长期经济增长中的公共投资政策--包含一般拥挤性公共基础设施资本存量的动态经济增长模型

本文通过建立理论模型 ,系统分析了公共基础设施资本促进长期经济增长的动力机制 ,揭示了公共投资政策与经济增长的关系。第一个模型是包含外生公共基础设施资本的动态模型。所得结果是 ,无论是纯公共性还是拥挤性的外生公共基础设施资本 ,都能够提高长期经济增长率。第二个模型是包含由公共投资形成的内生公共基础设施资本的动态模型。此模型假定公共基础设施资本由政府通过征税而进行公共投资形成 ,所得结果是 ,如果基础设施资本为纯公共性质 ,就能产生恒定的内生增长 ;如果基础设施资本为拥挤性质 ,则虽然不能产生恒定的内生增长 ,但能减缓增长率的递减 ,从而提高长期经济增长率。模型的结论表明 ,公共投资政策的研究重点不应当是政策的短期逆周期调节的效果 ,而应当是其推进长期经济增长的作用。本文的结论不仅能够解释经济增长的典型事实 ,而且可以为研究我国公共投资、积极财政、城市化战略、支持不发达地区发展以及环境保护等重大政策提供理论依据和分析方法     

Public Investment, Congestion, and Private Capital Accumulation

This paper analyses the impact of public investment on the dynamics of private capital formation in an intertemporal optimising market-clearing framework. The key feature characterising the analysis is that the public good is treated as a durable capital good, subject to congestion. We show how in the presence of congestion the effect of government investment on private capital formation involves a tradeoff between the degree of substitution between private and public capital in production and the degree of congestion. Both lump-sum and distortionary tax financing are considered, with this tradeoff being tightened in the latter case     

An Overlapping-generations Model of Escape Clause Protection

The paper explores the efficiency consequences of using temporary protection to ease adjustment following an unexpected, permanent improvement in a country's terms of trade. In the model, workers trade off the potentially higher wage that the export sector has to offer with a lower job acquisition rate. An unexpected improvement in the terms of trade surprises old workers who cannot undo the decisions they made while young. Some old workers who had not planned to search for work in the export sector end up changing their plans, adding to the pool of searchers, creating congestion. Temporary protection can reduce congestion and make the transition to the new steady state smoother. Moreover, there are conditions under which the congestion externalities lead to multiple steady‐state equilibria that can be Pareto‐ranked. Temporary protection may lead to a permanent change in the allocation of resources, and this permanent change may be welfare‐enhancing.     

Public and Private Hospitals,Congestion, and Redistribution

This paper studies how congestion in the public health sector can be used as both an in‐kind and in‐cash redistributive tool. In our model, agents differ in productivity and they can obtain a health service either from a congested public hospital or from a noncongested private one at a higher price. With pure in‐kind redistribution, agents fail to internalize their impact on congestion, and the demand for the public hospital is higher than optimal. When productivities are not observable but the social planner can assign agents across hospitals, the optimal congestion is higher than in the full information case in order to relax incentive constraints and foster income redistribution. Finally, if agents can freely choose across hospitals, the optimal subsidy on the private hospital price may be negative or positive depending on the relative importance of redistribution and efficiency concerns. In this case, redistribution is limited if the quality of the public facility depends on the number of users.     

Migration with local public goods and the gains from changing places

Without public goods and under fairly standard assumptions, in Hammond and Sempere (J Pub Econ Theory, 8: 145–170, 2006) we show that freeing migration enhances the potential Pareto gains from free trade. Here, we present a generalization allowing local public goods subject to congestion. Unlike the standard literature on fiscal externalities, our result relies on fixing both local public goods and congestion levels at their status quo values. This allows constrained efficient and potentially Pareto improving population exchanges regulated only through appropriate residence charges, which can be regarded as Pigouvian congestion taxes.     

UNIVERSITY COST STRUCTURE IN TAIWAN

In this paper we demonstrate that the measures of scale and scope economies may be elusive if failing to consider quality variation among universities and endogeneity of congestion in students’ learning and living facility utilization. Empirical results show that the private and highly congested universities have consistently underestimated the cost of congestion, which results in an upward bias in estimating the economies of scale and scope. Taking into account the quality of outputs in enrollments and the congestion factor, we find that the private and the more congested universities have much less scale and scope economies than the public and the less congested institutions. (JEL I21, H52, 9120)     

Bureaucracy, Tax System, and Economic Performance

This paper investigates the consequences for government size, growth and welfare if a selfish bureaucracy provides a congested input. Alternative exogenous tax systems are introduced and numerical analyses are carried out. The welfare optimum is only met under very specific assumptions: proportional congestion, a tax system only consisting of distortionary taxes and a bureaucracy that maximizes the budget's growth rate. Otherwise the relative size of the public sector becomes suboptimally large thus inducing welfare losses. From a welfare economic point of view bureaucratic selfishness is worse than a suboptimal taxing regime that does not (completely) internalize the congestion externalities.     

INFRASTRUCTURE,PUBLIC EDUCATION AND GROWTH WITH CONGESTION COSTS

This paper studies the implications of education quality for the optimal allocation of public expenditure in a simple endogenous growth model with mandatory schooling and infrastructure spillovers. Education quality is inversely related to the degree of congestion in schools, which is itself measured in two ways: the proportions of teachers and students in the population, and the ratio of government spending on education to teaching capacity. The balanced‐growth path is derived and the transitional dynamics associated with an increase in the degree of congestion are analysed. The growth‐maximizing share of government spending on education is shown to depend negatively on the congestion parameter. Policy implications for the ‘quantity versus quality’ debate in schooling are also discussed.     

Congestion effects in a public-good economy

This paper considers a public-good economy with congestion, where participants jointly produce a public good from input of a private good. This economic model gives rise to a transferable-utility game, the profit game, that depends on consumer preferences and a congestion parameter. The simplicity of the game allows the maximum level of congestion that guarantees the nonemptiness of the core of the economy to be determined. It is known that the sustainability of the Lindahl equilibrium in the core of the economy depends on the distribution of profits. In this paper two distributions of profits are compared: the Lindahl solution and the marginal-contribution solution. The latter is more often in the core than the Lindahl solution which in turn Lorenz-dominates the marginal-contribution solution.     

Optimal taxation in an endogenous growth model with variable population and public expenditure

In this paper we analyze second-best optimal taxation in an endogenous-growth model driven by public expenditure, in presence of endogenous fertility and labor supply. Normative analysis shows positive taxes on the number of children, which are necessary to correct for congestion in the publicly provided input (such as education and healthcare), negative public debt. Results on capital and labor income taxation depend on whether the public input is optimally provided.     

Inflationary Financing of Government Expenditure in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper analyses the role of inflation in economies with endogenous growth and congestion in public services. Optimal policy rules are derived for public services and investment. The other findings are as follows. Monetary policy should maximize economic growth. The more inefficient the public sector is, the higher the growth‐maximizing inflation rate is. If a currency union accepts a new member with an inefficient public sector, this will boost inflation in the union and decrease growth and welfare in all member economies of the union.     

Demand for locally provided public services within the median voter's framework: the case of the Brazilian municipalities

In this paper we estimated the demand for local public spending for the Brazilian municipalities within a median voter's framework. The rationale for applying that framework came from the fact that in federal systems voters’ preferences are more likely to be reflected at the local level as the consumers of public services have a better knowledge of the benefits and costs of the local public expenditures. Results obtained are consistent with the theoretical background thus suggesting that this hypothesis might be useful to describe the demand for local public goods in Brazil. In particular, the use of quantile regression permitted us to investigate the impacts of the conditioning variables on local public expenses across different expenditures classes thus allowing for heterogeneity across municipalities. Our results also suggest that the impact of the city size on the quality of club goods shows crowding effects as γ is between zero and one. However, in the estimated models, marginal congestion slightly decreases with expenditure. This is a rather surprising result as one is tempted to conclude that the congestion effect should be higher on big cities. Yet, a more careful look shows the drawbacks of such an interpretation. The indivisibilities preclude the provision of certain services in small towns, concentrating their provision on larger cities. Hence, the higher expenditures of those big cities reflect not only a crowding cost but also the fact that these towns offer a wide range of services when compared to the small ones.     

财政政策的供给效应与经济发展

本文分析了发展中国家公共投资对私人资本积累的动态响应。针对公共资本的拥挤性特征 ,同时考虑财政投资可能引起的风险。在不考虑公共投资风险的分权经济中 ,由于公共资本和私人资本都处于短缺状态 ,企业争夺拥挤性公共资本而扩张私人资本的投资行为虽然使经济超常增长 ,但是存在过度投资和过度拥挤。在集中优化模型中 ,如果考虑到公共投资的风险 ,政府通过税收方式弥补公共投资风险 ,同时将企业投资产生的拥挤效应内部化 ,就能消除企业的过度投资和过度拥挤现象 ,使经济保持合理持续的增长。对中国这样的发展中国家 ,需要重视财政的供给效应 ,在经济起飞初期保证一定数量的政府资本性支出是必要的 ,但随着经济的不断发展和政府资本性支出累积的风险增加 ,财政转型十分必要。     

The Effect of Spillovers and Congestion on the Endogenous Formation of Jurisdictions

This paper analyzes the effect of interjurisdictional spillovers and congestion of local public services on the segregative properties of endogenous formation of jurisdictions. Households choosing to live at the same place form a jurisdiction which produces congested local public services, which generates positive spillovers to other jurisdictions. In every jurisdiction, the production of the local public services is financed through a local tax based on households' wealth. Local wealth tax rates are democratically determined in every jurisdiction. Households consume the available amount of public services in their jurisdiction and a composite private good. Any household is free to leave its jurisdiction for another that would increase its utility. A necessary and sufficient condition to have every stable jurisdiction structure segregated by wealth is identified: the public services must be either a gross substitute or a gross complement to the private good.     

政府、企业与公众环保行为博弈分析

党的十七大明确提出将节约资源和保护环境作为国家的一项基本国策,其中也包括公众参与机制建设和"全民环保"的新理念.将公众置于社会大系统之中,其参与环保行为多是依赖政府设计的制度框架,与企业环保行为间博弈选择的结果.在政府不参与模型中,公众也不会自觉参与环保,企业更不会停止污染,必将导致"公地悲剧";而在政府参与模型中,政府的奖励与惩罚力度又会直接影响到公众参与的人数和参与成本,进而影响到企业环保行为的选择.由此提出制度设计方面的政策建议,以期推进更广泛程度的公众参与.     

The working for water programme: Evolution of a payments for ecosystem services mechanism that addresses both poverty and ecosystem service delivery in South Africa

A payments for ecosystem services (PES) system came about in South Africa with the establishment of the government-funded Working for Water (WfW) programme that clears mountain catchments and riparian zones of invasive alien plants to restore natural fire regimes, the productive potential of land, biodiversity, and hydrological functioning. The success of the programme is largely attributed to it being mainly funded as a poverty-relief initiative, although water users also contribute through their water fees. Nevertheless, as the hydrological benefits have become apparent, water utilities and municipalities have begun to contract WfW to restore catchments that affect their water supplies. This emerging PES system differs from others in that the service providers are previously unemployed individuals that tender for contracts to restore public or private lands, rather than the landowners themselves. The model has since expanded into other types of ecosystem restoration and these have the potential to merge into a general programme of ecosystem service provision within a broader public works programme. There is a strong case for concentrating on the most valuable services provided by ecosystems, such as water supply, carbon sequestration, and fire protection, and using these as ‘umbrella services’ to achieve a range of conservation goals. The future prospects for expansion of PES for hydrological services are further strengthened by the legal requirement that Catchment Management Agencies be established. These authorities will have an incentive to purchase hydrological services through organisations such as WfW so as to be able to supply more water to their users.     

Core equivalence with congested public goods

Summary This paper examines a model of an infinite production economy with a finite number of types of agents andsemi- public goods, which are subjected to crowding and exclusion. The utility of an agent depends not only on the vector of public commodities produced by the coalition to which she belongs, but also on the mass of agents of her type who are the members of this coalition. The main purpose of the paper is to derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the local degrees of congestion which would guarantee the equivalence between the core and the set of equal treatment Lindahl equilibria. We prove that this equivalence holdsif and only if there are constant returns to group size for each type of agents. It implies that linearity of each agent's congestion function with respect to the mass of the agents of her own type is necessary for the core equivalence to hold.The final version of this paper was written while Shlomo Weber was visiting the Technical University of Dresden as the Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are grateful to Peter Meyer, Nicholas Yannelis and the anonymous referees for useful remarks and suggestions.     

Sequential peak-load pricing: the case of airports and airlines

Abstract.  We investigate airport peak-load pricing using a vertical structure of airport and airlines. We find that a profit-maximizing airport would charge higher peak and off-peak runway prices and a higher peak/off-peak price differential than a public airport. Consequently, airport privatization would lead to both fewer total passengers and fewer passengers in the peak period. Although peak-travelling passengers benefit from fewer delays, this low level of peak congestion is not efficient, suggesting that airport privatization cannot be judged based on its effect on congestion alone. We also examine pricing behaviour of a public airport constrained to charge a time independent price.     

Fiscal Policy, Congestion, and Endogenous Growth

We devise an endogenous growth model with private and public physical capital, and human capital, which allows for relative and absolute congestion. According to empirical evidence, long-run growth is invariant to fiscal policy. Despite its complexity, the dynamics of the market economy and the centralized economy are analyzed in detail. We show that an increase in absolute congestion reduces the long-run growth rate of output. In contrast, relative congestion does not affect long-run growth. In the absence of congestion, it is optimal to use lump-sum taxation, and with congestion it is optimal to also tax income.     

Are state–local government expenditures converging? New evidence based on sequential unit root tests

Large and persistent gaps in subnational public expenditure have important implications regarding growth, equity, and migration. In this context, we revisit the question of expenditure convergence across the American states to provide more nuanced evidence than found by a small number of previous studies. We employ a methodology due to Smeekes (Bootstrap sequential tests to determine the stationary units in a panel, 2011) that sequentially tests for unit roots in pairwise (real per capita) expenditure gaps based on user specified fractions. In a panel of 48 combined state–local government units (1957–2008), we found that expenditures on highways, sanitation, utility, and education were far more convergent than expenditures on health and hospitals, police and fire protection, and public welfare. There was little evidence of “club convergence” based on the proportion of intraregional convergent pairs. Several historically high-grant receiving states showed relatively strong evidence of convergence. Our results bode well for future output convergence and opportunities for Tiebout-type migration across jurisdictions. They also imply a diminished role for public infrastructure and education spending in business location choices over time and a mixed role for federal grants in inducing convergence.