On a Reformed Stability and Growth Pact

In March 2005, the Council of Economics and Finance Ministers (Ecofin) presented its own suggestions for a possible Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) reform in a Report to the European Council. The Council Report divides its proposals into three parts, namely improving governance, strengthening the preventive arm and improving the implementation of the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP). The present paper contains a critical analysis of the ideas contained in the Report, accompanied by comparisons of the suggestions with earlier proposals for reform in the literature and the Commission Communication of September 2004.

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*Professor of European Financial Economics and Jean Monnet Professor of European Financial and Monetary Integration, CentER, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Research Fellow, CEPR, London, UK; Member of the Panel of Experts of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament to which the article was first presented as a Briefing Paper in May 2005.     

Offshoring,the Nature of Tasks,and Occupational Stability: Empirical Evidence for Germany

Using a large administrative data set of individual employment histories for Germany, this paper studies the relationship between offshoring and the individual risk of leaving the occupation. Moreover, a rich data set on tasks performed in occupations is used to better characterise the sources of worker vulnerability. Both material and service offshoring are, on average, not associated with an increase in occupational outflow rates. However, this association depends on the nature of tasks performed in the occupation. Higher intensities of interactive and, in particular, non‐routine tasks are associated with a larger decrease (or a smaller increase) in the occupational hazard rate.     

财政透明度对腐败的影响研究——来自中国的证据

本文通过理论建模结合实证检验的方法,深入分析了中国财政透明度对腐败的影响.研究结果表明,财政透明度的提高能够抑制腐败,但目前作用相对有限,贸易开放度、民营化、公务人员工资及政府规模对腐败有显著负影响,教育水平和经济发展水平对腐败没有显著影响;夏普里值分解的结果进一步揭示了各变量对腐败的相对贡献度,财政透明度的相对贡献度较小但有逐渐上升趋势.     

地区财政预决算偏差与政府效率、经济增长的关系研究

为研究地区经济增长、地方政府效率等环境变量对财政预决算偏差的影响,本文构建三个理论假设并通过面板数据协整模型、误差修正模型、脉冲响应函数及面板计量模型等方法对其进行检验,结果符合预期。研究表明：上述各要素之间存在长期和短期稳定关系;地区经济增长对预决算偏差的影响最为显著,呈现正向扩大效应;地方政府效率与预决算偏差的长期关系更加稳定,且对预决算偏差具负向冲击力;财政预决算偏差中,支出偏离度与收入偏离度的关系微弱,弹性系数较低。在经济新常态背景下,为缩小预决算偏差,我国应优化地方政府绩效评价体系,降低GDP指标权重,重视提升地方政府效率,推进建设规范有序的现代财政治理机制。     

Political Risk and Export Promotion: Evidence from Germany

Political risk represents an important hidden transaction cost that reduces international trade. This paper investigates the claim that public export credit guarantees mitigate this friction to trade flows and hence promote exports. We employ an empirical trade gravity model, where we explicitly control for political risk in the importing country in order to evaluate the effect of export guarantees. Using a novel data set on guarantees, we estimate the effect of guarantees in a static and dynamic panel model. We find a statistically and economically significant positive effect of public export guarantees on exports which indicates that export promotion is indeed effective. Furthermore, political risk turns out to be an important obstacle for exports and hence should be taken into account in any empirical model of trade.     

Immigration and structural change: Evidence from post-war Germany

Does immigration accelerate sectoral change from low- to high-productivity sectors? This paper analyzes the effect of one of the largest population movements in history, the influx of millions of German expellees to West Germany after World War II, on Germany's speed of transition away from low-productivity agriculture. A simple two-sector specific factor model, in which moving costs prevent the marginal product of labor to be equalized across sectors, predicts that expellee inflows boost output per worker by expanding the high-productivity non-agricultural sector but decrease output per worker within sectors. Using German district-level data from before and after the war, we find empirical support for these predictions.     

财政治理视角的支出整合、融资适配与复式预算:一个分析框架

为把公共预算塑造为促进财政治理和发展目标的核心工具,中国近期的改革议程基于当代公共支出管理(PEM)文献开发的三角范式,聚焦建构旨在联结特定财政成果的制度安排,但以复式预算促进支出整合和融资适配仍未受到重视.鉴于该主题事关重大且未被相关文献澄清,建构适当分析框架予以根本论述和普遍概括显得日益紧迫,该框架把PEM的两个三角范式扩展为六个互补的三角范式,贯穿其中的复式预算→支出整合与融资适配→财政政策与部门政策→治理目标这一主线表明,资本/经常支出整合和融资适配对促进财政良治至关紧要,但两者都依赖对传统复式预算的系统改进,涵盖四个主要路径:把投资职能整合到预算中、全面的预算竞争、支出经济构成的全面分析,以及把资本/经常支出作为预算的主要申报.     

Entrepreneurship: The Role of Clusters Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence from Germany

This paper is about the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level. Defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new organisations and clusters as a geographically proximate group of interconnected firms and associated institutions in related industries, this paper aims to answer three research questions : first, do clusters matter to entrepreneurship at the regional level? Second, if clusters are associated with different levels of entrepreneurship, what explains those differences? Third, what do the answers to the previous questions imply for academics and policy makers? To answer these questions, this paper distinguishes between clusters and industrial agglomerations and advances a theoretical model and empirical research to explain the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level. This paper uses the 97 German planning regions as units of analysis to test the hypotheses. Using hypotheses testing and OLS fixed-effects model, this paper finds that clusters do have an impact on entrepreneurship at the regional level, but industrial agglomerations do not. Implications for academics and policy makers and suggestions for future research are given in the concluding section.     

Entrepreneurship,Innovation and Economic Growth: Evidence from GEM data

Studies on the impact of technological innovation on growth have been largely mute on the role ofnew firm formation. Using cross-sectional data on the 37 countries participating in GEM 2002, this paper uses an augmented Cobb–Douglas production to explore firm formation and technological innovation as separate determinants of growth. One area of interest is the contrast between different types of entrepreneurial activities as measured using GEM Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rates – high growth potential TEA, necessity TEA, opportunity TEA and overall TEA. Of the four types of entrepreneurship, only high growth potential entrepreneurship is found to have a significant impact on economic growth. This finding is consistent with extant findings in the literature that it is fast growing new firms, not new firms in general, that accounted for most of the new job creation by small and medium enterprises in advanced countries.     

财政分权与经济增长：第二代财政分权理论

20世纪90年代中期以来，第二代财政分权理论有了极大发展。本文回顾了这一新理论区别于传统理论的特征，以及将其用于经济增长研究得出的新发现和主要问题。在此类研究中，中国改革开放以来的经济绩效，一方面为回答“财政分权是否有助于促进经济增长”提供了重要的经验研究依据，另一方面也在一定程度上证实了制度设计对财政分权效果具有决定性影响的判断，这与国内一些研究得出的结论有相似之处。这些研究成果对我国未来的中央一地方财政关系的发展具有重要的启示意义。     

How can the Stability and Growth Pact be improved to achieve both stronger discipline and higher flexibility?

Conclusion  While we are sceptical of re-opening the debate on the SGP,²⁶ we think that its functioning can nonetheless be improved. Our main proposals concern redefining the medium-term budgetary targets, improving transparency, tackling the pro-cyclical fiscal bias in good times, moving towards non-partisan application of the rules and improving transparency in the data. This set of ideas allows the achievement of both stronger discipline and higher flexibility and can be implemented without requiring any major revision of the existing rules. These proposals do not provide a recipe for tackling the problems encountered by countries still in transition towards lower deficits in the event of a cyclical slump. Nevertheless, if implemented, they would limit the type of behaviour which is largely responsible for the current fiscal tensions. He is also a member of the Panel of Experts of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament for which this article was written as a Briefing Paper (November 2002).     

The Impact of Public Support on SMEs' Outward FDI: Evidence from Italy

This paper evaluates the impact of public financial support to the internationalization of small and medium enterprises. We analyze the growth performance of firms that conducted outward foreign direct investments in the period 1994–2008, comparing firms that benefited from public support (380) with a sample of firms that also internationalized their activity in the same period but without any incentive (508). The econometric results, stemming from a two‐step treatment effect model, reveal that incentives are effective in enhancing firms' performance in terms of domestic turnover and productivity growth, especially when they are targeted at smaller and younger firms. Moreover, the effect of the incentives is enhanced for firms that have accumulated international experience.     

公共债务、财政可持续性与经济增长

各国为应对全球金融危机纷纷出台扩张性财政政策刺激经济复苏,这种导致政府债台高筑的财政政策影响着财政的可持续性,也影响着经济稳定增长.以中国数据进行的实证检验表明:长期低水平的基本赤字对经济增长产生较强的促进作用,且其经济增长效应与公共债务水平息息相关,二者呈倒U型关系,并存在一个最优组合关系.因此,在实行扩张性财政政策刺激经济增长的过程中,应该维持合理的赤字水平与国债规模,以保证财政的可持续性,有效发挥财政政策促进经济稳定增长的作用.     

财政分权、空间溢出与经济增长

相关研究发现,邻省间存在明显的政策模仿和基础设施的空间溢出作用。而财政分权作为影响地方政府政策和基础设施建设的重要因素,也必然对经济增长具有较强的空间溢出作用。在经典财政分权模型的基础上,建立考虑空间相关的拓展模型,以此模型的结论为基础,利用中国大陆31个省份1998—2005年的面板数据进行空间计量分析,结果发现,我国的财政分权对经济增长有着显著的促进作用和空间溢出效应。     

FDI,Trade, and Growth Dynamics: New Evidence from the Post-Reform India

This article has two aims: first, review the related literature on the relationship among Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Trade, and Economic Growth, and second, empirically examine the linkage between these variables. Our review of the literature indicates that despite a large volume of literature on the relationship among these variables, the direction of causality among them is far from over. Therefore, after observing a gap in the empirical literature, especially for developing economies, we investigate the linkage by using a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model applying the Ganger non-causality test of Toda and Yamamoto (1995) for the period 1991Q3 to 2006Q3. The evidence shows that there is bidirectional causality (two-way feedback) between FDI and economic growth. At the same time, there is also a unidirectional causality exists between exports and FDI, which runs from the former to the latter. Results of the test of causality between FDI and imports indicate the presence of a two-way feedback relationship between the variables.     

税收分成、财政激励与制造业企业活力——来自增值税分成改革的证据

作为中国政府间财政关系的重要维度,税收分成是观察政府与市场关系的重要视角.本文基于2016年的增值税分成改革,构造了强度DID模型,采用上市公司数据,实证检验了增值税分成改革产生的财政激励对制造业企业活力的影响.研究发现,增值税分成改革使地方政府发展制造业的财政收益提高,显著提升了制造业企业活力;增值税分成产生的财政激励通过降低企业税负,激发了企业活力.进一步分析表明,增值税分成改革对企业活力的促进作用,对创新驱动型企业、位于财政自给率更高地区的企业效应更大.本文的研究丰富了税收分成激励理论方面的文献,同时对于优化政府促进企业发展的方式、处理好政府与市场的关系具有政策价值.