Political agency,government responsiveness and the role of the media

The role of mass media in making governments responsive to the needs of citizens is a relatively neglected area in economics. We sketch a theoretical example with a role for media in enhancing government responsiveness based on asymmetric information between citizens and government. We then use data for the period 1958–1992 on the extent to which Indian state governments responded to food shortages via the public distribution of food, correlating these with proxies of media, political and economic development. We find that states that are more responsive tend to also be those with high levels of newspaper circulation, electoral turnout and literacy. In contrast, richer states do not tend to be more responsive than poorer states.     

Optimal contracts and the role of the government in wage bargaining

This paper introduces a contract between the government and trade unions in a model of strategic wage bargaining à la Lippi (2003). It shows that an optimal contract can be implemented through an appropriately defined inflation target.     

The role of the government in financial sector development

This study examines the impact of two dimensions of the government, namely, size and quality, on two dimensions of the financial sector, size and efficiency, in a cross section of 71 economies. The study finds that increased quality of the government as measured by governance and legal origin positively influences both financial sector size and efficiency. The size of the government proxied by government expenditure and the government ownership of banks has a negative effect on financial sector efficiency, and a positive impact on financial sector size, particularly in the low income economies.     

政府在养老保险基金监管中的定位

社会养老保险基金"养命钱"具有重要性与特殊性,政府是基金监管的主体,但受自身局限性影响,政府监管有必要保持适度性,必须引入其他的监管主体才能有效实现监管目标.我国现行的养老基金监管体制必须进行改革,构建多层次制衡式基金监管模式将是一种可行的选择.     

Public spending and growth: The role of government accountability

This paper examines the role of institutions in the nexus between public spending and economic growth. Empirical results based on a newly assembled dataset of 80 countries over the 1970–2010 period suggest that particularly when institutions prompt governments to be accountable to the general citizen does public capital spending promote growth. Taking account of the type of financing for this spending, we show that the growth-promoting effect under an accountable government appears to prevail for various financing sources, including a reallocation from current spending, an increase in revenue, and a rise in the budget deficit. However, government accountability does not seem to play a key role in the growth effects of current spending.     

小议政府在私立学校发展中的作用

教育是一种准公共品,可以由私人提供。私立学校是对公立学校的有益补充,有其存在的可行性和必要性。目前我国的私立学校正在蓬勃发展。政府应鼓励、支持私立学校的发展,既支持非营利性私立学校,也支持营利性私立学校。私立学校的学费虽高,但市场的供求关系会对其加以调节,无须政府过多干涉。政府应以各种方式鼓励有识之士和广大群众投资教育,并对私立学校提供优惠政策,促进其发展壮大。     

Economic selection and the role of government: Some lessons from evolutionary biology

The economic system is not divinely ordained. It is the product of human beings and can therefore be questioned and altered if necessary. The Reagan and Bush administrations elevated the status of those extreme right economists who wish to preserve privilege by claiming the divine right of market outcomes. It is the argument of this paper that this divine right has its roots in a Victorian view of natural selection. It is instructive to recognize that this view no longer holds sway in biology. It is even less true in the economic sphere.     

Optimal size of the government: the role of the elasticity of substitution

This paper analyzes the optimal fiscal policy in an endogenous growth model with productive public services. Government expenditure, which may be subject to different degrees of congestion, is financed by distortionary income taxation. The standard result on the equality between the growth-maximizing, welfare-maximizing and first-best income tax rates holds if and only if production is Cobb–Douglas or there is proportional congestion. With non-proportional (or in the absence of) congestion, the first-best income tax is lower than the (second-best) welfare-maximizing income tax which, in turn, is lower than the growth-maximizing income tax if the elasticity of substitution is below unity. Under mild conditions these relations are reversed if the elasticity of substitution is above unity. Intuition on these results is also provided.     

物流的角色定位及政府的作用

近两年来,物流热波及企业、社团和政府部门,闻者无不欣然接受,积极投入。如果说前两年大家还停留在对物流概念的争执、对物流基本知识的普及阶段,现时对物流是什么大家已有大致相同的意见,物流中心、配送中心纷纷上马,大量的人、财、物开始投入。笔者认为,目前大家需要冷静地思考一下,在实践中进行科学的反思,物流在国民经济运行中到底扮演什么样的角色,是否是新的经济增长点,是否已形成或将形成一个产业,政府在其间又将扮演什么样的角色。物流的角色定位首先要确定的是,物流是否是一个行业或产业。目前这是有争议的,很多方…     

The role of ageing in the growth of government and social welfare spending in the OECD

Government expenditure as a share of GDP in the OECD rose at an annual growth rate of 1.02% in the period between 1970 and 1997. Government spending has increased most on functions particularly demanded by elderly population: social welfare, health and defence. Ageing is the main driving force of the growth of government spending, followed by relative prices and population. However, we also find that the other age groups react to ageing, thereby preventing increases in benefits per retired persons and that institutional reforms have been successful at reducing the impact of ageing on pensions in recent years.     

In government we trust: The role of fiscal decentralization

This paper looks whether fiscal decentralization is associated with trust of citizens in government related institutions. We expect a positive relationship based on the argument of governments' improved responsiveness to preferences of citizens that is perceived to result from more decentralized fiscal systems. Survey data from up to 42 countries over the period 1994–2007 confirm this positive relationship. It is robust to controlling for unobserved country heterogeneity and a wide array of other explanatory variables that are associated with trust in government related institutions. Moreover, we do not find that the positive association with fiscal decentralization extends to other, non-government related institutions.     

Fractionalization and the size of government

I study the effect of voters with a group-based social conscience. Voters care more about the well-being of those belonging to their own group than the rest of the population. Within a model of political tax determination, both fractionalization and group antagonism reduce the support for redistribution. Whereas within group inequality increases support for redistribution, inequality between groups has the opposite effect. These results hold even if a poor group forms a majority. Using a panel constructed from US micro data, I find support for the hypothesis that within race inequality increases redistribution while between race inequality decreases redistribution.     

对农村小城镇公共设施建设中政府作用的思考

小城镇政府作为社会的公共管理部门,在小城镇建设中起着十分重要的作用,如何发挥政府的作用,实现小城镇的科学、稳定、和谐的发展,是值得我们认真研究的重要问题。小城镇政府的作用主要体现在制定小城镇建设规划与政策供给、对小城镇建设组织指导以及对小城镇建设监督等方面。     

从政府治理结构看服务型政府的建设

要在科学发展观引导下符合逻辑地设计出科学的政绩观，把在军事斗争时期有效使用的官员层级结构（各级政府）的纵向委托——代理关系改造为真正快速和有效代表民意的横向委托——代理关系，的最大化目标与民众的福利效用目标函数趋同的基础条件。要设计出代理人“剩余索取机识形态的学习和教育过程与治理结构互动，进而追求在经济人范式基础上的激励——约束与函数中利他主义和自我约束的结合，这是除了法律之外有效防止“政府俘获”、寻租腐败的不手段。增强政府行政和决策程序信息流动性、提高透明度对“良政治理”、建设服务型政府具有重要影响。     

Are government bonds net wealth? intertemporal optimization and the government budget constraint

Full integration of the government sector's intertemporal budget constraint into the private sector's intertemporal budget constraint implies the Ricardian equivalence proposition associated with Barro (1974) is valid. Private sector holdings of government bonds are not net wealth. Previous tests of the equivalence proposition estimate Keynesian consumption relationships augmented by alternative measures of government liabilities. Decisive results have not been obtained. The test presented here uses a formulation of the permanent income model to test the integration of the government's intertemporal budget constraint into the private sector's intertemporal budget constraint. The explicit use of a forward looking model of consumption imposes constraints on the equation estimated and on construction of the data; the present test is a significant improvement. The results of this test do not support the equivalence proposition.     

Tax reforms and the growth of government

This paper analyzes alternative approaches to measuring the effects of structural tax changes on government growth. It first reviews traditional time series approaches that attempt to disentangle the causal relationships between taxes and spending. It explains why these methods are incapable of uncovering the true causal links because of problems of observational equivalence and why institutional data can assist in making this determination. It then presents the methods and results from two alternative approaches and studies that analyze the effects of changes in tax structures on government growth. Both methods rely on econometric and institutional analysis. First version received: November 1997/Final version received: February 1999     

Making a technopolis in Hyderabad, India: The role of government IT policy

This paper studies the unusual growth of the information technology (IT) industry in the Indian city of Hyderabad during the last 15 years. It examines the high-technology industry in Hyderabad using registration data from the Software Technology Park (STP) of India and the state's IT policies meant to enhance the growth of regional industry. The paper outlines factors that are required for sustained growth of IT regions and evaluates the Hyderabad IT industry and the state government's IT policy against them.