaten punishments for not carrying them out-sanctions. Sanctions involve two parties, the sender and the target. (To help identify pronouns' antecedents, we consider a feminine sender and masculine target.) The sender's objective is to influence the target by threatening to impose some measure against him for acting contrary to her interest. Sanctions have long been important in international relations. Athens imposed a trade embargo against Megara, ultimately setting off the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). Sanctions are central to such international agreements as the United Nations Charter, the World Trade Organization, and the Montreal Protocol governing chlorofluorocarbons. U.S. law prescribes the use of sanctions in circumstances related, for example, to national security, human rights, intellectual property, and international trade.' Do sanctions actually achieve senders' objectives? A common claim is that they usually fail and are costly to senders. Recent U.S. legislation proposes to limit unilateral U.S. sanctions (except trade-related ones), on the grounds that they cost more than they are worth. History provides examples of sanctions that were costly and ineffectual, such as the League of Nations sanctions against the Italian occupation of Abyssinia, or U.S. sanctions against Cuba. United Nations sanctions against Iraq remain in place, having achieved less than full success, to say the least (see Gary Hufbauer et al., 1990). More systematic studies suggest that sanctions often do succeed, particularly when objectives are modest. Hufbauer et al. (1990) examine 116 episodes of sanctions with military or political objectives, deeming about one-third successful. Sanctions imposed under U.S. trade law have worked even better, about three-fourths of the time (see e.g., Sykes, 1992; Thomas Bayard and Kimberly A. Elliott, 1994; Elliott and J. David Richardson, 1997). Here we develop a simple framework to explain how sanctions can worl, and what is required for them to succeed. Our framework exploits advances in the theory of repeated games and bargaining under incomplete information. While a game-theorist would recognize the flavor of our results, the setting here is a fresh one.2 We find success more likely when the threatened measure costs the sender little relative to the gain from modifying the target's behavior, while the damage to the target is large relative to his cost of complying with the sender's will-results consistent with both intuition and empirical evidence (as well as with Adam Smith [1776 Book IV, Ch. I]). Moreover, a more patient sender is more likely to succeed, while the target's patience can work to the sender's disadvantage.3