日美贸易摩擦:由宏观经济摩擦转向制度摩擦

战后日美贸易摩擦是在经济全球化的背景下和产业结构的转换中产生和发展的.日美贸易摩擦的发展不仅与日本产业结构的变化同步,而且与全球化的进展同步.60年代,产业结构由轻工业转向重化工业化,贸易摩擦也由纺织品转向钢铁、彩电;70-80年代,产业结构由重化工业化转向技术集约化,日美贸易摩擦开始转向汽车、半导体;90年代,日本产业结构由技术集约化开始转向信息化,日美贸易摩擦开始转向金融、通信、流通等领域.     

Expense Preference Behavior and Contract-Management: Evidence from U.S. Hospitals

This paper reports on a study of expense preference behavior in a conditional sample of hospitals (before and after adoption of contract-management arrangements) using an extension of Mester's (1989) test. To identify expense preference parameters, input demand equations are considered in addition to the cost function and are estimated jointly with the cost function as a system of nonlinear equations. Based on this test, contract managers do not appear to be cost minimizers, although they tend to exhibit lower expense preference behavior than salaried managers. The importance of our results, however, goes beyond a single industry because we have shown that estimates of expense preference depend critically upon the particular input demand being studied. Studies that hitherto have relied on single input demand equations or on the cost function alone may have to be reinterpreted in this light.     

A Study of Major Impact: Assortative Mating and Earnings Inequality Among U.S. College Graduates

This research has two goals: to measure the extent of assortative (non-random) mating by college major in the United States, and to assess the extent to which assortative mating by college major increases earnings inequality among college-educated couples. Assortative mating of college graduates with other college graduates has been extensively studied, but research on assortative mating by field of study is rare. The analysis uses a large sample (659,732 couples) from five years of the American Community Survey public use files to group college degrees into nine categories, compute the frequency of all marital pairings, and compare these frequencies to a random assignment of pairings. The results show that assortative mating by college major is common for all majors and both genders, and that these results are robust to division of the sample by age group. Because high-earning majors tend to be married to spouses from the same high-earning major group, and likewise for low-earning majors, assortative mating increases earnings inequality among two-earner college-educated couples. The extent of this increased earnings inequality is calculated with both dollar measures and standard aggregate measures of inequality. Thus college-educated Americans tend to marry persons with similar college majors and this tendency measurably increases earnings inequality among college-educated couples.

     

人力资本先行追赶与制度创新--德国和美国的经验及对我国的启示

成功的经济追赶都是以人力资本的先行追赶为先导的，而人力资本的先行追赶则又是以比教育创新更广泛的制度创新为先决条件的。19世纪末德国和美国的历史经验为这种理论提供了证明。公共知识基础设施的制度创新是19世纪末德国和美国跨越式发展得以成功的主要原因，而在知识经济和信息革命的时代，人力资本的先行追赶还需要大力发展知识密集的服务业和创新网络，它与公共知识基础设施的创造性发展一起构成了21世纪人力资本先行追赶的双引擎。     

Discontinuities and Earnings Management: Evidence from Restatements Related to Securities Litigation*

A heated debate exists as to whether discontinuities in earnings distributions are indicative of earnings management. While many studies attribute discontinuities in earnings distributions to earnings management, other studies argue that earnings discontinuities are artifacts of sample selection and research design. Overall, there is limited direct evidence of a connection between earnings discontinuities and earnings management. In this study, we provide direct evidence linking earnings management to earnings discontinuities for a sample of firms that settle securities class action lawsuits and restate earnings from the alleged GAAP violation period. We compare the distribution of restated (“unmanaged”) earnings to originally reported (“managed”) earnings. We find that discontinuities are not present in the distribution of analyst forecast errors and earnings changes using unmanaged earnings but are present using managed earnings. The discontinuity in the earnings level distribution is attenuated, but not eliminated, on an unmanaged basis. These shifts among our sample of firms are caused by earnings management and cannot be explained by sample selection or research design issues. Our findings are important because many studies use earnings discontinuities as a proxy for intentional earnings manipulations and we provide the first direct evidence of a link between these two phenomena.     

趋同还是趋异:执政党派别与美国社会经济形势

本文通过考察执政党派别对美国社会经济形势是否产生显著的影响,来检验美国两大政党的政策取向及其实施效果究竟是趋同还是趋异.我们选取了反映美国社会经济形势的六组指标作为被解释变量,在控制了执政党在选举中获胜优势的基础上,检验代表执政党派别的虚拟变量是否具有统计显著性.经验检验结果表明,从20世纪60年代至今,美国的执政党派别在国家生活中并未产生显著影响,两党的政策取向及其实施效果呈现出趋同的态势:在不同政党执政时期,只有名义利率和公司税水平存在显著差异,而其他所有社会经济指标均未呈现出显著差别.     

金融服务与经济增长:美国的经验及启示

长期以来,金融发展与经济增长的关系一直是经济学家关注的热点话题之一。随着金融的日益发展,与此相关的理论研究和经验检验也在不断深化。Schumpeter(1912)早就提出较发达的金融体系有利于降低交易成本和信息成本,因此影响投资决策、储蓄水平和技术创新,进而促进经济增长。约翰·格力和爱得华·肖在20世纪60年代提出了金融能够将储蓄转化为投资而提高社会生产性投资水平的观点。随后,休·帕特里克(HughT.Patrick)从“需求追随”和“供给领先”两方面论证了金融体系在提高存量资本和新增资本配置效率、加速资本积累中的作用。麦金农和肖则…     

美国产业结构变动与服务业的发展

20世纪80年代以来,美国积极调整发展战略,国民经济取得了长足发展。本文在介绍美国产业结构变化的基础上,对美国服务业的发展以及美国与服务业和服务贸易相关的政策措施进行探讨。由于我国目前正处于产业结构调整的关键时期,因此学习美国的经验对我国产业结构调整和产业政策制订具有一定的理论和现实的借鉴意义。     

大股东控制与盈余管理行为研究:来自配股公司的证据

在上市公司配股融资过程中,大股东具有通过盈余管理来获得配股资格和提高股票价格的强烈动机。本文以1998—2002年间456家实施配股的上市公司为样本,基于行业横截面数据和修正的Jones模型研究了配股融资过程中盈余管理的分布特征,并分析了大股东控制对盈余管理行为的影响。研究结果表明：（1）上市公司在配股前3个年度和配股当年存在显著的盈余管理机会主义行为;（2）配股公司的盈余管理程度与第一大股东持股比例具有倒u型关系：当第一大股东持股比例低于53．20％时表现出正相关关系,而当第一大股东持股比例高于53．20％时则表现出负相关关系;（3）盈余管理程度与前2—10大股东持股集中度、负债比率和资本支出水平之间具有负相关关系．而与管理层持股比例和公司规模之间具有正相关关系。大股东通过盈余管理实现了对小股东财富的掠夺效应。造成了上市公司价值、声誉和后续融资能力的下降。     

Entrepreneurial Planning in a Regulated Environment: the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission and the Maritime Industry

Entrepreneurs exploit market opportunities and innovate to achieve or maintain strategic advantage over their competitors. In the absence of government regulation, entrepreneurs are free to focus on improving satisfaction of customer wants, for example, by enhancing current goods, supplying new goods, or supplying established goods at lower cost. In a regulated market, entrepreneurs focus on satisfying regulatory authorities, for example, to earn rate increases, subsidies, or tax benefits. Economists normally conceptualize regulation as restricting entrepreneurial choice over prices charged, including general prohibitions against price discrimination, or as imposing additional costs on business enterprises through mandating actions entrepreneurial planners would not otherwise have chosen, or prohibiting actions which would have been freely chosen. This paper examines the role of a specific regulatory agency, the Federal Maritime Commission, and its regulatory oversight of the maritime shipping sector. Business strategy and public policy implications will be developed, as well as implications for the growth and development of the shipping industry. The history and nature of government intervention in the maritime sector will be reviewed. The presence of a regulatory authority at least partly substitutes a kind of bureaucratic sovereignty over the consumer sovereignty of an unregulated market. Regulated firms compete for favors from the regulatory authority, and in a regulated environment strategic advantage is directed away from entrepreneurial planners to political entrepreneurs.

U.S. Monetary Policy and Herding: Evidence from Commodity Markets

Atlantic Economic Journal - This paper investigates the presence of herding behavior across a spectrum of commodities (i.e., agricultural, energy, precious metals, and metals) futures prices...     

Last‐Chance Earnings Management: Using the Tax Expense to Meet Analysts' Forecasts*

We assert that the tax expense is a powerful context in which to study earnings management, because it is one of the last accounts closed prior to earnings announcements. Although many pre‐tax accruals must be posted in the year‐end general ledger, managers estimate and negotiate tax expense with their auditors immediately prior to earnings announcements. We hypothesize that changes from third‐ to fourth‐quarter effective tax rates (ETRs) are negatively related to whether and how much a firm's earnings absent tax expense management miss analysts' consensus forecast, a proxy for target earnings. We measure earnings absent tax expense management as actual pre‐tax earnings adjusted for the annual ETR reported at the third quarter. We provide robust evidence that firms lower their projected ETRs when they miss the consensus forecast, which is consistent with firms decreasing their tax expense if non‐tax sources of earnings management are insufficient to achieve targets. We also find that firms that exceed earnings targets increase their ETR, but this effect is less significant. By studying the tax expense in total, rather than narrow components of deferred tax expense, our results provide general evidence that reported taxes are used to manage earnings.     

盈余管理与控制性大股东的"隧道行为"——来自配股公司的证据

我国上市公司处于大股东控制状态,在上市公司配股融资过程中,大股东具有通过盈余管理来获得配股资格和提高股票发行价格的强烈动机.本文以实施配股的上市公司为样本,基于行业横截面数据和修正的Jones模型研究了配股融资过程中盈余管理的分布特征,并分析了大股东控制下盈余管理行为带来的隧道效应.研究结果表明:(1)上市公司在配股前3个年度和配股当年存在显著的盈余管理机会主义行为,而配股后长期业绩趋于下降;(2)配股公司的盈余管理程度与第一大股东持股比例具有倒U型关系;(3)大股东的盈余管理行为导致了上市公司价值的下降.因此,大股东通过盈余管理实现了对小股东财富的掠夺效应,误导了外部投资者的决策,造成了上市公司资本配置效率、公司价值、声誉和后续融资能力的下降.     

Technology transfer to the U.S.S.R and the shape of the production function

Summary In this paper we argue that previous studies of the impact of imports of Western capital to the Soviet Union have erred by emphasizing the direct contribution of such capital to output. To our view, a more important consequence of such imports is a catalytic effect on the productivity of indigenous capital and labor cooperating with Western machinery. Estimates of production functions for Soviet industry and several subsectors indicate that Western capital imports do improve the productivity of indigenous inputs and make the production process more capital intensive.     

Tariff protection and workforce gender: Evidence from U.S. manufacturing industries

A data set of 266 four-digit SIC U.S. manufacturing industries is used to examine the relationship between tariff protection and workforce gender. The paper shows that industries with a relatively large proportion of women are more likely to be protected by U.S. tariff policy, even when factors such as wages and human capital are controlled. Furthermore, this result is robust in that it is not driven by any particular industry or industries.