SOME INEFFICIENCY IMPLICATIONS OF GENERATIONAL POLITICS AND EXCHANGE*

This paper explores the implications of generational selfishness in a model in which each generation has its own government. Such selfish generational governments will potentially distort the economy along a number of dimensions. One is the monopolization of factor supplies; another is the under- or overprovision of durable public goods. We demonstrate that selfish generations may place sizable marginal taxes on their factor supplies in order to monopolize their factor markets. We also show that selfish generations will provide inefficient levels of durable public goods both at the local and national levels. Finally, we demonstrate that generational inefficiencies can arise even in models of cooperative bargaining because of the first-mover advantage of earlier generations.     

Factor Uses and the Pattern of Specialization

We show that in the setting of multiple goods and factors, the factor proportions theory has the following prediction: across industries, the impacts of the endowment of a given factor on industry outputs have positive co‐variance with the relative uses of this factor. The intuition is that, on average, the industries that use a given factor heavily have positive output responses, following an increase in the endowment of this factor. This co‐variation condition is robust to Hicks neutral‐ and factor‐augmenting productivity differences, and constitutes a direct test of the production side of the factor proportions theory. We also show that the co‐variation condition finds empirical support. This is evidence that is consistent with the factor proportions theory.     

公共财政论的理论缺陷

作为一个理论体系,公共财政理论起码在三个方面存在严重缺陷：一是它的理论基础－公共物品理论是不完整的,本引入制度性公共物品的概念后,会使公共财政理论陷入十分尴尬的“左右逢源”中;二是所谓政府（国有资本）退出竞争性物品的生产和提供行列,并不意味着国家财政将专门为公共物品提供资金保证;三是国家财政也不能退出所有私人物品的生产和提供行鲍,因为一些基础设施和公用设施实质上是根据私人物品的属性提供的,尽管国家财政也参与对它们的资金提供。     

A theory of user-fee competition

We develop a two-region model where the decentralized provision of spillover goods and other public expenditures is financed by means of user fees. We show that a decentralized solution tends to be inefficient. If the regional spillover goods are substitutes, user fees tend to be inefficiently low, whereas they tend to be inefficiently high if the spillover goods are complements.     

Efficient Equilibria in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism with Private Information

We characterize generally the Bayesian Nash equilibria of a voluntary contributions public goods game for two consumers with private information.The two consumers simultaneously make voluntary contributions to the public good, and the contributions are refunded if the total falls short of the cost of the public good. Several families of equilibria (step‐function, regular and semi‐regular) are studied. Necessary and sufficient conditions for regular and semi‐regular equilibrium allocations to be interim incentive efficient are derived. In the uniform distribution case we prove (i) the existence of an open set of incentive efficient regular equilibria when the cost of production is large enough and (ii) the existence of an open set of incentive efficient semi‐regular equilibria when the cost of production is low enough. Step‐function equilibra are proved to be interim incentive inefficient.     

Distribution of tastes and skills and the provision of local public goods

This paper introduces into the Tiebout model individuals with different skills. It is shown that the production techniques, the distribution of tastes and skills and intercommunity trade will affect the pattern of communities. In the suggested model competition with local public goods is Pareto optimal: communities will not be composed of identical people. The optimal solution requires that every community will tax everybody according to his marginal social cost. A Pareto efficient redistribution policy can be carried out only by a central government using lump-sum taxes. A federal income tax will affect community patterns and therefore is inefficient.     

公共产品的私人供给--以开放源代码软件开发为例

公共产品如何供给的问题,是福利经济学、财政学等关注的焦点问题。在什么情况下,用什么样的激励制度才能促进私人供给公共产品的积极性,长期以来悬而未决。近期出现的开放源代码软件为我们提供了新的案例。开放源代码软件倡导自由和开放的精神,完全打破了以往的商业惯例。开放源代码软件符合公共产品的基本特征,对开放源代码软件特殊供给方式的研究,能使我们在探讨公共产品的私人供给方面开拓更广的视野。同时对开放源代码软件生产过程的研究,还揭示出一种新型的生产关系正在逐步形成。     

A generalized impure public good and linear characteristics model of green consumption

This paper provides a general framework for understanding consumer behavior related to goods and services that may be considered environmentally friendly, ethically produced, fairly traded, or some combination thereof. We generalize the impure public good model and derive its comparative static properties. The model accounts for any number of impure public (green) goods and joint production of any number of both private and public characteristics. The generalization provides a bridge between the impure public good model and the well-known linear characteristics model, both of which are special cases of the model developed here. The results show how demand for green goods and characteristics such as environmental quality depends on wealth, exogenously given levels of public goods, and the technologies of joint production. The effects of changes in technology depend critically on whether jointly produced characteristics are complements or substitutes in consumption. Several of the results are rather counterintuitive and differ in meaningful ways from existing models of impure public goods and linear characteristics. The results also illuminate several reasons for greater caution about whether it is reasonable to assume that green goods and services are necessarily beneficial for the provision of public goods.     

IRREVERSIBILITY AND MONITORING IN DYNAMIC GAMES: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

This article provides experimental evidence on the impacts of irreversibility and imperfect monitoring on the efficiency and the equity of a repeated public goods game. We find that irreversibility and imperfect monitoring both lead to inefficient and unequal outcomes through different channels. Irreversibility lowers public goods contribution in earlier periods and makes the initial-period contribution gap between two players long-lasting. Imperfect monitoring hampers conditional cooperation and persistently reduces group contribution. A finite mixture estimation with conditional cooperators provides a coherent account of the treatment effects.     

公共产品供给中的“政府失灵”现象分析

公共产品是指消费过程中具有非排他性和非竞争性的产品。从本质上讲,生产公共产品与市场机制的作用是矛盾的,生产者是不会主动生产公共产品的。而公共产品是全社会成员所必须消费的产品,它的满足状况也反映了一个国家的福利水平。这就需要由政府来承担提供公共产品的责任。但是,政府部门在提供公共物品时趋向于浪费和滥用资源,致使公共支出规模过大或者效率降低,政府的活动并不总像应该的那样或像理论所说的那样“有效”。克服这种现象,有三种政策选择：（1）市场化改革;（2）宪法改革;（3）政府机构改革。     

地方性公共品供给制度创新研究

在市场经济条件下 ,地方政府的主要职责是分级提供各种地方性公共品 ,满足居民生活和企业生产的共同需要。但是 ,政府提供并不等于政府生产 ,更不等于政府垄断生产。中国现行地方性公共品供给制度的主要缺陷是地方政府以及公共部门的过度垄断。按公共品生产与提供、直接生产与间接生产分开等原则 ,打破垄断 ,有序地向国内外开放公共品生产市场 ,大力推进公共品生产的市场化 ,形成“公”与“私”以及各自内部的竞争 ,将有助于提高地方性公共品供给效率 ,增进公共福利 ,并有助于推进中国的市场化进程。     

Direct democracy and local government efficiency

This paper studies the role of direct democracy in ensuring efficient and cost-effective provision of goods and services in the public sector. The sample consists of the population of municipalities in the German State of Bavaria, where in the mid-1990s considerable direct democratic reforms granted citizens wide opportunities to directly participate in local affairs through binding initiatives. Using information on the municipal resources and the municipal provision of public goods, and applying a fully non-parametric approach to estimate local government overall efficiency, the analysis shows that more direct democratic activity is associated with higher government efficiency. This result suggests that more inclusive governance through direct decision-making mechanisms may induce more accountable and less inefficient governments.     

The Costs of Cooperation

Public goods production is not necessarily desirable and involves higher costs than is often recognized. Specifically, public goods production may require that a small minority of individuals can collude at the expense of others or impose strategic sanctions on non-contributors. These facilities may have negative as well as positive effects. The same conditions that support public goods production also support business cartels and racial discrimination, for instance. We examine the implications of this perspective for modern debates on economic policy, civic virtue, communitarianism, and libertarianism.     

创造性团队中地位竞争对团队创新的作用机制——基于解决公共产品困境和团队信任视角

当今社会发展迅速，不确定性成为环境的重要特征，创新与学习是企业获取竞争优势的关键举措。团队创新涉及冲突和利益分配的复杂过程，影响团队创新的关键问题在于识别和解决组织公共产品困境。改变供给收益的地位竞争对公共产品知识分享和风险承担的关系还不明确，且在团队信任的边界条件下对团队创新的影响也有待进一步澄清。因此，有必要在解决组织公共产品困境的视角下，探索不同类型地位竞争行为对团队创新的影响效应。通过对来自29个项目团队的233份配对样本进行实证分析发现：威望型地位竞争对团队创新有积极影响，支配型地位竞争则负向影响团队创新；知识分享和风险承担是地位竞争影响团队创新的中介机制，威望型地位竞争是解决组织公共产品困境的有效方式；团队内部信任氛围也会对团队层面的地位竞争行为产生影响，关系信任正向调节威望型地位竞争与知识分享和风险承担的关系，威胁信任负向调节威望型地位竞争与风险承担的关系，正向调节支配型地位竞争与知识分享的关系。     

Tax competition in federations revisited

We extend Keen and Kotsogiannis (2002, 2004) by considering all-purpose public goods that are beneficial to both producers and consumers. Horizontal externality (resp. vertical externality) exerted by tax competition will not necessarily lead to inefficient outcomes.     

Ecological services to and from rangelands of the United States

The over 300 million ha of public and private rangelands in the United States are characterized by low and variable precipitation, nutrient-poor soils, and high spatial and temporal variability in plant production. This land type has provided a variety of goods and services, with the provisioning of food and fiber dominating through much of the 20th century. More recently, food production from a rangeland-based livestock industry is often pressured for a variety of reasons, including poor economic returns, increased regulations, an aging rural population, and increasingly diverse interests of land owners. A shift to other provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services is occurring with important implications for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and conservation incentives. There are numerous goods and services possible from rangelands that can supply societal demands such as clean water and a safe food supply. The use of ecologically-based principles of land management remains at the core of the ability of private land owners and public land managers to provide these existing and emerging services. We suggest that expectations need to be based on a thorough understanding of the diverse potentials of these lands and their inherent limits. A critical provisioning service to rangelands will be management practices that either maintain ecological functions or that restore functions to systems that have been substantially degraded over past decades. With proper incentives and economic benefits, rangelands, in the U.S. or globally, can be expected to provide these historical and more unique goods and services in a sustainable fashion, albeit in different proportions than in the past.     

The Political Economy of Clientelism*

In this paper, we argue that the political‐commitment problem provides an explanation for why much income redistribution takes an inefficient form, particularly employment in the public sector. A job is a credible way of redistributing when it provides rents (such as in situations with moral hazard), and employment is optimal ex post. Moreover, a job is selective and reversible, and thus ties the continuation utility of a voter to the political success of a particular politician. We show that the need to make offers of employment incentive‐compatible leads to inefficiencies in the supply of public goods. We also show that such inefficient redistribution becomes relatively attractive in situations with high inequality and low productivity. Inefficiency is increased when the stakes from politics are high, when inequality is high, and when money matters less than ideology in politics.     

新农村建设中农村公共物品供给问题研究

农村公共物品能否充分而有效的提供是社会主义新农村建设的突破口,是使我国农村经济健康发展,提高农民生活水平的必要条件。我国农村公共物品的提供存在总量不足、分配不均、结构不合理的问题。这是由于长期发展战略的忽视,供给主体权责失衡,决策机制偏离,行政能力不足等原因造成的。文章建议通过创新供给机制、加大财政投入、加强制度保障等多种措施,来改善和提高我国农村公共物品的供给水平。     

区位性因素与公共品的最优供给

本文分析了两种区位性因素对地方公共品最优供给(质量与数量)的影响。一类区位性因素为某公共品在城市中所在的区域。分析表明,位于城市边缘地区的公共品的最优质量要小于位于城市中心地区公共品的最优质量。另一类区位性因素为某公共品与居民的相对位置(距离),这一因素在具体分析中被转化为使用居民出行半径表示的指标。结论表明,出行半径的增加一方面加大了中间投票人与公共品之间的距离,另一方面也使得原先距离公共品较远的居民得以有机会享用该公共品。前一种影响对公共品的最优质量起抑制作用,后一种影响的效果则相反。而公共品的最优质量随出行半径如何变化,将取决于这两种效应之间的比较。本文还根据公共品之间是否存在替代性区分了替代性公共品与非替代性公共品,并分析了这两种不同性质的公共品受区位性因素影响而在最优质量与最优供给数量上所呈现出的差异。     

Better to be direct? Evidence from the abolition of direct elections in Italian local governments

This paper provides evidence for the importance of direct electoral processes by investigating the consequences for public spending of an unexpected reform that repealed direct elections for local (provincial) politicians in Italy. Direct elections were substituted with indirect ones, whereby directly elected municipal politicians choose a municipal mayor to serve as provincial president. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I document two main consequences of the reform. First, municipalities connected to the provincial presidents tend to receive disproportionately more public funds after the reform, suggesting geographic favoritism increased. Second, the share of provincial resources spent on public goods drops in favor of bureaucratic costs. I discuss suggestive evidence that these results are driven by weaker electoral incentives rather than by the selection of worse politicians.