Labor-Market Search and International Business Cycles

The objective of this paper is to explain the observed international fluctuations by modifying the traditional modelling of the labor market in the two-country real business cycles model. Our intuition is that labor-market search can be useful to understand the propagation of international fluctuations. Changes in the expected returns to search induce responses in search and recruiting activities, the effects of which are propagated through time via changes in the stock of employment. Given that the technology shock spills over to the other country, domestic and foreign firms start searching at the same time in anticipation. Employment then increases simultaneously and displays a hump-shaped profile in the two countries. This partially curtails the capital outflow from the country which does not benefit from the shock. Introducing in a search framework a non-separability between consumption and leisure in the utility function allows both to solve the consumption puzzle and to complete the explanation of the international comovement puzzle. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E32, F41, J40.     

财政支出倾向、金融市场失衡与城乡收入差距

本文基于新古典增长理论,构建了一个刻画财政支出倾向、金融市场失衡与城乡收入差距之间关系的动态一般均衡模型,并使用1996-2010年间中国宏观经济统计数据进行参数校准和数值模拟.研究结果表明,在其他因素不变的情况下,城乡金融市场发展差异性对城乡收入差距有显著影响,财政支出倾向的影响次之.财政支出的城市倾向策略,一方面促进了城市经济的发展,另一方面也不可避免地扩大了城乡收入差距.最后,本文据此给出了政策建议.     

Fiscal Austerity and the Multiplier in Times of Crisis

To address concerns about the sustainability of public debt, most industrialized countries shifted towards fiscal austerity after 2010. A popular concern is that austerity is self‐defeating, because fiscal multipliers can be large. Specifically, a number of recent studies find that multipliers tend to be large during financial crises and/or if monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound. However, public debt crises tend to have an offsetting effect by making multipliers smaller than during normal times. Consequently, while austerity is no cure for all, it is unlikely to be literally self‐defeating when sovereign risk is high.     

Fiscal Policy,Economic Integration and Unemployment

In this paper fiscal policy is examined for an open economy characterized by unemployment due to efficiency wages. We allow for capital and firm mobility in a model where the government chooses the level of wage, source-based capital and profit taxation. The taxing choices of governments are analyzed in scenarios which differ with respect to the constraints imposed on the set of available taxes and on the mobility of firms. As a general result, the welfare loss from labor market imperfections increases when tax bases become internationally mobile, which suggests an increasing relevance of domestic labor-market reforms when tax bases become global.     

中国财政政策理论乘数和实际乘数效应研究

本文通过建立宏观经济模型,分别测算了我国的理论财政政策乘数和实际财政政策乘数.测算结果表明,这两种财政政策的乘数值都不大,尤其是实际作用乘数的值明显偏低,财政政策的挤出效应也不明显.就乘数的影响因素来看,其可能原因在于我国的边际消费倾向过低,同时消费存在很大的刚性.根据上述乘数的测算值,我们还分别估算了在两种模型下财政政策的综合乘数效应.显然,财政政策是政府调节经济的主要杠杆,其中政府购买支出是最主要的政策工具.此外,尽管理论和实际作用乘数相差很大,但两者最终形成的乘数效应对经济的拉动作用相差不大,甚至财政政策的实际乘数效应在多数年份超过理论乘数效应.     

Fiscal Multiplier in Microstates: Evidence from the Caribbean

The global financial crisis and the attendant Great Recession of 2007–2009 have spawned a full-scale re-examination on the effectiveness of fiscal policy throughout the world. While this has led to a plethora of analyses in developed countries, the same abundance of the work has not been evident for developing counties. This paper uses time-series analysis to examine the multiplier impact of fiscal policy on growth and other macroeconomic variables in the case of four Caribbean states. Although these countries have similar degrees of openness, they differ in debt burdens and economic structures, thus providing a natural laboratory for this investigation. We concluded that fiscal multipliers among the sample countries are quite low and that the contemporaneous fiscal stance appears to be pro-cyclical.     

Redistribution, Fiscal Competition, and the Politics of Economic Integration

The paper examines the consequences of the economic integration of factor markets in a model with two countries that redistribute income among their residents. The social benefits in each country are financed by a source based tax on capital which is democratically chosen by its inhabitants. If either capital or labour is internationally mobile, the countries engage in fiscal competition and the partial integration of capital or labour markets is detrimental to the countries' redistributive ability. A move from partial to full integration, however, may alleviate rather than intensify fiscal competition, particularly, if the two countries face sufficiently similar economic and political conditions. In such a situation, for example, tax competition for mobile capital is softened as the labour market becomes more integrated and even vanishes if both factors are fully mobile. As a result, there is more redistribution in equilibrium and a majority of the population in each country is strictly better off.     

财政支农的市场一体化效应及其政策

以增加农民收入从而支撑具有产业、区域特征的市场一体化为视角,对财政政策不同的支农方式和支农工具所产生的不同的农业市场一体化效应进行了分析,认为直接收入补贴明显好于价格支持;间接支农优于直接支农;而且不同的支农项目对市场一体化的促进作用差异显著。为此,提出了逐步减少价格支持,增加直接收入补贴,增加财政间接支农力度,引导农业生产要素多渠道利用,促进农业系统内外部合作,重视三农无形资产,建立适当监督机制等政策建议。     

Market Segmentation, Market Integration, and Tacit Collusion

Moving from market segmentation to market integration (firms cannot discriminate among markets) is shown to have often anticompetitive effects in an infinitely repeated Cournot game. In particular, market integration between two countries leads both of them to experience anticompetitive effects when product markets are similar. The same conclusion holds when trade liberalization is modeled as a decrease in bilateral trade barriers followed by moving from market segmentation to market integration. The analysis also predicts that a less efficient country (like a country in transition) enjoys pro–competitive effects from market integration.     

财政分权、融资约束与税收政策周期性

中国的税收立法权集中,而税收征管执法权却高度分散,宏观税收政策的周期性应由中央和地方政府的财政行为共同决定。本文在税收平滑模型基础上引入财政分权体制下国税和地税部门两个税收政策执行主体,发现中央和地方债务融资约束的不同以及税收共享机制将导致中央、地方税收政策周期相背离——中央税收政策是逆周期的,地方税收政策是顺周期的,而宏观税收政策是非周期性的。基于中国2002—2013年间29个省级单位国、地税征管数据的实证检验为中央、地方税收政策周期相背离的理论假说提供了经验证据。本文的发现不仅为理解税收征管体制改革提供了一个新的视角,而且对优化中央"减税降费"政策效果,从分税制、地方债务、转移支付等财政体制源头上治理税收政策顺周期行为具有参考价值。     

Terms-of-Trade Shocks, Labor-Market Adjustment, and Safeguard Measures

This paper explores a simple model of labor-market adjustment where intersectoral transfer in response to terms-of-trade shocks involves both sector-specific skill acquisition and workplace disruption. Externalities arise because the marginal migrant does not consider the congestion costs imposed on intramarginal migrants or the disruption costs imposed on the incumbent workers in both sectors. While these externalities give rise to a case for temporary adjustment assistance, the analysis does not support the use of trade measures such as tariffs.     

Financial Integration,Growth and Volatility

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the welfare gains from financial integration for developing and emerging market economies. To do so, we build a stochastic endogenous growth model for a small open economy that can: (i) borrow from the rest of the world; (ii) invest in foreign assets; and (iii) receive foreign direct investment. The model is calibrated on 46 emerging market and developing economies for which we evaluate the upper bound for the welfare gain from financial integration. For plausible values of preference parameters and actual levels of financial integration, the mean welfare gain from financial integration is around 13.5% of initial wealth. Compared with financial autarky, actual levels of financial integration translate into higher annual growth rates.     

内生经济增长理论框架下的市场失效与财政政策

内生经济增长理论认为,知识和人力资本的外部效应与创新带来的垄断势力推动经济增长的同时,也会带来非帕雷托最优的经济增长收入分配的不公平,将阻碍经济增长;加快知识和人力资本积累、促进技术进步以及缓解收入分配不公平的财政政策能纠正市场失效,使长期经济增长达到社会最优.     

时变乘数效应与改革开放以来中国财政政策效果测定

财政政策效果测定历来是国家政策制定与改革关注的重点。本文基于约束的VAR模型提出了具有微观基础的财政政策时变乘数指标,并分解测算了改革开放以来中国财政支出和政府融资的时变冲击乘数、时变累积乘数以及时变现值乘数。同时,结合中国实际,通过一个理论模型分析了财政政策的乘数效应及其影响因素。研究结果表明,政府投资乘数呈减弱趋势,政府消费乘数亦呈小幅下降态势。政府税收乘数显著为负且相对较为稳定,但债务发行乘数呈明显下降趋势,并于2006年起由正转负。基于模型校准和经验分析可知,目前政策当局依然可通过增加消费性支出促进经济增长;但是,需要管控政府投资规模,因为随政府投资产出弹性下降和规模扩大,政府投资乘数急速下滑势必削弱财政政策效果。同时,由于中国税收并未引发大规模挤占效应,因此目前税收格局相对合理。此外,鉴于当前债务发行存在负经济增长效应,表明政策当局仍需重点盯住和管控债务规模。在此基础上,结合微观主体流动性约束强弱和结构性参数走向,本文提出了增强财政政策效果的对策建议。     

中国金融市场发展与政府债务风险 ——兼论财政政策联动性

文章在梳理我国金融市场发展对政府债务风险影响机理的基础上,基于"经济-财政-金融"一体的框架探究了两者的具体作用机制,并通过敏感度分析与财政反应函数分析了这一机制与财政政策调整间的联动性.研究发现,现阶段我国金融市场发展主要通过"筹资能力"①影响政府债务可持续性,无论是长期均衡还是短期动态调整均表现出改善政府融资环境的积极效应,且不易受财政政策冲击,可缓解经济景气变化所引起的政府债务风险长期均衡波动,实现对周期性风险波动的主动防控.同时,结合我国初现"财政疲劳"的现实,金融市场发展有助于实现财政调整的良性循环,扩大政策回旋空间,缓解潜在风险波动.此外,历史上较大危机后,我国不同财政防范措施造成了政府债务风险短期波动的显著差异.     

Financial Integration and Market Efficiency: Some International Evidence from Cointegration Tests

This study investigates whether the globalization of financial markets enhances the efficiency of national stock markets. To this end, we have developed a dynamic representation of cointegration which is consistent with hypothesis that stock prices reflect the efficient discounting of new information on market fundamentals and testes for market efficiency in five industrialized markets (the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany) over the last two decades. Our empirical analysis indicates that the U.S. and Canadian stock markets obey the long-run equilibrium path implied by our dynamic cointegration model, but the Japanese, British, and German markets do not exhibit such characteristics. Thus, it can be claimed that the stock markets of the United States and Canada are informationally efficient, whereas those of Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany are not. [G15, G14]     

Wage Rigidity, Monetary Integration and Fiscal Stabilization in Europe

Flexibility in fiscal policy is a necessary ingredient in a policy package for EMU. Even with strong endogenous shock absorbers, such as real wage flexibility, fiscal policy can speed up the stabilization process in response to demand shocks. If real wages are rigid, as they typically are in Europe, fiscal policy cannot remove the adverse effects of asymmetric supply shocks, but it can successfully limit the divergence between member states. Monetary flexibility, a possible option in the run-up to EMU, cannot completely make up for the stabilization function of fiscal policy.     

财政赤字、利率波动与金融危机——美国金融危机再审视

小布什执政期间由于减税以及军费和社保支出增加等原因导致政府赤字不断膨胀。本文从收入和支出两个方面分析小布什执政时期政府赤字膨胀的原因。在开放经济大国情况下的IS-LM模型中债务融资、货币融资、汇率融资等方式对利率波动有影响;实际利率模型实证分析的结果也表明了货币供应量、政府赤字、实际汇率和通货膨胀对实际利率的影响是显著的。在此基础上,应用Taylor规则的分析结果表明利率的不稳定变化可能引发次债危机。     

Market Structure and Fiscal Policy Effectiveness

In a monopolistic competition macromodel with endogenous market structure, the fiscal multiplier is shown to consist of two components. The first depicts the response of output to a fiscal expansion through the conventional channels that disregard the role of market imperfections. The second component captures the effects of firms' market power as well as the policy-induced change in market structure. The latter effect—which has not been taken into account in existing studies—is shown to be quite significant in raising the fiscal multiplier (even above unity) and in improving consumers' welfare when the labour market is competitive.