This paper extends the relative wealth specification of status preference to the two-sector Uzawa (1965) -Lucas (1988) model and examines the effectiveness of government spending on economic growth. It is found that the desire for relative wealth-induced social status and/or the education component of relative wealth-induced social status are important ingredients in determining the growth rate effects of government spending. Provided that the agent is concerned with his or her relative social position, the education-induced social status plays a more important role than the physical-asset-induced social status in determining the validity of public spending on growth. If individuals do not care about their education-driven social rewards, then an increase in government spending has no effect on the balanced growth rate regardless of the presence of the physical-asset-induced social status. A rise in government spending reduces the long-run growth rate if the education-induced social status is present. JEL Classification Numbers: D90, O40, E62.

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By presenting an efficiency wage model embodying intertemporal optimization, this paper proposes a channel to illustrate the willingness of firm's abatement activities. The idea is that worker's efficiency on working is positively related to his stock of health capital, and that abatement will raise the flow of health. The firm thus will treat the abatement expenditure as an environmental investment since it will raise the stock of health capital, and hence the working efficiency in the future. In addition, our model predicts that, when the authorities raise the subsidy on firm's abatement expenditure, the firm will raise both employment and abatement expenditures and lower its wage offer.

This paper develops a simple macroeconomic model with imperfect competition and consumption externalities, and uses it to examine whether the marginal cost pricing rule in the partial equilibrium framework can apply to the general equilibrium framework. It is shown that, for welfare to be maximised, average revenue should be set equal to marginal cost if consumption externalities are either absent or positive. However, for welfare to be maximised, average revenue should be set higher than marginal cost in the presence of negative consumption externalities. Copyright 2010 The Authors. Australian Economic Papers 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/University of Adelaide and Flinders University .