This paper projects the future of knowledge economy (KE) in SSA and MENA countries using the four components of the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index (KEI): economic incentive, education, ICTs and innovation. The empirical evidence provides the speeds of integration as well as the time necessary to achieve full integration. Findings broadly indicate SSA and MENA countries with low levels in ...

A key feature of the Swedish economy over last decade and a half has been the rapid internationalisation of its economy, both through FDI and trade. In this paper we consider the relationship between these two trends: whether the effect of increased inward FDI on exports by domestic firms may be positive or negative. The first case may occur as a result of demonstration effects. The second may ...

This paper compares emission taxes with other taxes from the viewpoint of emission reduction in an open economy. Using a simple monopoly model, we show that emission taxes may not be very effective to protect environment because of the spillover effects between markets stemming from non-constant marginal costs and transboundary externalities. Other taxes such as production taxes and tariffs are...

Hyperinflation results from the creation and injection of fiat money into the economy. Using laboratory methods, this paper examines conditions under which fiat money can serve as a medium of exchange in a finite horizon economy while the government is active in the markets for goods. Consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis, issuing new fiat currency does not stabilize a hyperinfla...

This paper proposes an alternative explanation to recurrent hyperinflations other than bounded rationality by explicitly considering the global dynamics of an economy with credit market frictions. In this paper we show that hyperinflations are self-generated and are manifestations of the underlying global dynamic properties of an economy with perfect foresight rational agents that face credit r...

Hidden Insurance in a Moral Hazard Economy We consider an economy where individuals privately choose effort and trade competitively priced securities that pay off with effort-determined probability. We show that if insurance against a negative shock is sufficiently incomplete, then standard functional form restrictions ensure that individual objective functions are optimized by an effort and in...

We consider inflation and debt dynamics under a global interest rate rule when private agents forecast using adaptive learning. Given the zero lower bound on interest rates, active interest rate rules are known to imply the existence of a second, low-inflation steady state. Under learning the economy can slip below this low-inflation steady state and be driven to an even lower inflation floor s...

We investigate experimentally the economic effects of wage taxation to finance unemployment benefits for a closed economy and an international economy. The main findings are the following. (i) There is clear evidence of a vicious circle in the dynamic interaction between the wage tax and unemployment. (ii) In the short run employment is boosted by budget deficits. However, subsequent tax rate a...

An economy is presented where trade is beneficial but not assumed. If trade is to occur, it must arise endogenously as either barter or mediated trade. The role decision costs play in the development of trade is explicitly recognized. The theoretical model is examined in an experimental setting by imbedding it in a computer trading game. The data obtained from the experiments are used to examin...

A benchmark result in the political economy of taxation is that majority voting over a linear income tax schedule will result in an inefficiently high tax rate whenever the median voter has a below average income. The present paper examines the role of tax avoidance for this welfare assessment. We find that the inefficiency in the voting equilibrium is the lower, the higher the average level of...