PRIVATE GOOD,EXTERNALITY, PUBLIC GOOD*

In two recent investigations into the economic problems of externality the authors have noted in passing that the welfare or optimality conditions in the case of a consumption externality seemed identical with the welfare conditions in the case of public goods as originally stated by Samuelson.¹ The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the welfare conditions for a public good are a special case of the welfare conditions for a consumption externality where a public good is defined as a good ‘which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual's consumption of that good’ (Samuelson [4]). Since the welfare conditions for a private good are also a special case of the welfare conditions for a consumption externality, it follows that we have a range of externality with the pure private good and the pure public good as polar cases.     

INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL FLOWS: PRIVATE VERSUS PUBLIC FLOWS IN DEVELOPING AND DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

Empirically, net capital inflows are procyclical in developed countries and countercyclical in developing countries. Private inflows are procyclical and public inflows are countercyclical in both groups of countries. The dominance of private (public) inflows in developed (developing) countries drives the difference in net inflows. We rationalize these patterns using a two-sector model of a small open economy facing borrowing constraints. Private agents overborrow because of the pecuniary externality arising from these constraints. The government saves to reduce aggregate debt, making the economy resilient to adverse shocks. Differences in borrowing constraints and shock processes across countries explain the empirical patterns of capital inflows.     

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE DELIVERY OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE SERVICES: THE CASE OF NORTH CAROLINA

This paper examines the effects of different institutional arrangements and characteristics on cost savings, efficiency gains, and productivity of delivering municipal solid waste services. A cost function approach is employed, and North Carolina municipal data for three years (1997, 2001, and 2003) are used for the analysis. Empirical findings indicate that there is no significant difference in cost savings between public delivery and private contractor delivery of solid waste services, a finding similar to those of other recent studies. There are three possible reasons for this. First, the threat of competition and contracting out might have led to cost savings in the cases of public delivery. Second, there might be a lack of competition because a few large private contractors have been able to win follow‐on contracts over the years. Third, there might be substantial transaction costs arising as the result of private contracting. (JEL H40, H83, Q53)     

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION: HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION UNDER PARENTAL TEACHING*

This paper examines a simple overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation under both the public and private education regimes. Both young individuals and their parents allocate time to human capital accumulation. Under the public education regime, the government collects tax to finance expenditure for education resources. We show that there exists a level of tax which maximizes the speed of human capital accumulation because of parental teaching; and, if the government chooses tax rates adequately, human capital grows faster and welfare levels become higher under the public education regime than under the private.     

INFLATION AND THE PUBLIC DEFICIT WHEN THE UTILITY OF MONEY IS INSATIABLE*

When the marginal utility of money is positive even at very high levels of the asset (Yoshiyasu Ono's, 1994, assumption), the relationship between inflation and the public deficit at full employment may result in a unique perverse equilibrium where higher deficits reduce inflation. If there are two equilibria, the low inflation equilibrium is one where the perverse effect between inflation and the public deficit prevails; while in the high inflation equilibrium higher public deficits increase inflation. These results contrast sharply with traditional results found in the literature.     

PUBLIC POLICY TOWARDS PRIVATE PENSIONS

This paper reviews and evaluates public policy towards private pensions which has developed in the U.S. over the past 60 years. It is shown that research results reported in the literature are not sufficiently conclusive to permit resolution of all, or even the most important, efficiency questions that surround pension policy. Given available information, a series of policy recommendations are made to either retain or alter current federal policy towards pensions. Unanswered research questions that prevent a more definitive set of conclusions are identified and discussed     

网络经济学视角下的私人货币

货币是一种典型的网络产品。在直接网络外部性作用下,货币的演化具有标准化和统一化的趋势。但是,人们对支付工具的需求是差异化的,货币发行可以给发行者带来多种收益,因此市场上始终存在着私人货币生存的空间。电子私人货币的兴起是技术进步引发的金融创新,它对交易效率的提高是有益的,但私人货币不会威胁到法币的垄断地位。     

FISCAL STRUCTURAL REFORM AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY: PUBLIC SPENDING AND PRIVATE EFFORT*

This paper explores governments' and private agents' incentives to implement or postpone fiscal structural reform attempts. Both fiscal consolidation and fiscal reorganization often create spillover effects and thereby induce free‐riding problems. It is thus important to cope with the free‐riding behaviour of interest groups. It is often argued that in order to attain successful outcomes, a good macroeconomic situation is needed, since we expect positive income effects. In this paper, we first explain the dynamic aspects of insufficient fiscal consolidation due to free‐riding problems in the framework of private provision of public goods. Then, using a static model between central and local governments, we examine the sign of income effects for reform attempts to pursue fiscal reorganization. It is shown that good economic circumstances do not necessarily enhance reform of reorganizing fiscal expenditures, although it could enhance fiscal reconstruction.     

MONEY IS PRIVACY*

An extensive literature in monetary theory has emphasized the role of money as a record‐keeping device. Money assumes this role in situations where using credit would be too costly, and some might argue that this role will diminish as the cost of information and thus the cost of credit‐based transactions continues to fall. In this article we investigate another use for money, the provision of privacy. That is, a money purchase does not identify the purchaser, whereas a credit purchase does. In a simple trading economy with moral hazard, we compare the efficiency of money and credit, and find that money may be useful even when information is free.     

民营企业参与城市公用事业PPP项目的影响因素研究

本文以5个参与城市公用事业PPP项目的民营企业为案例研究对象,提炼出民营企业参与城市公用事业PPP项目的11个主要影响因素,即投资回报率、运营效率、政策法规、政府承诺缺失、公平竞争、风险分配、政企关系、政府观念、风险评估、企业家机会识别和技术管理经验。基于解释结构模型法,本文构建了民营企业参与城市公用事业PPP项目影响因素的多级递阶结构模型(EGM),归纳出影响民营企业参与度的三要素(市场主导型因素、政府主导型因素和企业主导型因素)及其内在的逻辑架构,并从政府层面和企业层面提出提高民营企业参与度的建议。     

PRIVATE INTERHOUSEHOLD TRANSFERS OF MONEY AND TIME: NEW EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

There is a growing awareness that it is important to understand patterns of family assistance; however, there is still a great deal of information about private transfers that is not known. This study begins to fill this void by presenting results from a new survey and integrating these findings with evidence from recent studies that use other new data sets. It is found that: (i) a large share of households participate in private transfer networks, (ii) a greater amount of financial assistance is provided to lower income family members, (iii) altruism does not fully explain transfer behavior, and (iv) people in their 20s and 30s receive more assistance than people of other ages, even the very old.     

CONTINGENT PRICES AND MONEY*

Price posting with directed search is a widely used trading mechanism. Coles and Eeckhout showed that if sellers are allowed to post prices contingent on realized demand instead of one price, then there is real market indeterminacy. In this article, we fit this contingent price‐posting protocol into a monetary economy. We show that, as long as holding money is costly, there exists a unique equilibrium rather than a continuum. In this equilibrium sellers post a low price for when the buyer is alone, a high price for when several buyers show up, and buyers randomize between sellers and money holdings.     

THE DISTRIBUTION OF MONEY BALANCES AND THE NONNEUTRALITY OF MONEY*

Recent monetary models with explicit microfoundations are made tractable by assuming that agents have access to centralized markets after one round of decentralized trade. Given quasi‐linear preferences, this makes the distribution of money degenerate—which keeps the models simple but precludes the discussion of distributional effects of monetary policy. We generalize these models by assuming two rounds of trade before agents can readjust their money holdings to study a range of new distributional effects analytically. We show that unexpected, symmetric lump‐sum money injections may increase short‐run output and welfare, whereas asymmetric injections may increase long‐run output and welfare.     

MANAGING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LAND THROUGH PARTIAL INTERESTS

As property rights concerns grow along with budget pressures, government agencies charged with balancing resource policy objectives need to consider institutional alternatives to regulation and land purchase. This paper examines how public agencies participate in markets for partial interests in public and private land as a means of influencing resource use and conservation. The paper also reviews the application of real option theory to the valuation of conservation easements and considers potential extensions to other partial interests.