Pietro F. Peretto Professor Department of Economics Duke University Room 241, Department of Economics Duke University, Durham, NC 27708 (USA) Phone: (919) 660-1807 Fax: (919) 684-8974 Email: peretto@econ.duke.edu   Office Hours: T, Th. 10-12 or by appointment

Fields

Growth, Macroeconomics, Industrial Organization, International Economics

See Curriculum Vitae

Current Research

Growth on a Finite Planet: Resources, Technology and Population in the Long Run (with Simone Valente)  NEW

We study the interactions between technological change, resource scarcity and population dynamics in a Schumpeterian model with endogenous fertility. We find a pseudo-Malthusian equilibrium in which population is constant and determined by resource scarcity while income grows exponentially. If labor and resources are substitutes in production, income and fertility dynamics are self-balancing and the pseudo-Malthusian equilibrium is the global attractor of the system. If labor and resources are complements, income and fertility dynamics are self-reinforcing and drive the economy towards either demographic explosion or collapse. Introducing a minimum resource requirement per capita, we obtain constant population even under complementarity.

The relative performance of open economies is analyzed in an endogenous growth model with asymmetric trade. A resource-rich country trades resource-based intermediates for final goods produced by a resource-poor economy. The effects of an increase in the resource endowment depend on the elasticity of substitution between resources and labor in intermediates' production. Under substitution (complementarity), the resource boom generates higher (lower) income, lower (higher) employment in the primary sector and faster (slower) growth in the resource-rich economy. In the resource-poor economy, the shock induces a higher (lower) relative wage and positive (negative) growth effects that are exclusively due to trade.

In this paper we show that bank competition has an intrinsically ambiguous impact on capital accumulation and growth. We further show that banking market structure is also responsible for the emergence of development traps in economies that otherwise would be characterized by unique steady state equilibria. These predictions explain the conflicting evidence gathered from recent empirical studies on the role of bank competition for the real economy. We obtain these results developing a dynamic, general equilibrium model of capital accumulation where banks operate in a Cournot oligopoly. More banks lead to a higher quantity of credit available to entrepreneurs, but also to diminished incentives to screen loan applicants, thus to poorer capital allocation. We also show that conditioning on economic parameters describing the quality of the entrepreneurial population resolves the theoretical ambiguity. In economies where prospective entrepreneurs are on average of low quality, hence where screening is especially beneficial, less competition leads to higher capital accumulation. The opposite is true where entrepreneurs are innately of higher quality.

Sustaining The Goose That Lays The Golden Egg: A Continuous Treatment Of Technological Transfer  (with Nelson Sà and Michelle Connolly), Scottish Journal of Political Economy (2009), 56, 492-507. 

This paper proposes a simple model of the trade-offs perceived by innovating firms when investing in countries with limited intellectual property rights (IPR). The model allows for a continuous treatment of technology transfer and production cost gains occurring through FDI. While it does not consider possible changes in rates of innovation caused by changes in intellectual property rights in developing countries, it allows one to uncover a potentially non-monotonic relationship between welfare and IPR in the recipient country.

Resource abundance, growth and welfare: A Schumpeterian perspective, Journal of Development Economics (2012), 97, 142-155. (available online)

This paper takes a new look at the long-run implications of resource abundance. It develops a Schumpeterian model of endogenous growth that incorporates an upstream resource-intensive sector and yields an analytical solution for the transition path. It then derives conditions under which, as the economy's endowment of a natural resource rises, (i) growth accelerates and welfare rises, (ii) growth decelerates but welfare rises nevertheless, and (iii) growth decelerates and welfare falls. Which of these scenarios prevails depends on the response of the natural resource price to an increase in the resource endowment. The price response determines the change in income earned by the owners of the resource (the households) and thereby the change in their expenditure on manufacturing goods. Since manufacturing is the economy's innovative sector, this income-to-expenditure effect links resource abundance to the size of the market for manufacturing goods and drives how resource abundance affects incentives to undertake innovative activity.
Note: this is the published version of the paper previosuly posted under the title Is the "Curse" of Natural Resources Really a Curse?

Factor-Eliminating Technological Change (with John Seater)

Endogenous growth requires that non-reproducible factors of production be either augmented or eliminated. Attention heretofore has focused almost exclusively on augmentation. In contrast, we study factor elimination. Maximizing agents decide when to reduce the importance of non-reproducible factors. We use a Cobb-Douglas production function with two factors of production, one reproducible ("capital") and one not ("labor"). There is no augmenting progress of any kind, thus excluding the standard engine of growth. What is new is the possibility of changing factor intensities endogenously by spending resources on R&D. The economy starts with no capital and no knowledge of how to use it. By conducting R&D, the economy learns new technologies that use capital, which then is built. There are two possible ultimate outcomes: the economy may achieve perpetual growth, or it may stagnate with no growth. The first outcome is an asymptotic version of the AK model of endogenous growth, and the second outcome is the standard Solow model in the absence of any exogenous sources of growth. Which outcome is achieved depends on parameter values of saving and production, and there always is a feasible saving rate that will give the perpetual growth outcome. The model thus provides a theory of the endogenous emergence of a production technology with constant returns to the reproducible factors, that is, one that is capable of supporting perpetual economic growth. The model also allows derivation of the full transition dynamics, which have interesting properties. One especially notable feature is that the origin is not a steady state. An economy that starts with pure labor production becomes industrialized through its own efforts. The theory thus offers a purely endogenous explanation for the transition from a primitive to a developed economy, in contrast to other existing theories. Several aspects of the transition paths accord with the evidence, suggesting that the theory is reasonable. In contrast to almost all the existing endogenous growth literature, neither monopoly power nor an externality is a necessary condition for endogenous growth. It is sufficient that firms be able to appropriate the results of their research and development efforts. 

Energy Taxes and Endogenous Technological Change, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2009), 57, 269-283. (available online)

This paper studies the effects of a tax on energy use in a growth model where market structure is endogenous and jointly determined with the rate of technological change. Because this economy does not exhibit the scale effect (a positive relation between TFP growth and aggregate R&D), the tax has no effect on the steady-state growth rate. It has, however, important transitional effects that give rise to surprising results. Specifically, under the plausible assumption that energy demand is inelastic, there exists a hump-shaped relation between the energy tax and welfare. This shape stems from the fact that the reallocation of resources from energy production to manufacturing triggers a temporary acceleration of TFP growth that generates a ✓-shaped time profile of consumption. If endogenous technological change raises consumption sufficiently fast and by a sufficient amount in the long run, the tax raises welfare despite the fact that -- in line with standard intuition -- it lowers consumption in the short run. 

The Growth and Welfare Effects of Deficit-Financed Dividend Tax Cuts, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking (2011), 43, 835-869. 

I develop a tractable growth model that allows me to study analytically transition dynamics and welfare in response to a deficit-financed cut of the tax rate on distributed dividends. I then carry out a quantitative assessment of the Job Growth and Taxpayer Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. I find that the Act produces lower steady-state growth despite the fact that the economy's saving and employment ratios rise. Most importantly, it produces a welfare loss of 19.34% of annual consumption per capita --- a substantial effect driven by the fact that the steady-state growth rate falls from 2% to 1.08%.
Note: this is the published version of the paper previosuly posted under the title A Schumpeterian Analysis of Deficit-Financed Dividend Tax Cuts

The Employment (and Output) of Nations: Theory and Policy Implications

I study the effects of product and labor market frictions in a dynamic general equilibrium model with a three-state representation of the labor market. Firms bargain with unions over wages and employment levels. This generates unemployment. Households take the associated unemployment risk as given in making participation and consumption-saving decisions. Unemployment harms output because it inserts a wedge between labor supply (participation) and employment. New firms make entry decisions based on expected future profitability as determined by macroeconomic conditions. The model produces dynamics consistent with the long-run trends exhibited by the US and EU15 economies over the last 40-50 years. It also features feedback mechanisms linking the two markets that amplify the adverse effects on output of labor and product market frictions. These multiplier effects have interesting policy implications. 

The Manhattan Metaphor (with Michelle Connolly), Journal of Economic Growth (2007), 12, 329-350.  (available online)

Fixed operating costs draw a sharp distinction between endogenous growth based on horizontal and vertical innovation: a larger number of product lines puts pressure on an economy's resources; greater productivity of existing product lines does not. Consequently, the only plausible engine of growth is vertical innovation whereby progress along the quality or cost ladder does not require the replication of fixed costs. Is, then, product variety expansion irrelevant? No. The two dimensions of technology are complementary in that using one and the other produces a more comprehensive theory of economic growth. The vertical dimension allows growth unconstrained by endowments, the horizontal provides the mechanism that translates changes in aggregate variables into changes in product-level variables, which ultimately drive incentives to push the technological frontier in the vertical dimension. We show that the potential for exponential growth due to an externality that makes entry costs fall linearly with the number of products, combined with the limited carrying capacity of the system due to fixed operating costs, yields logistic dynamics for the number of products. This desirable property allows us to provide a closed-form solution for the model's transition path and thereby derive analytically the welfare effects of changes in parameters and policy variables. Our Manhattan Metaphor illustrates conceptually why we obtain this mathematical representation when we simply add fixed operating costs to the standard modeling of variety expansion. 

Corporate Taxes, Growth and Welfare in a Schumpeterian Economy, Journal of Economic Theory (2007), 137, 353-382. (available online)

I take a new look at the long-run implications of taxation through the lens of modern Schumpeterian growth theory. I focus on the latest vintage of models that sterilize the scale effect through a process of product proliferation that fragments the aggregate market into submarkets whose size does not increase with the size of the workforce. I show that the following interventions raise welfare: (a) Granting full expensibility of R&D to incorporated firms; (b) Eliminating the corporate income tax and/or the capital gains tax; (c) Reducing taxes on labor and/or consumption. What makes these results remarkable is that in all three cases the endogenous increase in the tax on dividends necessary to balance the budget has a positive effect on growth. A general implication of my analysis is that corporate taxation plays a special role in Schumpeterian economies and provides novel insights on how to design welfare-enhancing tax reforms. 

Effluent Taxes, Market Structure and the Rate and Direction of Endogenous Technological Change, Environmental and Resource Economics (2008), 39, 113-138. (available online)

This paper studies the effects of effluent taxes on firms' allocation of resources to cost-reducing and emission-reducing R&D, and on entrepreneurs' decisions to develop new goods and enter the market. A tax set at an exogenous rate that does not depend on the state of technology reduces growth, the level of consumption of each good, and raises the number of firms. The induced increase in the variety of goods is a benefit not considered in previous analyses. In terms of environmental benefits, the tax induces a positive rate of pollution abatement that offsets the "dirty" side of economic growth. A tax set at an endogenous rate that holds constant the tax burden per unit of output, in contrast, has ambiguous effects on growth, the scale of activity of each firm and the number of firms. Besides being novel, the potential positive growth effect of this type of effluent tax is precisely what makes this instrument effective for welfare-maximizing purposes. The socially optimal policy, in fact, requires the tax burden per unit of output to equal the marginal rate of substitution between the growth rate of consumption and abatement. Moreover, a tax/subsidy on entry is needed, depending on whether the contribution of product variety to pollution dominates consumers' love of variety. 

Schumpeterian Growth with Productive Public Spending and Distortionary Taxation, Review of Development Economics (2007), 11, 699-722. 

The latest version of Schumpeterian growth theory eliminates the scale effect by positing a process of development of new product lines that fragments the aggregate market in submarkets whose size does not increase with population. A key feature of this process is the sterilization of the effect of the size of the aggregate market on firms' incentives to invest in the growth of a given product line. In this paper I apply this insight to shed new light on the workings of fiscal policy. I analyze the role of distortionary taxes on consumption, household labor and assets income, corporate income, and public spending. The framework allows me to show which of these fiscal variables have permanent (steady-state) growth effects, and which ones have only transitory effects. It also allows me to solve the transitional dynamics analytically, and thus to analyze in detail the welfare effects of tax rates and public spending, and investigate the effects of revenue-neutral changes in tax structure. Pair wise comparisons reveal that replacing taxes that distort labor supply with taxes that distort saving/investment choices raises welfare. I discuss the intuition behind this surprising finding.

Scale Effects in Endogenous Growth Theory: An Error of Aggregation, Not Specification (with Chris Laincz), Journal of Economic Growth (2006), 11, 263-288. (available online)

Modern Schumpeterian growth theory focuses on the product line as the main locus of innovation and exploits endogenous product proliferation to sterilize the scale effect. The empirical core of the theory consists of two claims: (i) growth depends on average employment (i.e., employment per product line); (ii) average employment is scale-invariant. We show that data on employment, R&D personnel, and the number of establishments in the US for the period 1964-2001 provide strong support for these claims. While employment and the total number of R&D workers increase with no apparent matching change in the long-run trend of productivity growth, employment and R&D employment per establishment exhibit no long-run trend. We also document that the number of establishments, employment and population exhibit a positive trend, while the ratio employment/establishments does not. Finally, we provide results of time series tests consistent with the predictions of these models.

Market Power, Unemployment, and Growth,  in Frontiers of Economic Growth and Development, edited by Kwan Choi and Olivier de La Grandville, forthcoming in the series Frontiers of Economics and Globalization (Emerald).

I present a model where firms and workers set wages above the market-clearing level. Unemployment is thus generated by their exercise of market power. Because both the labor and product markets are imperfectly competitive, market power in the labor market interacts with market power in the product market. This interaction sheds new light on the effects of policy interventions on unemployment and growth. For example, labor market reforms that reduce labor costs reduce unemployment and boost growth because they expand the scale of the economy and generate more competition in the product market.

Teaching

Econ 395M-01&02: Topics Macro/International Finance: Economic Growth (Graduate)

Econ 210-01: Macroeconomic Theory (Graduate)

Econ 152/252: Economic Growth (Undergraduate)