Convergence,technological interdependence and spatial externalities: a spatial dynamic panel data analysis

This study adopts a spatial dynamic panel data approach and spatial quasi-maximum likelihood to re-estimate the speed of growth convergence in 91 countries based on technological interdependence and spatial externalities. We perform a conditional Lagrange multiplier test for spatial error dependence and find some differences to previous studies. First, the switch from a cross-sectional to a dynamic panel data framework enables the estimated rate of conditional convergence to be higher, more accurate and more appropriate for realistic and theoretical expectations. Second, the spatial Durbin model (SDM) is a general form of simplified model that considers spatial error correlation, and its likelihood ratio test for the theoretical model of ‘learning by doing’ effect provides further evidence. Finally, statistical tests find that spatial correlation not only occurs in each variable, but also appears in the error term. Thus, the SDM does not exist in the assumptions associated with the spatial error, which are not necessarily correct.     

Public sector efficiency in transition and beyond: evidence from Czech local governments

This article provides the first comparison of public sector efficiency in and beyond transition. We compare the comprehensive efficiency scores of 202 local governments in the Czech Republic in the transition period of 1995–1998 and the post-transition period of 2005–2008 and identify the period-specific determinants of local government efficiency. We observe convergence to the best practice frontier but also a growing efficiency gap between small and large governments. In both periods, municipal size and the main fiscal variables qualitatively affect efficiency in the same direction and in line with the fiscal stress hypothesis. Left-wing ideology is only robustly associated with cost inefficiency in the transition period. The geographic distances begin to matter for efficiency only in the post-transition period.     

Disentangling political and institutional determinants of budget forecast errors: A comparative approach

This paper provides a unique comparison between French and Portuguese local governments with respect to the nature and determinants of budget forecast errors. It starts by documenting and comparing their statistical properties. The results point at biased and inefficient budget forecasts, which seem to have been more cautious in French departments than in Portuguese municipalities. Second, we examine the political, institutional and economic determinants of forecast biases. Overall, we find that they are essentially driven by electoral motivations and by institutional differences across the two countries. In particular, opportunistic forecasting is more prevalent where governments enjoy greater margin of maneuver, and there is evidence of conservatism in French departments where fiscal autonomy is greater.     

地方政府、土地产权管制与经济增长：理论与证据

地方政府的土地产权管制解决了其在促进地方经济发展过程中的财政压力,为改革开放以来的中国经济增长做出了重要贡献。但理论分析表明,土地产权的政府管制虽然会促进短期经济增长,却不利于长期经济增长。基于中国31个省份1998～2012年面板数据的实证检验,和同时期面板数据的分组实证检验以及时间序列模型的回归残差分析,证实了地方政府土地产权管制与经济增长之间的这种逻辑关系。为促进我国长期经济增长,政府应该逐步放松对土地产权的管制。     

Academia-industry collaboration,government funding and innovation efficiency in Chinese industrial enterprises

This article uses a stochastic frontier model to elaborate how academia-industry research and development collaboration and government funding influence the innovation efficiency of industrial enterprises through a panel dataset from 2009 to 2015, including 30 provinces in China. We find that the research institute-industry collaboration promotes innovation efficiency of enterprises, while university-industry collaboration is adversely associated with innovation efficiency. Government funding plays a positive role on innovation efficiency across the board. Next, we divide the sample into three clusters according to enterprises’ innovation ability. In the first cluster, which has the least innovation ability, research institute-industry collaboration, university-industry collaboration and government funding have no significant effect on enterprise innovation efficiency. In the second and third clusters, university-industry collaboration exerts a negative impact on innovation efficiency but government funding improves innovation efficiency. At the same time, we investigate the interaction effects of enterprise R&D personnel and academia-industry collaboration and government funding on innovation efficiency. We find some heterogeneity in the full sample and the three sub-samples.     

我国地方政府债务治理:近期目标与长效机制

我国地方政府债务问题凸显,地方融资平台公司及其债务只是其现阶段的形式体现,深层次的原因应从地方财政资金的供给和需求两个方面探寻。针对我国地方政府债务现状,先治后理是基本逻辑主线,近期目标是清理地方融资平台及其债务,但从长计议则应构建加强地方政府财力建设、规范地方债务管理的长效机制。     

地方保护主义对地区产业结构的影响——理论与实证分析

本文旨在考察地区政府保护对地方产业结构的作用,对地区间产业结构趋同问题进行了研究。本文首先提出理论模型,在一个厂商投资行为模型中,从改变地区间贸易成本和政府直接投资两个方面引入地方政府行为变量,讨论政府行为对地区产业结构的影响。模型分析发现贸易成本的增加会促使地区间产业结构趋同,而政府直接投资对产业结构的影响并不确定,在一定情况下会促进地区间产业结构差异化。这些结论在随后进行的对中国近年地区和产业数据的实证研究中得到了验证。趋势分析发现样本年间我国地区产业结构差异的全国平均水平在逐年增大。而以地区为着眼点的计量回归分析则发现,在控制了运输条件、地区资源差异和产业结构等历史因素之后,政府变量对地区间产业结构差异变化有显著影响。政府设置贸易壁垒增加地区间贸易成本,会促进地区间产业结构趋同。政府的投资行为则在整体上促进了地区间产业结构的差异化。     

地方财政支农投入与农业技术效率的省际差异:1995～2011年

运用参数法中的随机前沿分析法,结合我国1995—2011年的省级面板数据,选取地方财政"一般预算支出"中的"农林水事务"支出作为代理变量,分析地方财政支农投入对农业技术效率的影响,发现地方财政支农投入对于农业技术效率以及农业产出具有显著的积极作用,财政支农投入差异是我国各省市农业技术效率差异的重要根源之一。但鉴于目前我国在中央与地方的财政分配上严重倾向于中央财政,不少省市的地方财政收入很有限,财政支农投入的数量、结构、区域分布等方面都亟待调整和完善。     

地方政府竞争的约束与激励:一个拓展研究

现有的文献并没有严格区分地方政府竞争的约束条件和激励要素,而是笼统地表述为"影响因素",而且往往过于注重经济因素的影响,并把"财政分权导致地方政府竞争"看作是一个公理性的结论。这对于明晰地方政府竞争的内在机理以及规范研究极为不利。约束条件包括宪法秩序的变化、意识形态的松动、分权化改革以及要素、产品甚至企业的跨区域流动性;激励要素包括地区经济的发展、权力中心的认可、辖区居民的支持以及自身利益的强化。     

Local Labor Systems and Agricultural Activities: The Case of Tuscany

The features of the Italian economy cannot be properly understood without taking into account the territorial organization, in particular, the so called local productive systems. The Italian National Statistical Institute provides a partition of the Italian territory into Local Labor Systems (LLS) on the basis of the Population Census data. LLS are a set of contiguous municipalities with a high degree of self-containment of daily commuter travel. This paper focuses on a study of the structural characteristics of agriculture activities in the LLS of Tuscany on the basis of the micro-data from the last General Agricultural Census. The main aim is to provide a picture of the economic activities of the LLS by using data from the Population and the Industrial censuses also.

Scale and efficiency measurement using a semiparametric stochastic frontier model: evidence from the U.S. commercial banks

In this paper, we use the local maximum likelihood (LML) method proposed by Kumbhakar et al. (J Econom, 2007) to estimate stochastic cost frontier models for a sample of 3,691 U.S. commercial banks. This method relaxes several deficiencies in the econometric estimation of frontier functions. In particular, we relax the assumption that all banks share the same production technology and provide bank-specific measures of returns to scale and cost inefficiency. The LML method is applied to estimate the cost frontiers in which a truncated normal distribution is used to model technical inefficiency. This formulation allows the cost frontier, inefficiency effects and heteroskedasticity in both noise and inefficiency components to be quite flexible.      

The effects of local government investment on economic growth and employment: evidence from transitional China

Based on the panel data of 28 provinces in the year of 1987-2001,this paper examines the effects of the local government investment on economic growth and employment.The empirical result shows that the local government investment plays a significant positive role in economic growth and emplovment.However,while the proportion of local government investment to GDP had a remarkable rise after 1998.the elasticity of local government investment on economic growth declined,which shows that there is a hig room for raising the efficiency of local government mvestment.Moreover,the empirical examination shows that although local government investment had positive effect on employment,the elasticity had a decrease after 1994 when the tax-sharing system reform was put into practice.This shows that the positive role of local government investment on emplovment is also limited.This paper argues that the role of local governments as investors must be weakened,and local governments of different levels should lessen direct economic intervention and concentrate on public regulation.     

经济分权模式下地方政府赶超与劳动收入占比——基于中国省级面板数据的实证分析

文章首先分析了地方政府由竞争而采取的赶超行为对劳动收入占比的影响。在中国特殊的经济分权模式下,这种赶超行为一方面加深了产品市场和要素市场的不完全竞争程度;另一方面由于地方政府没有充分利用资源禀赋的比较优势,而是优先发展重化工等资本密集型产业,从而导致了过快的资本深化。文章然后提出了理论假说,最后运用省际面板数据实证分析了地方政府赶超行为对劳动收入占比的影响。结果表明,地方政府的赶超行为显著降低了劳动报酬份额;另外,文章还发现人力资本存量也与劳动收入占比显著负相关。     

地方政府的危机管理:责任、信息与制度

当前我国危机管理体制建设已经进入了一个新阶段。本文从危机管理的分权效率、信息响应等角度论证了地方政府在我国危机管理体系中的特殊地位,分析了效率导向下的地方政府危机管理事权划分问题,探讨了信息优势与危机管理资源配置的关系。本文指出,应从赋权与问责、事后管理、制度建设等方面重新审视和发展我国的地方政府危机管理体制。     

Static efficiency decompositions and capacity utilization: integrating economic and technical capacity notions

Starting from existing static decompositions of overall economic efficiency on nonparametric production and cost frontiers, this article proposes more comprehensive decompositions including several cost-based notions of capacity utilization. Furthermore, in case prices are lacking, we develop additional decompositions of overall technical efficiency integrating a technical concept of capacity utilization. These new efficiency decompositions provide a link between short and long run economic analysis and, in empirical work, avoid conflating inefficiency and differences in capacity utilization. An empirical analysis using a monthly panel of Chilean hydro-electric power plants illustrates the potential of these decomposition proposals.     

制度-垄断地租与中国地方政府竞争:一个马克思主义分析框架

竞争性地方政府作为改革以来形成的重要制度形式,在相当程度上决定了中国社会主义市场经济体制的特点。本文不仅承续了既有文献中将地方政府的经济动机归于租金,并将土地财政视为地方政府利用租金开展战略投资的观点,而且试图在一个马克思主义框架内进一步发展这一观点。为此我们对租金的生产性利用和国家的经济作用的关系做了初步探讨,并将大卫·哈维的制度-垄断地租理论运用于分析中国地方政府围绕营建环境的投资活动。本文的基本结论是,中国地方政府在以土地财政为核心的战略投资中,充当了租金的生产性分配者和使用者的角色,并因之嵌入了原本由企业之间的竞争所带来的相对剩余价值生产过程,形成了中国经济特有的相对剩余价值生产双重结构,从而在相当长的时间内造就了世所罕见的高投资率,推动了中国经济的持续快速增长。     

Technical change, prices and communications technology: Insights from the Local Area Networking industry

We use hedonic regressions to analyse price changes in two categories of Local Area Networking (LAN) equipment: hubs and switches. Constant quality price indexes are constructed from the regressions and contrasted with available indexes constructed for the same type of equipment. We find that prices fell at an average annual rate between 22% and 33% during the 1990s. The results suggest that beside falling prices of inputs (i.e. semiconductors), technical change in the LAN equipment may be responsible for the decrease in the prices of communication equipment during the 1990s.     

Electoral accountability and tax mimicking: the effects of electoral margins, coalition government, and ideology

This paper investigates the relation between tax mimicking and electoral accountability against the background of data on Spain. The results confirm the presence of tax-mimicking behaviour and indicate a relation between tax mimicking and electoral accountability. Tax rates are found to be higher and the reaction to neighbours' tax rates lower when the electoral margin is high and when left-wing parties control government. Coalition governments do not tax heavily and mimic more than single party majority governments.     

外部风险对中国地方政府规模的影响

本文利用我国28个省市区1978—2006年的数据,分析了我国外部风险对地方政府规模的影响。研究发现,在当前我国更为开放的市场经济中,外部风险导致了地方政府规模的扩大,且外部风险与社会保障和社会福利支出显著正相关。为了抵御外部风险,必须把一部分经济资源配置到政府部门,以增加社会保障和社会福利等方面的支出。     

Cost and learning efficiency drivers in Australian schools: a two-stage network DEA approach

This article explore performance issues in Australian public schools, using a two-stage DEA network model, which accounts simultaneously for both cost and learning efficiency levels. In the cost efficiency stage, different types of expenses and investments are employed to support a given number of students, teachers and administrative staff. In the learning efficiency stage, these groups of individuals help to produce important outputs related to performance in student tests and school rankings. Results indicate that Australian public schools are heterogeneous. Policy implications are also discussed.