Public Versus Private Provision of Public Goods

It is well known that public goods are underprovided in a static setting with voluntary contributions. Public provision—in a median voter framework with proportional taxation—generally exceeds private provision. This paper compares private and public provision of public goods in a dynamic setting. In a dynamic setting, voluntary donations can result in efficient provision. Also, majority‐rule solutions exist even when taxes are not proportional to income. At low discount factors, public provision tends to exceed private provision. As patience increases, however, private provision may exceed public provision. This occurs because many outcomes with a low level of public good provision—and potentially large targeted transfer payments to particular individuals—become sustainable under public provision. Under private provision, however, large targeted transfers are unsustainable. To finance the public good, private provision tends to result in benefit taxation, and public provision tends to result in progressive taxation.     

公共投资对私人投资的挤出挤进效应分析

本文运用经济增长理论与新古典分析方法从短期与长期、宏观与微观两个层面分析了公共投资对私人投资替代与互补的影响机制.一方面,公共资本对私人资本具有替代性,增加公共投资会"挤出"等量的私人投资;另一方面,公共资本对私人投资具有正外部性,可提高私人投资的边际产出从而"挤进"私人投资.公共投资对私人投资的影响方向由这两种对立效应的相对强弱决定.实证检验表明,政府公共投资对私人部门投资在挤进的同时又有挤出,最终起主导作用的是挤进效应.政府在公共投资政策的制定和把握上应加强对私人投资的引导和规范,使私人投资者产生正确的理性预期,将项目投向更有效率、更有作用的领域.     

金融发展与国民储蓄率:一个倒U型关系

金融发展会同时影响家庭储蓄与企业投资,从而是决定国民储蓄率的重要因素。基于世界银行1973—2005年的跨国面板数据,本文利用动态面板回归发现金融发展与储蓄率之间存在显著的倒U型关系,即在金融发展水平较低时,储蓄率随着金融市场的发展而逐步提高,而当金融市场发展达到一定的程度后,储蓄率则随之下降。为解释以上实证发现,本文构建了一个家庭与企业均受融资约束的动态一般均衡模型。从理论上,本文证明了金融发展会降低家庭的储蓄动机,同时又会提高企业的投资需求。由于均衡储蓄率由家庭储蓄与企业投资共同决定,模型蕴含了金融发展与总储蓄率之间的非单调关系。数值模拟显示,本文模型能够解释金融发展与储蓄率之间的倒U型关系。     

公德私德研究——兼评张华夏和盛庆琜的道德理论

本文首先给出关于“公德”和“私德”的定义,公德的定义是:可以借助于理性推理加以评价或辩护的道德行为或道德规范,其标准是增进最多数人的最大利益。私德的定义是:必须惜助于情感直觉加以评价或辨护的道德行为或道德规范,其标准是增进他人的利益。然后简要介绍张华夏和盛庆(?)教授的道德理论,并进行比较和改进,把二者结合为一个新的道德模型,从而把公德和私德统一起来。一个好的道德系统应当是:以公德为主而以私德为辅。     

On the Private Provision of Intertemporal Public Goods with Stock Effects

The provision of public goods is often hindered by a lack of powerful institutions that can sanction free riders or otherwise enforce private contributions to the public good. The simple deposit based solution introduced by Gerber and Wichardt (J Public Econ 93:429–439, 2009) solves this problem, but may require prohibitively large deposits, in particular in the context of intertemporal public goods. In this paper, we propose a modification of the deposit solution that relies only on comparably small deposits. The proposed modification improves the applicability of the procedure, most notably as it also allows to reduce deposits in static public goods problem by transforming them into dynamic ones with small per period contributions.     

Aging,Savings, and Public Pensions in Japan*

We analyze the impact of population aging on Japan's household savings rate and on its public pension system and the impact of that system on Japan's household savings rate and obtain the following results: first, the age structure of Japan's population can explain the level of, and past and future trends in, its household savings rate; second, the rapid aging of Japan's population is causing Japan's household savings rate to decline and this decline can be expected to continue; third, the pay‐as‐you‐go nature of the public pension system, combined with rapid population aging, created considerable intergenerational inequities and increased the savings rates of cohorts born after 1965, which in turn slowed the decline in Japan's household savings rate; and fourth, the 2004 public pension reform alleviated the intergenerational inequities of Japan's public pension system somewhat but will in the long run exacerbate the downward trend in Japan's household savings rate.     

Effects of Public Infrastructure on Cost Structure and Productivity in the Private Sector

This paper examines the effects of public infrastructure on the cost structure and productivity in the private sector in Australia. Translog cost functions incorporating public capital infrastructure are estimated for the aggregate private sector as well as for seven broad industry groups using annual time series data for 1968/69–1995/96. The effects of public infrastructure on productivity are measured in terms of both cost-saving and output-augmenting measures. The empirical results suggest that public infrastructure has a positive and significant impact on productivity in private sector industries. Public capital serves as a substitute for both private capital and labour. The rates of return to public capital are significant and vary over the sample period.     

Unit Versus Ad Valorem Taxes: The Private Ownership of Monopoly in General Equilibrium

Employing a general equilibrium framework, Blackorby and Murty prove that, with a monopoly and under 100% profit taxation and uniform lump‐sum transfers, the utility possibility sets of economies with unit and ad valorem taxes are identical. This welfare equivalence is in contrast to most previous studies, which demonstrate the superiority of the ad valorem tax in a partial equilibrium framework. In this paper, we relax the assumption of 100% profit taxation and allow the consumers to receive profit incomes from ownership of shares in the monopoly firm. We find that, under certain regularity conditions, for any fixed vector of profit shares, the utility possibility sets of economies with unit and ad valorem taxes are not generally identical. But it does not imply that one completely dominates the other. Rather, the two utility possibility frontiers cross each other. Additionally, employing a standard partial equilibrium welfare analysis, we show that the Marshallian social surpluses resulting from the two tax structures are identical when the government can implement unrestricted transfers.     

Effects of Eastern European and Western technologies on LDCs: a macroeconometric analysis

Questions involving technology transfer to less developed countries (LDCs) command an increasing interest in the world today. In this paper, two macroeconometric models are developed to compare the impacts of Eastern European medium-advanced and Western most-advanced technologies on the economic growth of LDCs. The models are then used to analyse data from the Egyptian industrial sector for the period 1952–1980.     

定向增发与公开增发新股融资股东财富效应的实证研究

公开增发新股和定向增发新股是上市公司增发新股融资的两种方式。研究发现,我国上市公司公开增发新股后1～3年股东获得的长期超额收益率均为负,而定向增发新股后两年股东获得的长期超额收益率均为正,表明我国上市公司宣告公开增发新股股东获得负的股东财富效应,而宣告定向增发新股股东能获得正的股东财富效应。从保护投资者长期利益的视角看,本文的研究结果表明在股权分置改革之后证券管理部门推出的定向增发新股融资方式和上市公司青睐定向增发新股融资方式具备其适时性和合理性。     

Agriculture in recent development theory

This paper is a critical review of recent contributions to the literature on agriculture in development theory. It considers and compares the main lines of advance made within neoclassical, neo-Marxian and structuralist approaches. Recent neo-Marxian and structuralist studies of agrarian development reveal that traditional agriculture is neither stationary nor efficient, that resource allocation cannot be separated from wealth distribution or production organization, that forms of surplus appropriation do not necessarily follow the dictates of efficiency, that the social relations of production may inhibit accumulation and determine the forms of technological change, that the state's role in primitive accumulation is more economic than explicitly coercive/political, and that political and macroeconomic constraints preclude a simple ‘get the prices right’ view of the intersectoral terms of trade. The thrust of these developments is to challenge both neoclassical and some orthodox Marxian formulations of agrarian development issues and add to the insights to be gleaned from a political economy of development.     

Estimating the Private Economic Benefits of Sons Versus Daughters in India

In order to understand the economic incentives behind gender discrimination in India, this paper provides the first estimates of the magnitude of the economic benefits of having a son instead of a daughter. The study estimates large gains from a first-born son to per capita income and expenditure, household assets, and a reduction in the probability the household is below the poverty line. Estimates show that a first-born son may provide economic advantages through a reduction in total children born and also from an adult son’s labor supply contribution to his parents’ household. The observed pattern of incentives is also compared with observed patterns in sex selection as a test of whether the relative economic value of first-born sons and daughters can explain the prevalence of sex-selective abortion.     

Public Spending and Private Investment: Evidence From Greece

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is a link between disaggregated measures of government expenditures and private investment in Greece. A cointegration analysis of a multivariate system of equations is applied in order to empirically estimate the long run relationships between private investment and different measure of government expenditures. Subsequently IRF and VDC are estimated. Government investment is found to assert a positive effect on private investment, supporting in this way the capital accumulation process. On the other hand, government consumption appears to compete for the same resources with government investment, while it negatively affects private investment. [E62]     

Rates and Biases of Technical Progress and Returns to Scale in the Multi-output, Multi-input Production: Primal Versus Dual, Output-augmenting Versus Input-saving and Long-run Versus Short-Run

I examine the relationships among various dual concepts of output-augmenting and input-saving rates of technical progress as well as various dual concepts of returns-to-scale measures in the long run and short run. Output-augmenting rates of technical progress are all equal, and so are input-saving ones. Returns to scale plays an important role in the relationship between output-augmenting and input-saving rates of technical progress. Capacity utilization plays an important role in the relationship between the long run and short run. The bias of technical progress is also briefly referred to.
L Classification Numbers: D24, O030, O047.     

Privatisation in Australia: Understanding the Incentives in Public and Private Firms

Privatisation has been an important tool of government policy in Australia and overseas in the last two decades. We explain recent contributions to research in privatisation, and apply a simple framework to ownership policy in a wide variety of Australian cases, including prisons, airports, Telstra, water and gas distribution, and ambulance services. The framework is not limited to these applications, and is aimed at providing a starting point for policy makers in their assessment of alternative ownership regimes. Our analysis is supportive of other authors, who have cast doubt on the wisdom of prison privatisation, and we extend this conclusion to ambulance services and the disposal of highly toxic waste. Application of our framework also suggests that Australian privatisations may have involved excessive separation of assets. The framework also provides a basis for arguing that a key monopoly component of Telstra—the 'wires' component—be kept in public ownership, and access auctioned to service providers. We consider the possible pitfalls of corporatisation policy, and argue that corporatised entities may operate to improve the appearance of success at the expense of the reality.     

Public Open Access and Private Timber Harvests: Theory and Application to the Effects of Trade Liberalization in Mexico

A common popular assertion is that trade liberalization encourages deforestation. But whether this is true depends on how trade policies affect the allocation of land among competing uses and how they influence illegal cutting of public forests. A model is presented that allows for forests to be either public or private, and public forests are divided into protected (or managed) and threatened categories. Effects of price changes are shown on each part of the forest. An empirical version of the model is applied to the case of Mexico with NAFTA. Most scenarios considered show that NAFTA will have positive long-run effects on forest cover in Mexico but that this is net of losses on private lands.     

Private and Public Information in Self-fulfilling Currency Crises

Received November 9, 2000; revised version received July 24, 2001     

On Endogenous Efficiency in Public and Private Firms

This paper reconsiders a model proposed by De Fraja (1993) to compare public and private production under complete and incomplete information. It is argued, in contrast to previous results, that such a model provides no convincing grounds to sustain the productive superiority of public ownership. It is also suggested that meaningful comparisons of efficiency require settings where differences in ownership imply different implementation constraints.