Effects of an anticipated expansion in international public goods on public capital accumulation

This paper presents a generic model to include public capital accumulation and the services of international public goods provided by a neighbor country. It examines the long-run and short-run responses of private and public capital accumulation in the home country to an anticipated increase in international public goods. It is found that the home economy in effect cuts its public capital stock, but keeps an unchanged private capital stock in the long run when a neighbor commits itself to expanding the stock of public goods in the future. The key factor determining the short-run responses of the home country is the extent to which it will match its government spending with a neighbor country's policy, which is associated with the relative difference between the marginal utility of consumption and that of home public capital affected by an increase in international public goods.     

中国外运服务创新模式研究——以河南分公司为例

入世后,我国货运代理市场进一步开放．货运代理面临新的竞争格局。外资船公司纷纷建立自己的货代公司或办事处,直接和全面地控制货流．参与市场竞争．逐步获得货代经营权,对河南的货代业也造成严重冲击。通过全面分析国内外国际货运代理的发展现状,分析了河南国际货运代理业存在的问题,论证了中国外运河南分公司服务创新模型的必要性,提出了货代企业在入世后的市场环境下进行服务创新的策略。     

Trade costs,regional inequality,and the Home-Market Effect

ABSTRACT

This paper develops an economic geography framework with positive trade costs in both manufacturing and traditional sectors, mobile skilled workers, and unequal shares of unskilled labour in regions. It shows that partial agglomeration always features the Home-Market Effect (HME) regardless of whether regions trade only the manufacturing good or both. Moreover, spatial factor mobility is significant for the HME to arise, while intersectoral mobility does not play a crucial role. Furthermore, a decrease in the traditional sector trade costs makes the HME weaker and increases the likelihood of full agglomeration in the larger region. Finally, the paper shows that a small departure from Cobb–Douglas upper-tier utility towards gross substitutability of manufacturing and traditional goods reinforces the HME, while the opposite holds for gross complementarity of goods.     

A two-region model with two types of manufacturing technologies and agglomeration

A two-region model is proposed in this paper. Manufactured goods can be produced with cottage technology under constant returns to scale or with modern technology using differentiated intermediate goods, which are produced with increasing returns to scale technology. In the model, there may be multiple equilibria, and, in such cases, the initial conditions determine the equilibrium that the economy reaches. It is shown that strong increasing returns due to specialization and low transportation costs bring about industrialization with agglomeration. This framework explains the mechanism behind the different industrialization process in Japan and in less developed countries.     

基于项目的组织与复杂产品系统——企业能力理论视角的分析

国际学术界关于"复杂产品系统"和"基于项目的组织"的研究,对我国大型企业进行产业升级和实施"走出去"战略具有重要意义.我国企业在大规模生产的消费品领域具有很强的竞争力,在国际市场上占据了很大份额,但国际高端资本品(即复杂产品系统)在市场上的竞争力则与西方先进国家存在巨大差距.本文从企业能力理论视角分析复杂产品系统和基于项目的企业的特征,说明基于项目的组织的经济性主要来自重复经济,而要实现重复经济,就要建立起能够利用重复经济的组织架构,进行相应的能力建设.     

Acquisition of skills, labor subsidies, and agglomeration of firms

The paper develops an analytically solvable model of new economic geography in which agglomeration of firms is caused by workers' investment in the acquisition of skills. Skilled workers earn high wages and have a large demand for goods. Since firms are attracted towards the demand, they locate at proximity of skilled workers. More workers invest in the acquisition of skills when more firms ask for these skills. Consequently, partial or full agglomeration of firms may be the location equilibrium. We also show that a reduction in transport costs increases the regional governments' incentives to subsidize the acquisition of skills.     

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.     

Urban Agglomeration and Dispersion: A Synthesis of Alonso and Krugman

Urban agglomeration becomes increasingly important because of the globalization of world economies. This paper is a general equilibrium analysis of urban agglomeration economies due to product variety, and agglomeration diseconomies due to intra-city congestion in a two-city system framework. Special attention is paid to the impacts of transportation cost decrease on urban concentration and dispersion. Our main result is that dispersion necessarily takes place when the transportation cost is sufficiently low. We also conduct numerical calculations using specific parameter values, and depict a structural transition from dispersion to agglomeration, and then re-dispersion when the transportation costs decrease monotonically over time. Finally, we observe that dispersion is usually bad as compared to agglomeration, from a welfare point of view.     

Modeling Agglomeration and Dispersion in City and Country: Gunnar Myrdal, François Perroux, and the New Economic Geography

The "new economic geography" is a recent body of literature that seeks to explain how resources and production come to be concentrated spatially for reasons other than the standard "geographic" ones. Unlike alternative explanations of the geographic distribution of industry, the literature is not interdisciplinary. The new economic geography lies well within economics proper: it is an offspring of international trade theory, with models characterized by increasing returns, factor mobility, and transportation costs. The models explain the distribution of industry in terms of the opposition of an agglomerating force, the interaction of transportation costs and increasing returns to scale, with a dispersing force, commonly the interaction of transportation costs and a partially fixed input or output market.
Some authors outside the new economic geography (e.g., Martin 1999) have criticized it as simplistic, irrelevant, or passé. They claim it employs overly abstract analysis, prioritizes mathematical technique over realistic explanation, and is reminiscent of the much earlier works of Gunnar Myrdal and François Perroux—in comparison to which, however, it falls short.
This paper investigates the similarities and differences between the new economic geography and the work of Myrdal and Perroux, who in the previous special issue of this journal were ranked by Zafirovsky (1999, pp. 596, 598) as among the leading twentieth century economic sociologists. I examine how the techniques of analysis and intuitive explanations of agglomeration compare between these economic sociologists and the new economic geographers. The paper highlights what has been gained and what has been lost by the new economic geographers, who generally eschew interdisciplinary study.     

浅议港口建设项目安全条件论证

港口是联接水陆运输的枢纽,也是危险货物运输中易发生事故的重要场所之一。如何确保港口危险货物的作业安全,在当前我国各行业安全生产形势依然严峻的情况下是各港口管理部门和从事危险货物作业的港口企业必须考虑的重要问题之一。     

Management's reporting strategy and imperfection of the capital market

Since the decision on the reported outcome is delegated to the management of the firm, it is commonly held that when the capital market is imperfect the manager achieves consumption smoothing by smoothing the reports relative to the actual outcome. Modeling the firm as a principal-agent contract shows the contrary. When the capital market is imperfect the firm's reporting strategy is conservative, as the manager never reports more than the actual outcome because of fear of an unfavorable future outcome. When the capital market is perfect the firm either smooths the report-reports more than the actual outcome when the actual outcome is low and reports less than the actual outcome when the outcome is hig-or reports more than the actual outcome in order to take advantage of the sharing rule being an increasing function of the report.     

The political economy of international trade and factor mobility

Abstract. Free trade in goods and factors is efficient. When we move away from economic theory and consider the policies actually followed by governments, we observe distortions being implemented both on goods and factors trades. It is natural then to question the relative merits of the two types of intervention, and the normative literature has provided only partial answers. We ask then why is the international flow of goods and factors not free, and the political economy literature has looked at the two issues only separately. In studying the determination of trade policy, a theoretical paradigm has emerged, focusing on the role of influence driven contributions. This approach has also found strong empirical support. The literature on the political economy of factor mobility, on the other hand, is fragmented. Distortions in labor and capital flows are typically the subject of different studies, and only recently a unified framework has been proposed. More work has to be done in this area as well as in integrating the political economy of trade and factor movements.     

Optimal property taxation in the presence of interregional capital mobility

A single region's optimal property tax policy is examined in a model with interregional capital mobility. In this model, property taxation is used to finance local public expenditures. Different tax rates may be imposed on property used to produce goods which are traded between regions and property used to produce nontraded goods (e.g., residential property). The key determinants of the difference between the optimal tax rates are identified, and it is argued that there exists a bias towards relatively low tax rates on property used to produce traded goods. The role of labor mobility is also investigated.     

Global networks of trade and bits

Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to produce detailed topologies of the Internet, but so far these data have been overlooked by economists. In this paper, we suggest that such information could be used to characterize both the size of the digital economy and outsourcing at country level. We analyse the topological structure of the network of trade in digital services (trade in bits) and compare it with the more traditional flow of manufactured goods across countries. To perform meaningful comparisons across networks with different characteristics, we define a stochastic benchmark for the number of connections among each country-pair, based on hypergeometric distribution. Original data are filtered so that we only focus on the strongest, i.e. statistically significant, links. We find that trade in bits displays a sparser and less hierarchical network structure, which is more similar to trade in high-skill manufactured goods than total trade. Moreover, distance plays a more prominent role in shaping the network of international trade in physical goods than trade in digital services.     

From Bismarck to Maastricht: The March to European Union and the Labor Compact

This paper considers the likely impact that European Union (EU) will have on the labor compact. It is argued that, despite increased economic integration in Europe, countries will still be able to maintain distinct labor practices if they are willing to bear the cost of those practices. The incidence of many social protections probably already falls on workers. In addition, it is argued that imperfect mobility of capital, labor, goods and services will limit the pressure that integration will place on the labor compact. Evidence is presented suggesting that labor mobility among EU countries has not increased after the elimination of remaining restrictions on intra-EU labor mobility in 1993. Moreover, immigration from non-EU countries, which is much larger than intra-EU migration, has declined since 1993. Evidence is also reviewed suggesting that the demand for social protection rises when countries are more open, and therefore subject to more severe external shocks. This finding suggests that increased economic integration and European Monetary Union (EMU) could lead to greater demand for social protection. The U.S. experience with state workers' compensation insurance programs is offered as an example of enduring differences in labor market protections in highly integrated regional economies with a common currency.     

Do We Still Need Cities? Evidence on Rates of Innovation from Count Data Models of Metropolitan Statistical Area Patents

Evidence of the importance of urban agglomeration and the offsetting effects of congestion are provided in a number of studies of productivity and wages. Little attention has been paid to this evidence in the economic growth literature, where the recent focus is on technological change. We extend the idea of agglomeration and congestion effects to the area of innovation by empirically looking for a nonlinear link between population density and patent activity. A panel data set consisting of observations on 302 USA metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over a 10-year period from 1990 to 1999 is utilized. Following the patent and R&D literature, models that account for the discreet nature of the dependent variable are employed. Strong evidence is found that agglomeration and congestion are important in explaining the vast differences in patent rates across US cities. The most important reason cities continue to exist, given the dramatic drop in transportation costs for physical goods over the last century, is probably related to the forces of agglomeration as they apply to knowledge spillovers. Therefore, the empirical investigation proposed here is an important part of understanding the viability of urban areas in the future.     

国际人才跨区域自由流动机制创新研究——基于美国国家科学基金委(NSF)案例研究与借鉴

我国区域间国际人才流动性弱、知识交流频率低和人才创新水平相对较低的状况亟待改善。本研究基于人才生态系统理论创新性构建基于大科研平台计划的国际人才自由流动机制研究理论框架,并在借鉴美国国家科学基金委(NSF)先进经验基础上,提出国际人才跨区域自由流动的创新机制包括:构建大科研平台计划关键载体;推动旨在保障国际人才人力资本所有权和自由交易权的《政府间人事合作法》立法;出资成立《人才发展共同基金》,推动国际人才自由流动市场化改革;以产业集聚带动国际人才跨区域自由流动。该研究结论为全球化背景下加速人才要素自由流动的机制创新研究提供有益参考。     

R&D,Interindustry and International Technology Spillovers and the Total Factor Productivity Growth of Manufacturing Industries in Canada, 1974-1989

The paper presents new econometric evidence on the relationship between total factor productivity growth and the R&D expenditures of Canadian manufacturing industries in the presence of interindustry and international spillovers of technology. In contrast to studies that presume that international spillovers are incorporated in imports of intermediate and/or capital equipment goods, the present paper assumes that the principal channel of transmission of new technology is foreign direct investment. Three original proxies for international spillovers use information on patenting, the size and the origin of foreign ownership in the host country and the R&D expenditures in the country of origin. The results suggest that the nexus between industry's own R&D expenditures and the TFP growth is significant and positive, especially for the process-related R&D. Domestic interindustry spillovers of new technology have a larger effect on TFP than industry's own R&D expenditures. All three proxies for international technology spillovers are associated positively and significantly with TFP growth. However, international spillovers contribute to TFP growth less than domestic interindustry spillovers and less than own process-related R&D.     

Expansionary effects of the welfare state in a small open economy

We examine the relationship between welfare state policies and economic performance in a small open economy with (i) free trade in final goods and international capital mobility, and (ii) aggregate increasing returns to scale. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we find that a retrenchment of welfare programmes is not an inevitable consequence of economic integration. Instead, by improving the exploitation of aggregate scale economies, social expenditure policies and international openness complement each other in facilitating an improvement in economic performance that can sustain a more generous welfare protection.     

Towards a theory of optimal roads

The purpose is to find an allocation of a given total amount of road capital in two-dimensional space such that total transportation costs for a region are minimized. A continuous model in analogy to hydrodynamics is used. Transports are supposed to be generated by the gravity hypothesis. It is discussed how transportation paths are optimally adjusted to a given distribution of road capital, and how road capital should be distributed at a given traffic distribution. It is also discussed how the latter problem should be solved when it is taken into account that the distribution of roads affects the choice of paths.