DOES GOVERNMENT SPENDING AFFECT INCOME INEQUALITY? A META-REGRESSION ANALYSIS

In this paper findings of a meta-regression analysis are presented exploring the effects of government spending on income inequality, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. We identify a total of 84 separate studies containing over 900 estimates of the effect of one or more measures of spending on one or more measures of income inequality. The results show some evidence of a moderate negative relationship between government spending and income inequality, which is strongest for social welfare and other social spending, and when using the Gini coefficient or the top income share as the measure of inequality. However, both the size and direction of the estimated relationship between government spending and income inequality is affected by a range of other factors, including the control variables and estimation method used. We also find evidence of publication bias, in that negative estimates of the relationship appear to be under-reported in the literature.     

Public spending and growth: The role of government accountability

This paper examines the role of institutions in the nexus between public spending and economic growth. Empirical results based on a newly assembled dataset of 80 countries over the 1970–2010 period suggest that particularly when institutions prompt governments to be accountable to the general citizen does public capital spending promote growth. Taking account of the type of financing for this spending, we show that the growth-promoting effect under an accountable government appears to prevail for various financing sources, including a reallocation from current spending, an increase in revenue, and a rise in the budget deficit. However, government accountability does not seem to play a key role in the growth effects of current spending.     

Corporate bond returns and the financial crisis

We examine effects of government actions and related accounting policies on the corporate bond market implied by changes in relations between aggregate bond returns and cash flow and discount rate news. We capture the influence of risk by partitioning bonds into investment and speculative grades. We use earnings changes as a proxy for cash flow news and T-Bill rate changes as a proxy for discount rate news. As expected, during non-crisis periods, we observe a positive relation between earnings changes and bond returns and a negative relation for T-Bill rate changes. A combination of government bailouts of large financial institutions and mark-to-market accounting preserves the positive relation for earnings changes during the crisis for investment grade bonds, while absence of these factors leads to an insignificant relation for speculative grade. Intervention by the Federal Reserve to induce lower interest rates as earnings were declining, a flight to safety shifting demand from corporate bonds to T-Bills, and low cost funds invested in risk free investments explain a reversal of the relation between bond returns and T-Bill rate changes for both grades.     

The (im)possibilities of open data?

The perceived benefits and possibilities that the production, publication and consumption of Open Government Data (OGD) can provide to citizens and the economy are well documented. In the UK, this has resulted in the introduction of key legislation, such as the Freedom of Information Act 2010, and the Data Protection Act 2018. However, there is insufficient empirical knowledge and evidence to support the extent as to which the intended possibilities of OGD (transparency, releasing social and commercial value, and participation and engagement) have been realized. This article investigates these supposed possibilities and suggests that they may be impossibilities instead.     

Government fiscal projection and debt sustainability

This paper reconsiders Japan’s fiscal sustainability. We investigate whether a simulation conducted under the political constraint imposed by a fiscal reaction function supports the official projection. First, we obtain Japan’s fiscal reaction function by estimating the response of the primary surpluses to the past debt for a panel data set of 23 OECD countries. Next, we investigate the political feasibility of the official projection using our estimated reaction function. When the Cabinet Office criterion is used for the debt-to-GDP ratio, the government can attain the policy target of nonnegative fiscal surpluses and realize fiscal sustainability. Notably, the negative growth-adjusted bond yield and the high growth rate contribute to this finding.     

“双重赤字”联动的政府债务作用

政府债务是否影响“双重赤字”联动是国际经济学研究的重要问题。囿于财政赤字与经常账户赤字间往往存在严重的内生性,已有经验研究并未得到与理论研究一致的结论。本文引入义务教育年限作为财政赤字的有效工具变量,采用包括发达经济体、新兴市场和发展中经济体在内的150个国家(地区)2000-2014年的面板数据,得到了与理论预期一致且稳健的政府债务作用证据:(1)“双重赤字”联动倾向随着政府债务水平的提高会趋于减弱,但不会消失;(2)“双重赤字”的政府债务作用主要体现在发展中经济体,在发达经济体稍弱但亦显著;(3)对于中国这样的低债务水平发展中经济体,扩张性财政政策会引致经常账户盈余的显著减少。而对于已经处于高债务水平的发达经济体,通过紧缩性财政政策来调节经常账户失衡的策略要特别注意货币政策和贸易条件等因素的配合。     

Government policies towards Israel's high-tech powerhouse

Israel's Silicon Wadi is second only to US Silicon Valley in terms of business start-ups. The government policies play an important role in promoting innovation and driving the country towards a high-tech powerhouse. In this study the analyses, carried out through the lens of cluster and national innovation system (NIS), have shown that the thriving high-tech clusters are the result of government-led policies in creating the venture capital (VC) industry with the impacts of Yozma program. Importantly, the government financing did not crowd out but crowd in private investments. Israel presents an interesting case of the most successful Silicon Valley-style economy. The lessons of Israel in successfully climbing the technological ladder to become a high-tech powerhouse would be useful for other countries to learn how to promote high-tech clusters.     

政府科技投入成本效益分析

政府科技投入的有效和高效是创新型国家建设的重要保证，基于2009-2014年我国东中西部九省（市）的面板数据，通过科学选取“成本-效益”评价指标体系，应用超效率CCR模型和Malmquist指数模型，计算和比较了各省政府科技投入成本效益，探求了政府科技投入成本效益的变动趋势及影响因素。在此基础上，提出了九省（市）政府科技投入的相关建议。     

Banking crises and government intervention

Intervention has taken different forms in different countries and periods of time. Moreover, recent episodes showed that in front of an imminent crisis, the promise of no interventions made by governments is barely credible. In this paper we address the problem of resolving banking crises from the government perspective, taking into account the fact that preventing banking crises is crucial for the government. In addition, we introduce the moral hazard problem, inherent in the banking system, and consider the interaction between regulation, policy measures and banks’ behavior. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that compares different policy plans to resolve banking crises in an environment where insufficiently capitalized banks have incentives to take risk, and the government has to decide whether to provide public services or impede crises. We show that when individuals highly value public services then the best policy in terms of welfare is to apply the tax on early withdrawals, as the government can transfer those taxes to the whole population by investing in public services (although at some cost). Conversely, when individuals assign a low value to consuming public services, recapitalization is the dominant policy. Finally, when the probability of a crisis is sufficiently high, capital requirements should be used.