土地出让收入、地方财政支出对我国房价影响的区域差异性研究

利用2002～2011年30个省市面板数据分析土地出让收入、地方财政支出对我国房价影响的区域差异性。研究结果表明,东中西部三个区域的土地出让收入与地方财政支出对房价的影响均存在不同程度的时滞效应;短期内土地出让收入与地方财政支出对房价的作用效果并无显著的区域差异性,但就长期发展趋势来看,东部与西部地区仍以地方财政支出影响为主,而中部地区的情况却出现了逆转,土地出让收入对房价的刺激作用要显著大于财政支出。     

Management Policy and Estimated Returns on School Trust Lands

Every state entering the Union since 1803 received land grants from the federal government for the support of their respective public school systems. Inherent in this federal grant is the fiduciary duty to prudently and effectively manage these assets for the beneficiary, their school systems. We develop a framework that measures the present value of the beneficiary’s economic benefits to assist managers of school trust lands in determining future management policy. Using this framework, we assess whether managers of state school trust lands are currently meeting their fiduciary responsibilities of “maximum economic benefit” for their beneficiaries or whether changes in management policy are needed. The present value of realized economic returns from grazing lease revenues and capital appreciation are compared with the present value of income streams that may be generated from alternative investments available to the land trustees if the land were sold and the proceeds reinvested in U.S. Treasury securities. Market values and capital appreciation for school trust lands in Wyoming are estimated using hedonic models formulated from ranch sales data. Because we are comparing a risky return on land investments with a riskless return on Treasury bonds, we observe, in most cases, that the sale of land andreinvestment of proceeds will increase economic benefits on school trust lands. Accepted for Publication in The Journal of Real Estate, Finance and Economics.     

Determinants of intramethod choice in the oil and gas industry

Procedural flexibility can have a substantial impact on reported costs, revenues, expenses, and balance sheet valuations. Until 1978 oil and gas companies had considerable flexibility in applying full cost and successful efforts. A unique opportunity to measure the income effect of firms' procedural choices occurred when the SEC specified the exact procedures that must be followed by oil and gas producers when they account for exploratory and development costs under both the full cost and successful efforts methods. In complying with the new rules firms were required to adjust retained earnings retroactively to reflect what it would have been if the new procedures had been in effect all along. These retained earnings adjustments provide a measure of the income effect of procedural choices.This study shows that economic incentives influence the procedural accounting choices which were made by oil and gas producers. The same economic incentives also influence the choice of full cost or successful efforts. Finally, the discriminatory ability of firms' economci incentives is most powerful when firms' reporting strategies are defined in terms of both choice of accounting methods and procedural applications within those methods.     

Political fragmentation and projected tax revenues: evidence from Flemish municipalities

The level of revenues pocketed by a government during the fiscal year often deviates from that projected by this government in its budget. Despite a flourishing literature on, for example, the technical or procedural determinants of such forecast errors, little is yet known about how political stratagems may affect forecast errors. In the present paper, we analyse whether differences in the level of government fragmentation are useful in explaining local government tax revenue forecast errors—controlling for various other factors. Using data on 242 Flemish municipalities for the period 1992–2002, we find that two-party governments are more optimistic than single-party governments. In contrast to our initial expectations, governments with at least three parties are significantly more careful (or less optimistic) in their revenue projections than single- or two-party governments.      

Fiscal policy and aggregate demand in the USA before,during, and following the Great Recession

We examine the direct effect of federal and subnational fiscal policy on aggregate demand in the USA by introducing the Fiscal Effect (FE) measure. FE can be decomposed into three components. Discretionary FE quantifies the effect of discretionary or legislated policy changes on aggregate demand. Cyclical FE captures the effect of the automatic stabilizers—changes in government taxes and spending arising from the business cycle. Residual FE measures the effect of all changes in government revenues and outlays which cannot be categorized as either discretionary or cyclical; for example, it captures the effect of the secular increase in entitlement program spending due to the aging of the population. Unlike other approaches, FE is a bottom-up approach that allows for differential effects on aggregate demand depending on the type and length of the policy change. Thus, FE is arguably the most detailed and comprehensive measure available of the stance of US fiscal policy in relation to aggregate demand. We use our new metric to examine the contribution of fiscal policy to growth in real GDP over the course of the Great Recession and current expansion. We compare this contribution to the contributions to growth in aggregate demand made by fiscal policy over past business cycles. In doing so, we highlight that the relatively strong support of government policy to GDP growth during the Great Recession was followed by a historically weak contribution over the course of the current expansion.     

The revolutions in China’s inter-governmental fiscal system

There were three periods in the development of China’s inter-governmental fiscal system. In the first period (1950s to 1979), local governments collected tax revenues and remitted upward to the central government. Reforms during the next two periods made revolutionary changes to the system. The tax-sharing system (established in 1994) provides for revenue centralization, spending decentralization, and large central transfers to local governments. This system remains largely in force.     

土地价格、土地财政与宏观经济波动

本文在一个包含金融加速器的新凯恩斯动态一般均衡模型中引入土地财政和政府隐性担保融资机制,借此考察在土地财政体制下土地价格的波动特征、驱动因素和对宏观经济的影响机制,同时使用2004Q1到2016Q1的中国宏观经济数据对模型进行贝叶斯估计。方差分解的结果表明,在样本期间,土地需求冲击、土地供给冲击和货币政策冲击是驱动中国土地价格变动的主要因素,货币政策冲击和土地供给冲击是引起短期土地价格波动的主要因素,土地需求冲击在长期中驱动了土地价格波动。数值模拟结果发现,土地财政对宏观经济波动具有放大效应,正向的土地需求冲击将推高土地价格,并通过抵押约束机制引起宏观经济波动,地方政府对土地财政的依赖将放大该效应,并进一步对土地价格形成正向反馈,从而引起宏观经济更大的波动;在土地财政体制下,正向的土地供给冲击有助于抑制土地价格上涨,并减少宏观经济波动。     

Local taxes and political influence: evidence from locally dominant firms in German municipalities

We analyze the impact of locally dominant firms—i.e. firms that contribute a sizeable share to municipalities’ revenues—on local business tax rates. We argue that these firms have considerable political power locally even if they are not large in the regional or national perspective. These locally dominant firms can use their political power to voice their concerns directly vis-à-vis the local government—a channel of influence that is hardly available in municipalities with an atomistic structure of tax payers. We hypothesize that municipalities with locally dominant firms will set lower tax rates than municipalities in which tax-payers’ concentration is low. We test the impact of tax-payers’ concentration on local business tax rates using data from 423 municipalities in the German state Hesse between 1998 and 2005. The estimation technique accounts for spatial lags and autoregressive disturbances. Results support our central hypothesis: the higher the tax-payers’ concentration, the lower the municipal business tax rates.     

The effect of the interest coverage covenants on classification shifting of revenues

ABSTRACT

While prior studies focus on real/accrual-based earnings management and expense misclassification to investigate earnings manipulation in avoiding covenant violations, this paper extends such research in a new direction. In particular, it examines whether firms employ classification shifting of revenues when they are subject to interest coverage EBITDA-based covenants close to their threshold values or limits. This earnings management tool allows firms to increase reported EBITDA by misclassifying non-operating revenues as operating revenues to remain within covenant limits that include EBITDA. Using a sample of 559 UK listed firm-years for the period 2005–2014, it establishes that the use of classification shifting of revenues is high when interest coverage covenants are close to their limits. Further analysis suggests that firms also employ revenue shifting when all their loan covenants are EBITDA-related.     

Interregional redistribution through tax surcharge

The paper considers a utilitarian federal government that levies a tax to finance a national public good or to effect a redistributive policy. Regions differ in their incomes and in their preferences for a local public good. First, we assume that the central government observes each region's public expenditures (and, hence, local tax revenues) but cannot perfectly observe revenues and preferences. We derive the (constrained) Pareto-efficient allocation and show how it can be implemented by a surcharge on local taxes. The level of redistribution that can be achieved is limited by the fact that it may be difficult, or even impossible, to distinguish low-income regions with a high preference for the public good from high-income regions with a low preference. Then we allow for the possibility that the central government can observe incomes through a costly audit. We examine the optimal audit policy and study the impact of audits on the optimal taxation scheme. Throughout the paper we focus on the properties of average and marginal tax rates and on the resulting under- or overprovision of regional public goods.     

Does reduced trade tax revenue affect government spending patterns?

Many skeptics of trade liberalization in the developing world argue that lowering trade taxes can cause significant fiscal pressures in countries particularly reliant on these taxes and result in a reallocation of resources away from important development goals. This paper evaluates whether there is evidence that central governments systematically change the composition of spending priorities in the wake of lowered trade tax revenues as a share of total government revenues. We find no systematic evidence for this concern in a sample of 51 developing countries for the 1991 through 2005 period.     

从供给视角看我国房地产市场的“两难困境”

本文通过理论模型解释我国房地产市场两难困境的内在机制,提出各参与主体的博弈行为与房地产泡沫的制度逻辑:一方面地方政府土地出让和开发商的垄断造成房价过高;另一方面地方政府投资又依赖于土地出让收入。中央政府面临两者之间的权衡。本文提出,地方政府的利益是地价和房价上涨的根本原因,开发商垄断是高地价和高房价的直接原因。我们认为,大力建设保障性住房,并发展高端房市场是解决房地产市场两难处境的有效手段。     

房价调控、地方政府债务与宏观经济波动

在地方政府债务高企的背景下,房价调控能否使资本流向非房地产部门？房价调控如果触发地方政府债务违约,宏观政策应如何应对？本文基于中国宏观经济的特征事实,引入地方政府的土地财政行为,将房价变动与地方政府的偿债能力联系起来。研究表明,由于地方政府依赖土地出让和土地抵押贷款筹集收入,房价管控导致的地价下降会带来地方政府收入的下降,直接影响地方政府的偿债能力。如果地方政府债务不出现违约,那么房价管控带来的地价下降会降低地方政府从金融部门获得的抵押融资额,使非基建部门的融资成本下降,非基建部门投资和产出上升。而如果调控房价带来的地价下降导致地方政府出现债务违约,金融部门资产受损,使金融中介减少贷款和提高贷款成本,带来整个社会的信贷紧缩,经济中各个部门的产出大幅下降。进一步的政策分析表明,有必要在避免地方政府债务违约的同时,使用财政资金补充银行资本金等多种方式稳定金融中介的资产负债表,从而将房价调控对经济的负面影响程度降到最低。     

Political Fragmentation and the Evolution of National Tax Structures in the OECD

This paper considers how tax structures in OECD countries change over time and how these changes are related to political fragmentation. Tax structures amongst OECD countries have become more uniform in the recent past (1965–1995) but it is less clear that this convergence satisfies time-series requirements. Evidence on stochastic convergence tends to suggest that there is evidence of persistence of shocks remaining over a considerable time period. A consideration of the countries where this persistence is most prevalent shows that there is significant correlation between high persistence and weak (coalition) governments, giving further weight to the theories of weak government.     

US imperialism in action: An audit-based appraisal of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq

This paper drawing from audit reports reflects upon the post-Iraq war administration the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). It argues that the CPA's compliance with basic levels of decent public administration were akin to Guantanamo's compliance with basic levels of natural justice. The audit reports demonstrate that the CPA was a chaotic administration which spent billions without proper controls or procedures and left precious Iraqi oil revenues open to fraudulent acts. The CPA failed to comply with its obligations under UN resolutions. It identifies the geopolitical/economic implications of the US government which was partly motivated by economic concerns but it was also motivated by political concerns—the imposition of US hegemony. It then turns to the broader economic imperatives of the falling rate of profit and the imposition of neoliberalism (market fundamentalism).     

Returns of Education in the Czech Republic

Prepared for presentation at the Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF) in Seville, Spain, 28–31 August 2000, for the session on the opportunity-equalising effects of fiscal systems.University education is nowadays provided as public goods in the Czech Republic. Due to economic pressure on public finance the trend of the 90s became the internalisation of costs associated with university education.The generally accepted hypothesis is that nowadays the returns from the costs of university education are achieved in a shorter time than before economic transition. Additionally, it is thought that the return on university education is differentiated by professions. We aim to test these hypotheses. That is why the cornerstone of our study is the deeper analysis of the differentiation of selected professions in the current state in comparison to the period before transition.After 1989, due to the economic transition and development of the market economy, wage differentiation accelerated in the Czech Republic. An important factor in differentiation seems to be the level of human capital, represented above all by university education. Education significantly increased the chance of finding a job, as another analysis has proven. However, these positive effects of education have been paid for by considerable monetary and non-monetary costs.The paper provides an economic analysis at the level of an individual and his point of return between costs and revenues from university education. To achieve an exact but still simple analysis we take into account only quantifiable monetary costs and revenues. The calculation of the point of return is done with the use of the construction of a cumulated whole-life income and its interpolation. The analysis uses data for the Czech Republic in 1988 and 1997.     

A Conceptual Analysis of Price Setting in Australian Local Government

A complex set of issues underlies the pricing of the diverse range of goods and services from which Australian local governments derive a significant portion of their revenues. Although local governments have a not‐for‐profit orientation, they are expected to be financially viable and embrace a broad notion of accountability. They are also expected to influence the behaviour of constituents in accordance with policy decisions, but be equitable in doing so. These and related parameters are discussed and illustrated in order to reveal and elucidate the nature of pricing decisions in local government, and to differentiate the local government context from other price‐setting environments.     

Official forecasts and management of oil windfalls

Official forecasts for oil revenues and the burden of pensioners are used to estimate forward-looking fiscal policy rules for Norway and compared with permanent-income and bird-in-hand rules. The results suggest that fiscal reactions have been partial forward-looking with respect to the rising pension bill, but backward-looking with respect to oil and gas revenues. Solvency of the government finances might be an issue with the fiscal rules estimated from historical data. Simulation suggests that declining oil and gas revenue and the costs of a rapidly graying population will substantially deteriorate the net government asset position by 2060 unless fiscal policy becomes more prudent or current pension and fiscal reforms are successful.     

Why Do Countries Mandate Accrual Accounting for Tax Purposes?

This study investigates why countries mandate accruals in the definition of corporate taxable income. Accruals alleviate timing and matching problems in cash flows, which smoothes taxable income and thus better aligns it with underlying economic performance. These accrual properties can be desirable in the tax setting as tax authorities seek more predictable corporate tax revenues. However, they can also make tax revenues procyclical by increasing the correlation between aggregate corporate tax revenues and aggregate economic activity. We argue that accruals shape the distribution of corporate tax revenues, which leads regulators to incorporate accruals into the definition of taxable income to balance the portfolio of government revenues and expenditures. Using a sample of 26 OECD countries, we find support for several theoretically motivated factors explaining the use of accruals in tax codes. We first provide evidence that corporate tax revenues are less volatile in high accrual countries, but high accrual countries collect relatively higher (lower) tax revenues when the corporate sector grows (contracts). Critically, we then show that accruals and smoother tax revenues are favored by countries with higher levels of government spending on public services and uncertain future expenditures, while countries with procyclical other tax collections favor cash rules and lower procyclicality of corporate tax revenues.     

Predation,Protection, and Accumulation: Endogenous Property Rights in an Overlapping Generations Growth Model

We study a simple growth model with overlapping generations in which property rights are insecure. Insecurity of property rights leads to predation. Due to predation some of the resources are used for protection purposes. Both predation and protection remove resources from the accumulation process. In the model individuals allocate their labor between working for firms and appropriating output from them. Firms allocate their capital between production and protection. Without government, the model generates a unique but inefficient equilibrium. We show that in this equilibrium the level of output is increasing in the rate of effectiveness of protection, the relative utility of honesty, and the discount rate. Further, the equilibrium level of output is dynamically inefficient. We then extend the model to include a government as the sole provider of the public good “protection”. Protection is assumed to be financed by a capital tax imposed on firms. The model then yields multiple equilibria, with both a stable high-protection low-predation equilibrium, and a stable low-protection high-predation equilibrium. Which equilibrium a country is most likely to achieve, and how difficult it is for a country to move to the more desirable low-predation high-protection equilibrium, depend crucially on the parameters of the model describing the economy’s institutional structure. Hence, the results of the model support the emphasis placed by the World Bank on the importance for growth of strengthening institutional structures in developing countries.JEL Code: D23, D90, O41