政策扩散视角下既有试点推广其他政策可行性分析——以双创示范基地推广全面创新改革试验政策为例

改革开放以来，“试点－推广”已成为我国政策创新和扩散的典型范式。创新驱动发展战略实施以来，这一范式被广为应用，往往同一个地区同处不同政策的试点和推广区域，这为政策扩散理论研究提供新的实践案例。本研究基于政策扩散理论，初步构建了“既有试点推广其他政策”可行性分析模型，并以双创示范基地推广全面创新改革试验政策为例展开分析。研究发现：双创政策和全面创新改革政策同属创新驱动发展战略框架，两者的政策内容高度匹配；双创政策的实施为全面创新改革实验政策的推广提供了基本动力和创新基础；两者在政策目标、主体和工具上存在一定差异，可能产生执行主体权不配责和既往目标的路径依赖等问题；总体上，双创示范基地有着良好的基础推广全面创新改革试验政策。     

Building the NAFTA Railway

Abstract

The key but too often overlooked link between firms and communities in the emerging NAFTA economy is transportation. Cross-border investment, trade, competition and cooperation are dependent on the restructuring of the U.S., Mexican and Canadian transport systems into a tightly integrated, efficient network. The paper examines the role of transport industries in the NAFTA economy, focusing particularly on a case study of the strategies of the Kansas City Southern Railway to become the “NAFTA Railway” to compete in the North American economy and the implications of these efforts for the firms involved, government transport policies, and the North American economy.     

Assessment of trade liberalisation in sub-Saharan Africa

The following paper describes the efforts of sub-Saharan African countries to liberalise their trade regimes and analyses the response of the economy to this reform in the short and medium run. In a sample of eight countries the economic reaction is found to be consistent with the ranking of countries according to their trade restrictiveness. However, additional explanations are found to be crucial to the success of African trade reform. Particularly, the lack of supporting policies and institutions, such as export promotion and developed capital markets, threaten the pursuit of reform and undermine the medium-run response of the economy.     

Trade Policy in Burundi: Reform Without Political Stability

This paper evaluates Burundi's progress with trade policy reform, by comparing earlier analyses of Burundi's trade policies undertaken in the 1980s with that of the WTO's recent Trade Policy Review. Since the mid‐1980s Burundi has been trying to reform its trade and macroeconomic policies against the background of continuous socio‐political tensions and periodic outbreaks of violent tribal conflict. A ‘then and now’ comparison allows us to assess both the extent of the trade reforms and of the economic return to those reforms. It is evident that there has been a significant rationalisation and simplification of trade policy. Burundi has eliminated most quantitative import restrictions and reduced the average level and range of its tariffs. The scope for allocative distortions, undesirable redistributive effects and for impediments to investment and growth has been substantially reduced. However, a return to reform in terms of export growth or diversification and of overall economic growth is not discernible yet. This is unsurprising, given the scale of the economic disruption. Sustained socio‐political stability, among other things, will be required to induce the investment in human and physical capital needed for a positive return to trade policy reform.     

How and how far to liberalize a developing economy with informal sector and factor market distortions

Whether a liberalizing developing economy should implement the entire WTO-prescribed package, and to what extent this is expedient, are two important questions, especially because the available empirical evidence suggests that developing countries have been facing substantial adjustment costs in their endeavour to implement trade and investment reform. The present paper makes a humble effort to provide answers to the above questions in terms of a three-sector general equilibrium model with informal sectors. Welfare implications of three liberalization policies: inflow of foreign capital, tariff reduction and labour market reform, have first been analysed in a full-employment framework. Later, the paper has been extended into a Harris?–?Todaro framework with an urban informal sector and capital market distortion. We have shown that welfare consequences of a tariff reform and/or a policy of deregulating the labour market crucially depend on the presence and magnitude of foreign capital in the economy. It is argued here that unless a proper choice among different prescribed policies, compatible with the internal institutional, technological and trade-related characteristics, is made, drastic implementation of reform measures may produce counterproductive results for the welfare of the relevant country.     

Central banking after the Latin American debt crisis

Stabilization and structural reform that has characterized Latin America as of late is based upon an increasing adherence to sound fiscal and monetary policies. The economic deprivation brought on by the debt crisis has served as a powerful impetus behind these developments. The macroeconomic policies leading up to the crisis have been put aside in favor of a legal framework of transparent budgetary practices and an independent central bank. Fraga's article analyzes the recent evolution of the central banks in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela.     

Smoothing Economic Trends in 2008

2008 marks the first time that the government has changed the monetary policy from ＂prudent＂ to ＂tight＂. For the last ten years China has been following the prudent approach, but this change is required to stabilize economic expansion in future.     

Measuring Effects of Trade Policy Distortions: How Far Have We Come?

After a brief review of the literature to the early 1970s, this paper assesses the contributions by economists during the past three decades to measuring the distortionary effects of trade policies. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive survey, but draws on selections from the literature that give a sense of the distance the profession has travelled from a trade policy practitioner's viewpoint since Corden's first paper on the subject in 1957. Phenomenal though that progress has been, there is ample room for further improvement in computing the economic (and other) effects of trade‐related policies and their reform. The paper concludes with suggestions of where the priorities should be in global modelling of trade policy reform, as the world moves into the next round of multilateral trade negotiations.     

Assessing privatization investment opportunities in Thailand

Executive Summary Multinational corporations (MNCs) can find lucrative opportunities to invest in emerging‐market countries by participating in the privatization of state‐owned enterprises. The ability of MNCs to form joint ventures or acquire state enterprises in most countries, however, depends on the characteristics of the government's privatiza‐tion policies and plans, the pace of their implementation, and the mechanisms allowed for foreign investment. In order to assess the feasibility of privatization policies in emerging‐market countries, and especially those undergoing dynamic reforms of their economies, MNCs need a framework for analyzing privatization efforts. The appli‐cation of such a framework is illustrated using the experience with privatization and economic reform in Thailand. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Accounting for the Mexican banking crisis

The Mexican banking crisis of 1994–1995 has widely been interpreted as the victim of the balance-of-payments crisis, rather than its cause. After all, Mexican banks had been enjoying high capitalization ratios, deemed to be more than sufficient to deal with the increased risk of non-performing loans. This paper, however, suggests that to a large extent Mexican accounting practices — rather than sound principles — were responsible for the apparent good health of the banking system. The role of banks in causing the Mexican crisis may therefore have been greater than previously thought.     

International briefing 36: training and development in Ecuador

This article examines educational policies in Ecuador. It outlines the main features of the education and training systems, and analyses the impact on productivity and national development. The efforts made by various national authorities to strengthen and encourage education at all levels is evident, as well as efforts to boost productivity by changing the productive mix. In conclusion, much effort has been made to move from an economy of finite resources based on the exploitation of natural resources, to an economy of infinite resources focused on generating knowledge.     

中国工业制成品出口竞争力及其提升策略

改革开放以来,中国对外贸易出口规模一直保持高速增长,工业制成品出口规模不断扩大,日益占据绝对的主导地位;中国工业制成品的出口竞争力和国际市场占有率均有所提高;出口结构逐渐向中等和高技术含量的制成品转化,但目前还是纺织品和服装产品等中国传统的比较优势产品最具国际竞争力,所占国际市场份额也最多;中国工业制成品的出口竞争力主要来源于价格优势和质量优势.因此,中国应该一方面加强对技术研发的资金支持和政策支持,提高技术水平,另一方面,加强内资企业的整合与合作,并尽快创建大型跨国公司,从而进一步提升中国工业制成品出口的国际竞争力.     

Distorted Agricultural Incentives and Economic Development: Asia's Experience

Earnings from farming in many low‐income countries have been depressed by a pro‐urban bias in own‐country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduce national and global economic welfare. The rapid development of many Asian emerging economies has been accompanied by a gradual reduction in their anti‐agricultural policies, but many distortions remain and some countries have moved from negative to positive assistance for farmers, following the earlier examples of first Japan and then Korea and Taiwan. Drawing on results from a new multi‐country research project, this paper examines the extent of these changes relative to those of other developing countries over the past five decades. It concludes by pointing to prospects for further policy reform in Asia.     

The new challenge in Eastern Europe: Investment and restructuring

The reform programmes of most Eastern European countries have liberalized prices and taken on the task of macroeconomic stabilization, but the formation and implementation of structural policies has largely been neglected so far. What steps should the governments of Eastern Europe take to encourage the necessary restructuring of their economies and to attract the urgently needed foreign investment?     

推进河南省民生工作改善的政策措施

着力保障和改善民生,使人民群众共享改革发展成果,是落实科学发展观的核心工程,是党和政府全部工作的立足点。河南省在推进民生工程中,只有大力发展经济,增加财政收入,才能增强改善民生的保障能力;只有实施积极的财政政策和就业政策才能确保民生。同时,要进一步解放思想、转变观念,创新社会管理,动员全社会力量进入民生领域,建立与经济社会发展相协调的现代社会组织体系,以充分发挥人民群众在社会建设中的主体作用。     

1998年以来财政体制与政策的宏观评价

目前对于1998年以来积极财政政策的评价大都与经济运行的周期性波动相联系,缺乏与财政体制改革和经济转轨阶段性演进相联系的考察,而这两个被忽略的方面可能正好是影响积极财政政策效果的原因.本文试图从更宏观的视角分析五年来财政体制与政策的基本关系,并提出下一步财政改革与发展的政策建议.     

The economics of demonstrations: The effect of competition on demonstration and pricing strategies

Demonstrations of new software products and their equivalents in the automobile industry, i.e., test-drives, are an inherent part of sales efforts. Yet the quality of standard demonstrations has been criticized as being inadequate and, in particular, too short. Heavy competition at the dealer level has been pinpointed as the main reason for short, minimal demonstrations. An analysis of business cases from two industries—automobile and software—indicates that, while competition diminishes demonstration efforts in the automobile industry, it has the opposite effect in the software industry where heavy competition induces demonstration efforts. This paper studies demonstration policies in a monopoly and a duopoly and explores the role of competition and costs of production and demonstration on demonstration strategies in these two market settings. Comparing the set of conditions between the two market settings enables us to determine under which competition will increase (decrease) demonstration intensity.     

Trade and the (dis)incentive to reform labor markets: The case of reform in the European Union

We study the relation between international trade and the gains to reform labor markets by removing firing restrictions. We find that trade linkages imply substantially smaller benefits to reform than those calculated in the closed economy general equilibrium model of Hopenhayn and Rogerson [Hopenhayn, Hugo, Rogerson, Richard, 1993. Job Turnover and policy evaluations: a general equilibrium analysis. Journal of Political Economy 101 (5), 915–938 October]. When economies trade, labor market policies in one country spill over to other countries through their effect on the terms of trade. A key finding in the open economy is that the share of the welfare gains from domestic labor market reform exported substantially exceeds the share of goods exported. Thus, with international trade, a country retains little to no benefit from unilaterally reforming its labor market. A coordinated elimination of firing taxes yields considerable benefits. We also find that the U.K. benefits from labor market reform by its continental trading partners. These insights provide some explanation for recent efforts toward labor market reform in the European Union.     

我国银行业“营改增”税制改革思考

由于税负和各种因素的制约,银行业的发展也遇到了瓶颈。为提升第三产业的发展,国家实施了大规模的结构性减税政策,《营业税改征增值税试点方案》明确将金融服务业纳入增值税的扩围改革范围之内。但金融业具体的改革还未纳入到试点城市,本文就金融业"营改增"的背景、意义、税率设计以及国际经验借鉴进行探讨,以期对金融业的发展起到一定的推动作用。     

Trade Policies in Southeast Asia in the Wider Asian Perspective

This paper takes stock of trade policies in Southeast Asia after the Asian crisis and in the wake of the current global economic crisis. It compares trade policies in individual Southeast Asian countries; places them in the context of regional and global economic integration; and particularly draws implications for the region from the rise of China and India. The first section looks at recent trade and FDI patterns in Southeast Asia. Then follows an overview of key trade‐policy trends, in the region overall and in individual countries. The next sections examine ASEAN countries in international trade negotiations and agreements: first in the WTO, especially in the Doha Round; then within ASEAN; and finally on cross‐regional FTAs. The paper concludes that ASEAN countries cannot rely on external tracks ‘from above’ for meaningful trade policy reform. Since the Asian crisis there has been a slowdown of reform momentum, and too much reliance on trade negotiations – especially FTAs. Rather, countries in the region have to rely on themselves –‘from below’ as it were. The engine of liberalisation and regulatory reform has to be home‐driven – as it was before the Asian crisis – with governments taking unilateral measures in response to internal and external conditions.