发达国家科研投入效率初探——基于16个OECD国家纵列数据的统计学分析

以16个OECD国家作为研究对象,以SCI来源期刊论文量作为衡量一国科研产出的指标,通过纵列数据(Panel Data)分析方法建立了科研投入-科研产出关系模型,定量描述了发达国家科研产出与科研经费投入、科研人员数、时间等因素的关系。为了排除母语因素对SCI论文量可能产生的影响,语言变量也被引入到模型中。同时,还比较了不同统计模型估计出的不同结果,验证了统计模型选取的重要性。     

Are OECD policy recommendations for public sector reform biased against welfare states? Evidence from a new database

Policy advice by the OECD has long been at the heart of academic debates on welfare state reform, with frequent claims questioning the ideological orientation of recommendations. This paper constructs an indicator of perceived reform need for 24 countries, quantifying the policy advice contained in the OECD Economic Surveys around 1985, 1995, and 2005. These recommendations describe a policy consensus that is based on competition, work incentives, monetary reform, fiscal discipline, and labor market reform. Empirically, perceived need for reform is well explained by preceding levels of economic freedom. In particular, countries with more government intervention, lower property rights protection, and more regulation are perceived to have a bigger reform need. In turn, perceived reform need has no explanatory power for subsequent changes in social expenditure and welfare state entitlements. Only in countries with right wing governments, perceived reform need might be followed by marginal reductions in welfare state entitlements, but definitely not in social expenditure.     

Aging: Some Pleasant Fiscal Arithmetic

Projections of age-related public expenditure growth have raised widespread concerns about fiscal sustainability. This paper examines how total expenditure would develop under four policy rules on public expenditure growth. Some simple arithmetic of expenditure, GDP, and population is reviewed and applied in simulations for 19 OECD countries over 2000–50. A general and a specific conclusion arise from the results. Generally, long-term expenditure projections could benefit from revisiting common assumptions on non-age-related expenditure growth. Specifically, realistic gradual adjustment in non-age-related expenditures could go a long way towards maintaining fiscal sustainability under age-related spending pressures.

How does public spending affect technical efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries

The relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Revisiting the subject from a distinct angle with respect to the mainstream approach, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of public sector's size and of public expenditure components on 15 European countries’ technical efficiency from 1996 to 2014 by using a True Random Effect model. Using the total public expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function and technical efficiency by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings show that the effect of public sector's size on efficiency is positive while the type of public expenditures may have both positive and negative impact. In more details, results suggest that education and health expenditures have a positive effect on technical efficiency, while others have a negative impact.     

Globalisation, capital mobility and tax competition: theory and evidence for OECD countries

Are the predictions of tax competition theory wrong? While the tax competition literature predicts that taxes on income from capital decrease with increasing globalisation, past empirical studies on various data find contradicting evidence. By using different data and additional elements of economic theory, this paper aims to challenge the empirical contributions. For a panel of 14 OECD countries and for the period 1967–1996, we find that globalisation has indeed a negative and significant impact on corporate taxes. Furthermore, globalisation tends to raise labour taxes and social expenditures. As a consequence, the so-called “efficiency” and “compensation” hypotheses of globalisation are not competing, but rather, both appear to apply at the same time. Efficiency has an impact on the tax-mix, whereas compensation is provided through increased social expenditures.     

Exports and growth: Granger causality analysis on OECD countries with a panel data approach

This paper investigates the possibility of Granger causality between the logarithms of real exports and real GDP in twenty-four OECD countries from 1960 to 1997. A new panel data approach is applied which is based on SUR systems and Wald tests with country specific bootstrap critical values. Two different models are used. A bivariate (GDP–exports) model and a trivariate (GDP–exports–openness) model, both without and with a linear time trend. In each case the analysis focusses on direct, one-period-ahead causality between exports and GDP. The results indicate one-way causality from exports to GDP in Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Sweden, one-way causality from GDP to exports in Austria, France, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Norway and Portugal, two-way causality between exports and growth in Canada, Finland and the Netherlands, while in the case of Australia, Korea, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the UK and the USA there is no evidence of causality in either direction.     

Calculation and decomposition of income inequality in low- and middle-income countries: a survey data analysis

This article estimates income inequality in a sample of four low- and middle-income (LMI) countries namely; Albania, Nepal, Tajikistan and Tanzania using the household survey data – Nepal Living Standard Measurement Survey Second. First, we estimate the income generation function for each country and calculate the income inequality using Gini index (GI). Second, we decompose the income Gini into the determinants of income generation functions. Based on the decomposition result, socio-economic factors are the most important determinants of income inequality followed by geographic factors. Demographic factors have the least effect on income inequality in all four countries. Third, we propose a new method to quantify the effect of change in each covariate of income generation function on income Gini. That allows us to quantify the effects of change in specific policy such as increase in investment in schooling or public health to specific group of the population in society on income inequality. A carefully chosen, integrated policy can significantly reduce inequality in all four countries under study.     

2002～2005年间我国不同地区高校科技创新效率比较研究

利用SPSS13.0对2002～2005年间我国各省、市、自治区高校科技创新活动进行了聚类分析,并采用DEA的CCR模型对这4年中我国各省、市、自治区高校科技创新过程中经费支出,以及人员投入的效率问题进行了比较研究,结果发现有24个地区DEA有效,6个地区非DEA有效。最后给出了非DEA有效地区的改进方向。