南北经济收敛性与共同富裕

区域经济收敛有利于协调区域发展,从而有助于实现我国共同富裕的奋斗目标。然而我国幅员辽阔,区域经济差距由来已久。当下,从GDP总量的角度来看,我国区域经济格局呈南北经济差距扩大的态势。文章利用我国284个地级市文章中的284个地级市还包括4个直辖市。2000—2019年面板数据,探析了南北经济差距演变情况。首先,基于σ收敛和dagum基尼系数分析了人均实际GDP演变特征;其次,构建β收敛模型分析了南北经济收敛性,并考察了人力资本、物质资本、技术水平、对外开放和财政支出对南北经济收敛的影响;最后,文章从共同富裕的视角,对我国西南、西北和东北地区与其他地区的经济收敛性进行探讨。研究发现:(1)南北区域经济存在显著的俱乐部效应,南方内部经济由收敛演变为不具有显著收敛特征,而北方内部经济差距均呈收敛趋势;(2)适度的人力资本的流动不会导致经济发散,物质资本总体上延缓区域经济收敛速度,财政支出对区域经济收敛的作用有限,而技术水平和对外开放对经济收敛速度的影响不稳定;(3)从实现共同富裕的总体目标来看,西北地区的经济表现与其他地区存在显著差异,东北和西南的小部分区域也需要引起一定的重视。对此文章提出合理化建议,以期更好实现共同富裕目标。     

Confucian culture and the external pay gap

We examine the impact of Confucian philosophy on external pay gaps, and find that a Confucianist atmosphere is negatively associated with firms’ external pay gaps for both executives and employees. Mechanistically, the Confucian concept of “righteousness” reduces the self-interested motivation of management, in turn reducing executives’ external pay gap; “humaneness” causes management to focus on protecting employees’ rights and interests, benefiting employees’ compensation; and “honesty” improves information disclosure, reducing the external compensation gap for both executives and general employees. The inhibitory effect of Confucian culture on the external pay gap is greater in regions with weak formal institutions and non-state-owned firms, while foreign cultural shocks attenuate the Confucian influence. Finally, the Confucian culture-driven reduction of the external pay gap improves enterprises’ economic efficiency.     

Fund ownership,wealth, and risk-taking: Evidence on private equity managers

Private equity (PE) managers are required to invest their own money in the funds they manage. We examine the incentive effects of this ownership on the delegated acquisition decision. A simple model shows that PE managers select less risky firms and use more debt, the higher their ownership. We test these predictions for a sample of Norwegian PE funds, using managers’ wealth to capture their relative risk aversion. As predicted, the target company’s cash-flow risk decreases and leverage increases with the manager’s ownership scaled by wealth. Moreover, the overall portfolio risk decreases with ownership, mitigating widespread concerns about excessive risk-taking.     

国际技术势差、对外直接投资逆向技术溢出与本土企业技术进步

全球经济大变局背景下，中国“走出去”企业的全球优化布局对逆向技术溢出效应有效发挥至关重要。基于技术势差视角构建“走出去”企业与当地企业间的技术扩散吸收模型，探究OFDI逆向技术溢出的发生机理，并以2005—2019年78个经济体为样本，对理论命题进行验证。结果发现，中国OFDI能够对本土企业技术进步产生逆向技术溢出效应，但存在时滞性和阈值效应：当国际技术势差过大时，“走出去”企业难以通过技术扩散获取新技术，无法实现对国内企业的技术反哺；只有当中国与东道国的TFP比值处于合理区间时，才存在显著逆向技术溢出效应。此外，加快技术积累和其它渠道的国际技术溢出也是推动本土企业技术进步的重要途径。     

Evaluation of a Flemish Active Labour Market Policy in the framework of the European Social Fund. Results and challenges

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the “Work Experience for Young Persons” (WIJ) programme, which was implemented in Flanders between 2015 and 2018. The WIJ programme is partially financed through the European Social Fund (ESF) and targets unqualified, young, and unemployed people with the aim of facilitating their entry to the labour market. The programme involves a trajectory of intensive guidance that includes labour market orientation and coaching as first phase, plus competence strengthening activities as second phase. This analysis is based on the Flemish Public Employment Service’s administrative data sources, which allows us to exploit detailed information on previous labour market history. We apply Coarsened Exact Matching to evaluate the WIJ’s impact on young unemployed people specifically in terms of their probability of being employed, unemployed or inactive, and of re-entering into education. Our results suggest that those who have participated in the WIJ programme have lower employment and education probabilities with respect to those who participated in the standard activities proposed by the public employment service. However, we found a positive employment effect if we only consider those who participated in the standard trajectory, i.e. those whose WIJ intervention lasted fewer than 14 months; this means that the negative effects are driven by those young individuals following the extended trajectories.     

劳动力市场性别差距、生产结构转型与人口增长转变

本文从劳动力市场性别差距视角为理解生产结构转型与人口增长转变的互动关系提出了新的理论机制。以脑力劳动密集型生产部门比重提高为特征的生产结构转型将缩小性别工资差距，提高家庭生育养育机会成本并降低生育率，进而增加女性劳动相对供给，这又会进一步提高脑力劳动密集型生产部门比重。直接干预女性劳动定价政策可能会带来女性结构性失业，反而扩大劳动力市场性别差距，且不利于生产结构转型；单方面降低女性生育养育成本政策虽然能够提高生育率，但也可能产生类似不利影响；降低男性生育养育成本政策既可以提高生育率，又可以缩小劳动力市场性别差距，并促进生产结构转型；生育养育成本补贴支出由政府承担的影响比由企业承担更为温和。本文结果表明，促进人口长期均衡发展的政策应与缩小劳动力市场性别差距、推动生产结构转型的政策统筹谋划和协调推进。本文研究为“优化人口发展战略，建立生育支持政策体系”提供了一定的理论依据和参考。