Issam Samiri
- 20 February 2025
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 3033Details
- Abstract
- Questions about market power have become salient in macroeconomics. We consider the role of institutional structures in addressing these within a dynamic general equilibrium framework. Standard models account for monopoly profits as a lump-sum transfer to the representative agent. We label this an "incentive leakage," and show this to be a general characteristic of firm-optimal arrangements. We show that shareholder-operated or worker-operated firms that eliminate leakage can generate within-firm incentives that effectively reduce monopoly distortion in equilibrium. When all firms operate similarly, an additional general equilibrium effect arises through internalization of an aggregate demand externality. We characterize steady-state welfare across structures, and show how zero-leakage institutions lead to improvements towards the Golden Rule benchmark. Overall, our paper takes the first step towards an analysis of the macroeconomics of institutions without incentive leakage.
- JEL Code
- E10 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→General Aggregative Models→General
E22 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Capital, Investment, Capacity
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
E25 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Aggregate Factor Income Distribution