Spring cleaning: rural water impacts, valuation, and property rights institutions

Using a randomized evaluation in Kenya, we measure health impacts of spring protection, an investment that improves source water quality. We also estimate households' valuation of spring protection and simulate the welfare impacts of alternatives to the current system of common property rights in water, which limits incentives for private investment. Spring infrastructure investments reduce fecal contamination by 66%, but household water quality improves less, due to recontamination. Child diarrhea falls by one quarter. Travel-cost based revealed preference estimates of households' valuations are much smaller than both stated preference valuations and health planners' valuations, and are consistent with models in which the demand for health is highly income elastic. We estimate that private property norms would generate little additional investment while imposing large static costs due to above-marginal-cost pricing, private property would function better at higher income levels or under water scarcity, and alternative institutions could yield Pareto improvements.     

Political connections, financing and firm performance: Evidence from Chinese private firms

This paper examines the role of affiliation with the ruling Communist Party in the operation of private enterprises in China. Using a nationwide survey of private firms, we find that the Party membership of private entrepreneurs has a positive effect on the performance of their firms when human capital and other relevant variables are controlled. We further find that Party membership helps private entrepreneurs to obtain loans from banks or other state institutions, and affords them more confidence in the legal system. Finally, we find Party membership to be more important to firm performance in regions with weaker market institutions and weaker legal protection.     

Political Entrepreneurship and the Democratic Allocation of Economic Resources

Political entrepreneurship occurs when an individual acts on a political profit opportunity. These profit opportunities can be divided into two categories: productive, and predatory. Productive opportunities enable entrepreneurs to profit from enhancing the efficiency of government, while predatory opportunities enable entrepreneurs to profit from forcibly transferring resources from some to others. This analysis shows that political institutions tend to favor predatory over productive political entrepreneurship, and shows that what is sometimes referred to as political exchange does not have the same efficiency characteristics as voluntary exchange in private markets.     

Performance of private higher education institutions in Vietnam: evidence using DEA-based bootstrap directional distance approach with quasi-fixed inputs

Vietnam’s higher education has witnessed substantial improvements since the implementation of the Doi Moi (renovation) policy. One of the significant developments is the promotion of establishment and enhancement of the role of private institutions in national education systems. However, the quest to improve the overall performance of the private higher education institutions remains a big challenge for many stakeholders. We assess the performance of Vietnamese private universities using a data envelopment analysis–based bootstrap directional distance approach with quasi-fixed inputs. The results show that there was a large variation in the efficiency levels of private universities within and between academic years and between metropolitan and other private universities. Our empirical findings provide more insights for educational leaders and policy makers on the performance of private higher education institutions and the implications of privatization of the national higher education system.     

Bank versus nonbank financial institution lending behaviour: indictors of firm size,risk or ownership?

Using 1251 matched commercial loan deal terms of listed companies over the period 2003–2014, we examine the heterogeneity of lending behaviours of bank and nonbank financial institutions. The results show that large firms have a higher likelihood of getting loans from nonbank financial institutions. Compared to banks, nonbank financial institutions are more likely to provide credit help to high operation risk firms. State-owned listed firms have a higher probability to get finance from nonbank financial institutions than private firms, which highlights the situation that private firms are in a weak position to get credit help from China’s financial system. Moreover, the process of increasing the banks’ noninterest income ratio tends to drives firms to borrow from nonbank financial institutions.     

Post-Lange Market Socialism: An Evaluation of Profit-Oriented Proposals

In recent years we have observed significant growth in the private sector in many higher education systems around the globe. This growth of private higher education is associated with high political expectations, notably concerning greater choice of programs and greater responsiveness of institutions to students' and labor markets' demands. Looking at the experience of several European and Latin American countries, this study analyzes the patterns of program diversification of public and private higher education and discusses the impact of the private sector for the diversification of higher education's supply. The results show a contrasting picture between political beliefs about privatization in higher education and its actual results, suggesting that private institutions tend to be far more specialized than their public counterparts.     

民间金融与中小企业发展:对温州的实证分析

本文以温州为例对中小企业发展与民间金融互动关系问题进行了实证分析。温州中小企业 (尤其是规模居中的中小企业 )对于民间金融有着较为明显的需求。在民间金融供给方面 ,我们对温州介入中小企业信贷的民间金融规模及运作方式进行了分析。本文认为 ,政府需要建立多元化的中小企业融资服务体系 ,引导民间金融组织逐步演化为规范化运作的、定位于中小企业融资服务的民营金融机构 ,才能从根本上解决中小企业融资问题     

Bank ownership,performance, and the politics: Evidence from Taiwan

This paper investigates the effects of politics on the performances of financial institutions in Taiwan over the period from 1994 through 2009 using the two-stage generalized method of moments approach. We argue that politics and financial institutions are related and this relationship varies with the ownership of financial institutions. Our main findings are, firstly, during election years, the private financial institutions earned higher ROA and loan growth than the government- and foreign-owned. Secondly, government-owned institutions are not affected by current elections for all measures of performance, while foreign institutions significantly earned lower ROA, higher interest margin, and spent higher overhead costs. The finding that lendings of government-owned institutions are no longer subject to political pressures across time implies partial success of financial reforms in Taiwan.     

Institutional capacity to dynamically innovate: An application to the Portuguese case

The present paper addresses the dynamics of innovation, by extending the analysis beyond a static-economic perspective. It offers a dynamic-institutional mapping of relational capacities to dynamically innovate. Its main goal is to contribute to the above-mentioned research theme by presenting a new methodology able to pinpoint different trends in the relational capacities of institutions when they are innovative. Thereby, major characteristics in the networks of innovation are identified. This investigation uses an extended set of private institutions and public organizations located in Portugal, evaluated by their WebPage contents. To this data set a new combination of multivariate statistical methods is applied to detect group performances, to compare them, and to identify gradients of capacity to dynamically innovate. The results demonstrate that this method can provide extremely useful and tailor-made information for policy evaluation at regional or national levels.     

Pro-social motivation,effort and the call to public service

We investigate the interaction of pro-social motivation and wages in pro-social organizations with a novel subject pool, 1700 students destined for the private and public sectors in Indonesia, using a measure of pro-social motivation that exactly matches the mission of the organization. Three novel conclusions emerge. Consistent with a common, but untested, assumption in the theoretical literature, workers with greater pro-social motivation exert higher real effort. However, high pay attracts less pro-socially motivated individuals. Furthermore, we also test whether a real world pro-social organization (the Indonesian Ministry of Finance) attracts pro-socially motivated workers. We find that prospective entrants into the Indonesian Ministry of Finance exhibit higher levels of pro-social motivation than a comparable sample of general workers.     

民营企业实施柔性管理的对策研究

柔性管理方式的产生是市场竞争和科技革命共同作用的结果,是民营企业提升竞争力的必然选择。柔性管理是一个有机整体,对多元化的市场需求具有快速响应能力。民营企业实施柔性化管理必须注重人的培养、加强研究开发、进行流程再造、重建组织结构、推动制度创新。     

Education production efficiency: Evidence from Brazilian universities

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the efficiency of higher education institutions in Brazil with emphasis on its determinants, taking particularly into account the relative efficiency of public and private institutions on the application of their resources. The availability of scores in standardized tests for Brazilian universities helps a lot with this task since they provide a widely accepted output measure. The difference between the scores of last-year and first-year students in ENADE is used to measure performance. There exists an entrance exam in Brazilian universities where they can screen out their students. Therefore we believe that students' characteristics should be considered a non-discretionary input and consequently explain the output. This specification implies that public institutions are more inefficient than private ones.     

社会地位会影响企业融资约束吗?——来自A股民营上市公司的经验证据

本文从企业的社会性对经济性行为影响的视角研究社会地位对民营企业融资约束的影响。以2009—2018年沪深A股民营上市公司为研究样本,研究发现社会地位越高的企业面临的融资约束程度越小。将企业所在地区的市场化程度以及企业高管的金融背景纳入考虑之后,研究发现相比于市场化程度较高的地区,在市场化程度较低地区,社会地位缓解企业融资约束的效果更为显著;相较于拥有金融关联的企业,没有金融关联的企业提升社会地位更有利于缓解融资约束。且进一步研究发现,在市场化程度较低地区,没有金融关联的企业社会地位缓解融资约束的效果最为显著。这些结论不仅拓展了企业"社会属性"对其"经济性"行为的影响研究,而且能够为民营企业缓解融资约束提供有益借鉴,尤其是处在市场化程度不高地区,且不存在金融关联的民营企业。     

Regulatory Institutions And Structures

This article presents a legal perspective on regulatory institutions, procedures and processes. Analysis of legal instruments examines justifications for regulatory interventions, and considers the inadequacies of private law remedies to instances of market failure (such as monopolies, inadequate or asymmetric information, externalities and co–ordination problems). A distinction is drawn between social and economic regulation: the former deals with such matters as health and safety, and environmental and consumer protection; and the latter is needed where there is insufficient competition. Instruments of social regulation include prior approval, mandatory standards and information disclosure. A range of instruments of economic regulation is also assessed, including competition law, public ownership, price and quality regulation, and competitive public franchising. Analysis of regulatory processes focuses on regulatory rule–making, delegated regulation and self–regulation. Particular weight is given to different forms of accountability—financial, procedural and substantive—which draws attention to the significance of the public interest dimension of regulatory systems.     

Persistent media bias

The news media plays an essential role in society, but surveys indicate that the public views the media as biased. This paper presents a theory of media bias that originates with private information obtained by journalists through their investigations and persists despite profit-maximizing news organizations and rivalry from other news organizations. Bias has two effects on the demand for news. First, rational individuals are more skeptical of potentially biased news and thus rely less on it in their decision-making. This skepticism reduces demand and leads the news organization to set a lower price for its publication the greater is the bias it tolerates. Lower quality news thus commands a lower price. Second, bias makes certain stories more likely than others. Given their private information, journalists may bias their stories if their career prospects can be advanced by being published on the front page. News organizations can control bias by restricting the discretion allowed to journalists, but granting discretion and tolerating bias can increase profits if it allows journalists to be hired at a lower wage. Bias is not driven from the market by a rival news organization nor by a news organization with an opposing bias, and the profits of a high-bias news organization can be higher than the profits of a low bias one. Moreover, bias can be greater with competition than with a monopoly news organization. If individuals collectively choose regulation in place of their individual decision-making, bias increases the expected stringency of regulation.     

Competition and diversification in public and private higher education

The development of mass higher education and growing competition between higher education institutions has given increasing visibility to the issue of diversification. This article analyses the issue of programme diversification, using a panel of 181 Portuguese higher education institutions over the period 1995 to 2007, by comparing the behaviour of public and private institutions. The results show that the legal status of institutions is the major determinant of programme diversification, as private institutions are far more specialized than their public counterparts. The study also evaluates the role of other institutional variables, such as the institution’s size, age, location, institutional mission and research intensity, to explain differences in the diversification behaviour of higher education institutions. The results provide important insights, as competition has been thought to improve the performance of higher education institutions.     

Public investment in developing countries: A blessing or a curse?

This paper analyzes the relationship between public and private investment in developing countries. We set up a simple theoretical model where two countervailing forces coexist. On the one hand, public investment raises the marginal productivity of private capital and leads to potential crowding-in of private investment. On the other hand, weak institutions and restricted access to financing could diminish the positive effects of public investment projects and crowd-out private investment. The empirical results - which exploit both the time series and cross sectional variation in the data using a panel of 116 developing countries with annual observations between 1980 and 2006 - suggest that on average the crowing-out effect dominates. Moreover, we find that this crowing-out effect is dampened (or even reversed) in countries with better institutions - where the marginal productivity of public investment is conceivably higher - and that are more open to international trade and financial flows, such that financing constraints are less binding.     

转型经济中的贿赂与企业增长

运用欧洲复兴与开发银行(EBRD)在转型经济国家进行的BEEPS调查数据,本文研究了转型经济中企业增长与贿赂的关系.控制了企业、行业、制度和宏观经济的相关因素,以及控制了遗漏企业隐含特征所造成的内生性问题后,发现企业的贿赂与增长间存在显著的正向关系.进一步的研究表明贿赂能够通过降低官员掠夺(保护费功能),或帮助企业获得资源(润滑剂功能)来促进企业增长,这体现了贿赂的关系资本作用.     

我国在用医疗器械安全监管法律主体研究

随着医疗技术的进步和科技水平的提升,在用医疗器械安全已成为影响人的生命健康的重要因素之一。站在行政法的角度,从法律体系、监管职权、社会监管等方面分析发现当前我国在用医疗器械安全监管主体存在的问题。建立以政府食品药品监管部门为主导、社会组织和机构为补充的在用医疗器械安全监管主体模式能够完善我国在用医疗器械监管体系,确保人民群众＂用械＂安全。     

Higher education costs and scale and scope economies

Higher education multi-product cost functions are estimated for the public and private sectors disaggregated by research, comprehensive, baccalaureate, and associate level institutions. The output mix incorporates professional school teaching output, in addition to undergraduate and graduate teaching and research outputs. Scale and scope economies are examined by sector and institutional level, also accounting for regional differences. Ray economies are found throughout the private sector, but confined to lower level public institutions. Research economies are widespread throughout all sector levels. Economies of scope prevail among private institutions across levels, but only among comprehensive and baccalaureate public colleges.