时滞产品生产的经济增长与社会福利分析

时滞产品生产所带来的负外部性 ,使厂商利益与社会利益往往不一致 ,时滞产品的生产导致经济增长率与社会福利的同步下降 ,并可能引致资本向时滞产品生产领域流动从而加剧其影响程度。在生产领域适当的政府调控是保障经济增长目标实现与社会福利提升的必然选择。     

地方政府财政支出与经济增长关系的实证分析——以北京市为例

本文着重分析了改革开放后北京市政府财政支出与经济增长的关系,发现经济增长促进了政府财政支出规模的扩张。根据各项支出对经济增长的影响,本文划分出生产性支出和非生产性支出两大类别,并利用VAR模型和IRF检验了生产性财政支出冲击与非生产性财政支出冲击对经济增长的影响。通过了解这种影响模式,将为判断2008年后北京市经济增长趋向提供一种思路。     

创业精神的生产性与非生产性:一个制度的视角

创业精神对经济增长的贡献取决于创业精神的水平及其在生产性活动与非生产性活动中的配置状况,本文研究了制度安排所决定的创业报酬结构和税收对创业精神配置的影响.结果发现创业报酬结构是决定性的;同时创业精神市场配置具有内生性,导致二类创业精神水平的差距持续扩大,从而影响经济增长.这在一定程度上解释了贫困地区经济增长低迷,发达地区经济快速增长的现象.政府可借助调节税收、改变报酬结构等措施调整不合理的创业精神配置,从而改善经济增长的水平.     

地方政府财政支出结构与规模对收入分配及经济增长的影响

经济增长实际上是物质和人力资本价值实现的过程。本文采用26个省级面板的数据,探讨地方政府支出结构与规模对收入分配的影响机制,进而对地区经济增长的影响。地方政府非生产性支出对收入分配有正面影响,缩小收入分配差距。地方政府生产性支出对收入分配有负面影响,会扩大地方城乡居民收入差距。生产性支出对经济增长有显著的促进作用,非生产性支出对经济增长有一定遏制作用。另外,从三重维度上衡量,居民收入、城镇居民收入以及农村居民收入差距扩大对经济增长具有负向作用。因此,改革政府支出结构,调节政府支出规模,对我国城乡居民收入差距和经济推进具有重要作用。     

制度质量与企业家活动配置——对鲍莫尔理论的经验检验

鲍莫尔关于生产性和非生产性企业家活动的理论是对经济学中企业家理论的一次重大贡献,本文以跨国数据检验了鲍莫尔的著名论断:制度质量决定了企业家在生产性活动与非生产性活动中的配置,好的制度鼓励更多生产性的企业家活动,坏的制度鼓励更多非生产性的企业家活动。鲍莫尔理论的政策含义是明显的,各国政府应该设法改善制度质量,鼓励现有的企业家才能更多地投入到生产性活动领域,而不是增加旨在提高企业家数量的各种政府补贴。鲍莫尔的理论从另一层面告诉我们,发展中国家并不缺乏企业家,而是缺乏把社会精英变成生产性企业家的制度保障。     

我国税收的经济增长效应与社会福利损失分析

税收对经济增长和社会福利的影响是宏观公共财政理论和经济增长理论研究的重点,已经有大量的研究。基于一个包含政府生产性公共支出的内生增长模型,本文以我国1980—2006年的经济为样本经济,通过参数化和数值模拟考察了我国税收的经济增长效应以及社会福利损失的大小。研究发现,在样本经济的参数环境下,我国税收的经济增长效应较小,但税收的社会福利损失较大;适当提高税率有利于促进经济增长,提高社会福利水平。原因是,税收通过公共支出对经济增长直接的促进作用要比其对劳动供给和投资的扭曲更大;税收通过提高消费增长率和休闲水平从而对社会福利有正向影响。本文的政策含义是,在我国当前的经济环境下,通过税收融资可以促进经济增长,提高社会福利水平。     

企业家价值偏好对企业家活动配置选择的影响

本文通过建立企业家价值偏好与企业家活动配置之间的理论模型,提出企业家在选择企业活动配置过程中,偏好事业型企业家与从事创新等生产性活动配置正相关,与寻租等非生产性活动配置负相关,偏好财富型企业家与寻租等非生产性活动配置正相关,与创新等生产性活动配置负相关。并通过实证分析检验了这一假设,扩展了企业家活动配置理论。     

价值规律是支配市场经济分配的客观规律

市场经济中分配的手段和实现形式是市场价格。市场价格是商品价值的货币表现,决定于生产商品的社会必要劳动时间。价值规律通过支配商品价值的形成调节着商品所有者经济利益的分配,并且通过人们追求自身经济利益展开的平等、自由竞争实现了社会生产资源的有效配置。     

经营者收入的博弈分析——劳动价值论的一种拓展

以期以来，我国经济学界一般承认，在公有制企业内，从事生产性管理的活动是创造商品价值的生产劳动，但却否认资本主义私人企业中的生产经营管理活动也创造价值。这种逻辑显然是难以自圆其说的。     

寻租理论的新发展

寻租理论把租金的范围定义在政治领域。政府拥有某些政治特权,可以创造和保护租金,从而增加人们的决策选择。出于利益最大化的考虑,人们会选择＂寻租＂方式来增加收益。正是由于＂寻租＂,遏制了市场经济发挥作用。同时,寻租活动也浪费了本应用于从事生产性活动的资源。在上述思想的指引下,寻租理论的发展出现两大分支：一是规范寻租理论,试图说明和估算寻租活动给经济带来的成本;二是实证寻租理论,试图解释社会中人为制造的租金来源。寻租被应用于很多研究领域,但是也许是由于寻租理论本身存有缺陷,或者其他原因,寻租理论在中国并没有很好地发展起来。     

Abstinence from child labor and profit seeking

Opponents of child labor suggest that demand-driven mechanisms can eliminate such practices. If consumers prefer adult-labor products, they suggest that labeling will drive out child-labor products. I show that under Bertrand competition, even with complete information, this is unlikely. When products are differentiated only by labor type, such a scheme requires at least three firms and child-labor costs at least as large as adult-labor costs. With additional lines of differentiation, child labor is eliminated only when the adult-labor costs are smaller. Thus, while labeling may reduce child labor, it is unlikely to eliminate it.     

On the optimality of social status seeking

We present an endogenous growth model in which households display their social status by holding not only capital but also bonds. According to conventional wisdom, the quest for social status provides an incentive for individuals to accumulate wealth, which stimulates economic growth and elevates it to a socially optimal level. Instead, we show that portfolio allocation is crucial to the growth-enhancing effect of the quest for social status. If households exhibit their social status by accumulating physical capital and holding government bonds, the quest for social status may not increase economic growth. As a result, social status seeking cannot achieve the social optimum. Calibrating our model to data, we find that if government bonds constitute part of the wealth for households’ quest for social status, the quest for social status decreases economic growth.     

Leaders,laggards and technology seeking strategies

We analyze the conditions determining optimal technology seeking strategies for leader and laggard firms. We extend existing theories by differentiating leaders and laggards in terms of absorptive capacity and intra-firm technology transfer skills, next to productivity levels. In addition, both Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as well as exports function as two alternative technology seeking strategies. Our theoretical results demonstrate that for a wide range of parameter settings, leaders optimally seek technology through FDI, whereas laggards do so through exports. Confronting these findings with some original exploratory industry-level analysis complemented by insights derived from case studies, we find broad overall support for our theoretical predictions.     

Collective rent seeking and division of labor

The article analyzes division of labor within multiple groups engaged in collective rent seeking through time. Each agent seeks membership in one of two subgroups within each group, conveniently labelled a leader-subgroup and a follower-subgroup. The within-group generated payoffs are used as input in the between-group competition for the other groups' payoffs and an external rent. Within-group egalitarian allocation, but not relative-effort allocation, alleviates leadership struggle if the rent is large or the group is moderately more decisive than the other groups. The group employing a more egalitarian sharing rule than the other groups alleviates its leadership struggle more successfully. The Folk theorem is used to show the conditions under which leadership struggle gets intensified or alleviated.     

Rent seeking and the economics of corruption

The paper studies the influence of Tullock (West Econ J 5:224–232, 1967) and the rent-seeking literature more generally on the study of corruption. The theoretical corruption literature with its emphasis on principal-agent relationships within government and rent creation by corruption politicians has largely, but not entirely, overlooked that contestable rents encourage unproductive use of real resources in seeking these rents. As a consequence, the literature underestimates the value of corruption control and the cost of corruption itself.     

Nursing compensation: the realities of seeking equity

The importance of equitable salary compensation has been identified as a key factor in recruitment and retention. Costing out nursing care can identify revenues, improve budget negotiation leverage, and perhaps supply data needed to readjust hospital reimbursement rates.     

A theory of return‐seeking firms

We introduce a theory of return‐seeking firms to study the differences between this and profit‐maximising models. A return‐seeking objective takes into account the opportunity cost of each additional resource input to a firm's production as being a potential capital input choice in an alternative project. We find that firm supply curves cease to exist in perfectly competitive markets, that supply curves may slope up as well as down, that economies of scale are necessary for any production to occur and that firms always produce on a decreasing portion of their cost curve.     

Income inequality, consumption, and social-status seeking

Using the Chinese Urban Household Survey data between 1997 and 2006, we find that income inequality has a negative (positive) effect on household consumption net of education expenditures (savings) even after we control for household income. We argue that people save to improve their social status when social status is associated with pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. Rising income inequality can strengthen the incentives of status-seeking savings by increasing the benefit of improving status, and by enlarging the wealth level required for status upgrading. We also find that the negative effect of income inequality on consumption is stronger for poorer and younger people and that income inequality stimulates more education investment, which are consistent with the status-seeking hypothesis.     

Rent seeking: Some conceptual problems and implications

Conclusion Rent-seeking waste is a matter of opinion depending on one's view of the appropriate role of the state, which must ultimately be determined on the basis of ethics rather than economic theory. If emphasis is placed on the freedom of individual choice, there are genuine opportunities for improvements in the political system and strong reasons to reduce the current level of redistributive activity. Rent-seeking activities by organized groups are important in the growth of the bargaining society or transfer society with its stifling effect on the competitive market process and concomitant shrinking of liberty of choice. Moreover, while there can be little doubt that there has been a pronounced increase in the number of groups organized for redistributive purposes, group activities generally pose little reason for concern in the absence of government assistance. Thus, limiting the role of the state is essential in minimizing the effects of rentseeking activity.³⁰ There is mounting evidence that a revision of the constitutional contract will be necessary to reduce the role of the state. Regardless of the approach taken in reducing the scope of government, however, a necessary first step is increased awareness of the economic and ethical implications of redistributive activities by individuals and groups.This article was presented as a paper at a New York University-Liberty Fund Research seminar in Austrian economics, August 7–11, 1983. The author wishes to thank members of the seminar and Terry Anderson, Marc Johnson, Dwight Lee, Jim Leiby, Rolf Mueller, and Ray Palmquist for helpful comments and suggestions.