Do we now collect any revenue from taxing capital income?

The U.S. income tax system has long been recognized as a hybrid of an income and consumption tax system, with elements that do not fit naturally into either pure system. What it actually is has important policy implications for, among other things, understanding the impact of moving closer to a pure consumption tax regime. In this paper, we examine the nature of the U.S. income tax system by calculating the revenue and distributional implications of switching from the current system to one form of consumption tax, a modified cash flow tax.     

Endogenous fluctuations in unionized economies with productive externalities

Summary. We discuss the effects of unions on steady-state multiplicity and welfare, and on the existence of endogenous fluctuations. We consider an OG economy with productive capital externalities and we focus on underemployment equilibria. We find that for wide regions in the parameter space, including an arbitrarily small degree of externalities and a Cobb-Douglas technology, unions increase steady state employment and welfare, and local indeterminacy (sunspots) emerges. Moreover with a CES technology multiplicity of steady states is only possible in the presence of unions. Our results also show that the role of unions in shaping local dynamics and bifurcations depends on technology (externalities and factors substitutability).Received: 16 January 2002, Revised: 18 March 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: E32, J51, D60, D62. Correspondence to: Leonor ModestoThis paper is a much revised version of our former working paper Unions, Increasing Returns and Endogenous Fluctuations. Financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under the POCTI, is gratefuly acknowledged.     

资本市场变迁及运行效率相关研究评析

资本市场变迁及运行效率是中外学者研究的重点，形成了许多理论流派，其中信息空间理论为资本市场制度变迁提供了新的分析框架。同时，中国资本市场正处在发展建设之中，亟需有效的理论指导其发展。然而，中国资本市场的不完备性和特殊性导致诸多理论的应用存在局限性。而信息是各理论流派研究的核心，只是角度和侧重点不同，故信息空间理论可为研究资本市场变迁和制度选择提供新的研究思路。     

中国上市公司负债比率偏低的影响因素分析

本文在国外资本结构理论的基础上，将西方公司与中国公司的资本结构特点进行比较，从内因和外因两个方面解释了中国上市公司负债比率偏低的现象。     

国有企业、金融市场改革与养老保险制度改革的互动效应--中国如何解决老年保障问题?

中国政府非常清楚社会保障所面临的危机，决定寻求解决办法。拟议中的社会保障改革的核心是积累制和整合条块分割的体系，计划为每个工人建立个人退休账户，对养老基金进行有效投资。然而，这种改革受阻于三个关键因素。(1)在向积累制的转化过程中必须支付特制成本；(2)现有的社会保障体系条块分割、分散化管理3(3)已经积累的基金尚未取得高收益，也未分配到最有效率的用途上。     

增长失衡与政府责任——基于社会性支出角度的分析

当前中国的发展出现了以国富与民生关系失衡为本质特征的增长失衡。本文从教育、医疗和社会保障等与民生有关的政府责任切入,指出当前中国与民生状况直接相关的政府社会性支出的不足,是导致增长失衡的重要原因。为此,政府应在提供教育、医疗和社会保障等方面承担起基本的责任,加快财政支出结构转型,增加社会性支出的比重,改善民生状况,纠正增长失衡;并通过社会性支出的增加,促进人力资本积累,推动增长路径的转变,实现经济长期健康发展。     

人力资本与区域全要素生产率分析

本文采用Malmquist指数分析了我国30个省级行政区1996—2003年的全要素生产率(TFP)增长,并将其分解为技术进步指数和效率变化指数。为了减少计算偏差,我们在使用承认无效率项存在的生产前沿技术的同时,引入了人力资本要素。本文的分析结果表明我国的人力资本水平增长迅速,30个省区的经济增长效率差距逐年扩大。同时我们发现在引入人力资本要素后,1996—2003年区域全要素生产率的增长得益于技术进步;如果不考虑人力资本存量,则低估了同期的效率提高程度,而高估了期间的技术进步指数。     

分析国际资本流动趋势调整武汉招商引资思路

如果要在更大规模上吸引外资投资于武汉市制造业,必须把握国际资本流动的特点和发展趋势,以适时制定与之相匹配的前瞻性外资战略和政策.本文在阐述国际资本流动特点的基础上总结了目前外资流动的四大趋势:中国吸引外资扩大化趋势;并购化趋势;流向政策透明地区趋势;产业集群显现优势趋势,以期对武汉市政府制定相应外资政策提供借鉴.     

信誉的价值:以网上拍卖交易为例

本文使用网上拍卖交易数据,就卖者信誉对市场交易的影响进行了实证研究。我们发现,卖者的信誉评价一方面影响物品成交的价格,另一方面还对物品拍卖成功的概率有着显著的正面影响;但相对来说,卖者的信誉评价对后者的效果比对前者要更显著。这是本文的主要发现。该结果验证了在一个没有政府干预、近乎自由放任的“虚拟”市场上信誉机制的积极作用。     

Public policies as specification errors

Treating public policies as computable dynamic general equilibrium model specification errors offers computational and conceptional advantages for comparing models with data. The set of policies calculated to rationalize observed behaviors raises the substantive economic question whether, in any particular market, actual public policies sufficiently coincide with the model's behavior-rationalizing policies, or whether the model offers correct hypotheses about the determinants of demand and supply. As illustrations, public policies are calculated to rationalize, with respect to the stochastic neoclassical growth model, capital market behavior since WWII and labor market behavior in 1929–1950. One conclusion is that capital taxation drives a wedge between consumption growth and the expected pre-tax capital return, in the direction and amount predicted by the theory, and that capital taxation is the major intertemporal distortion in the postwar capital market. Second, a good theory of the Great Depression labor market must explain why measured MRS and MPL diverged so dramatically in 1929–1933 and why the wedge persisted.