arXiv subjects

Hayato Kato

Publications and source records attributed to Hayato Kato.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Trade Policy and Structural Change

We study how tariffs affect industrial structure and welfare in an economy where sectors are complements and preferences are nonhomothetic---two drivers of structural change. Tariffs reshape sectoral composition through relative prices, income effects, and sectoral net exports. We characterize these mechanisms analytically and quantify them in a dynamic multi-country model with capital accumulation and input-output linkages. A counterfactual 20-percentage-point increase in U.S. manufacturing tariffs raises the manufacturing value-added share by about one percentage point and increases U.S. welfare by 0.43 percent, while lowering welfare abroad; retaliation would make all countries worse off. The optimal unilateral U.S. manufacturing tariff is 20.9 percent. Comparing different preference specifications, we show that homothetic preferences without income effects overstate the U.S. welfare gains from unilateral tariff increases.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2024

A Global Minimum Tax for Large Firms Only: Implications for Tax Competition

The Global Minimum Tax (GMT) is applied only to firms above a certain size threshold, permitting countries to set differential tax rates for small and large firms. We analyse tax competition among multiple tax havens and a non-haven country for heterogeneous multinationals to evaluate the effects of this partial coverage of GMT. Upon the introduction of a low but binding GMT rate, the havens commit to the single uniform GMT rate for all multinationals. However, gradual increases in the GMT rate induce the havens, and subsequently the non-haven, to adopt discriminatory, lower tax rates for small multinationals. Our calibration exercise shows that introducing a GMT rate close to 15\% results in a regime where only the havens adopt split tax rates. Welfare and tax revenues fall in the havens but rise in the non-haven, yielding a positive net gain worldwide.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2022

SCALER: A Tough Versatile Quadruped Free-Climber Robot

This paper introduces SCALER, a quadrupedal robot that demonstrates climbing on bouldering walls, overhangs, ceilings and trotting on the ground. SCALER is one of the first high-degrees of freedom four-limbed robots that can free-climb under the Earth's gravity and one of the most mechanically efficient quadrupeds on the ground. Where other state-of-the-art climbers specialize in climbing, SCALER promises practical free-climbing with payload \textit{and} ground locomotion, which realizes true versatile mobility. A new climbing gait, SKATE gait, increases the payload by utilizing the SCALER body linkage mechanism. SCALER achieves a maximum normalized locomotion speed of $1.87$ /s, or $0.56$ m/s on the ground and $1.0$ /min, or $0.35$ m/min in bouldering wall climbing. Payload capacity reaches $233$ % of the SCALER weight on the ground and $35$ % on the vertical wall. Our GOAT gripper, a mechanically adaptable underactuated two-finger gripper, successfully grasps convex and non-convex objects and supports SCALER.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2022

Simultaneous Contact-Rich Grasping and Locomotion via Distributed Optimization Enabling Free-Climbing for Multi-Limbed Robots

While motion planning of locomotion for legged robots has shown great success, motion planning for legged robots with dexterous multi-finger grasping is not mature yet. We present an efficient motion planning framework for simultaneously solving locomotion (e.g., centroidal dynamics), grasping (e.g., patch contact), and contact (e.g., gait) problems. To accelerate the planning process, we propose distributed optimization frameworks based on Alternating Direction Methods of Multipliers (ADMM) to solve the original large-scale Mixed-Integer NonLinear Programming (MINLP). The resulting frameworks use Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming (MIQP) to solve contact and NonLinear Programming (NLP) to solve nonlinear dynamics, which are more computationally tractable and less sensitive to parameters. Also, we explicitly enforce patch contact constraints from limit surfaces with micro-spine grippers. We demonstrate our proposed framework in the hardware experiments, showing that the multi-limbed robot is able to realize various motions including free-climbing at a slope angle 45° with a much shorter planning time.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2022

The Resilience of FDI to Natural Disasters through Industrial Linkages

When do multinationals show resilience during natural disasters? To answer this, we develop a simple model in which foreign multinationals and local firms in the host country are interacted through input-output linkages. When natural disasters seriously hit local firms and thus increase the cost of sourcing local intermediate inputs, most multinationals may leave the host country. However, they are likely to stay if they are tightly linked with local suppliers and face low trade costs of importing foreign intermediates. We further provide a number of extensions of the basic model to incorporate, for example, multinationals with heterogeneous productivity and disaster reconstruction.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2022

Economic Integration and Agglomeration of Multinational Production with Transfer Pricing

Do low corporate taxes always favor multinational production over economic integration? We propose a two-country model in which multinationals choose the locations of production plants and foreign distribution affiliates and shift profits between them through transfer prices. With high trade costs, plants are concentrated in the low-tax country; surprisingly, this pattern reverses with low trade costs. Indeed, economic integration has a non-monotonic impact: falling trade costs first decrease and then increase the plant share in the high-tax country, which we empirically confirm. Moreover, allowing for transfer pricing makes tax competition tougher and international coordination on transfer-pricing regulation can be beneficial.

econ.GN↗