ON THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF PUBLIC CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURES

The multiplier effects resulting from an isolated increase in the level of public consumption within different public branches are investigated and the policy implications are discussed. The article begins with a theorethical analysis which shows why and in which ways these multipliers can be expected to differ between public branches. Thereafter, an empirical investigation is given, based on simulations with an econometric model of the Swedish economy. In this model the public activities are divided into 13 different public branches. The effects of an increase in public consumption on employment, imports and private consumption are found to differ considerably depending on which branch of the public sector is expanded. Some implications for short run stabilization policy are discussed. The article ends with a special analysis of the implications for a medium term planning problem: the trade off between private and public consumption growth. This analysis throws new light on the old topic "private or public consumption". In an economy with highly differentiated production in the public sector the trade-off is shown not to be unique. The sacrifice of private consumption growth corresponding to a given growth of public consumption expenditures will vary considerably according to the distribution of the public consumption growth within the different branches of the public sector.     

CORRUPTION AND CORPORATE FINANCE PATTERNS: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract.  This study demonstrates the importance of government corruption in shaping corporate finance patterns across countries. Corruption contributes to a more prevalent and higher degree of corporate equity ownership concentration and more reliance on bank financing in raising external finance. It argues that corporate governance under corrupt governments is particularly poor. Firm management, taking advantage of political capital acquired through bribery, is especially powerful in expropriating from outside investors. Ownership concentration and reliance on bank financing are means of mitigating the corporate governance problem under a corrupt government.     

THE IMPACT OF TAX REGIMES ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE PATTERNS

This paper discusses the trade implications of value‐added taxes (VATs) that refund domestic taxes paid by exporters of domestic production while imposing taxes on imports of foreign production. VATs are used by over 140 countries of the world, including every member of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development except the United States. An investigation of the implications of border‐adjustable taxes on the U.S. trade balance suggests that VATs positively affect trade competitiveness but with differing impacts by sector. These results do not necessarily extend to the conclusion that a U.S. VAT would increase U.S. exports; such a prediction requires economic forecasting and appropriate simulations. The present results do imply that the adoption of VATs by other countries appears to have benefited U.S. trade. Panel data over 20 years, 29 industries, and 145 countries is used to conduct the analysis. (JEL F10, H20, K34)     

THE INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF CONSUMPTION LEVEL CARRIED OUT BY THE POLISH CENTRAL STATISTICAL OFFICE

1. The problems presented have arisen in practice when carrying out international comparisons of national income and its elements between the CMEA countries. Some rough conclusions are drawn from the nearly completed comparison of consumption level between Poland and Austria. 2. The basic methodological principles of the comparison were similar to the methods used by the group of economists directed by Milton Gilbert and Irving Kravis in their comparison relating to Western European countries. However, a number of new problems have emerged in the course of our work which required practical and theoretical solutions. Some differences in theoretical approach between the Gilbert-Kravis study and ours are discussed. Gilbert and Kravis based their comparison as far as possible on average prices of commodity groups or quantity data, and price indexes for representative goods were applied only as a practical necessity. On the contrary in our study we based our calculation mainly on representative goods and their price relation as this method, in our opinion, takes into account quality differences, which escape from the picture in the Gilbert-Kravis method. 3. Some special theoretical and practical problems of comparisons between countries having market economies and those with planned economies are presented in terms of the example of the comparison of consumption levels between Austria and Poland. Three groups of questions are pointed out: (1) the problem of the definition and boundaries of the aggregates compared; (2) the problem of differences in pricing in the groups of products and services compared, resulting from the social policy of the government concerned; and (3) the problem of differences arising from general price policies in the countries compared. 4. At the end of the paper it is suggested that it would be useful to work out a “statistical information system”, which would make possible detailed comparisons of the volume of consumption among several countries and groups of countries without the need of conducting direct comparisons between each pair of countries.     

MODELING MOVEMENTS IN INDIVIDUAL CONSUMPTION: A TIME‐SERIES ANALYSIS OF GROUPED DATA

We characterize the time‐series properties of group‐level consumption, income, and interest rates using microdata. We relate the coefficients of moving average representations to structural parameters of theoretical models of consumption behavior. Using long time series of cross sections to construct synthetic panel data for the United Kingdom, we find that for high‐educated individuals the Euler equation restrictions are not rejected, the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is higher than one, and there is evidence of “excess smoothness” of consumption. Low‐educated individuals, conversely, exhibit excess sensitivity of consumption to past income, and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is not statistically different from zero.     

MODELING AGGREGATE PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH: THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERSECTORAL TRANSFER PRICES AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

The value-added model underlies current measures of aggregate productivity growth. Unbiased estimates result only if the economy is closed to trade in foreign-produced material inputs and all domestic intersectoral transactions are characterized by marginal cost pricing. Neither condition typically holds.
This paper identifies these biases and proposes a delivery-to-final-demand framework, a modified form of that first introduced by Domar. The rate of aggregate productivity growth is decomposed into terms identifying the contributions of total factor productivity growth within individual sectors, the reallocation of the economy's primary inputs among sectors, and changes in the allocative efficiency of markets for intermediate goods. The adjustments necessary to remove biases from existing value-added estimates are derived.     

国际食物消费启示与中国食物 缺口分析：基于历史数据

通过梳理美国、欧盟、日本、韩国和中国台湾的食物消费统计资料，本文发现食物消费存在四大特点，分别是在经济水平发达之前食品消费严重依赖本国（地区）农业自然资源禀赋、食物消费饱和状态广泛存在、班尼特法则和在外饮食常态化。另外，当人均GDP进入15 000美元～20 000美元区间后，食物消费趋于稳定或缓慢增长，粮食和肉类人均消费（包含水产品）均趋近于“双百”状态：口粮消费约100千克，肉类和水产品加总约100千克。通过考察中国内地的食物消费现状，本文发现2020年后中国内地的食物消费将趋于稳定或进入缓慢增长阶段，在肉类、植物油和食糖消费上还存在较大缺口。     

AN INDEX NUMBER APPROACH TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF CONSUMPTION: WESTERN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES*

The quantity index comparing the per capita consumption of one country vis-à-vis the other often gives widely different figures, depending on which country's prices are used as “weights”. In this paper, this gap between two quantity indexes is divided into a substitution effect and an income effect by assuming common tastes between nations. For this division, we estimate the points of over-compensated variation and under-compensated variation in income from Gilbert and Kravis’data. The results of our estimation show that the income effect is smaller than the substitution effect. But the sign of the income effect indicates that this effect is generally in the same direction as the difference between two quantity indexes. Translated into the Bortkiewicz covariance, this means that the income elasticities are inversely related to the relative prices; the higher the income elasticity of a good, the lower is its price in the high income country relative to the low income country. Since we only approximate the points of exactly compensated variation in income, we cannot estimate “true” quantity indexes. However, our result implies that the two indexes in Gilbert and Kravis’data do form the upper and lower boundaries to the true index-numbers.     

国际

<正>世界银行专家指出中国需要更高的实际利率世界银行中国首席经济学家郝福满8月15日指出,目前中国经济没有全面过热,但利率水平偏低。从长远看,中国需要更高的实际利率,以提高投资效率,把资金投向效益好的部门。世界银行同日发布的《中国经济季报》预计,下半年中国GDP增速将出现一定的回落,全年增长率为10．4%,明年将降至9．3%；通货膨胀的压力不大,     

国际

<正>欧洲央行行长称日本欧洲带动全球经济强劲发展欧洲中央银行行长特里谢5月8日表示,尽管面临高通胀和高物价的双重挑战,但日本和欧洲国家经济增长带动了全球经济的强劲发展。然而,全球利率升息的可能性很大,通货膨胀依然存在,并呈小幅上升趋势。另据欧盟委员会8日发表春季经济预测报告,将欧元区2006年的经济增长率由原先预计的1．9％调高为     

CONSUMPTION GROWTH ACCOUNTING

The methodology in this paper combines an input–output structural decomposition approach with the supply-side perspective of mainstream growth accounting. In explaining the intertemporal change in consumption per worker, three sets of effects are distinguished. First, contributions due to several types of technological changes are considered. Second, effects caused by changes in international trade are discerned. Third, composition effects that reflect structural shifts in demand (including changes in tastes) are quantified. As an empirical illustration, we analyze the developments in the U.K. between 1979 and 1990.     

LIQUIDITY CONSTRAINT, GOVERNMENT CONSUMPTION SUBSTITUFION AND HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION VOLATILITY IN CHINA

本文借用两个相关的模型探讨流动性约束和政府消费替代对于我国居民消费过度波动现象的解释力,发现流动性约束和政府消费分别通过弱化居民消费跨期优化能力和增强其对居民消费替代作用的渠道来增加居民消费波动,且前者的作用强于后者.本文同时发现流动性约束的增加减损居民福利,而政府消费替代比例的增加则能提高居民福利.     

流动性约束、政府消费替代与中国居民消费波动

本文借用两个相关的模型探讨流动性约束和政府消费替代对于我国居民消费过度波动现象的解释力,发现流动性约束和政府消费分别通过弱化居民消费跨期优化能力和增强其对居民消费替代作用的渠道来增加居民消费波动,且前者的作用强于后者。本文同时发现流动性约束的增加减损居民福利,而政府消费替代比例的增加则能提高居民福利。     

长假制度一定能促进消费吗——论假日消费的“陷阱”

收入与时间是决定消费的两个最重要因素。因此,单独增加可用时间,不一定能够促进消费。然而,1999年开始的黄金周政策,使得总消费出现了明显的增加。同时,长假导致财富在各部门间发生了明显的转移。     

消费稳定、消费增长与居民福利* ——对于扩大内需的新寓意

城乡居民消费取决于两个视阈的特征：消费波动和消费增长。扩大内需尤其是消费需求一直以来都在致力于促进消费增长,但效果却不理想,而稳定消费作为被忽视的另一个视阈,值得关注吗？本文基于我国省际城乡1985-2011年实际人均消费数据,测度消费增速放缓和消费波动的福利成本,实证分析我国省级城乡层面两种福利成本的大小关系,从定量意义上说明稳定消费为扩大内需不容忽视的新视阈。研究发现,无论是城镇,还是农村,各省份消费波动的福利成本并不必然远小于消费增速放缓的福利成本,相关参数合理取值范围之内,前者大于后者是更为普遍的情形。因此,稳定消费视阈扩大内需具有不容忽视的政策空间,政府应该在把促进消费增长作为扩大内需工作重点的同时,合理兼顾消费稳定。     

MEASURES OF TOTAL HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION

By expenditure on education, health, housing and other public services, governments provide many goods and services which are alternatives to, or additional to, household expenditure on consumption. In most Western national accounts, the two forms of consumption are rigidly separated. Yet the combination of the two–the concept of total household consumption–has obvious importance for the measurement and comparison of living standards and for the formulation and analysis of policy. This concept is recommended as an additional aggregate in the revised SNA. It is displayed in the UN International Comparison Project (ICP). It is used as a major aggregate ("total consumption of the population"), although hitherto generally excluding nonmaterial services, in the Material Product System. Yet it is rarely shown explicitly in Western national accounts. One reason is the slow progress in the analysis by purpose of government expenditure.
This paper shows how far figures of total household consumption, and of its division between collective and private consumption, can in fact be derived, for the advanced countries, from the data provided to the UN Yearbook of National Accounts , supplemented b y the ICP. The results show first the wide national variations in the relation between the two forms of consumption but, secondly, the gaps in information on this crucially important topic. The relation between direct government expenditure for collective consumption and transfer payments to households ("social income") is also examined. High and low levels of these two forms of State support to consumption reinforce each other almost as often as they offset each other. But, again, the data provided by national accounting statistics are very incomplete.
This paper was prepared for the 16th General Conference of the IARIW, August 1979.