Natural Resource Management and Economywide Policies in Costa Rica: A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling Approach

A computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is used to tracethe effects of government policies on Costa Rican forests inthe presence of incomplete markets. The results indicate thatcorrecting the market failure would, as expected, reduce deforestation.More interestingly, in the presence of the market failure, loweringthe tax on unskilled labor reduces deforestation because peoplegain employment in other parts of the economy. Taxation of otherproduced goods changes the incentives for deforestation. Forexample, a tax on agricultural products elevates the relativeprice of capital and shifts resources away from the capital-intensiveindustrial sector toward the agricultural and forest sectors;as a result, such a tax increases deforestation.     

地方税制的国际经验与借鉴

本文通过对美、德、日、法四国的地方税制进行比较分析,归纳出四国地方税制的特征,并在此基础上提出了对我国地方税制改革的建议:建立分级地方税制;选择财产税为地方税主体税种;采用集权为主的税权模式。     

我国财政支出结构的实证分析

基于2006-2011年我国31个省份一般财政支出数据,运用因子分析方法对我国不同时期各地的财政支出结构进行实证分析。结果发现：第一,一般公共服务、国防、公共安全、教育和科学技术等13个不同支出项目可以通过＂偏高级经济技术＂、＂偏社会保障服务＂、＂偏基本设施建设＂较好地反映;第二,地方政府活动的范围和方向以高级经济技术为中心,但逐渐转变为以基本设施建设为中心,后来又转变偏社会保障服务,充分反映不同时期政府政策的重点。最后,笔者分别从财政政策、政府管理模式、财政赤字、税收政策四个角度阐述这一财政支出变化的原因。     

我国现行环境税费的环保效果:基于地方政府视角的分析

财政联邦主义理论告诉我们,地方财政行为可能会影响环境政策的执行,在财政分权的情况下,可能出现地方政府为了促进经济增长和增加税收收入而采取放松环境质量管理的策略行为,导致"竞争到底"现象的出现。基于这一理论假设,从地方政府的角度,建立计量经济模型对我国现行环境税费的环保效果进行实证检验,得出如下结论:我国应积极推行绿色GDP等考核指标;明晰中央政府和地方政府各自的环保责任;中央政府应规范地方政府之间的竞争,等等。     

Optimal fiscal policy under multiple equilibria

We study optimal fiscal policy in an economy where (i) search frictions create a coordination problem and generate multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria and (ii) the government finances the provision of a public good by taxing market activity. The government must choose the tax rate before it knows which equilibrium will obtain, and therefore an important part of the problem is determining how the policy will affect the equilibrium selection process. We show that when the equilibrium selection rule is based on the concept of risk dominance, higher tax rates make coordination on the Pareto-superior outcome less likely. As a result, taking equilibrium-selection effects into account leads to a lower optimal tax rate.     

Agglomeration,tax competition,and fiscal equalization

This paper analyzes the impact of fiscal equalization on asymmetric tax competition when positive agglomeration externalities are present. It uses a model focusing on the strategic reason for capital taxes to demonstrate that per capita fiscal capacity equalization improves the spatial allocation of capital provided a sufficiently rich (marginally) larger region and sufficiently strong agglomeration externalities. If tax revenue is used to finance public goods, per capita fiscal capacity equalization generally cannot simultaneously eliminate public good inefficiency and spatial inefficiency. However, the achievement of full efficiency for ex ante identical regions requires excessive (full) equalization in the presence (absence) of agglomeration externalities.     

"省直管县"财政体制改革模式探讨——以湖南为例

"省直管县"财政体制改革是地方政府从政府规模、层级及财政关系等层面实行的一次深远变革,也是地方政府突破中央权力设置的制度壁垒而获得创新效率的一个难得契机,湖南省应从实际出发探索建立地方新型财政管理模式和地方公共产品供应模式.     

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.     

物业税改革的经济影响:一个文献综述

自从2003年我国提出物业税改革的设想后,物业税改革成为了一个热点话题.分析物业税改革可能带来的经济影响是当前讨论的重点之一.物业税将逐渐成为地方政府的一个稳定的主要收入来源.为地方政府提供长期而稳定的激励,提高地方公共财政的效率;物业税改革在短期内会降低房价,不过幅度不会太大,也不会降低购房者的负担;物业税改革还可以提高土地资源的配置效率,一定程度上缓解由土地批租制度带来的地方政府"寅吃卯粮"的问题.     

Tobin meets Oates: solidarity and the optimal fiscal federal structure

We explore the implications for the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization when people’s preferences for goods and services—which classic treatments of fiscal federalism (Oates in Fiscal federalism, 1972) place in the purview of local governments—exhibit specific egalitarianism (Tobin in J. Law Econ. 13(2): 263–277, 1970), or solidarity. We find that a system in which the central government provides a common minimum level of the publicly provided good, and local governments are allowed to use their own resources to provide an even higher local level, performs better from an efficiency perspective relative to all other systems analyzed for a relevant range of preferences over solidarity.     

分税与地方财政支出结构

本文研究了税收分成对地方财政支出结构的影响。理论分析发现,在地方政府的财政支出结构竞争中,税收分成比例的提高将直接导致地方政府增加生产性公共支出,发挥生产性支出的产出外部性,提高产出水平和自身税收收入水平,实现福利最大化。一系列经验分析显著地验证了上述结论,即当地级市政府的税收分成率提高10%,该地区生产性支出占比将提高1.39%。本文的分析和结论有助于解释中国地方财政支出结构变动的原因,从而为政府间税收分配改革提供有效的政策建议。     

Unemployment,Government Spending and the Laffer Effect*

The paper studies the effects of income tax rate changes in a general equilibrium model with frictional unemployment. Laffer curve effects, by which a tax rate reduction may increase the level of government spending or its share in output, are shown to be possible under certain conditions. These are the presence of unemployment benefit payments, government budget balance through fiscal spending adjustment and limited quantitative importance of labour reallocation costs. Endogenous government spending acts as a fiscal accelerator if the fiscal burden of unemployment benefit payments is large, but reduces the employment effects of tax rate cuts if it is low.     

Tax Competition and International Public Goods

A well known result in the tax competition literature is that tax rates are set too low in the Nash equilibrium to finance an efficient level of public consumption goods. In this model we introduce international spillovers in public goods provision and show that such spillovers reduce, and in the limiting case of perfect spillovers, eliminate tax competition. There is, however, always underprovision of the public good in equilibrium, since larger spillovers increase the problem of free riding. In an extension to the model, we demonstrate that congestion costs may result in overprovision of the public good.     

交易费用、政府边界与财政体制改革

将新制度经济学中的交易费用理论引入政府供给公共产品的分析，给出了政府供给公共产品的边界的理论模型。我国政府在供给公共产品过程中发生的交易费用：决策费用、实施费用和监督费用过高，制约了我国政府供给公共产品的效率。制度的一项重要功能是降低交易成本，改革财政分权体制是降低政府供给公共产品发生的交易费用的有效途径。     

财政压力与地方政府融资平台的兴起

本文利用2004-2006年取消农业税的自然实验,使用1994—2009年的县级面板数据首次从实证上检验了财政压力导致地方政府融资平台成立这一假说。利用双重差分模型研究发现,取消农业税改革导致的财政冲击越大,县级地方政府在改革后设立融资平台的概率越高。这一发现在不同模型设定下保持稳健,并通过了基于改革前样本和利用其他税种收入变动构造的安慰剂检验。我们还排除了上述发现由扩权强县和财政省直管县等其他财政制度改革驱动的可能性。进一步的分析表明,面临更激烈的区域间竞争、初始财政禀赋较低的县更倾向于设立融资平台。本文丰富了关于财政压力对中国地方政府行为影响的研究,有助于更好地理解中国财政体制与金融制度之间复杂的关联性。     

Optimal Fiscal Policy with Consumption Taxation

We characterize optimal fiscal policies in a general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition and endogenous public spending. The government can tax consumption, as alternative to labor income taxes. Consumption taxation acts as indirect taxation of profits (intratemporal gains of taxing consumption) and enables the policymaker to manage the burden of public debt more efficiently (intertemporal gains of taxing consumption). We show analytically that these two gains imply that the optimal share of government spending is higher under consumption taxation than with labor income taxation. Then, we quantify numerically each of these gains by calibrating the model on the U.S. economy.     

Fiscal policy with banks and financial frictions

We assess the role of banks to the transmission of optimal and exogenous changes in fiscal policy to the economy. We built-up a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with patient and impatient agents, banks and a government to find that banks and their associated capital-adequacy constraint mitigate the negative spill-over effects to the economy from higher taxes. Specifically, we confirm that labour income tax is the most distortionary fiscal instrument. The optimal choice of a housing tax is the most favorable funding source to a temporary increase in public spending. The combination of housing and labour taxes is the most preferred tax bundle to be optimally chosen under negative output shocks. Moreover, a permanent increase in housing tax is beneficial if it is welfare enhancing and the existence of banks benefits mainly impatient households under permanently higher consumption taxes. Finally, these results remain robust to various robustness checks.     

我国开征不动产税与增强地方政府公共服务能力的思考

在物质生活基本得到满足的情况下．老百姓对医疗、教育、社会保障、公共安全以及环境保护等公共产品和公共服务的需求越来越突出，对地方政府的目标要求也不再是发展经济这一单一目标，而是更加强调其公共服务的能力。地方政府的公共服务能力在很大程度上取决于其收入能力。本文将探讨不动产税改革将如何在增强地方政府公共服务能力中发挥作用，并针对开征不动产税过程可能遇到的难点问题，提出相关对策建议。     

国家产业政策、地方政府行为与实际税率——理论分析和经验证据

本文从地方政府行为的角度研究国家产业政策对于企业实际税率的影响。理论分析表明,产业政策引致重点扶持行业资本回报率增加,使得地方政府面临降税引资和增税增收的权衡;此时,地方政府将会降低产业政策重点鼓励行业的实际税率。借助国家“五年规划”重点行业的划分度量国家产业政策,我们对理论假说进行了实证检验。研究发现,政策鼓励显著降低了相应行业的实际税率水平;并且地方政府财政收入水平越高,实际税率下降幅度越大;机制分析表明这可能是通过降低对鼓励行业的征税努力的方式实现的。分企业类型研究发现,实际税率的降低主要存在于私营企业而非地方国有企业和中央企业。上述发现对于理解地方政府行为在产业政策中的作用以及产业、财政政策协调有重要意义。     

Financing Local Police Spending in England and Wales: Fiscal Federalism in Practice

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues over the 2000s, and we find that three‐quarters of the temporal and spatial variation in local revenues per head can be explained by differences in incomes, prices and local preferences. A particularly robust parameter is the effective local community tax price associated with raising revenue. We discuss the police funding model in the wider context of fiscal federalism, and we point to alternative funding structures that could be adopted.