公共资本生产率的比较研究——基于长三角21城市公共资本边际生产率的实证分析

近10年来长三角的政府公共投资（分配）过多地流向了上海、苏州、杭州、南京等核心城市，使这些城市的人均公共资本拥有量大幅上升，从而引发了其边际生产率递减情况的发生。但它们的资本利用效率或技术创新水平没有明显提升（或下降），不足以抵消其资本边际生产率下降的趋势。对这些大城市的经济发展来说，公共投资对其经济增长的意义已经在数量上表现得不明显，但对正处于经济快速增长期且资本边际生产率呈递增态势的长三角外缘中小城市而言，公共投资却有着积极意义。     

基于Miller-Orr模型的省级政府现金管理实证研究

现代国库制度的两项重要功能是,确保对预算执行过程的有效监控和对政府现金资源的妥善管理,而高效的现金管理系统对监控预算执行起着重要的支持性作用.在政府现金管理已逐渐为政府和理论界所关注的背景下,本文从政府现金管理的基本理论、本质及意义入手,以实际调研数据为基础,通过将西部某省2003-2005年的实际数据运用到修正的Miller-Orr模型中,较准确的测算出了2006年该省国库现金月余额的控制范围,为建立省级政府现金管理模式提供了有益的参考.     

The effectiveness of government spending on education and health care in developing and transition economies

Recent studies show that corruption is associated with higher military spending [Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 17 (2001) 794] and lower government spending on education and health care [J. Publ. Econ. 69 (1998) 263]. This suggests that policies aimed at reducing corruption may lead to changes in the composition of government outlays toward more productive spending. However, little empirical evidence has been presented to support the claim that public spending improves education and health indicators in developing and transition countries. This paper uses cross-sectional data for 50 such countries to show that increased public expenditure on education and health care is associated with improvements in both access to and attainment in schools, and reduces mortality rates for infants and children. The education regressions are robust to different specifications, but the relationship between health care spending and mortality rates is weaker.     

Delaying integration of immigrant labor for the purpose of taxation

Delayed integration (DI) is a rule for taxing migrants. It requires that immigrants be taxed in the host country only after some period of transition. Conversely, emigrants are released from the obligation to pay taxes only after a certain period. DI is an alternative to the Employment Principle and the Home-Country Principle. The former governs the international taxation of labor. The latter is a close substitute for the Nationality Principle, on which US tax law is based. The paper studies DI in a setting which allows one to trade off the efficiency costs of distortionary taxation and of wasteful government.     

Wealth inequality and collective action

We study the effect of inequality in the distribution of endowments of private inputs (e.g., land, wealth) that are complementary in production with collective inputs (e.g., contribution to public goods such as irrigation and extraction from common-property resources) on efficiency in a class of collective action problems. We focus on characterizing the joint surplus maximizing level of inequality, making due distinction between contributors and non-contributors, in a framework that allows us to consider a wide variety of collective action problems ranging from pure public goods to impure public goods to commons. We show that while efficiency increases with greater equality within the groups of contributors and non-contributors, so long the externalities (positive or negative) are significant, there is an optimal degree of inequality between these groups.     

Robust political economy

This paper introduces the idea of “robust political economy.” In the context of political economic systems, “robustness” refers to a political economic arrangement's ability to produce social welfare-enhancing outcomes in the face of deviations from ideal assumptions about individuals' motivations and information. Since standard assumptions about complete and perfect information, instantaneous market adjustment, perfect agent rationality, political actor benevolence, etc., rarely, if ever actually hold, a realistic picture and accurate assessment of the desirability of alternative political economic systems requires an analysis of alternative systems' robustness. The Mises-Hayek critique of socialism forms the foundation for investigations of robustness that relax ideal informational assumptions. The Buchanan-Tullock public choice approach complements this foundation in forming the basis for investigations of robustness that relax ideal motivational assumptions. JEL Code B53, P16, P26     

美国财政分权的效率分析

美国作为一个高度发达的市场经济国家,不但在经济发展领域里取得了令人瞩目的成就,而且在制度的设计、创新和发展等方面也有许多值得借鉴之处,美国财政分权体制就是其中之一.本文在分析财政分权效率的含义及要求的基础上,从美国政府问事权和财权划分明确且相互匹配、科学合理的转移支付制度、分权与制衡并存的预算机制、地方政府自治以及整个财政分权体制的法律依据等方面分析了美国财政分权高效的原因.     

Unemployment dynamics in an OLG economy with public pensions

Pension benefits in old age establish a disincentive to save in youth, thereby yielding lower levels of capital stock and the wage rate. As a result, the trade union has an incentive to change the composition of its two targets: employment and the wage rate. This paper develops a model that includes employment effects of public pensions via capital accumulation and union wage setting. Within this framework, we consider how contribution rates to the pension system influence the level and time path of the unemployment rate. It is demonstrated that (1) a higher contribution rate results in a lower unemployment rate, and (2) the economy with a high (low) contribution rate experiences monotone convergence towards (oscillatory convergence towards or a period-2 cycle around) the steady state. The author would like to thank an anonymous referee, Kazutoshi Miyazawa, and seminar participants at Osaka University for their useful comments and suggestions, and Masako Ikefuji and Hiroaki Yamagami for their research assistance. Financial support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (No.17730131), the Asahi Glass Foundation, the Japan Economic Research Foundation and the 21st Century COE Program (Osaka University) is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are mine.     

Local governance and public goods provision in rural China

In developing countries, identifying the most effective community-level governance mode is a key issue in rural development; therefore, empirical evaluation of these different modes is desperately needed. Since the 1980s, tens of thousands of villages in rural China have held local government elections, providing a good opportunity to investigate the effect of democratization on the level of public goods provision. Using a recent village survey conducted over a significant period of time, this article compares two different governance modes. It finds that elections affect little on the size of revenue but significantly shift the distribution of taxation from individuals to enterprises if possible. However, privatization has made taxation or levies on rural enterprises more difficult. It also shows that elections and power sharing are conducive to improve the allocation of public expenditures.     

论农村公共财政建设的制度环境与模式选择

公共品的层次性、成本补偿原理、均等化以及民主决策理论等是中国农村公共财政建设的一般理论基础。而农村经济制度、经济水平和结构、意识形态、民主水平等构成我国农村公共财政模式选择的现实制约条件。中国农村公共财政应是公共品供给体制上的分级财政、筹资体制上的向内倾斜型财政、决策体制上的民主型财政、管理体制上的法制型财政和反映农村社会经济变化的动态发展型财政。