Knowledge that Transforms

A model of corporate financial policy (debt-equity ratios and dividend payout rates) is included in the Harberger general equilibrium model of incidence of the corporate income tax. Illustrative calculations of the distortions of financial policy and increases in risk premiums induced by the corporate tax are provided. Because risk premiums on corporate securities would be reduced, eliminating the corporate tax or integrating it into the personal tax would increase the income of noncorporate investors relatively more than that of investors in corporate securities, and is therefore less regressive than is commonly thought.

Noncooperative oligopoly behavior in nonrenewable resource markets is analyzed under stationary conditions assuming perfect information. The existence of Cournot-Nash equilibria in output paths is established under standard cost and demand assumptions, and a number of comparative dynamic results are obtained. If all suppliers have the same costs, for instance, and total reserves are fixed, either increasing the number of suppliers or equalizing their reserve holdings causes more rapid resource use. If suppliers' costs differ, it is shown that equilibrium involves inefficient production; high-cost reserves may even be exhausted before low-cost reserves.

In an open economy with a floating exchange rate, the efficacy of fiscal and monetary policy depends fundamentally on the wage-setting process. In the canonical models of Mundell and Fleming, monetary expansion raises output via an exchange rate depreciation, while fiscal expansion has no output effect. These results hold only when real wages can be altered by exchange rate movements; if the real wage is fixed, the Mundell-Fleming ranking of policy is reversed. This paper explores the interaction of wages and policy in short- and long-run models, under the assumptions of perfect foresight and world capital mobility.