Culture,institutions, and long-run performance

If institutions are essential for long-run performance, why don't developing countries adopt institutions in developed countries to become rich? In this dynamic model, culture affects a ruler's institutional choice, while culture itself evolves endogenously. Multiple stable steady states are possible, and even similar initial conditions can lead to dramatically different steady states. The state of Qin's unification of China in 221 bc is used to illustrate the model. In one steady state, consistent with what happened in the state of Qin, individuals value material incentives. Qin did not strictly practice the patriarchal clan system advocated by Confucianism. Qin adopted Legalist institutions under which government officials were chosen by merit, and Qin culture was further shaped by Legalism. In another steady state, consistent with what happened in states other than Qin, individuals value loyalty and family values. Those states chose not to adopt Legalist institutions comprehensively, fearing that inconsistencies between culture and institutions could lead to internal rebellions even though institutional reforms would increase their military power. Other cases of how the interdependence between culture and institutions affects performance are also discussed.     

全面理解人力资本的经济价值——教育经济学与培训经济学的融合

教育经济学不应只是正规学校教育的经济学,在终身学习的理念下,正规学校教育的结束并不意味着学习步伐的停滞和人力资本投资的终结。教育经济学未来拓展的路径,除了理论基础上的"外延式"发展外,还可以在原有的人力资本理论框架内走一条"内涵式"发展的道路,即强调综合考察人力资本投资的多种途径,特别是教育和培训这两种最主要的人力资本投资形式,让教育经济学走出正规学校教育经济学的固有领地,团结在人力资本理论的名义下,与培训经济学融合,走向人力资源开发研究的广阔天地,惟其如此,才能全面、深入地研究人力资本的经济价值及其实现机制。     

Adam Smith on Relations of Subordination, Personal Incentives and the Division of Labour

In elaborating his stadial approach to economic and social progress, Smith placed special emphasis on the evolution of the conceptual pair authority/subordination. The aim of this paper is to analyse the reciprocal relations which link together the evolution of the relations of subordination, personal incentives, and the division of labour with special reference to the agricultural and the commercial stages. In the former case, Smith pointed out the exclusive role performed by personal incentives in increasing labour productivity, a role which is consistent with his manifest preference for the figure of the 'independent small-scale proprietor'. In the latter case we note a change of emphasis due both to the pervasive role of the division of labour in increasing labour productivity, and—as a by-product of this change—to the emergence of a new form of relation of subordination. In this new context the division of labour engenders a new form of property polarisation, one connected no longer to land but to capital accumulation. Moreover, because of its harmful effects on the mental capacity of manufacturing workers, the division of labour appears to act as an obstacle against social mobility, and this in turn further reinforces the process of property polarisation.     

地方官员激励、制度环境与要素市场扭曲*——基于中国省级面板数据的实证研究

探寻地方官员干预要素市场的动因是治理中国要素市场扭曲的前提,而地方官员对要素市场的干预可能主要源于财政、晋升和寻租等方面的激励。本文基于对现有文献的梳理和归纳,理论上分析了地方官员激励影响要素市场扭曲的机理,并利用中国省级层面面板数据对理论假说加以检验。研究发现：地方官员的财政激励、晋升激励和寻租激励对地区要素市场都产生了显著的扭曲效应,而“入世”后的这种扭曲效应下降了。在不同制度环境中,地方官员激励对要素市场扭曲的影响存在着差异。金融和法律环境的改善以及产权明晰程度的提高,能够在一定程度上规避地方官员激励对要素市场产生的扭曲效应。本文既拓展了官员激励和要素市场扭曲等研究领域,又启发了中国要素市场扭曲的治理方向。     

中国传统思想在现代人力资源管理中的应用

中国传统思想博大精深，不是儒、法、道三家思想就可以涵括的，但这三家思想却是中国传统思想最重要的组成部分。在现代人力资源管理理论已日趋完善的前提下，重新审视和思考中国古代传统思想，分析各家所长，探询现代人力资源管理理论中中国传统思想的脉络，研究中国传统思想在现代社会中的创新意义，对建立有中国特色的人力资源管理理论具有重要的意义。     

Government decentralization as a commitment in non-democracies

In the past several decades, many countries, among them non-democratic, chose to decentralize their governments. One prominent and well researched example is China's decentralization in 1980–1990s. This paper proposes a rationale to account for a voluntary devolution of centralized power by a non-democratic ruler through decentralization. The idea is that decentralization serves as a commitment device to ensure that ex post chosen policies reflect regional preferences, thereby boosting individual productive effort incentives, hence tax revenues used to provide national public goods. Thus, it helps to overcome the holdup problem, enhancing efficiency and possibly benefitting the non-democratic ruler.     

Government incentive strategies and private capital participation in China’s Shale gas development

Shale gas development investments are uncertain and irreversible in the initial stage in China. Flexible incentive strategy is needed for governments to guide private capital participation at different development stages. This study aims to provide analysis governments can use to encourage private investment in shale gas projects according to its plans in an extended real options framework. A social benefits variable is introduced to determine the threshold of social benefits that determine whether the government will choose a deferred or instant incentives strategy. By considering the efficiency factor, we show the optimal arrangements of two kinds of incentives: tax cuts and production subsidies, to implement incentive targets. The results indicate that current market demand and social benefits are the key factors that affect the government’s choice of incentive strategy. We also find that the optimal level of incentives, either tax cuts or production subsidies, are independent of current market demand and future market uncertainty under the delayed incentive strategy, but which affect the optimal level of incentives under the instant motivation strategy, and ignoring the negative influence of unpredictable random events on future market demand might lead to insufficient government incentives in this case.     

全球化加剧了城市贫困吗?

本文利用中国乡村的经验证据,对发展中国家普遍存在的局部性(经济)改革(Partial Reform)现象进行了分析。和现有文献所不同的是,本文着重分析地方官员而不是国家一级的政治精英在局部性改革中所扮演的角色。本文的结论是,给定中央政府的改革方案,地方官员因为拥有政治权力,可以选择性地实施那些只对他们自身利益有关的改革措施,而对那些可能会减少寻租机会,或削弱他们的权力基础并进而威胁其未来寻租机会的改革措施,地方官员会反对或阻挠,从而造成不同内容和性质的改革措施进展参差不齐的所谓局部性改革现象。随着改革的进展,原来支持和推动改革的力量可能会转而成为进一步改革的障碍。     

The trade-off between risk and incentives in fiscal federalism: Evidence from China

A central argument of the second-generation fiscal federalism literature is that allocating a considerable share of tax revenue to local governments can provide fiscal incentives for local officials to promote economic growth. However, increasing incentives will increase the costs of uncertainty if local government officials are risk averse. Building on the insights of the classic principal-agent models, we predict that the optimal share of tax revenues retained by local government will decrease as the uncertainty of total tax revenues increases. Using Chinese provincial data, we find a robust negative relationship between volatility and the tax-sharing ratio at the sub-provincial level. Our results indicate that optimal decentralization in developing countries balances the trade-off between risk and incentives.     

Incentives to Diffuse Advanced Abatement Technology Under the Formation of International Environmental Agreements

We analyse the incentives for polluting firms to diffuse and adopt advanced abatement technology in a framework in which governments negotiate an international environmental agreement. These incentives crucially depend on whether the underlying environmental policy instrument is an emission tax or an emission quota. The results for the international setting fundamentally differ from those for the national setting that have been elaborated upon in the earlier literature. In particular, equilibrium diffusion and adoption of advanced abatement technology are not necessarily optimal under the tax regime and may be even lower than those under the quota regime.     

韩国媒体报道中的中国国家形象分析及其相关对策——以韩国主流媒体对中国广州亚运会报道为例

随着全球化时代的来临,国家形象问题日益成为国际传播和国际关系领域里的研究热点．成为政府官员、专家学者和普通民众普遍关切的一个极富理论和实践意义的课题。本文首先介绍了韩国主流媒体对中国广州亚运会报道的整体情况,分析了韩国主流媒体报道中的中国国家形象,指出韩国媒体对中国和广州各个方面的报道比较全面、相对客观．只是在涉及到民主、人权、日本、朝鲜等问题时,才表现出负面。本文强调需要不断提升对外传播能力,通过提升国家公民的素质、建设和谐媒体．实施中国媒体“走出去”战略等手段重新塑造国家形象。     

经济全球化下的国际税收竞争与税收优惠

本文从经济全球化入手,论述了经济全球化、税收国际化、国际税收竞争与税收优惠的关系,主张纵向研究国际税收竞争,从国民经济发展的全局出发审视利用税收优惠手段参与国际税收竞争的利与弊.     

双重激励下地方政府发展新兴产业的动机与策略研究

本文建立了政策执行的双重激励模型,探索政治激励、经济激励与地方政府政策执行方式的相互关系。通过考察新能源汽车产业政策在地方层面的执行情况,笔者发现,地方政府执行中央政府产业政策的实质动机是经济激励。由于新兴产业的市场回报无法现时兑现,且其发展前景与本地的资源禀赋情况密切相关,因此对地方政府的经济激励呈现很大的不确定性和差异性。地方政府故而在平衡经济发展和政治晋升的情况下作出实动、暗动、伪动、缓动等不同选择。本文进一步提出了新兴产业政策制定和执行的启示。     

Religious identity and the provision of public goods: Evidence from the Indian Princely States

This paper describes a simple model of how a ruler’s religious identity affects public goods provision. Our primary insight is that rulers reduce public goods expenditures to a greater degree when there are privately-provided substitutes excludable by religion.The basic idea is that if the good is provided privately to the ruler’s co-religionists, the ruler faces weaker incentives to provide this public good because his co-religionists receive lower marginal utility from its provision. Testing such a conjecture is an empirical challenge, however, since the religious identity of rulers rarely varies over time and place. We address this problem by exploiting variation in the religion of rulers in the Indian Princely States. Using data from the 1911 and 1931 Indian censuses, we find that Muslim-ruled states had lower Hindu literacy but had no significant impact on Muslim literacy. This result is consistent with our model, as Muslim religious schools provided a substitute for public schools that served both Hindus and Muslims. The model is further substantiated by the fact that the religion of the ruler had no statistically significant impact on railroad ownership or post office provision, neither of which had privately-provided substitutes.     

Resource Management and the Mayor's Guarantee in French Water Allocation

This paper uses standard methods in stochastic calculus tomeasure the cost of the agency conflict that pits electedofficials of French municipalities against the communities theyrepresent in the management of the water supply. Under the Frenchlegal code, the municipalities are responsible for the watersupply and the elected officials are personally liable for anydamage due to negligence on their part. Uncertainty regardingexactly how negligence will be defined by the courts puts theelected officials in a precarious position. By delegatingauthority to an oligopoly of private firms, however, electedofficials can eliminate their personal liability, which istransferred to the delegated firm. Many studies argue thatdelegation locks communities into long-term contracts that areagainst their better interests. Thus, the agency conflict mayaffect the delegation decision to the detriment of the community.To determine whether or not this is true it is necessary to knowthe economic cost of the mayor's personal liability.     

军工企业竞争战略对技术创新的影响——股权激励视角

军工企业技术创新能力既影响着国民经济发展,又关乎国防安全。以2013—2017年80家上市军工企业数据为样本,分析军工企业竞争战略对技术创新的影响,以及股权激励在其中的作用路径。研究结果表明,差异化战略和成本领先战略对技术创新均有直接正向影响,差异化战略影响更大,且股权激励在差异化战略对技术创新的影响中发挥部分中介作用。     

生态化的创新法律体系研究

生态化技术创新需要有效的法律制度的支持,针对当前我国创新法律体系存在的问题,提出了构建生态化的创新法律体系的观点,并分析其构建的法理基础。生态化的创新法律体系主要由理念结构、体系结构和具体制度3个层面建构而成,其中国家创新战略、政府激励机制、市场激励机制以及风险规避机制属于需要重点关注的几个方面。     

晋升博弈中政府官员的激励与合作--兼论我国地方保护主义和重复建设问题长期存在的原因

过去大量的研究强调行政性分权和财政包干下地方官员的财政激励对区域经济发展及其互动的影响。本文建立了一个地方官员政治晋升博弈的简单模型 ,旨在强调地方官员的晋升激励对地区间经济竞争和合作的影响。由于政治晋升博弈的基本特征是一个官员的晋升直接降低另一个官员的晋升机会 ,即一人所得为另一人所失 ,这使得同时处于政治和经济双重竞争的地方官员之间的合作空间非常狭小 ,而竞争空间非常巨大。该模型理解我国区域经济竞争与合作问题提供了一个系统的视角和框架 ,它尤其有助于解释我国长期存在的地方保护主义、“大而全”的地区发展战略和地区间形形色色的产业“大战”和恶性竞争。     

民族精神在体育教学中实施的途径

本文分析了民族精神教育存在的问题和学校体育在民族精神教育中的作用，着重阐述体育与民族精神教育的关系以及如何寓民族精神教育于学校体育教学中。     

The Control of Politicians in Divided Societies: The Politics of Fear

Autocrats in many developing countries have extracted enormous personal rents from power. In addition, they have imposed inefficient policies including pervasive patronage spending. I present a model in which the presence of ethnic identities and the absence of institutionalized succession processes allow the ruler to elicit support from a sizeable share of the population despite large reductions in welfare. The fear of falling under an equally inefficient and venal ruler that favours another group is enough to discipline supporters. The model predicts extensive use of patronage, ethnic bias in taxation, and spending patterns and unveils a new mechanism through which economic frictions translate into increased rent extraction by the leader. These predictions are consistent with the experiences of bad governance, ethnic bias, wasteful policies, and kleptocracy in post-colonial Africa.