Macroeconomic volatility and welfare loss under free-trade in two-country models
Abstract
This paper investigates the interlinkage in the business cycles based on sunspot fluctuations of large-country economies in a free-trade equilibrium. We consider a two-country, two-good, two-factor general equilibrium model with Cobb-Douglastechnologies, sector-specific externalities and linear preferences. We also assume constant social returns in the investment good sector but decreasing social returns in the consumption good sector. We first identify the determinants of each country's accumulation pattern in autarky equilibrium, and second we show that some country's sunspot fluctuations may spread throughout the world once trade opens even if the other country has determinacy under autarky. We thus prove that under free-trade, globalization and market integration may have destabilizing effects on a country's competitive equilibrium. Finally, we characterize a configuration in which opening to international trade improves the stationary welfare at the world level but deteriorates the stationary welfare of the country which imports investment goods and exports consumption goods. We thus show that in opposition to the standard belief, international trade may not be beneficial to all trading partners in the long run. Moreover, we prove that for some country, international trade may have contrasted consequences as it may at the same time improve the stationary welfare and have a destabilizing effect.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by HAL in its series Working Papers with number halshs-00281377.Length:
Date of creation: 22 May 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00281377
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00281377/en/
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/
Related research
Keywords: Two-country general equilibrium model; free-trade; local indeterminacy; sunspot fluctuations; capital intensities; decreasing social retur;References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Yunfang Hu & Kazuo Mino, 2009. "Financial Integration and Aggregate Stability," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 09-01, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP).
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00281377For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (CCSD).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.