Optimal fiscal policy for a state or local government

State and local government services are enjoyed by, and taxes borne by, two groups, residents and non-residents. This paper addresses the question: if state and local governments maximize their residents' welfare, and cannot distinguish between individual residents and non-residents but know the aggregate characteristics of the two groups, what set of taxes (subsidies) and public goods should they choose? Some of the results obtained are: (i) even when all commodities are taxable and equity is ignored, the existence of non-resident consumption makes uniform taxation non-optimal; (ii) in some cases, whether a commodity should be taxed or subsidized is independent of its own-price elasticity; (iii) central cities may be subsidized by suburban residents; and (iv) the ability of state and local governments to redistribute is inversely proportional to the openness of the economy.     

Estimating Final Demand Expenditure at Factor Cost and Net Price Indices

This article describes the methodology which is currently used at Statistics Canada to compute price indices, net of taxes and subsidies (net price indices), and to estimate final demand expenditure at factor cost in the Canadian system of national accounts. This methodology involves the use of a specially designed input–output model of the Canadian economy. The model is used to extract the taxes, net of subsidies paid on the inputs used by industries, and to allocate these net taxes to the direct and indirect final demand deliveries of the industries. Downstream interindustry links are established to trace the final demand deliveries of industries. Using these links, the model could easily be extended to decompose final demand expenditure into other cost components, such as the embedded energy cost or the cost of imported inputs. Some empirical results are shown to illustrate how the calculations are made.     

The formulation of a linear economic plan for implementation by an optimal combination of command and financial stimulus

Conclusions Command and market activities may be viewed as having different coefficients and different mechanisms of implementation. The command activities are implemented by direct order, the market activities by the producers or consumers optimizing their individual preference functions without regard to state preferences, except as so far these are directly affecting their budgets, via i) direct taxes or subsidies upon their activities, ii) the price system, and iii) lump taxes (subsidies).An optimal combination of command and market activities may be obtained by describing the social system as a linear programme with some constraints and variables based upon the producers and consumers preference functions, and finding its optimal primal and dual solutions. These solutions may be used for directing the command activities, for constructing the tax-subsidy system and for information about equilibrium prices and activity levels.     

Projecting supply and use tables: new variants and fair comparisons

ABSTRACT

We have introduced in this paper new variants of two methods for projecting Supply and Use Tables that are based on a distance minimisation approach (SUT-RAS) and the Leontief model (SUT-EURO). We have also compared them under similar and comparable exogenous information, i.e.: with and without exogenous industry output, and with explicit consideration of taxes less subsidies on products. We have conducted an empirical assessment of all of these methods against a set of annual tables between 2000 and 2005 for Austria, Belgium, Spain and Italy. From the empirical assessment, we obtained three main conclusions: (a) the use of extra information (i.e. industry output) generally improves projected estimates in both methods; (b) whenever industry output is available, the SUT-RAS method should be used and otherwise the SUT-EURO should be used instead; and (c) the total industry output is best estimated by the SUT-EURO method when this is not available.     

Double Bertrand tax competition: a fiscal game with governments acting as middlemen

In a common market with costless mobility of all factors regional governments can attract mobile firms by granting subsidies which they must finance out of wage taxes on mobile labour. Firms locate where subsidies are highest and workers settle where taxes are lowest, forcing government ‘in the splits’ (double Bertrand-type tax competition). Initially, there is unemployment in the economy. Regional governments then behave like middlemen in the labour market, and the fiscal game takes the form of competition among strategic intermediaries. Results from the theory of intermediation are applied to this framework. It is shown that government size may increase rather than decline in a fiscal competition, that industrial clustering may emerge from tax competition, and that tax competition may alleviate the unemployment problem.     

Labor Supply Effects of Federal Rental Subsidies

Federal rental subsidies appear to create disincentives for work through marginal taxes on earnings, income effects, and requirements that nonrecipients on waiting lists maintain low incomes in order to remain eligible. This paper takes advantage of the rationing of housing subsidies by identifying labor supply effects using analytic methods that could not be validly applied to unrationed programs. It finds that subsidies substantially reduce hours worked and labor force participation among recipients.     

Skill shortages and labor market outcomes in Central Europe

The new Central European members of the EU have been characterized by low employment rates, especially among unskilled workers, despite the GDP recoveries and large private sector shares in output and employment. Evidence points at skill shortages in Central Europe as a key impediment to faster labor reallocation and convergence to the EU-15 employment structures. In this paper, we develop a simple model of labor reallocation with transaction costs and show how skill shortages can inhibit firm creation and increase income inequality. We use the model to examine the impact of training subsidies and their financing on skill acquisition and start-ups of new private firms, and show that the positive effect of subsidies would be mostly offset by high wage taxes. Shifting financing from wage to consumption taxes would improve incentives for workers’ training and firm start-ups, while relying more on income taxes could reduce the income gap between workers and entrepreneurs.     

政府补助影响因素的行业和企业特征

本文利用2006年至2008年上市公司中政府补助的数据,经验性地验证了政府补助范围、金额和种类的变化状况;政府补助与否的行业特征以及补助强度大小的行业特征;接受补助公司与没有接受补助公司在企业特征方面的差异。结果发现：科研创新补助和荣誉相关补助的公司从2006年到2008年增加了一倍以上,但与生产相关的补助金额却最多,上升幅度也最快。分行业接受补助公司的数量比例与按照补助强度划分的行业结果完全不同,社会服务业、电力、煤气及水的生产和供应业、房地产业是补助强度最大的三个行业。企业特征中,盈利能力、成长性、偿债能力、人工效率等对企业能否接受补助没有显著影响,而分别以资产总额、主营业务收入、员工人数来衡量的规模则是企业能否接受补助的显著因素。该文的结论对我国今后的政府补助具有一定的政策意义。     

A new contract for welfare: partnership in pensions

The government's Green Paper proposes reducing state pension costs whilst encouraging private sector provision. The success of the proposed ‘stakeholder pension schemes’ depends on regulation. However, regulation can penalise those it is intended to protect. This is a sensitive issue, since stakeholder pension schemes are expected to attract financially vulnerable, lower paid, employees. Whilst the flat rate accrual of the state second pension confers some benefit, certain groups are put in a difficult position by the retention of means-tested benefits.     

Optimal unemployment policy in a matching equilibrium

This paper considers optimal unemployment policy in a matching equilibrium with risk averse workers and unobserved job search effort. The Planner chooses unemployment benefits, taxes and job creation subsidies to maximise a Utilitarian welfare function. Optimal policy involves a trade-off between higher employment taxes (which finance more generous unemployment benefits) and greater market tightness (which reduces the average unemployment spell). Optimal UI implies the initial UI payment equals the wage, thus ensuring consumption is smooth across the job destruction shock, and UI payments then fall with duration.     

The U.S.A.'s Land Data Legacy from the 19th Century: A Message from the Henry George-Francis A. Walker Controversy over Farm Land Distribution

A bstract . Today's perception of land problems stems in part from agriculturally-oriented data developed in the late 19th Century and continued in present day series. Henry George criticized the agricultural statistics of his time but he was as much a captive of the data as his antagonist, Francis A. Walker. The historical identity of farm with farm operator in agricultural statistics is a basis for current concerns about the structure of agriculture. Landownership issues now transcend agriculture. The distribution of wealth, control of use, incidence of taxes and subsidies require land data not tied to a particular firm, industry or program.     

对我国能源税费体制改革的新思考

能源环境问题是影响当今经济社会可持续发展的核心问题之一.我国相对完善的能源税费体制尚未形成,资源税费改革滞后,对能源环境税费征收重视不足,节能环保激励效应不明显,使得能源税费对能源产业调控作用有限,进而导致长期以来能源价格未能全面反映能源的全部价值.因此,根据“十二五”规划纲要提出的改革目标,我国能源税费制度改革应依据维护生态平衡、系统化设计、能源结构的优化与多样化、公平分配环境责任、提高能源效率等基本原则,从建立综合税收调控体系、择机开征碳税、全面推进资源税费改革、开征能源环境税、健全能源环保税收优惠措施五个方面入手加快推进.     

The Henry George Theorem in a second-best world

The Henry George Theorem (HGT) states that, in first-best economies, the fiscal surplus of a city government that finances the Pigouvian subsidies for agglomeration externalities and the costs of local public goods by a 100% tax on land is zero at optimal city sizes. We extend the HGT to distorted economies where product differentiation and increasing returns are the sources of agglomeration economies and city governments levy property taxes. Without relying on specific functional forms, we derive a second-best HGT that relates the fiscal surplus to the excess burden expressed as an extended Harberger formula.     

General equilibrium and optimal taxes

It is shown that if subsidies are not excessive, there exists a general competitive equilibrium in the presence of a complex tax structure. Furthermore, under certain continuity assumptions, a tax structure which is optimal from the social point of view can be determined. Procedures maximize quasi-concave after tax profit functions. Consumers have convex budget sets reflect- ing their income from sales and profits minus taxes on fixed income and progressive sales taxes. Their preferences are interdependent, intransitive and incomplete. The government provides public goods and determines the optimal tax regime on the basis of its preferences on the final competitive consumption allocation.     

Monopsonistically/monopolistically competitive regional development: Public correction of market outcomes

A model of regional market development is constructed which captures the inefficiencies typical in most of the related literature, and a variety of corrective policy options are explored. For taxes and subsidies, there is no dominant policy with each limited by the zero-profit constraint on entry, informational problems, or adverse distributional considerations. Discriminatory pricing decreases efficiency, but uniform pricing achieves optimal allocations. Public production has certain informational advantages.     

An economic analysis of local inducements for business

This paper presents a theoretical and preliminary empirical examination of various local real estate subsidies to business. Local governments can subsidize the structure capital, land, or both at a particular urban site. Standard microeconomic theory is used to investigate the effects of subsidy programs on the structure-land ratio, the employment-land ratio, and the amount of real estate taxes collected at the site in question. It is concluded that municipalities may benefit from subsidies to businesses even if those businesses would have located in the municipality without the subsidy.     

Energy Development and U. S. Government Policy: Recommendations for Using Market Forces to Achieve Optimum National Goals

A bstract . Public policy in the United States toward the energy sector consists of a variety of special legislation. some supportive and some punitive, which tends to work at cross purposes. Thus, some tax policies encourage energy production and promote energy conservatton. Simultaneously, many regulatory activities discourage energy production and promote consumption , as do selective taxes. A more effective policy for the sector's development would be the simultaneous elimination of both the special benefits given to various segments of the industry and the many obstacles that have been placed in its path. Specific recommendations to carry out this approach include repealing the windfall profits tax. eliminating the regulatory functions of the Department of Energy , cutting out the tax breaks for specialized energy projects, reducing obstacles which impede new energy projects, and removing the expenditure subsidies for highly specific energy activities that Congress has chosen to support.     

Education choice under uncertainty: Implications for public policy

We analyse how progressive taxation and education subsidies affect schooling decisions when the returns to education are stochastic. We use the theory of real options to solve the problem of education choice in a dynamic stochastic model. We show that education attainment will be an increasing function of the risk associated with education. Furthermore, this result holds regardless of the degree of risk aversion. We also show that progressive taxes will tend to increase education attainment.     

what Price Water Marketing?

A bstract . We can multiply the value of output from limited natural water supplies by allocating them to higher uses. To this end we need a market in raw water, but existing markets work badly, for several reasons. Sellers are undermotivated, absent taxes or debt. Free groundwater subverts the pricing of surface water. Loss of elevation, and damage from effluents, and instream uses are not charged for. Obsolete subsidies abound; obsolete entitlements dominate allocation. Some trades extinguish public rights. Rent-seeking distorts allocation. Needed public agencies have been subverted by organized land speculators. Recommendations are given.