损失规避与经济波动的福利成本研究

目前经济波动的福利成本研究均建立在基于消费的效用函数基础上，而引入收入波动后我们发现：收入波动导致的福利成本才是更为重要的因素。本文定义的偏好具有损失规避的特点，在比较温和的参数设定下，考虑了收入波动后得到的福利成本指标A在1．4％--13．4％之间，比此前各种技术方法得到的A值提高了1—2个数量级。采用中国转型期以来的统计数据，消除短期波动的福利效果等同于将消费的长期增长率再提高约0．25个百分点，这表明如能进一步稳定经济的运行，仍会带来可观的福利提升。     

中国经济周期的社会福利成本

文章通过建立动态一般均衡模型,测算出中国经济周期的社会福利成本,并在此基础上给出了政策建议。结果显示,与非洲的发展中国家不同,现阶段,消除我国经济周期所带来的社会福利非常小,少于提升消费增长速度0.1%所带来的社会福利,与抑制经济周期相比,政府应该把主要精力放在如何促进经济增长上。     

基于贝弗里奇—尼尔森分解方法的中国经济周期福利成本估算

本文利用消费序列非平稳下的贝弗里奇-尼尔森分解方法估算了中国经济周期的福利成本,并与基于消费序列平稳下的线性方法和HP滤波分解方法的计算结果进行了比较.实证结果表明:中国经济周期的福利成本很大,约为美国的2-5倍;且基于消费序列平稳下的线性方法和HP滤波分解方法低估了中国经济周期的福利成本.本文研究的政策含义在于中国政府在积极促进经济增长把蛋糕做大的同时,应把更多的注意力放在熨平宏观经济波动上,使中国经济更加平稳的增长.     

经济波动福利成本研究——从技术的推进到思想的拓展

经济波动福利成本研究的早期量化分析认为,经济波动造成的福利成本微不足道,这一结论成为新古典宏观经济学基本观点的一个重要支撑.而在经济波动福利成本研究的后续研究中,这一领域在技术和思想上不断推进,尤其是增长效应、危机效应等新的福利机制不断被挖掘出来,使得我们对经济波动影响社会福利的机制有了更深入了解,也使得早期结论受到相当的质疑.     

On the Welfare Cost of Economic Fluctuations in Developing Countries*

Macroeconomic fluctuations are much stronger in developing countries than in the United States. Yet, while a large literature debates the welfare cost of economic fluctuations in the United States, it remains an open question how large that cost is in developing countries. Using several models, we provide such a measure. We find that the welfare cost of consumption volatility per se is far from trivial and averages a substantial multiple of the corresponding U.S. estimate. Moreover, in many poor countries, the welfare gain from eliminating volatility may in fact exceed the welfare gain from an additional percentage point of growth forever.     

Cross-Border Pollution,Terms of Trade,and Welfare

We construct a two-good general equilibrium model of international trade for two small open economies where pollution from production is transmitted across borders. Governments in both countries impose emission taxes non-cooperatively. Within this framework, we examine the effect of changes in the degree of cross-border pollution on Nash emission taxes, emission levels and welfare. We do so under two scenarios: when changes in cross-border pollution do not affect domestic pollution (non-strategic) and when they do (strategic). We also examine the effect of changes in international terms of trade on pollution and welfare when cross-border pollution is non-strategic.      

The Pareto-Scorza Polemic on Collective Economic Welfare

This paper reviews the 1902–03 polemic between Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Scorza, an Italian mathematician, on the validity of what is now referred to as the first law of welfare economics – i.e. the proposition that a point of equilibrium determined under conditions of free competition is Pareto optimal. It establishes that, contrary to the received view, Pareto did not write at cross-purposes to Scorza and his work published after the polemic does not suggest that Pareto eventually sided with Scorza on the issue of collective economic welfare.     

拥挤收费、边际成本定价与福利

交通拥挤收费是利用价格机制来调节城市道路高峰期交通量的一种手段.本文通过经济学分析指出:交通拥挤不仅给消费者带来直接损失,而且还伴随着多种外部不经济;征收拥挤费可以减少社会福利损失;拥挤收费增加的收入应该用于缓解拥挤的交通投资上.     

通货膨胀与社会福利损失

通货膨胀到底对经济有多大的影响?这是经济学家和各级政府所关心的问题.本文按照Lucas(2000)的方法,在Gong和Zou(2001)给出的带有人们对社会地位的追求和消费品及投资品的Cash-in-Advance约束的模型的基础上分析了通货膨胀对社会福利的影响,给出了通货膨胀的福利损失的估计.     

Environmental Degradation,Longevity, and the Dynamics of Economic Development

I construct a two-period overlapping generations model in which longevity is positively affected by public spending on health services and negatively affected by pollution. It is shown that the parameters which determine the extent of environmental degradation (i.e., emission rate and pollution abatement) may also represent additional factors affecting the dynamics of the economy, the likelihood of multiple (non-trivial) steady-state equilibria and the emergence of poverty traps. The distribution of public spending between public health care and pollution abatement that maximizes equilibrium income is also derived. This distribution of spending minimizes the threshold which the economy needs to surpass in order to avoid a poverty trap while, under certain circumstances, it can maximize equilibrium welfare as well.     

Flows of Air Pollution,Ill Health and Welfare

We provide a theoretical framework for measuring welfare when pollution influences economic growth by impairing health and driving up defensive medical expenditures. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in practice by applying it to data from Swedish valuation studies designed according to the accounting principles suggested here. We estimate that the negative health effects of nitrogen dioxide emissions amount to 0.6% of GDP in Sweden. We also show that a corrective Pigouvian tax should internalize the direct disutility, reduced labor productivity, and increased healthcare expenditures caused by pollution. According to our calculations, harmful health impacts alone (excluding ecosystem effects) justify 65% of the current Swedish tax on nitrogen dioxide.      

外资政策、国民利益与经济发展

本文通过建立经济模型对吸引外商直接投资政策的经济效应进行了分析。研究表明 :无论是限制外商直接投资还是对外商直接投资采取过多的优惠政策均不能使短期内国民利益达到最大 ;但从动态考虑 ,外资优惠政策能否提高国内居民的福利水平取决于外资企业对内资企业技术水平的影响。     

金融稳定与物价稳定、经济增长的动态关联性

本文基于2002年第1季度至2014年第4季度的数据,构建中国金融稳定综合指数,并采用带有随机波动的时变参数向量自回归模型,对金融稳定与物价稳定、经济增长之间的动态关联性进行实证考察.结果表明:(1)自2002年第1季度以来,中国金融稳定性不断提升.(2)总体而言,各经济变量的脉冲响应强度随着滞后期的延长而逐渐减弱.(3)短期内,经济增长和物价稳定有利于金融稳定;中长期内,经济持续过热不利于金融稳定,物价上涨对金融稳定的负向影响强度逐渐减弱,并可能由负转正.(4)金融稳定对经济增长和物价稳定的影响随着经济环境的变化而发生变化.(5)与金融稳定对经济增长和物价稳定的影响相比,经济增长和物价稳定对金融稳定的影响强度更大、持续时间更长.     

Trade Structure, Transboundary Pollution and Multilateral Trade Liberalization: The Effects on Environmental Taxes and Welfare

This paper considers a trade situation where the production activities of potentially heterogeneous countries generate pollution which can cross borders and harm the well-being of all the countries involved. In each of those countries the policy maker levies pollution taxes on the polluting firms and a tariff on imports in order to correct that distortion. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the effect of a reduction in the tariff on equilibrium pollution taxes and welfare. The existing literature has investigated this problem for trade between two identical countries. This paper analyzes the problem in the more realistic context where countries are not necessarily identical and trade can be multilateral. It becomes possible to show what bias is introduced when those two realities are neglected. I find that a tariff reduction can actually lower output; it can also lower welfare even if pollution is purely local.     

Sunk Costs, Market Access, Economic Integration, and Welfare

The nature of the equilibrium that arises after economic integration is shown to depend crucially on how initial entry costs are divided along two separate dimensions: market access versus technology costs, and fixed versus sunk costs. There are three post-integration equilibrium regimes: a traditional trade theory regime which arises when both market access costs and fixed costs are small, a new trade theory regime which arises when market access costs are small but fixed costs are high, and a market access regime which arises when market access costs are high. While the first two regimes have already appeared in the literature, the third is new. The sign, magnitude, and qualitative behavior of the welfare effects of integration across all three regimes depend on the configuration of these costs.     

The Welfare Economic Theory of Green National Accounts

This paper takes a critical look at the literature on green national accounts. The problem studied is to find a linear index of economic variables that responds to perturbations in the same direction as social well-being. The thesis of a large literature, that net national product (which is a flow) is that index in closed economies, is shown in some interpretations to be simply false and in others to suffer from deep estimation problems. It is argued that capital depreciation using shadow prices should certainly be included in national accounts, but that the right welfare index is a comprehensive measure of wealth, defined as the shadow value of an economy’s stock of all capital assets. It is shown that comprehensive wealth is usable as a criterion for policy evaluation as well as for determining sustainable economic development.     

Urban Pollution,Unemployment and National Welfare in a Dualistic Economy

This paper undertakes a comparative static analysis in the Harris–Todaro (H–T) model by accommodating local pollution. Unlike in the classical H–T model where migration proceeds in response to urban–rural differences in expected earnings, we consider labor movement taking place according to the difference in utility, which is influenced by the quality of the local environment. The paradoxical result is that an improvement in pollution‐abatement technology gives rise to an increase in urban unemployment and has no effect on the workers' aggregate welfare.