The influence analysis on public expenditure to the technique efficiency of China

In this paper, we use SFA to estimate the time-variant stochastic frontier model of 31 cities in China. The results tell us that raising the proportion of public expenditure in GDP can lower the technological efficiency, but raising some parts of public expenditure in GDP can promote the technological efficiency. Its realistic meaning is that it is excellent to turn the public expenditure structure to promote the technological efficiency. We computed the technological efficiency of 31 provinces/cities and the results show that the gap between the eastern region and western region is growing much. Finally, we decompose total factor productivity (TFP) and get the following result: from three regions, the biggest influence factor on technological efficiency is the scales economy. Technological progress and allocation efficiency have a smaller influence. From our results, we suggest that technological progress and allocation efficiency from public expenditure and income be raised to influence the TFP rate of change, and have a more efficient public expenditure. __________ Translated from Journal of Finance and Economics (财经研究), 2005, (12) (in Chinese)     

Economic growth and budgetary components: a panel assessment for the EU

In this article, we test to determine whether a reallocation of government budgetary components can enhance long-term GDP growth in a set of 15 EU countries. We apply panel data techniques to the period 1971–2006, and use three alternative dependent variables in a growth regression: economic growth, total factor productivity and labour productivity. Our results also identify the distortions induced by public expenditure in the private factors allocation. In particular, we detect a strong crowding-in effect associated to public investment, which has enhanced economic growth by boosting private investment. We also associate a dependence of productivity on public expenditure on social security.     

Corporate Expenditure on Environmental Protection

We examine the determinants of firm’s current environmental expenditure and firm’s capital investment in equipment for pollution control in Irish manufacturing industries using a Heckman selection model. The main determinants for the two types of expenditure are similar: larger, exporting and energy-intensive firms are more likely to spend. Being subject to environmental regulation also has an effect. Once the decision to commit resources has been taken, larger, older, foreign-owned, exporting and energy-intensive firms incur higher environmental expenditure. For the amount of capital investment only firm size and age play a role. This suggests that the economic and regulatory incentives in place are such that it is the largest and most polluting firms that do most to reduce pollution.     

On the optimality of funding and hiring/firing according to stochastic demand: The role of growth and shutdown options

We examine the firm's investment and hiring/firing policy under stochastic demand with potential reversibility. We evaluate in particular the values of both investment and hiring/firing growth and shutdown options not only for the standard Cobb–Douglas production function but also when taking account of the natural upper bound on the output due to the demand level. For this latter purpose, we use results about average of options provided in Shackleton and Wojakowski (2007). As a by-product, we extend the approach of Tserlukevich (2008) by introducing the employment level to analyze in particular the optimality of the financial structure and leverage. Our approach allows us to get a quasi-explicit solution of the optimal firm's value that can be deeply analyzed. Such results can potentially explain the interest for flexible contractual arrangements with capital and labor firm's structure.     

Modelling investment and disinvestment decisions under competition,uncertainty and different market interventions

A real options market model is developed, which derives the firms' optimal investment and disinvestment thresholds simultaneously in a competitive environment. It combines genetic algorithms and stochastic simulation, whereby vast modelling flexibility is gained. For example, different market interventions can be integrated and their effects on the firms' investment behaviour and the sectoral welfare can be assessed. The model is validated for its application to competitive markets by numerically replicating the optimality property of myopic planning. According to the results, production ceilings and investment subsidies are preferable to price floors because the welfare is less reduced for a given stimulation of the willingness to invest. Moreover, it is shown that not considering disinvestment options, which in reality often exist, can lead to incorrect valuations of investment strategies at firm level and incorrect policy impact analyses at macroeconomic level.     

中国研发投入的动态演化

R&D investment is enterprises’ strategy based on the market demand on innovative products and its production capacity for them. Enlarging market demand would spur the enterprises’ R&D input and the enhancement of technology state in production ability could have a complex effect on less developed countries’ R&D expenditure. With the measurement of China’s technology state compared to the United States and Japan, this paper explores with the state space model the dynamic effects of determinants on China’s R&D expenditure with the data during 1987–2006. The result illustrates that the growing national income, a proxy of domestic market demand, impedes the further R&D investment in China due to the enormous demand for necessities dominated by lower income class, and the income inequality is the major incentive for R&D investment via the higher pricing on the wealthy group, and that the improvement of technology state reduces the innovation risk and plays an important role in stimulating R&D expenditure.      

Optimal endowments of transport investment: an empirical analysis for mauritius

We investigated the issue of optimality of the provision of transport capital in economic progress. Using an optimization growth model, a condition allowing the assessment of whether public capital would be under- or overprovided was theoretically derived. By deriving a growth equation from a simple production function, we empirically tested this condition for the case of Mauritius during the period 1950–2005. Transport capital is observed to have played an important role in explaining growth of the country. Same is reported for nontransport capital. Interestingly, the null hypothesis that the coefficients of all the types of capital are equal could be rejected, and the estimated coefficient on transport investment proved to be higher than that on private investment (and the nontransport capital). This suggests that transport capital would still be underprovided for the Mauritian case, despite government investment.     

On optimality in intergenerational risk sharing

Summary. This paper defines and studies optimality in a dynamic stochastic economy with finitely lived agents, and investigates the optimality properties of an equilibrium with or without sequentially complete markets. Various Pareto optimality concepts are considered, including interim and ex ante optimality. We show that, at an equilibrium with a productive asset (land) and sequentially complete markets, the intervention of a government may be justified, but only to improve risk sharing between generations. If markets are incomplete, constrained interim optimality is investigated in two-period lived OLG economies. We extend the optimality properties of an equilibrium with land and give conditions under which introducing a pay-as-you-go system at an equilibrium would not lead to any Pareto improvement. Received: October 5, 1998; revised version: April 3, 2001     

Optimal fiscal policy, uncertainty, and growth

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy in a stochastic endogenous growth model. Due to externalities in human capital accumulation, the market allocation is inefficient, thereby justifying government intervention. The uncertainty stemming from technological disturbances affects the growth rate, which can be explained by precautionary motives of risk averse agents. Fiscal policy means consist of a consumption tax, investment subsidies, and bonds. We obtain counter-acting growth effects of investment subsidies, which are differentiated with respect to deterministic and stochastic capital income components. The policy implications from the deterministic model are substantially extended in the stochastic context. A general rule for a welfare maximizing policy is derived, which is represented by a continuum of alternative tax-transfer-schemes. We discuss three benchmark cases, which crucially differ with respect to their implications regarding the size of the government expenditure share.     

Risky human capital and deferred capital income taxation

We study the structure of optimal wedges and capital taxes in a dynamic Mirrlees economy with endogenous distribution of skills. Human capital is a private, stochastic state variable that drives the skill process of each individual. Building on the findings of the labor literature, we construct a tractable life-cycle model of human capital evolution with risky investment and stochastic depreciation. In this setting, we demonstrate the optimality of (a) a human capital premium, i.e., an excess return on human capital relative to physical capital, (b) a large intertemporal wedge early in the life-cycle, and (c) a non-zero intratemporal wedge even at the top of the skill distribution at all dates except the last date in the life-cycle. The main implication for the structure of optimal linear capital taxes is the necessity of deferred taxation of physical capital. The average marginal tax rate on physical capital held in every period is zero in present value. However, expected capital tax payments do not equal zero in every period. Necessarily, agents face negative expected capital tax payments early in the life-cycle and positive expected capital tax payments late in the life-cycle.     

Unit roots and structural breakpoints in China’s macroeconomic and financial time series

This paper applies unit-root tests to 10 Chinese macroeconomic and financial time series that allow for the possibility of up to two endogenous structural breaks. We found that 6 of the series, i.e., GDP, GDP per capita, employment, bank credit, deposit liabilities and investment, can be more accurately characterized as a segmented trend stationarity process around one or two structural breakpoints as opposed to a stochastic unit root process. Our findings have important implications for policy-makers to formulate long-term growth strategy and short-run stabilization policies, as well as causality analysis among the series. __________ Translated from Economic Research Journal (经济研究), 2006, (1) (in Chinese)     

On an optimal consumption problem for p-integrable consumption plans

A generalization is presented of the existence results for an optimal consumption problem of Aumann and Perles [4] and Cox and Huang [10]. In addition, we present a very general optimality principle. Received: July 14, 1999; revised version: September 9, 1999     

中国地方公共支出的产出效率及其最优水平

通过对Barro Rule单一类型政府支出模型的推广,本文建立了多类型政府支出模型,并且利用中国省级面板数据研究了不同类型公共支出的效率及其最优水平。结果显示,最优总支出水平大致在20%左右,经济建设性支出、行政性支出和社会服务性支出的最优水平大约分别为5.8%、6.6%和7.6%。     

Applications of a generalized metric in the analysis of iterated function systems

Summary. Iterated function systems make up an interesting class of stochastic processes which are useful for many types of stochastic modeling. In this paper we review and slightly generalize a contractivity condition guaranteeing uniqueness of invariant measures. Also, we examine how the invariant measure, and thus also the asymptotic behavior, of such a process is affected by perturbations of the defining functions and probabilities.Received: 15 September 2002, Revised: 29 October 2002, JEL Classification Numbers: C62, O41.I would like to thank Professor Göran Högnäs for his support. I am also greatly indebted to the Finnish Graduate School in Stochastics for my financial support and I would like to thank the anonymous referee for the helpful comments.     

Testing the balanced growth hypothesis: evidence from China

We investigate whether China’s experience during 1952–2004 supports the balanced growth entailment of the neoclassical growth model. Estimation of long-run relations among output, consumption and investment for the full period reject the balanced growth hypothesis for both the national and regional economies. When the economic reforms of the late 1970s are modelled as a structural break by the methods of Johansen et al. (Economet J 3(2):216–249, 2000) and Perron (Econometrica 57(6):1361–1401, 1989), we find some evidence of balanced growth in the pre-break period but in the post-break period the ‘great ratios’ are trend-stationary, precluding fully balanced growth, though permitting a common (stochastic) productivity trend.      

Endogenous fertility and modified Pareto-optimality

In a world of endogenous fertility, where the number of descendants is an integral part of the economic allocation, the traditional concept of Pareto-optimality cannot be applied any longer: the number of individuals to be present on earth may vary between any two allocations we wish to compare. Therefore, the concept needs to be modified in order to give new life to the discussion of economic efficiency. This work introduces a straightforward variation of the Pareto-principle and characterizes the optimality of economic allocations according to this concept. It is shown that some of the well-known traditional results on intertemporal optimality do no longer hold. In particular, lump-sum tax instruments (or the rearrangement of initial endowments) are no longer a sufficient tool to achieve efficiency. Received: March 2003, Accepted: September 2005 This work has greatly benefitted from comments by Oded Galor, Karl Shell, Vasco Santos and an excellent anonymous referee. Many thanks to the Editor of this Journal for providing an impeccable refereeing process. Support by the European Union via the Human Capital and Mobility Grant #ERBCHBICT941218 is gratefully acknowledged.     

Book Reviews

This paper reformulates Kalecki's investment models based on 'the principle of increasing risk'. First, it is shown that in his model risk can be interpreted as a conditional probability of bankruptcy of a firm, or the 'hazard rate' in reliability theory. Secondly, a simple static Kaleckian investment model is developed based on this interpretation. In the model, a slightly modified Kaleckian optimality condition for investment holds. It is also shown that, as Kalecki correctly pointed out, the principle of falling marginal efficiency of capital (or investment) is not required to obtain a finite level of investment. Finally, I consider sequential investment in an intertemporal model. In this model, a modified version of the Kaleckian optimality condition determines investment. In addition, as Kalecki emphasized, his increasing risk limits the level of investment even without increasing and convex adjustment costs associated with investment, by which the finite rate of investment is derived in the macroeconomics literature.     

The Causality Between R&D And Investment

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between R&D expenditure and investment in machinery and equipment in order to test for causality. New growth theory emphasises the role of R&D in creating blueprints needed to produce new capital goods implicitly assuming causality running from R&D to investment. Other recent studies using firm level data have investigated the relationship between innovative activity and investment in fixed capital. In this paper we use aggregate data from the US economy on R&D expenditure in the industrial sector and aggregate investment in machinery and equipment. Standard Granger causality tests, together with the Hsiao version, are then performed, showing that causality runs from R&D to investment. In addition we perform a cointegration analysis allowing a test of possible long-run feedbacks. This dynamic representation shows that any feedback between investment and R&D is only significant in the long run.     

Environmental regulation and investment: Evidence from European industry data

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the effects of environmental regulation on investment. In particular, we ask whether and how strongly an industry's investment responds to stringency in environmental regulation. Environmental regulation is measured as (i) an industry's total current expenditure on environmental protection, and (ii) a country-industry's revenue from environmental taxes. Focusing on European data of manufacturing industries between 1998 and 2007, we estimate the differential impact of environmental stringency on four types of investment: gross investment in tangible goods, in new buildings, in machinery, and in ‘productive’ investment (investment in tangible goods minus investment in abatement technologies). Both environmental variables enter positively, and their quadratic terms exhibit significantly negative parameter estimates. This, in turn, indicates a positive but diminishing impact of environmental regulation on investment.     

The probability approach to general equilibrium with production

We develop an alternative approach to the general equilibrium analysis of a stochastic production economy when firms’ choices of investment influence the probability distributions of their output. Using a normative approach we derive the criterion that a firm should maximize to obtain a Pareto optimal equilibrium: the criterion expresses the firm’s contribution to the expected social utility of output, and is not the linear criterion of market value. If firms do not know agents utility functions, and are restricted to using the information conveyed by prices then they can construct an approximate criterion which leads to a second-best choice of investment which, in examples, is found to be close to the first best. We are grateful to participants in the 2006 Public Economic Theory Conference, Hanoi, the 2007 CARESS/COWLES workshop on General Equilibrium at Yale University, the 2007 SAET Conference at Kos, Greece, the NSF/NBER 2007 Conference on General Equilibrium at Northwestern University, and seminars at Rice University, the University of Southern California, Indiana University, and U.C. Davis for helpful comments. We particularly thank Jacques Drèze and David Cass for stimulating discussions, and a referee for helpful suggestions for improving the paper.