POLICY UNCERTAINTY,ELECTORAL SECURITIES,AND REDISTRIBUTION*

This article investigates how uncertainty about the adoption of a redistribution policy affects political support for redistribution when individuals can trade policy‐contingent securities in the stock market. In equilibrium the support for redistribution is smaller than where no “policy‐insurance market” is available. This implies that in economies with well‐developed financial markets redistribution decreases with the level of participation in these markets and with income inequality. Furthermore, the existence of a policy‐insurance market may lead to a less equal distribution of income than where no insurance is available even if a majority of individuals are redistributing resources through private transfers.     

Health insurance and labor market outcomes: Joint decision-making within households

Most Americans obtain access to health insurance through an employer. In this paper, we ask how the link between health insurance and employment affects labor market choices such as whether to work full-time. To understand the effect of the incentives embedded in the employer-based insurance system, we study the joint decision-making of husbands and wives that determines the household's access to health insurance. We estimate the effect on a wife's (husband's) labor market outcomes of husband's (wife's) health insurance, allowing the health insurance of both spouses to be endogenous. Obtaining unbiased estimates of such effects is complicated by the likelihood that positive assortative mating creates correlations between a couple's characteristics and the possibility that there are important unobservable household income effects. Our innovation is to measure these biases by examining a second fringe benefit, paid sick leave, in addition to health insurance. We find that, as predicted, spouse's insurance has statistically significant negative effects on being offered own employer insurance as well as on the probability of working full-time with health insurance.     

MEASURING HEALTH INSURANCE BENEFITS: THE CASE OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Since 2012, the Congressional Budget Office has included an estimate of the market value of government‐provided health insurance coverage in its measures of household income. We follow this practice for both public and private health insurance to capture the impact of greater access to government‐provided health insurance for working‐age people with disabilities, whose market value rose in 2010 dollars from $11.7 billion in 1980 to $114.3 billion in 2012. We then consider the more general implications of incorporating estimates of the market price of insurance, equivalent to that provided by the government, into policy analyses in a post‐Affordable Care Act world. (JEL D31, H24, I18, J31)     

基于联盟博弈的海洋养殖保险运行模式分析

我国是世界上遭受海洋灾害最为严重的国家之一。海洋养殖业因资源环境依赖度高,致灾程度也较为严重。目前我国相关损失补偿工作主要依靠政府拨款以及社会捐助进行,保险市场由于收益低等原因参与意愿相对较低。本文将资产管理公司引入联盟博弈模型,比较多主体参与的海洋养殖保险最优模式。Shapely 值计算结果显示,保险公司、政府、投保人和资产管理公司四方主体组成联盟中,保险公司可以降低成本,政府能够缓解财政压力,投保人也能得到更加充分的保障,对各方都是最优的选择。     

A natural experiment of the effect of advertising on sales: the SASOL case

China's so-called ‘reform and opening up’ policy (Gai Ge Kai Fang), implemented nearly 30 years ago, has led to tremendous economic development. China's nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 3.25 trillion US dollars in 2007, making it the fourth largest economy in the world. At the same time, income inequality has become quite skewed in China, inviting considerable criticism. Moreover, the trend towards greater income inequality persists. Of particular public policy relevance is the effect of income inequality on health disparities in China, particularly for low-income households. This study addresses this issue using a longitudinal dataset from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) over the period 1997 to 2006. Our central finding is that income inequality affects health differently by socioeconomic status: income inequality harms individual health among low income households by more than it does among high income households. More specifically, health is more adversely affected by greater income inequality for households with low incomes. China's central government is committed to making further investments in the health care system. As part of that effort, attention should be directed at low income households to reduce health inequality, possibly providing them with a health insurance safety net similar to Medicaid in USA.     

巨灾风险下的投保行为 ——基于实验理论的研究

中国尚无巨灾保险市场,研究人们在巨灾风险下的投保行为对巨灾保险市场的建立与发展都具有重要的意义。本文以地震风险为例,运用实验经济学的方法,探讨了个体面对巨灾风险时的投保行为与相关理论问题。研究结果表明,人们的投保决策受其对风险概率认知的影响较小,知道清晰的风险概率甚至会降低投保率;在实验中引入仿真信息,将诱导被试投保;而过往受灾经历影响较大,且这种影响并不一定需要亲身经历才能形成,知晓他人遭受灾难也能唤起人们的投保意识。通过扩展传统的实验理论,实验室实验被应用到了这种因难以控制变量而研究较少的领域,并发现了投保行为的某些特征。     

Financial market and housing wealth effects on consumption: a permanent income approach

The objective of this study is to examine the financial market and housing wealth effects on consumption. Housing has the dual functions as both a commodity yielding a flow of housing services and an investment asset yielding a flow of capital income. With the construction of an empirical framework based on the vector autoregression approach, the findings from this study suggest that a rise in housing price has both a positive wealth effect and a negative price effect on consumption. While the positive wealth effect is caused by an increase in capital income, the negative price effect is caused by an increase in the cost of housing services. In addition, the housing market wealth effect increases, at the expense of the price effect, with the level of housing-market leverage. These findings imply that the government policy of land supply aiming to stimulate the economy should strike a balance between the possible wealth and price effects of the housing market.     

新农保养老金政策效果评估——基于老年人生活幸福感的实证研究

作为一项重要的社会保障政策,新农保养老金的效果到底如何,目前学术界还没有统一的评估结论。本文基于2016年中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据,使用断点回归设计的方法,利用老年人幸福感指标对新型农村社会养老保险的政策效果进行了评估。本文从老年人对生活的满意度和自信心两个维度来衡量幸福感,发现领取养老金对其生活满意度的影响尚不显著,但提升了其对未来生活的信心。异质性分析发现东部地区和中高收入地位的老年人在领取新农保养老金后生活幸福感提升较为显著,但现实中挤出效应的影响更大。最后,作为社会支持的新农保与传统的“养儿防老”观念存在一定的替代效应。     

Health insurance and the labor supply decisions of older workers: Evidence from a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs expansion

This paper exploits a major mid-1990s expansion in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care system to provide evidence on the labor market effects of expanding health insurance availability. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to compare the labor market behavior of older veterans and non-veterans before and after the VA health benefits expansion to test the impact of public health insurance on labor supply. We find that older workers are significantly more likely to decrease work both on the extensive and intensive margins after receiving access to non-employer based insurance. Workers with some college education or a college degree are more likely to transition into self-employment, a result consistent with “job-lock” effects. However, less-educated workers are more likely to leave self-employment, a result suggesting that the positive income effect from receiving public insurance dominates the “job-lock” effect for these workers. Some relatively disadvantaged sub-populations may also increase their labor supply after gaining greater access to public insurance, consistent with complementary positive health effects of health care access or decreased work disincentives for these groups. We conclude that this reform has affected employment and retirement decisions, and suggest that future moves toward universal coverage or expansions of Medicare are likely to have significant labor market effects.     

A Pure Theory of Job Security and Labour Income Risk

Models of labour market equilibrium where forward-looking decisions maximize both profits and labour income on a risk-neutral basis offer valuable insights into the effects of employment protection legislation. Since risk-neutral behaviour in the labour market presumes perfect insurance, however, job security provisions plays no useful role in such models. This paper studies a stylized model of dynamic labour market interactions where labour reallocation costs are partly financed by uninsured workers' consumption flows. In the resulting second-best equilibrium, provisions that shift labour reallocation costs to risk-neutral employers can increase productive efficiency if their administrative dead-weight costs are not too large, and increase workers' welfare as long as employers' firing costs at least partly finance workers' mobility.     

我国居民收入不平等的主要原因：市场还是政府政策？

市场因素和政府收入再分配政策是决定一国居民收入不平等程度的两个重要因素。本文采用中国家庭收入调查（China Household Income Project ,CHIP）住户数据,计算出我国居民市场收入基尼系数与可支配收入基尼系数,并同发达国家进行比较,借此探讨目前我国居民收入不平等是由市场力量造成的,还是政府收入再分配政策力度不足的结果。研究发现,从市场收入基尼系数来看,我国与发达国家之间的差距并不大。由此认为,政府收入再分配政策效果不明显是导致我国居民收入分配不平等状况较发达国家严重的主要原因。加大转移支付等再分配政策力度是缓解和改善目前我国居民收入不平等的主要途径。     

Relative Income Position and Happiness: Are Cabinet Supporters Different from Others in Japan?

During the period of 2001–2006, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) adopted a market‐oriented policy under the Koizumi cabinet. Using data covering the Koizumi and first Abe cabinets, the present paper attempts to examine whether the effects of relative income differ between supporters and non‐supporters of the Koizumi cabinet. Key findings are as follows: within the Koizumi cabinet period, a relatively low‐income position is negatively related to happiness for non‐LDP supporters but not for LDP supporters. However, under the period of the first Abe cabinet, the difference in the effect of relative income for LDP supporters and others disappears. These results imply that an expectation of market outcomes leads to a difference in the effect of relative income position on happiness levels.     

Policy,Demography, and Market Income Volatility: What Shaped Income Distribution and Inequality in Australia Between 2002 and 2016?

Isolating the impact of policy, demographic shifts, and market volatility on changes in income inequality is of great interest to policymakers. However, such estimation can be difficult due to the complex interactions and evolutions in the social and economic environment. Through an extended decomposition framework, this paper estimates the effect of four main components (policy, demography, market income and other factors) on the year-over-year changes in income inequality in Australia between 2002 and 2016. This was a period marked by substantial policy, population, and economic shifts due to factors such as the mining boom, the global financial crisis and increasing immigration. The framework also incorporates a flexible non-parametric market income model which captures demand-side shock better than a standard parametric model. Our results suggest that market income was the primary driver of income inequality for all segments of the income distribution in Australia over the past 15 years. Policy factors, moreover, have had the largest net impact on reducing inequality overall, especially for lower income earners.     

我国基本养老保险扩面的收入分配效应研究

文章基于一般均衡分析框架,通过构建“统账结合”制基本养老保险的异质性跨期交叠一般均衡动态模型,引入国发〔2005〕38号文的主要内容,利用政策仿真、参数估值和敏感性检验等方法,重点研究了养老保险制度覆盖面扩展的收入分配和再分配效应,并进行了理论推导和实证测算。结果发现：（1）我国基本养老保险扩面具有明显的收入分配和再分配效应,且再分配效应是累进的,发生了从城镇企业职工为代表的高收入者向以灵活就业人员和农民工为代表的低收入者的收入转移;（2）个人账户发挥了平滑作用,有利于改善不同类型劳动者终生的收入分配,但不利于收入再分配的改善;（3）社会统筹账户具有较强的收入再分配效应,有利于改善不同类型劳动者的收入再分配,缩小收入差距。参数敏感性检验表明结论是稳健的。因此,进一步优化社会统筹账户有利于减小收入不平等。     

The distributive effect of monetary policy: The top one percent makes the difference

The paper evaluates the distributional effect of monetary policy. The empirical analysis is implemented for the USA, where the dynamics in income inequality is mainly driven by the variation in the top one percent of the income distribution. The paper uses the inequality measures that represent the whole income distribution. The distributive effect of monetary policy is evaluated in the cases of different frequency data. To identify a monetary policy shock, the paper applies the contemporaneous and the long run identification methods. In particular, a cointegration relation is determined among the considered variables and the vector error correction methodology is used for the identification. The obtained results indicate that contractionary monetary policy decreases income inequality. These results can have important implications for the design of policies to reduce income inequality by giving more weight to monetary policy.     

期权在公司财务金融中的运用

在现代公司中,财务金融具有融资决策和投资决策两个基本职能.期权作为一种特殊的投资工具,必须依靠资金、项目计划,根据对市场行情的合理预测,采取灵活有效的经营策略、操作技巧来运作,才有可能得到最大的投资收益和效应.它是人们为减少未来市场变化带来的损失可采用的一种既能进行投资获利、又把风险限定在某一范围的投资方式.     

The welfare effect of income tax deductions for losses as insurance: Insured- versus insurer-sided adverse selection

Kaplow (1992) shows in a complete-information environment that allowing income tax deductions for losses as partial insurance is undesirable in the presence of private insurance markets. This paper elaborates on Kaplow's finding by studying two extreme types of asymmetric information structures in private insurance markets: Either the insured or insurers possess superior information. It is shown that our derived result is consistent with Kaplow's if the insured have superior information; however, Kaplow's negative conclusion with respect to the income tax deduction will be overturned if insurers have superior information instead. A policy implication from our finding is that whether or not to allow an income tax deduction for losses needs to be more refined and, specifically, it should be tailored to the “adverse selection” information structures of private insurance.     

Flexicurity Labour Market Performance in Denmark

Unemployment is at a low and stable level in Denmark. This achievementis often attributed to the so-called flexicurity model combiningflexible hiring and firing rules for employers with income securityfor employees. Whatever virtues this model may have, a low andstable unemployment rate is not automatically among them sincethe basic flexicurity properties were also in place during the1970s and 1980s where high and persistent unemployment was prevalent.Labour market performance has changed due to a series of reformsduring the 1990s, the main thrust of which was a shift froma passive focus of labour market policies to a more active focuson job search and employment. The policy tightened eligibilityfor unemployment benefits and their duration as well as introducedworkfare elements into unemployment insurance and social policiesin general. Thereby, policy makers attempted to strengthen theincentive structure without taking resort to general benefitreductions. We argue that the workfare policies have playedan important role running primarily via motivation/threat andwage effects. However, active labour market policies are resourcedemanding, and although the workfare reforms have improved costeffectiveness, there is still an issue as to whether the resourcesgoing into active labour market policies are used efficiently.(JEL codes: J30, J40, J60, H53)     

Is trade in electrical and electronic products sensitive to IPR protection? Evidence from China’s exports

This article attempts to provide the first empirical evidence on the effect of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on China’s export of electrical and electronic products. It adopts a gravity model for unbalanced panel data of China’s 146 important trading partners over the period of 2002–2012. To eliminate the effects of FDI in determining the linkage between IPR and exports, the panel excludes the destination countries and territories that invest in China. The results reveal that the level of IPR protection in destination countries has a positive impact on China’s flow of exports. Further analysis on data disaggregated by IPR score demonstrates that a higher level of IPR protection in destination countries and territories is positively linked with China’s exports of these items in each of the IPR protection clusters and indicates a strong market power effect by the interplay between R&D expenditure and IPR in the destinations. Finally, both market power and market expansion effects are found to be prevalent in the destinations, as implied by the coefficient of IPR protection disaggregated by income level of China’s export destinations. The results generally resemble those in the literature that describe the linkage between IPR protection and trade flows.     

The determinants of the demand for private health insurance under Medicare

Since the introduction of Medicare in 1984, the proportion of the Australian population with private health insurance has declined considerably. Insurance for health care consumption is compulsory for the public health sector but optional for the private health sector. In this paper, we explore a number of important issues in the demand for private health insurance in Australia. The socio-economic variables which influence demand are examined using a binary logit model. A number of simulations are performed to highlight the influence and relative importance of various characteristics such as age, income, health status and geographical location on demand. A number of important policy issues in the private health insurance market are highlighted. First, evidence is provided of adverse selection in the private health insurance pool, second, the notion of the wealthy uninsured is refuted, and finally it is confirmed that there are significant interstate differences in the demand for private health insurance.