The Scholarship of Teaching Economics

The authors report on the results of a telephone survey of 1,001 employees of seven large corporations conducted for the Business Roundtable as part of its public policy program. A set of 20 questions keyed to the Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics was embedded in the survey. A measure of economic literacy was constructed from the survey results. Greater economic literacy was associated with more overall education, more college economics coursework, high incomes, and being male. An examination of individual test questions revealed that previous college economics had substantial effects on employees' current economic literacy.     

关于当前宏观经济形势和宏观经济政策

2002年下半年的经济增长不会像2001年那样呈逐季下降趋势,可能出现比较平稳的上升。但我们要清醒地认识到,通货紧缩的趋势扩大和有效需求不足问题基本上还没有得到解决,经济增长的内在动力依然不足。在继续坚持积极的财政政策和稳健的货币政策的同时,应研究选择积极的财政政策淡出的时间和力度,不能把积极的财政政策中期化和长期化。     

新常态下经济结构调整与财政政策取向

对于一个国家的经济发展来说,其主要动力来源于经济结构调整。改革开放以来,中国经济结构不断优化,有力地推动了经济的快速发展。在中国经济进入新常态的背景下,主动调整和优化经济结构仍是迫在眉睫的重要任务。作为国家经济管理的重要手段,财政政策在启动、刺激和调整国家的经济运行方面能够发挥有效的功能。对财政政策影响经济结构的方式进行了分析,指出经济结构的战略性调整、优化和升级是今后中国财政政策实施的立足点和着力点。     

1998年中国反衰退措施效果研究

对1998年反衰退措施效果的研究表明:(1)由于政府预算规模过小,地方政府必须保持平衡预算且不能借贷等原因,财政自动稳定器对1999年经济复苏所做出的贡献微不足道;(2)在相机抉择政策方面,1998年的财政政策不具备扩张的特征,难以构成经济复苏的推动力。这一发现对于当前反衰退经济政策的制定和未来财政体制的改革都具有重要意义。     

我国现阶段财政政策若干问题的思考

１９９８ 年下半年以后, 中央把宏观调控的重点, 放在实施积极的财政政策上。即运用适当规模的财政赤字和向商业银行增发国债, 加大财政支出力度, 作为启动国民经济增长的重要手段。但是, 如果没有消费需求的支持和货币政策的配套, 就不可能把行政启动转变为市场启动, 这种投资增长和经济回升, 是不会持久的。这就要求政府的宏观调控的着眼点, 要放在鼓励和促进消费需求增长上, 使投资和消费双向启动, 才能带动国民经济增长的良性循环。     

税收、财政支出与内生经济增长

构建了基于财政支出、税收的内生经济增长模型,并推导出在给定税收、财政支出政策的变化路径时,经济会达到"竞争性分散均衡",税率与经济增长存在"倒-U"型关系,政府投资性支出与经济增长之间正相关。利用中国省际面板数据进行实证检验显示,在我国经济运行中,总产出、消费、投资、政府投资性支出、税率、利息率、工资水平之间存在长期均衡关系。我国宏观税率为28.63%时达到最优值,政府投资性支出对经济增长率存在正向影响,但不同区域间存在较大差异性。     

财政支出结构与经济增长

通过构建理论模型和经验模型,我们可以得出以下结论:(1)财政支出总水平与经济增长负相关,财政生产性支出与经济增长正相关。(2)财政人力资本投资比物质资本投资更能提高经济增长率。(3)用于科学研究的支出所带来的经济增长远远高于物质资本投资和人力资本投资所带来的经济增长。这些结论对政府今后调整财政支出政策,优化财政支出结构,确定财政支出重点,具有重要的政策含义。     

财政政策对经济增长和收入分配的长期影响效应分析

政府财政政策对经济增长和收入分配有不同的影响,其中,政府消费性支出和投资性支出均对经济增长有正的促进作用,但政府支出却加大了居民收入分配的差距;税收对我国经济增长的影响均为负,其中,间接税缩小了居民收入分配差距,而直接税却拉大了居民的收入分配差距。     

我国生态环境保护和治理的财政政策选择

环境的公共产品性质和外部性，决定了它应该成为政府财政投资的重点。因而财政政策对环境保护和治理的影响极大。从总体上看，我国的财政政策在支持生态环境保护和治理中发挥了重要作用。但由于财政政策在设计上存在着缺陷，致使其在生态环境建设中的支持作用未能完全发挥。基于此，本文提出了完善我国生态环境可持续发展的财政政策建议。     

积极财政政策:理论、实践与政策调整

积极财政政策来源于西方财政理论与实践，这一理论对我国财政理论与实践有着十分重要的影响。结合中国实际情况，积极财政政策应如何调整。     

基于流动性过剩的财政政策和货币政策协调性研究

流动性过剩是当前中国宏观经济中的突出矛盾，影响了中国经济健康有序的发展。要解决流动性膨胀问题，不应该仅仅从银行体系这个角度来考虑，而应该从整个宏观经济平衡这个更为广泛的视角去分析和研究。这意味着仅仅依靠货币当局，沿用提高存款准备金率和存贷款利率、向市场发行央行票据等现有的货币政策手段来应对流动性膨胀，难以根治问题。应在运用货币政策的同时，配合财政政策，通过两大政策的协调配合，建立起消费主导的良性经济发展模式和合理的国民收入分配格局，才是应对流动性膨胀的治本之策。     

The lean times in the Peruvian economy

The growth rate of “nonprimary gross domestic product (GDP)” (Perú’s urban economy) dropped to 3.6 percent in 2014 and to 2.4 percent in 2015, far below the annual average of 7.3 percent recorded over the previous decade; moreover, an equally low growth rate of 2.8 percent per year is projected in 2016. In the macroeconomic history of Peru, the times of plenty —that is, the more or less prolonged booms—are also times of high prices of the commodities that the country exports; meanwhile, the lean times—that is, the more or less intense recessions in which economic activity slows down—are times of low commodity prices. This article describes the negative external shock undergone by the Peruvian economy and its recessionary and inflationary effects over 2014–15, analyzes the fiscal and monetary policies applied in response to the external shock, and outlines the macroeconomic challenges faced by the new government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.     

Integrating Applied Field Work into the Undergraduate Economics Curriculum

This article documents the development and implementation of an undergraduate research methods course incorporating field work. Conducted in collaboration between the UW-Eau Claire Department of Economics and local elected officials and county staff in Buffalo County, Wisconsin undergraduate students were assigned the task of developing and presenting initiating a county-wide economic redevelopment strategy during the Spring term 2018. Course specific learning goals included: Hard skills development (software usage, data acquisition and analysis, benchmarking, and survey design) and soft skills development (presentation of sensitive economic information to lay audiences and teamwork). Initial results suggest that field-based coursework improves student learning, student interest in economics, improve local economic performance, and may help to bridge the “Town versus Gown” divide.     

The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy responses to twin crises

We study how effective fiscal and monetary policy responses are during a twin crisis. Using the dataset provided by Laeven and Valencia (2008 Laeven, L and Valencia, F. (2008) Systemic banking crises: a new database. IMF Working Paper No. 08/224 [Google Scholar]), we identify 57 episodes of twin crises. Following the methods proposed in Baldacci et al. (2009 Baldacci, E. 2009. Gupta, S. and Mulas-Granados, C., How effective is fiscal policy response in systemic banking crises?, IMF Working Paper No. 09/160 [Google Scholar]) and Hutchison et al. (2010 Hutchison, M. 2010. Noy, I. and Wang, L., Fiscal and monetary policies and the cost of sudden stops, Journal of International Money and Finance, 29, 973–87 [Google Scholar]), we construct the variables measuring the duration and output cost of a twin crisis. We find that fiscal policy does not seem to be associated with the shortening of a twin crisis. Regarding monetary policy, we find that monetary tightening is associated with the lengthening of a twin crisis duration, consistent with the result in Hutchison et al. (2010 Hutchison, M. 2010. Noy, I. and Wang, L., Fiscal and monetary policies and the cost of sudden stops, Journal of International Money and Finance, 29, 973–87 [Google Scholar]) dealing with a sudden stop crisis. In addition, our results show that while a mild monetary expansion is effective in reducing a twin crisis duration, over-expansionary monetary policy loses its effectiveness.     

弱势下的扩张:中国财政状况和政策取向分析

目前以预算内财政收入计算的财政规模很低,但这一指标并没有全面反映我国财政的规模,真实的财政规模其实相当大。用“积极的财政政策和稳健的货币政策”概括1998年以来的宏观调控有失公允,为确保经济增长,中央政府实际上调动了包括货币政策在内的所有政策资源刺激经济。目前,我国债务规模在可控范围之内,真正决定积极财政政策取向的是财政项目的效益等因素,我国积极财政政策已经转向谨慎。正在实行的财政政策有两个显著特点,一是推进公共财政体系建设,这是由我国经济体制改革的总体目标设定的;二是在实行积极财政政策的同时,增加税收,这反映了财政在加强自身建设的同时(提高财政两个比重),竭力完成宏观调控目标的努力。这两个看似矛盾的政策,统一在当前的财政政策中,恰当地反映了转型期财政必须应对的多重目标。     

Comment

Opposite to mainstream economics, (post-) Keynesian economics has defended the need of a discretionary fiscal policy that helps to maintain economic activity at a full employment level, offsetting the cyclical deviations from that level of output. In this sense, it is implicitly assumed that any discretionary management of public finance is, by definition, efficient. The Spanish case shows that public authorities can make an inefficient use of the discretionary room of fiscal policy, thus exacerbating the existing macroeconomic and fiscal imbalances. Consequently, there is a need for rules that constrain the discretionary management of public finance.     

The Macroeconomics Curriculum: A Proposal for Change

Intermediate macroeconomics should be taught as a two-part sequence, with the first component based on a benchmark model that reflects accepted theory and applications to policy, with electives introduced in subsequent courses.     

Fiscal policy rules,budget deficits,and forecasting biases

In this paper, we analyze the impact fiscal policy rules have on budget deficits and forecasting biases in official budget outlooks. Persistent budget deficits and over-optimistic budget forecasts have been observed in many countries in the past, especially in the euro area. To prevent such developments from happening in the future, fiscal rules have been revised or implemented with the aim to strengthen both preventive (ex-ante) and corrective (ex-post) elements of fiscal rules frameworks. Do such ex-ante and ex-post rules differ in their effects? In an attempt to answer this question, we build a two-period model and distinguish between ex-ante rules that apply to budget forecasts and ex-post rules that apply to realized budget deficits. Our model indicates that effectively enforced ex-post rules are more effective than ex-ante rules at reducing budget deficits. Interestingly, ex-ante rules differ from ex-post rules in their effects on forecasting biases. Only ex-post sanctions reduce forecasting biases, while ex-ante rules have no impact on such biases. In addition, we show that political stability and the size of government increase the effectiveness of fiscal rules. If, however, financial markets have a disciplining effect on governments, the effectiveness of fiscal rules is reduced. Our results imply that if fiscal policy rules cannot be effectively enforced, reforming other areas such as electoral rules or financial market regulations might be a more promising approach to ensuring sound public finances than fiscal policy rules.     

技术经济学的教学模式创新研究

技术经济学作为应用经济学的分支，是实践性很强的一门学科，也是经济管理类本科专业的核心课程。其主要任务是从经济角度对具体工程项目、技术方案进行分析评价，为投资决策提供科学依据，最大程度地避免投资风险和提高经济效益。目前，我院经济专业、市场营销专业、工商管理以及信息系统和信息管理专业开设了技术经济学课程，本文对现有的技术经济学教学模式进行了改革创新，认为应结合学生的特点合理安排教学内容，通过例题、案例以及上机操作提升学生的实践能力，提高教学效果。     

The effect of fiscal system reform on fiscal policy outcomes

We investigate how reform in governmental accounting affects fiscal policy outcomes including debt, balance, and fiscal transparency. Since a change from cash to accrual accounting can be regarded as a natural experiment among governments, a fixed-effects model is exploited. We discover that the change diminishes debt in developed countries, but expands it in less-developed ones, with strong effects in highly indebted countries. The change improves balance in developed countries and worsens it in less-developed countries, which is significant for developed countries with large deficits. Transparency is improved only in less transparent developed countries.