Pension Schemes and Incentives: Case Studies from Australia and the United Kingdom

The use of selective benefits, directed to those considered most in need, has a high 'poverty reduction efficiency'. But selectivity inevitably produces non-linearities in the budget constraints facing individuals, which may have incentive effects. The design of a tax and transfer scheme requires these two aspects to be carefully balanced. This article considers the issues in the context of means-testing within the Australian and UK State pension schemes. In the Australian case, the main question concerns the incentive to save, while in the UK scheme the 'earnings rule' presents a strong disincentive to work beyond pension age.     

政治庇护与改制:中国集体企业改制研究

公有产权的政治庇护理论认为拥有公有企业控制权的政府会从公有企业的持续经营中获取政治收益(就业、税收、企业利润以及个人福利等),政府或政府代理人的收益将会影响公有企业的改制决策。本文通过1998年至2003年全国规模以上集体企业的大样本数据,检验了政治庇护理论对公有企业改制原因的预测。结果表明,当集体企业为政府或政府代理人贡献的政治收益越高,集体企业在生产投入和产品销售上越依赖于政府,集体企业相对于地方经济越重要时,集体企业越不容易发生改制。这些结果有力地支持了政治庇护理论,并为企业改制政策制定和实施提供了重要的参考依据。     

民营化、外资股东和嵌入性:来自中国的证据

与传统经济学研究以代理理论为主对民营化的讨论不同,本文通过整合演进理论、制度理论和代理理论,研究了民营化企业改进绩效必须解决的组织和管理问题。以2001年经历了民营化并且在1998～2003年间持续运营的企业为样本进行实证研究,发现,外资股东参与的民营化企业更有可能改进治理结构,进行组织学习和资源能力的培养。但是,这种关系会受到改制企业组织和制度嵌入性的影响。因此,如何管理好组织和制度嵌入性的双重影响,是影响民营化企业改制后绩效改善的关键。     

Lottery Incentives and Resource Management: Evidence from the Agricultural Data Reporting Incentive Program (AgDRIP)

Environmental and Resource Economics - To manage resources effectively in an agri-environmental context, policymakers need information about on-farm management practices and ecological conditions....     

Privatization and Its Benefits: Theory and Evidence

Privatization has been a key component of structural reformprograms in both developed and developing economies. The aimof such programs is to achieve higher microeconomic efficiencyand foster economic growth, as well as reduce public sectorborrowing requirements through the elimination of unnecessarysubsidies. Microeconomic theory tells us that incentive andcontracting problems create inefficiencies due to public ownership,given that managers of state-owned enterprises pursue objectivesthat differ from those of private firms (political view) andface less monitoring (management view). Not only are the managers'objectives distorted, but the budget constraints they face arealso softened. The soft-budget constraint emerges from the factthat bankruptcy is not a credible threat to public managers,for it is in the central government's own interest to bail themout in case of financial distress. Empirical evidence showsa robust corroboration of theoretical implications: privatizationincreases profitability and efficiency in both competitive andmonopolistic sectors. Full privatization has a greater impactthan partial privatization and monopolistic sectors show anincrease in profitability that is above the component explainedby increases in productivity, which reflects their market power.From the macroeconomic perspective, no conclusive evidence canbe drawn, but the trends are favorable. (JEL D21, D61, D62,E65)     

Seasonality and the Life-cycle Permanent Income Hypothesis: Evidence for Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany

Intra-year observed consumption displays substantial seasonality. Consumers allocate their non-durable expenditure over the four quarters of the year, maximising total utility subject to the period-to-period budget constraint. Osborn (1988) derives a seasonally-varying utility function, for which Hall's (1978) consumption function implies a periodic autoregressive model with a unit root. Using quarterly seasonally unadjusted consumption for Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany, recently developed tests for seasonality and periodicity are used to examine the modified rational expectations life-cycle permanent income hypothesis and to reinforce previous findings in the literature. Seasonal habit persistence is introduced as an alternative model and its empirical adequacy is found to be significant. Finally, a multivariate test of the excess sensitivity puzzle excludes a predictive role for lagged income changes.     

Incentives and Female Entrepreneurial Activity: Evidence from Panel Firm Level Data

The goal of this paper is to investigate entrepreneurial activity and to analyze the incentives of female participation in the labor market. Female entrepreneurial activity is closely related to social and economic issues. They represent a driving force, active and effective members of economic, political, professional and managerial societies. On the other hand, they have families with serious maternal responsibilities and inelastic household obligations, roles which they are trying to balance effectively. To that reason, specific actions and carefully designed measures are essential in encouraging and promoting them to engage into entrepreneurial activity. To investigate the issue of entrepreneurial activity, personal characteristics and various motivation incentives are examined in order to determine the major factors that may influence female entrepreneurial spirit in Greece. Obtaining data from 1600 industrial firms located in the prefecture of Piraeus over the period 1999–2009, this study makes use of the panel methodology approach to provide evidence about the main determinants of female entrepreneurship. What is found is that a combination of pull and push motives and effective mentoring framework, in addition to a set of personal characteristics such as risk of failure, educational level, creativity, innovativeness, ambitiousness and marital status, seem important for the encouragement of women entrepreneurship in Greece to start up a new business. The implications seem very substantial for the formulation and implementation of effective support policies and measures for female entrepreneurs’ vital start up and early stage period.     

Privatization, water access and affordability: Evidence from Malaysian household expenditure data

The aim of this paper is to examine empirically the impact of privatization on water access and affordability in Malaysia using household expenditure data. The development of water sector in Malaysia in terms of coverage has been fairly uneven. Some states have privatized their water supply sector while others have not. The overall finding of this study is that the impact of privatization on access and affordability in the Malaysian water supply sector is ambiguous. Privatization does not seem to have improved access to treated water from network in Malaysia. A likely explanation of this is the role played by the government in the sector in terms of tariff regulation and universal service provision. Furthermore, privatization does not seem to have adversely affected affordability in the sector. In addition to political intervention in tariff regulation, this could be due to the government maintaining a significant stake in privatized water companies.     

Incentive regulation in the United Kingdom and the United States: Some lessons

Summary and Conclusions This paper has reviewed the approach to incentive regulation in the United Kingdom and the United States. The United Kingdom approach has typically relied on pure PCR, incorporating much sharper incentives for efficiency and lower transactions costs, but it makes the company more of a hostage to the regulator. The United States approach, which is grounded or even mired in the legal system, gives up efficiency incentives in an attempt to avoid making the companies the hostages of regulatory reneging.²⁷ The papers in this Issue illustrate the broad scope of incentive regulation, from the purer forms of PCR to a number of variations and mixtures of PCR with other forms of regulation. The interesting theoretic results and the importance of achieving practical solutions in incentive regulation underscore the importance of the problems and approaches raised in this Issue.     

Privatization and enterprise wage structures during transition: Evidence from rural industry in china

Wage structures in transition economies usually diverge significantly from their centrally–planned predecessors. Using a matched sample of employees and enterprises, we examine the effects of privatization on wage structures in rural industry in two provinces of China. We find that privatization was associated with increased wage and earnings inequality. We report increased returns to education, increased returns to experience for mid–age workers, and increases in gender wage discrimination. We find these aspects of wage structures are similar in different types of private ownership emerging from the reform process. JEL classification: P31, P23, P26 and J31.     

地方官员激励和产权保护——基于企业微观数据的研究

文章利用世界银行的企业微观调查数据对地方官员激励与企业产权保护进行了实证研究。研究发现:(1)地方财政分权程度越高、当地市委书记的年龄小于55岁,企业所获得的产权保护水平越高,反之则越低。(2)地方官员激励机制对产权保护的作用在不同规模企业中具有结构性差异。具体而言,在财税剩余所得激励下,地方官员更倾向于保护大企业,而在一把手晋升激励下,地方官员则更倾向于保护小企业。这与不同规模的企业对经济总量和增速有不同的边际贡献率有关,地方官员在财税剩余所得激励下更关心经济总量,而在一把手晋升激励下则更关注经济增速。     

地区间竞争、财政自给率和公有制企业民营化

相关文献认为 ,分权化改革导致的地区间竞争加剧引发了各地区的国有企业民营化进程。本文试图通过实证分析验证这一结论。本文的实证分析表明 ,地区间竞争加剧的确会推动相关地区国有经济民营化进程。但是由于 1 994年以来 ,地区间市场一体化水平基本没有提高 ,从而地区间竞争并没有明显加剧 ,因此 ,2 0世纪 90年代以来普遍展开的公有制企业改制进程主要不是由地区间竞争推动的。地方政府积极推动公有制企业民营化的主要动因来自于财政方面 ,来自于 1 994年分税制改革给地方政府造成的财政压力和预算约束硬化 ,来自于非国有经济发展、非国有经济比重提高对改善地方财政状况的显著作用。本文的实证分析表明 ,非国有经济比重的提高明显有助于提高地方财政自给率。     

Understanding low interest rates: evidence from Japan,Euro Area,United States and United Kingdom

The paper investigates the factors determining long‐term interest rates. Our estimation results for major industrialized economies suggest that central banks have actually had a key influence on the level of long‐term interest rates. We thus show that 1) the customary neoclassical model of interest rate determination, on which central banks tend to rely, is neither rooted in the institutional setup of the credit markets nor supported by the data, and that 2) the Austrian explanation incorporated in the model of Wicksell–Mises–Hayek of the credit and business cycle fits better the economic reality. As central bank policy makers might lack the necessary knowledge and foresight to set market rates to levels consistent with economic fundamentals, there is a high chance of misalignments of market rates. The correction of misalignments could lead to severe economic disruptions.     

股权激励与财务重述——基于中国A股市场上市公司的经验证据

本文以2005—2007年中国A股市场实施股权激励的上市公司及其配对样本为研究对象,采用Logistic回归法,考察了股权激励与财务重述的相关关系。研究发现,实施股权激励的公司发生财务重述的可能性要显著高于未实施股权激励的公司;相比基于业绩的股权激励模式,实施基于股价的股权激励模式的公司发生财务重述的可能性更高。研究结论支持了有股权激励尤其有基于股价的股权激励模式的上市公司经营者可能有短期盈余操纵行为的观点。     

Influences on software piracy: Evidence from the various United States

Examining socio-economic influences on software piracy in the United States, we find a negative relationship between software piracy and income, tax burdens, and economic freedom. A 1% increase in per-capita income correlates with a 0.25% reduction in piracy.     

Multiple job holding in the United Kingdom: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

This article examines the determinants of multiple job holding in the UK. We address these issues using data from the first 11 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which covered the period from 1991 to 2001. Evidence from the BHPS does not support the hypotheses of main job hours constrained and main job insecurity. We argue that the incentive for moonlighting in the UK is due to financial pressures and the desire for heterogeneous jobs. The empirical work is carried out separately for men and women.     

Regime‐dependent effects of uncertainty on inflation and output growth: evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States

Employing a bivariate regime switching model, this paper attempts to examine the regime‐dependent effects of inflation uncertainty and output growth uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Using monthly data of the United Kingdom and the United States, we provide evidence that both nominal and real uncertainty exert regime‐dependent impacts on inflation. Furthermore, in case of both the countries, inflation uncertainty has adverse impact on output growth mainly during the period of economic contraction. Also, for these two countries, it can be argued that higher real uncertainty significantly reduces output growth only in their respective low output growth regimes.