A contingent claims analysis of optimal investment subsidy

This paper uses contingent claims analysis to answer two questions: (i) why are some subsidy markets apparently slow in attracting an optimal subsidy when others are not, and (ii) what can be done about it? The lack of activity in the green investment subsidy markets has been a concern as it appears optimal that countries should offer such support from a welfare point of view but progress has nonetheless been stalling, which motivates this paper. We show that free riding (which is likely to affect the green subsidy market) cools down the subsidy market with harmful welfare effects, and preemption (which is likely to affect the more active FDI subsidy market) overheats the subsidy market with similarly harmful effects. The theory dictates a taxation scheme that offsets these effects to restore the welfare to its maximum point.     

The dynamic effects of an earnings subsidy for long-term welfare recipients: Evidence from the self sufficiency project applicant experiment

In the Self Sufficiency Project Applicant Experiment, new welfare entrants were informed that if they remained on public assistance for a year they would become eligible to receive a generous earnings subsidy offer. Those who satisfied the waiting period, and then left welfare and began working full time within the following year, were entitled to receive payments for up to 36 months whenever they were off welfare and working full time. A simple optimizing model suggests that the program rules created an unusual sequence of incentives: (1) to prolong the initial spell on welfare for at least 12 months to become eligible for the subsidy offer; (2) to lock in subsidy entitlement by finding full time work and leaving welfare in the 12–24 month period after initial entry; and (3) to choose work over welfare during the three years that subsidies were available. Consistent with these implications, comparisons between the experimental treatment group and a randomly assigned control group show that the program increased welfare participation in the first year after initial entry and lowered it over the following 5 years. We develop an econometric model of welfare participation and program eligibility status that allows us to separately identify the behavioral effects associated with the program rules. We find important responses to all three incentives, and that the program impact persisted after subsidy payments ended, although the effect decayed over time.     

Public housing units vs. housing vouchers: Accessibility,local public goods,and welfare

We develop a general equilibrium model of residential choice and study the effects of two housing aid policies, public housing units and housing vouchers. Land is differentiated by both residential accessibility and local public goods, and the provision levels of local public goods are determined by property tax revenues and neighborhood compositions. Households differ in their incomes and preferences for local public goods. Housing aid policies are financed by general income taxes. We discuss how the location of public housing units is a fundamental policy variable, in addition to the numbers and sizes of units, and argue that vouchers not only cause less distortion for social welfare compared to public housing, but may also improve overall welfare.     

Welfare targeting in networks

This paper investigates welfare targeting for public goods in networks. First, we show that a tax/subsidy scheme (not necessarily budget-balanced) affects each consumer only insofar as it affects his neighbourhood. Second, we show that either a Pareto-improving income redistribution can be found or there exist Negishi weights, which we relate to the network structure. Third, in the case of Cobb–Douglas preferences, we show that a Law of Welfare Targeting holds and links two well-known notions of the comparative statics of policy interventions: neutrality and welfare paradoxical effects. Collectively, our findings uncover the importance of the $-1$ eigenvalue to economic and social policy: it is an indication of how consumers absorb the impact of income redistribution.     

Reviewing Oates' insights in a repeated game setting

This paper analyzes the optimal assignment of public good policies to layers of a federal system in a repeated game setting. Under a centralized regime, public goods are financed jointly across regions, and a federal legislature decides on the regional quantities. Under a decentralized regime, public goods are financed locally, and governments play a non-cooperative provision game. We find that a centralized (decentralized) regime is more likely to provide the efficient public good policies in case spillovers are small (large). Received: September 2003, Accepted: October 2004 JEL Classification: H11, H41 I wish to thank Clemens Fuest, Anke Kessler, Christoph Lülfesmann, and an anonymous referee for valuable comments on this paper. Financial support by the DFG (SPP 1142) is gratefully acknowledged.     

对“付费性公益”的一个理论解释

在市场经济中构建公益服务体系,因其混合性和高度复杂性,已成为挑战市场与政府范式的前沿课题。文章通过对公权事务、人权事务与共生事务的划分定义了公益概念,将公益划分为三个层次,提出并分析了付费性公益概念;借鉴社会学"场域"概念和康芒斯交易理论,划分了三个资源配置场域,对物品进行了新的分类,并以此建立了三类供求关系构型,以解释付费性公益与市场和政府之间的职能分工;从三个层面梳理出付费性公益运行的三重机制体系。     

Fiscal centralization versus decentralization: Growth and welfare effects of spillovers, Leviathan taxation, and capital mobility

This paper develops an endogenous growth model with spillovers of public goods, Leviathan taxation, and mobile capital to examine the relative merits of centralized and decentralized fiscal systems for economic growth and social welfare. We show that a decentralized system dominates a centralized system in terms of economic growth; however, the difference in social welfare between a decentralized and a centralized system is non-monotonic and displays a hump-shaped relationship with respect to capital mobility. Since higher capital mobility induces stronger tax competition, this finding implies that there is an optimal degree of tax competition; some tax competition is desirable, but fierce tax competition may be harmful. We also show that there is a critical level of spillovers of public goods above which centralization dominates decentralization in terms of social welfare, as in previous studies; however, if spillovers are below this critical level, capital mobility also matters in the welfare comparison between centralized and decentralized systems.     

我国中间产品反倾销的公共利益问题探讨

自1997年我国发起第一起反倾销调查至今,我国反倾销调查绝大多数是针对中间产品的进口。本文针对我国反倾销产品的特征,结合这些产品下游产业的行业垄断特征,研究了我国中间产品反倾销的公共利益问题,指出对中间产品合理征收反倾销税可以提高我国整体福利。     

The Desirability of In‐kind Transfers in the Presence of Distortionary Taxes

A standard argument in welfare economics maintains that private goods should not be publicly provided, because cash transfers are always superior to in‐kind transfers. However, this conclusion does not hold in second best economies. A strong case for the desirability of in‐kind transfer in the presence of distortionary taxes has been made in various recent contributions. Here, we survey the arguments provided in these papers, using a common theoretical framework which enables us to present more clearly the similarities and the differences among the various papers. The use of a common formal model helps us to show how the rationale for public provision of private goods is sensitive to the form of the tax system. It also helps us to provide an explanation why mandatory and non‐mandatory in‐kind transfer schemes have the same effects on social welfare. Finally, we offer some considerations on the relevance of the theory of in‐kind transfers for policy action. JEL Classification Number: H42     

The decentralization tradeoff for complementary spillovers

In this article, we examine how centralization and decentralization internalize positive spillovers of local public expenditures when a spill-in from foreign spending is not a substitute, but a complement to domestic spending. Specifically, we assume the production of two district-specific public goods out of two complementary district-specific inputs in a taste-symmetric two-district setting. We compare equilibria in non-cooperative decentralization and cooperative centralization for different spillovers, degrees of complementarity and cost-division rules, and control for the effects of strategic delegation and the feasibility of cross subsidies to the input in the foreign district. We find that centralization welfare-dominates decentralization in most institutional settings and for a wide range of parameters. Yet, we also identify conditions for decentralization to welfare-dominate centralization even in our setup where preferences are homogenous. The setup features three structural novelties: Strategic delegation improves provision and welfare in decentralization. In the absence of cross-district transfers, decentralized provision and welfare increase in spillovers. Welfare in centralization is generally non-monotonic in spillovers.     

Mergers between local public firms

We consider a country made up of two regions, where each region owns a local public firm and a domestic private one. A national authority decides whether or not to merge the two local public firms. The result depends on whether the goods produced by the firms are homogeneous, substitutes or complements. We find that if the two local public firms produce the same good, the national authority is indifferent as to whether to merge or not. When local public firms produce different goods two cases arise. First, if the firms in each region produce homogeneous goods the national authority merges the two local public firms when the goods are complements, independent in demand and weak substitutes. Second, if the firms in each region produce heterogeneous goods the national authority merges the two local public firms only when the goods are close complements. Therefore, there is greater scope for mergers in the former case than in the later.     

Voting on public pensions with hands and feet

Aging changes the political power in a democracy in favor of the older generations. With free labor mobility like that of the EU, the success of the gerontocracy is, nevertheless, limited by migration of the young generations. This connection between political voting and voting with the feet is analyzed in a two-country model with overlapping generations. The interregional competition on public pensions yields premium payments which are larger when the young generations' migration decisions take the impact on future pensions into account (strategic migration) than when these decisions are made myopically. The paper also pays attention to migration (in-)efficiency and to the implications of harmonization principles. Received: November 1999 / Accepted: July 2001 RID="*" ID="*" The paper benefited greatly from discussions at the EEA conference in Santiago de Compostela, the CESifo Workshop on Public Pensions in Munich and seminars in G?ttingen, Mainz, and Tellow. We are grateful to many seminar participants, two anonymous referees of Economics of Governance and, in particular, to Paolo Manasse for their valuable comments and creative hints. The usual disclaimer applies.     

How municipalities react to budgetary windfalls

Using a panel of 308 observations over the period 1989–1996, we analyse how Flemish municipalities react to budgetary shocks. We address two questions: whether governments respond differently to tax than to grant windfalls and whether responses to positive and negative shocks are symmetric. Our results confirm the recent findings on U.S. local governments that reveal asymmetric responses to positive and negative windfalls. We also find evidence of different responsiveness to tax and grant windfalls. Received: November 2000 / Accepted: September 2001 RID="*" ID="*" We thank Roger H. Gordon, Stanley Winer and participants of the 1998 EEA meeting in Berlin where a previous version of this paper was presented for stimulating comments.     

国外城市公共交通财政补贴政策研究

城市公共交通是城市交通系统的重要组成部分 ,为促进城市公共交通事业的发展 ,保障公交企业的正常运营 ,世界各发达国家和地区无不实行了公交财政补贴政策。本文在若干发达国家公交财政补贴政策分析的基础上 ,结合我国城市的特点 ,提出了我国城市公交财政补贴的改进建议。     

‘Sweet deals’: State-owned enterprises,corruption and repeated contracts in public procurement

We show how a price analysis of stable relations between customer and supplier in the public procurement of homogeneous goods can help differentiate opportunistic from honest behaviour among economic agents. We consider two types of stable relations: repeated procurements and connections based on the state ownership of suppliers. On the basis of a large dataset on the procurement of granulated sugar in Russia from 2011 to 2013, we find that for private suppliers, prices of repeated contracts were lower compared to one-time deals when procured through more transparent procedures and higher when procured through non-transparent procedures. For non-transparent procedures, we observe significant overpricing of contracts with state-owned suppliers compared to private suppliers, especially in the case of repeated contracts, whereas for competitive e-auctions, there is only a small difference between the contract prices of state-owned suppliers and private suppliers.     

Delegation in a mixed oligopoly: the case of multiple private firms

Previous research examining mixed duopolies shows that the use of an optimal incentive contract for the public firm increases welfare and that privatization reduces welfare. We demonstrate that these results do not generalize to a mixed oligopoly with multiple private firms. We derive the optimal incentive contract for a public firm that weighs both profit and welfare and show that its use may either increase or decrease welfare depending on the number of private firms and the exact nature of costs. We also identify the conditions that determine whether or not privatizing the public firm facing an optimal incentive contract reduces welfare. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Creation,Maintenance and Governance of Public Goods and Free Goods

The theory of public goods is largely irrelevant to their management and governance. It is highly normative but is unused in the policy area. It remains centred on highly idealized and dichotomized characteristics (non-rivalrousness and non-excludability) of public goods despite important theoretical progress in the last twenty years. It is suggested that public goods are as much social as technological constructions, but there is no explanation of how such goods come into existence. It is argued that they are often subject to evolution that changes the balance of their characteristics between being public or private goods. Present theory bears little relationship to the governmental budgetary processes assumed necessary to finance such goods, yet all management and maintenance costs, often high enough to deter such funding, are ignored. While there is recognition that the intensive use of a public good often imposes costs directly upon users, there is no corresponding recognition either that inappropriate and intensive usage can erode public goods as assets or that such usage is difficult to control. Free goods are described and mooted as specific and important types of public goods. Illustrative examples of public and free goods, mainly from Australia and the Pacific, are cited.     

Coasian equilibrium

We consider a general equilibrium economy with public goods and externalities. Following Boyd and Conley (1997), we treat externality markets directly instead of indirectly through Arrovian commodities. Because such direct externality markets are not subject to the nonconvexities that Starrett [Starrett, D., 1972. Fundamental nonconvexities in the theory of externalities. Journal of Economic Theory 4, 180–199] shows are fundamental to Arrow’s externality markets, this new approach admits the use of largely standard methods to prove welfare and existence theorems in an economy with externalities. We extend the Boyd and Conley model to allow firms to benefit from public goods and be damaged by externalities, and to allow consumers to produce externalities. We state a first welfare theorem and prove the existence of a competitive equilibrium. Taken together, this can be viewed as a type of general equilibrium Coase theorem. Considered as a special case, these theorems also represent a significant generalization of existing results for pure public goods economies.     

城市公交成品油价格补助政策浅析

为消化油价调整给公交行业带来的成本负担,国家于2006年开始出台了一系列成品油价格补助政策,给予城市公交企业成品油价格补助。本文根据成品油价格补助政策产生的原因及现状,分析目前成品油价格补助政策存在的问题,并为成品油价格补助政策的有效实施提出建议。     

Infrastructure provision and macroeconomic performance

This paper studies the differences between private and government provision of infrastructure. Capital utilization decisions and their differential role in determining market prices for capital goods under the two regimes of infrastructure provision serve as a critical transmission mechanism for fiscal policy. A subsidy to private providers of infrastructure is preferable to direct government provision irrespective of how the subsidy or expenditure is financed. The case for private provision is much stronger in economies characterized by high levels of congestion. The choice between private and government provision also has a crucial effect on the design of optimal fiscal policy.