The Collective Household, Household Production and Efficiency of Marginal Reforms

Most research on the welfare properties of taxes employs the unitary model of the household, ignoring household production. A simple model provides expressions for the changes in individual utility given marginal reforms to government policy. It is shown that the burden of a higher tax on household goods falls on the household member that consumes more than they produce or purchase. Numerical calculations show that price substitution (complementarity) between home and market labor increases (decreases) aggregate efficiency costs of a marginal redistribution of income without impacting the intra-household distribution of utility changes. Modeling household goods as public versus private can alter the distributional consequences of marginal reforms.     

"互联网+"下的包容性金融与家庭创业决策

文章利用中国家庭跟踪调查(CFPS)2014年度数据,采用离散选择模型和两阶段最小二乘方法,从广度和深度两个方面研究了"互联网+"下包容性金融对家庭创业决策的影响.结果表明:"互联网+"与包容性金融的融合发展将通过"信息流"融通"资金流",降低家庭创业融资中的风险,增加其正规金融市场参与度,从而提升一般家庭的创业可能性,特别是对城市家庭、高收入家庭和受教育程度高的家庭的创业决策具有明显的促进作用;此外,"互联网+"与包容性金融的融合发展还将使家庭更积极地投身于机会型创业活动中.文章进一步检验了"互联网+"下包容性金融影响家庭创业决策的正规金融融资偏好渠道和风险偏好渠道的有效性,这对于在当下的"双创"工作中改善创业者的金融支持环境具有重要的意义.     

Education Policies: Equity, Efficiency and Voting Equilibrium

This paper investigates the effects of two specific forms of intervention in the market for education: an ability test for admission to university and a subsidy to tuition fees financed through general taxation. Both these measures enhance equality of opportunity, but their equity and efficiency effects are ambiguous. This ambiguity is reflected in the political economy equilibrium which would emerge as the result of voting on the level of the ability test and of the subsidy.     

The Democratic Efficiency Debate and Definitions of Political Equilibrium

An ongoing debate has been occurring within public choice for over a decade concerning the efficiency of democracy. Virginia Political Economy holds that political markets perform very differently from traditional markets. Chicago Political Economy, exemplified by the work of Becker and Wittman, maintains that political equilibrium, properly defined, is relatively efficient. I argue that the debate can be understood at least partially in methodological terms: Chicago views politics exclusively within the equilibrium framework of traditional economics, while Virginia draws at least implicitly on Austrian economics' view of the economy as a disequilibrium process. I contend that the factors which public choice scholarship has identified as distinguishing politics from markets—rational ignorance, majority rule, collective outcomes—affect the performance of politics as a process even if political equilibrium is relatively efficient.     

人口老龄化、寿险持有与家庭资产配置效率

基于非期望产出的DEA-SBM模型,首先测度了家庭层面的资产配置效率,弥补了过去测度家庭效率时未考虑房产的不足;然后借助Tobit模型实证考察了人口老龄化对居民家庭资产配置效率的影响。研究结果显示,老龄化程度的加深将抑制居民家庭资产配置效率的提升,且投资者的风险态度、家庭持有商业寿险是这一负向效应的重要传导渠道。从异质性分析来看,对于低收入、西部地区家庭,以及中青年家庭和持有中高债务规模的家庭而言,老年人占比对家庭资产配置效率的负向效应更明显。进一步讨论发现,流动性约束的存在放大了老龄化的负向效应,而普及金融知识教育、增强社会互动是提升家庭资产配置效率的有效途径。     

全球供应链管理的效率、均衡和风险问题

伴随着全球化与竞争一体化的加速,外包、合作、多赢和核心竞争力的构建等经营战略和模式的创新,供应链显现出前所未有的竞争优势。但同时,也面临着一些全新的挑战：如供应链复杂性和脆弱性,供应链的灵活性和依赖性,供应链的精益化与弹性,局部优化和总体均衡等。本文从均衡策略和风险管理的角度,针对全球化背景下由于不确定性剧增而导致的诸多供应链管理的悖论问题进行了剖析,以期加强对供应链及供应链风险管理意识,提供建立起一般性的分析框架,推进供应链风险分析和风险管理以及不确定性的问题的系统性研究。     

When Transparency Goes Against Efficiency: Fiscal Equalization in a Context of Firm and Household Mobility

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the mobility of households and firms affects economic efficiency and whether a transparent system of equalization payments can be efficiency‐enhancing. When local governments choose their fiscal policy taking into account the impact the policy will have on migration, the decentralized equilibrium does not result in a socially efficient allocation: central government intervention is required. However, assuming the transparency of fiscal equalization—that is local governments know the transfer formulas as advocated by the Council of Europe—no system of equalization transfers is able to ensure economic efficiency. The system has to combine a transparent transfer with a grant the formula of which is not known to local governments.     

我国政府供给偏好决定的一个经济学解释--政治均衡与经济效率

政府供给偏好包括政府供给的规模偏好与结构偏好,它们是社会各方政治影响力相互冲突和竞争的结果。我们通过构建“执政能力函数”,从最简单的消费者集团与纳税人集团政治影响力制衡模型,到多集团、多政府供给项目下的政府供给结构决定模型,再到官僚控制下的政府供给偏好决定模型,逐步阐释了政治均衡决定资源配置的低效率属性,进而说明,相对于市场,政府供给规模和范围边界的收敛趋势会促进社会资源配置效率的改进。在我国当前社会经济转型过程中,政府供给偏好的形成具有更多的动态特征,从提高整个社会资源配置效率和建设和谐社会的目标来看,公共决策的民主化虽然能够在一定程度上缓解政治均衡的低效率,但无法从根本上消除政治均衡决定资源配置的低效率属性,因此我国当前政府职能转型的核心重点不在于公共决策的完全民主化,而在于协调政府供给范围调整与市场经济深化的进程和路径。公平竞争、自发扩展的市场经济秩序是市场“内生型”政府供给偏好形成的基础。     

全球化条件下基于交易费用的企业制度效率以及企业家精神的一般均衡分析

文章从交易成本和专业化的视角,通过构建瓦尔拉斯一般均衡分析模型来讨论全球化条件下竞争性市场中“企业家精神(Entrepreneurship)”的演化和角色.研究指出,如果全球化条件下竞争性市场中的企业家精神是有效的,那么当从劳动分工中获得的收益超过具有固定学习成本的不同专业模式个体之间的交易成本时,劳动分工的网络效应就会被充分利用.因此,全球化条件下竞争性市场中的企业家精神可以通过扩大范围来提升总生产率,并且权衡劳动分工对总生产率的网络效应与交易成本.文章认为在经济转型过程中,对商业参与者而言,企业家精神是经济发展和提高企业竞争力的关键因素.除此之外,全球化水平和变动系数以及总交易效率系数的提高会促进劳动分工水平、参与者的人均实际收入水平和福利水平的提升.     

Compensation Policies and Teacher Decisions

A dynamic, discrete choice framework with a flexible structure for unobserved heterogeneity is used to model the occupational decisions of individuals who are certified to teach in elementary and secondary schools. The model is estimated using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 and is used to examine the effects of possible changes in the compensation policy for teachers.     

Financial Constraints and Investment Decisions

In what follows we show that liquidity constraints can affect a firm's investment even when the constraints are not currently effective. This happens when, at any given time, the firm believes that internal finance is likely to become a constraint in the future. In these circumstances, the value of the firm becomes a non‐monotonic functional form of the fundamental. Thus, in a dynamic setting, the potential barrier to internal liquidity expansion exerts a global effect on the firm's investment policy, lowering its desired investment profile (Classification JEL: E22, E51 ).     

Firm Image and Individual Investment Decisions

This paper documents the importance of firm image in individual investment behavior. We conduct three experiments designed to examine whether investment decisions are influenced by selective information disclosures that are intended to promote a positive or negative firm image. Importantly, the disclosures are not value-relevant. Participants actively make investment decisions that have real economic consequences. We find that participants invest more heavily in firms with a positive image than in firms with a negative image, controlling for industry membership and financial data. These results are consistent with economic models of choice that recognize that the financial outcome is not the only argument in a person's utility function.     

Financial and Thermodynamic Equilibrium

This paper explores general equilibrium asset pricing implications in a two-period model in which the production side explicitly describes the thermodynamic process unavoidably connected with production. We show that steady state of the production process, i.e. thermodynamic equilibrium, has a one-to-one correspondence with the absence of arbitrage possibilities. This provides an alternative definition of the absence of arbitrage.
(J.E.L.: D5, G1, R3)     

中国建置经济制度的历史传承与当代竞争

在人类经济史上 ,中国与西欧组织经济的方式有显著的区别 ,其特征与西欧庄园经济的分封方式不同 ,具有独特的“建郡置县”规范。通过数学模型 ,本文说明中国建置经济制度有过辉煌 ,其历史遗产在今天仍然具有生命力。在人类经济发展的今天 ,经济制度之间不是非此即彼的排斥关系 ,它们将相互影响且继续传承下去     

Equilibrium Selection and Consistency

In this paper we show that, for two important classes of strategic games, namely the class of mixed extensions of finite games and the class of games with compact and convex strategy spaces and continuous-concave payoff functions, equilibrium selection is incompatible with One Person Rationality, Consistency and (restricted) Non-Emptiness.     

Measuring Household Welfare: Problems and Pitfalls with Household Surveys in Central Asia

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -