This paper offers an explanation of why, in Imperial China, the merchant class expanded and the economy modernized up to the 13th century, and why it entered into decline from the 14th century onward. The modernization of China required the accumulation of public capital and the building of good...

Using a general equilibrium model, this paper examines the employment and welfare effects of minimum wages coupled with capital taxes in a small open economy. The individual and joint optimal policies for a minimum wage and capital taxes are derived and explained. Specifically, policy reform to...

This paper considers the employment and welfare effects of mixed ownership via partial privatization of state-owned enterprises for a developing economy. An increase in the private ownership lowers the production and, hence, worsens urban unemployment in the short run. However, in the long run,...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to examine the optimal level of environmental preservation in terms of its costs and benefits for a closed as well as an open economy. The optimal preservation policy for a closed economy is to tax the general population and use the tax revenue to...