Research Database

Historically, competition, or the extension of markets, has repeatedly brought tremendous increases in wealth. However, there is still plenty of uncertainty among economists as to why that is so. This article develops a model in which competition, modeled as the movement of goods between two areas, reduces resistance to new technology and, hence, leads to increased technology adoption and wealth. Here, the extension of markets leads to wealth increases because it reduces activities that block the use of new, more productive technology.

We study the effect on the growth of an economy of alternative financing opportunities in a stochastic growth model with incentive constraints. Efficient accumulation mechanisms are designed and computed for economies that differ in their incentive structure. We show that when borrowing is subject to information constraints, there is a computable efficient transfer mechanism that does not affect capital accumulation and investment patterns, even though consumption patterns and the distribution of wealth are affected. In contrast, enforcement constraints can severely reduce the outside financing opportunities and affect investment patterns and economic growth. We adapt numerical algorithms for obtaining numerical solutions of these models.