就业问题的公共政策思考

进入21世纪,就业问题在我国再次引起人们的关注,各种旨在促进就业的政策纷纷出台。从实际效果看,有些政策取得了较好的效果,有些政策则不尽如人意。之所以出现这种情况,关键在于政策是否符合社会经济的客观发展规律。为了提高我国促进就业政策的有效性,我们需要把握就业问题的本质,需要认清国内外就业的形势,需要了解市场经济国家就业政策的特点。     

中国城市的失业、消费平滑和预防性储蓄

一、导言 经济冲击随时都会发生,特别在发展中国家,不管是基于正常的商业周期、金融冲击还是经济结构调整.最近的亚洲金融危机只是众多例子中的一个.     

心理会计、公共福利保障与居民消费

消费需求不足是我国经济快速增长过程中的一个突出问题。考虑到经典理论的局限性,我们提出了基于心理会计的消费行为假说,并对假说的真实性进行了验证。研究发现,居民心理会计账户结构的变化是当前制约我国消费需求增长的根本原因,而改革进程中出现的一些制度结构的失衡是问题的根源。据此我们指出,通过提高公共福利和社会保障水平,降低经济发展过程中的不确定性进而调整居民心理会计账户的结构,与单纯增加居民收入相比能够更加有效地促进消费的增长。     

Are Private Sector Consumption Decisions Affected by Public Sector Consumption?

This paper looks at the interaction between public and private consumption in Australia. The results show that there is a long-run equilibrium relation between private and public consumption. However, the nature of this relation changed during the 1980s from one of complementarity to one of substitutability.     

Unemployment Insurance under Moral Hazard and Limited Commitment: Public versus Private Provision

This paper analyzes a model of private unemployment insurance under limited commitment and a model of public unemployment insurance subject to moral hazard in an economy with a continuum of agents and an infinite time horizon. The dynamic and steady‐state properties of the optimum private unemployment insurance scheme are established. The interaction between public and private unemployment insurance schemes is examined. Examples are constructed to show that for some parameter values increased public insurance can reduce welfare by crowding out private insurance more than one‐to‐one and that for other parameter values a mix of both public and private insurance can be welfare maximizing.     

Substitution Between Private and Public Consumption in Australia*

Large increases in the private sector's savings ratio during a period of rapid growth in the relative size of the public sector has led to the suggestion that substitution between private and public consumption may be an important fcature of the Australian economy (Clements 1979). In this paper, empirical estimates are presented which indicate that no such substitution exists The estimates are derived from a theoretical model of consumption which is based on inter-temporal optimization in a stochastic environment. The estimates also suggest that private sector consumption behaviour is consistent with the joint hypothesis of rational expectations and Ricardian equivalence     

政府公共消费的经济效应及其政策含义

关于公共消费与经济增长之间的关系,学术界颇多争论,分歧较大,虽然一些研究成果发现公共消费与经济增长负相关,但也有一些学者通过研究得出了截然相反的结论.本文运用经济增长理论分析公共消费支出的社会经济效应,并以中国相关数据为样本进行实证检验,并提出相关的政策建议.     

A Permanent Income Model of Public Consumption

This paper tests the permanent income hypothesis (PIH) for public consumption. Unlike private agents, a government is a representative national, infinitely-lived agent that usually faces no liquidity constraints. Thus, the expectation is that the PIH restrictions should not be rejected for public consumption. However, using U.S. data, the paper is unable to find evidence supporting the permanent income model of public consumption. Public consumption is found to be sensitive to lagged public income and too smooth relative to permanent public income. The results therefore cast doubt on the characterization of the public sector as a social welfare optimizing agent.     

Unemployment and indeterminacy

Using an efficiency-wage model, we examine the relationship between indeterminacy and unemployment insurance. It is shown that the less unemployment insurance is, the more likely equilibrium is to be indeterminate. Equilibrium can be indeterminate even without externalities or increasing returns, which makes a sharp contrast to the recent literature on indeterminacy. Our result is based on the fact that the no-shirking condition with marginal utility of wealth kept constant is downward sloping when income insurance is not perfect.     

Immigration and Unemployment*

The wisdom of maintaining high levels of immigration into Australia has been questioned, particularly on the grounds that migration contributes to aggregate unemployment. This paper uses both statistical causality techniques and conventional structural models to investigate the relationship between immigration and unemployment in the post-war period in Australia. The tests find no evidence of any association from migration to unemployment, though there is strong evidence of a significant effect of Australian unemployment on migration. The results indicate that immigration policy should not be dictated by unfounded fears of immigration causing unemployment, at least over the range of previous Australian experience.     

Land and Urban Unemployment

This paper re–examines the effects of expansion of land itself on unemployment and welfare in the mobile–capital Harris–Todaro model with land in agriculture. We show the possibility of immiserization and the harmful effects on employment contrary to the conventional results.     

Unemployment Benefits and Entrepreneurship

Several recent empirical papers show that unemployment benefits crowd out nascent entrepreneurs. In the present paper provide theoretical support in favour of this interesting result. Over fairly general preference patterns we obtain a measure of the opportunity cost of entrepreneurs in the presence of unemployment benefits and derive conditions under which potential entrepreneurs suffer as unemployment benefits rise. We formulate a clear transmission mechanism in the labour market that links unemployment benefits to occupational choice for a group of risk‐averse individuals.     

Unemployment and Workers' Control

The relationship between democratic workers' control and unemployment is explored. When unemployment arises from labor market distortions, market imperfections, or from information imperfections, labor-managed firms are superior to capitalist firms. The firm's governance and decision making structures then play an instrumental role in the level of unemployment. However, when involuntary unemployment arises from effective demand failures, then workers' control may not be able to maintain or to restore full employment. In such cases, collective and coordinated efforts are needed to reduce the level of involuntary unemployment.     

工人离职、失业波动与失业保险文献评述

失业不仅涉及失业波动的影响,还包括在职工人的离队。为减少工人搜寻过程中产生的负外部性,应降低工人的信息成本。失业保险政策的实施又降低了失业工人再就业的激励性,应确立有效的失业保险水平,实现产出与社会福利的最大化。     

Unemployment and consumption patterns

In this paper we obtain empirical evidence about the effect of female and male unemployment on household demand of a selection of goods and services. We analyse the percentage of the family income expenditure on a particular group of goods concerning education, domestic services, leisure goods, hotels etc. The impact of several determinants on each group of commodities is estimated using a Tobit specification. The data used for estimation have been taken from The Household Expenditure Survey (1990–91). Our main result is that male and female unemployment has a different impact on the household consumption.     

Unemployment and immiserizing transfer

This paper reexamines the welfare effects of international transfers in a two country model in the presence of unemployment which is generated by an exogenously specified real minimum wage rate. In this context we have found the necessary conditions for the occurrence of paradoxical as well as normal results on employment as well as welfare.I am grateful to an anonymous referee for useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Needless to say, the usual caveat applies.