Wage posting without full commitment

Wage posting models of job search typically assume that firms can commit to paying workers exactly the posted wage. We relax this assumption and impose “downward” commitment; firms can commit only to paying at least their advertised wage. As each firm can only commit to pay at least their advertised wage, workers may demand that the firm pay more than the advertised wage. In labor markets with a finite number of workers and firms, the strategic interaction between firms makes it costly for firms to provide applicants the incentive not to demand wages in excess of the advertised wage. In equilibrium, firms may settle for running job auctions at the cost of losing control of the number of applicants that they can attract. When this strategic interaction between firms vanishes, workers never choose to demand more than the advertised wage.     

Investment without regulatory commitment: The case of elastic demand

This paper analyzes a regulation game with asymmetric information and lack of commitment. It expands Besanko and Spulber's (1989) framework to the case of elastic demands using a generalized Nash solution. It is found that the most important property of the equilibrium with inelastic demand is not carried over to the elastic demand case, i.e., incomplete information worsens underinvestment, contrasting to Besanko and Spulber's result.     

Investment without democracy: Ruling-party institutionalization and credible commitment in autocracies

What explains private investment in autocracies, where institutions that discourage expropriation in democracies are absent? We argue that institutionalized ruling parties allow autocrats to make credible commitments to investors. Such parties promote investment by solving collective-action problems among a designated group, who invest with the expectation that the autocrat will not attempt their expropriation. We derive conditions under which autocrats want to create such parties, and we predict that private investment and governance will be stronger in their presence. We illustrate the model by examining the institutionalization of the Chinese Communist Party.     

Bilateral commitment

We consider non-cooperative environments in which two players have the power to gradually and unilaterally rule out some of their actions. Formally, we embed a strategic-form game into a multi-stage game, in which players can restrict their action spaces in all but the final stage, and select among the remaining actions in the last stage. We say that an action profile is implementable by commitment if this action profile is played in the last stage of a subgame-perfect equilibrium path. We provide a complete characterization of all implementable action profiles and a simple method to find them. It turns out that the set of implementable profiles does not depend on the length of the commitment process. We show, furthermore, that commitments can have social value in the sense that in some games there are implementable action profiles that dominate all Nash equilibria of the original game.     

Taxation and Tournaments

This paper analyzes the effects of progressive taxes on labor supply and income distribution in the context of the rank‐order tournament model originally developed by Lazear and Rosen (1981). We show conditions under which a more progressive tax schedule will cause so large general equilibrium effects that the inequality in disposable income will actually increase. We also show that a non‐zero redistributive tax is always optimal if society's welfare function displays inequality aversion; this result always holds, regardless of behavioral responses and general equilibrium effects.     

Endogenous monetary commitment

We develop an asynchronous framework in which each player can optimally select the frequency of his moves based on cost-benefit considerations. To demonstrate how such ability to commit can alleviate coordination problems, we apply the framework to monetary policy.     

Neutral Property Taxation

A major difficulty in implementing land/site value taxation is imputing the land value of built‐on sites. The literature has focused on two alternatives. The first, residual site value, measures postdevelopment site value as property value less structure value, with structure value measured as depreciated construction costs. Residual site value would be relatively easy to estimate, but a residual site value tax system, which taxes land value before development and residual site value after development at the same rate is distortionary, discouraging density. The second, raw site value, measures postdevelopment site value as “what the land would be worth were there no building on the site (though in fact there is).” Raw site value taxation is neutral (does not distort the timing and density of development), but the estimation of postdevelopment raw site value would be complex so that assessment would likely be less fair and more arbitrary, contentious, and prone to abuse. This paper asks the question: Is it not possible to design a property tax system (taxation of predevelopment land value, postdevelopment structure value, and postdevelopment site value at possibly different rates) that employs the administratively simpler residual definition of postdevelopment site value and achieves neutrality? Under restrictive assumptions and subject to an important qualification, the paper provides an affirmative answer, and characterizes the tax rates that achieve neutrality. It also briefly discusses issues of practical implementation.     

论税收伦理

最适税收理论运用了福利经济学的工具,在传统的税制设计目标的论述中增加了分析的力度。但是,它拘泥于经济学上的功利主义福利分析方法,仅仅涉及一个人怎样在不同的时间里分配他的满足,而不关心满足的总量怎样在个人之间进行分配;仅仅考虑人的需求,而不考虑环境的需要,助长了税收经济主义的倾向,导致了生态环境的蓄意破坏,税收公平性的失调。税收效率固然重要,但正义和可持续性也必不可少。必须在生态哲学观基础上研究我国的税收制度,才能促使经济、社会和环境的和谐发展。我们的税收命题不仅仅是"取之于民,用之于民",而应该是"取之于民和自然,用之于民和自然"。     

税收信用--现代税收思想的新理念

市场经济是法治经济，也是信用经济。市场经济条件下，税收秩序需要法律“有形之手”和信用“无形之手”共同维护。税收信用包括税收立法、守法、执法、司法信用和用税信用，涉及人大、税务、法院、财政等多个主体，涵盖经济信用和政治信用。发展我国税收信用，必须从法律保障、文化基础、信用机制和信息渠道等多个方面入手。     

资源税在中国矿业税费金制度中的功能定位

与矿业活动有关的各项赋税方案的一揽子财政制度的总和构成了矿业税费金制度,是国家管理、调控、干预矿产资源开发利用的重要手段.资源税是以各种应税自然资源为课税对象、为了调节资源级差收入并体现国有资源有偿使用而征收的税种.资源税在中国矿业税费金制度中应当具备主导功能、杠杆功能、调控功能.但是,资源税与矿产资源补偿费性质歧义容易导致税费重复征收、资源税税率偏低难以客观体现级差地租、资源税课税范围过窄造成非应税资源被掠夺式开发、经济全球化对资源税征收提出新要求等问题,影响了资源税功能的发挥.在分析中国矿业税费金制度、尤其是资源税所面临的主要问题的基础上,提出了资源税在中国矿业税费金制度中功能定位的政策建议.     

科学设计生态税,完善我国生态税制

生态建设对国家可持续发展战略具有非常重要的意义．我国目前的粗放型掠夺式增长方式已使生态环境不堪重负。而生态税从经济学的角度为解决我国日益恶化的环境问题提供了思路。本文探讨的重点是如何科学设计生态税，完善我国生态税制。     

Optimal Age-Specific Income Taxation

This paper studies optimal earnings taxation in a three‐period life‐cycle model where taxes can be differentiated according to age. Agents choose their level of education when young and their retirement age when old. I study the problem both without and with borrowing constraints. It is shown that, without borrowing constraints, a first‐best optimum can be decentralized by setting a zero tax rate in the third period and a first‐period tax lower than the second‐period one. With borrowing constraints, the first best can no longer be achieved. The gap between the first‐ and second‐period tax rates is larger, while the third‐period tax rate is generally different from zero.     

How delegation improves commitment

McCallum (1995, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 85 (2), 207-211) conjectures that delegation merely relocates the commitment problem but does not solve it. This holds if optimal ex-ante policies do not change if additional information becomes available. However, with a flexibility-credibility trade-off delegation improves credibility.     

A continuum of commitment

We examine a generic three-stage game for two players with alternating moves, where the first player can choose the level of adjustment cost to be paid in the last period to modify the action she announced in the first period. In the resulting continuum of commitment options, convexifying the choice between first-mover and second-mover advantage in pure strategies, we characterize when an intermediate adjustment-cost level is chosen in equilibrium. We show that the wastefulness of the adjustment cost may be in the players’ best interest, improving both of their individual net payoffs over making any fraction of the adjustment cost a side-payment from the first to the second player.     

Taxation and Market Power

We analyze the incidence and welfare effects of unit sales tax increases in experimental monopoly and Bertrand markets. We find, in line with economic theory, that firms with no market power are able to shift a high share of the tax burden to consumers, independent of whether buyers are automated or human players. In monopoly markets, a monopolist bears a large share of the burden of a tax increase. With human buyers, however, this share is smaller than with automated buyers, as the presence of human buyers constrains the pricing behaviour of a monopolist. Several control treatments corroborate this finding.     

论轻税政策

什么叫轻税政策?轻税政策是指有利于效率、公平和经济稳定增长的税收政策，在三关系中，效率是基础。     

公益、救济性捐赠的税收政策分析与税收筹划初探

本文在分析公益、救济性捐赠的税收政策的基础上,提出了纳税人应充分运用现代税收优惠政策,对其捐赠行为进行税收筹划,使纳税人在完成公益善举的同时,又能减轻税负.     

Technology transfer with commitment

Summary. This paper considers technology transfer in a duopoly where the firms have two types of commitment strategies: incentive delegation and capacity installation. It turns out that the possibility of technology transfer significantly differs under these two types of commitment as well as depending on whether one or both firms commit. Under strategic incentive delegation, the possibility of technology transfer is minimal when both firms use the incentive delegation strategy and the costs of incentive delegation are negligible. If both firms choose the incentive delegation strategy and the costs of incentive delegation are significant then the possibility of technology transfer rises compared to a situation with no pre-commitment. In case of commitment to a capacity level before production, the possibility of technology transfer does not change when both firms simultaneously commit to their capacity levels. Different sets of results arise when only one firm can pre-commit. Received: February 10, 1997; revised version: December 16, 1999