Increasing Public Expenditure: Wagner's Law in OECD Countries

Abstract. The paper proposes a panel cointegration analysis of the joint development of government expenditure and economic growth in 23 Organization Economic Cooperation and Development countries. The empirical evidence provides indication of a structural positive correlation between public spending and per‐capita gross domestic product (GDP), which is consistent with the so‐called Wagner's law. A long‐run elasticity larger than 1 suggests a more than proportional increase of government expenditure with respect to economic activity. In addition, according to the spirit of the law, we found that the correlation is usually higher in countries with lower per‐capita GDP, suggesting that the catching‐up period is characterized by a stronger development of government activities with respect to economies in a more advanced state of development.     

Inflationary Financing of Government Expenditure in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper analyses the role of inflation in economies with endogenous growth and congestion in public services. Optimal policy rules are derived for public services and investment. The other findings are as follows. Monetary policy should maximize economic growth. The more inefficient the public sector is, the higher the growth‐maximizing inflation rate is. If a currency union accepts a new member with an inefficient public sector, this will boost inflation in the union and decrease growth and welfare in all member economies of the union.     

Fiscal Illusion and Cyclical Government Expenditure: State Government Expenditure in the United States

A well‐established literature argues that fiscal illusion increases the level of government expenditure. This article focuses on the proposition that fiscal illusion also influences the cyclicality of government expenditure. Predictions are formed with reference to government reliance on high income elasticities of indirect tax revenues and on intergovernmental transfers. Predictions are tested with reference to the expenditures of 36 states in the United States from 1980 to 2000. Government expenditures are more likely to be procyclical when citizens systematically underestimate the cost of taxation.     

Consumption, Housing Rents and Housing Price: A Test Of A Real Estate Pricing Model Using Hong Kong Data

The present study investigates whether Hong Kong's volatile real estate market is consistent with a non–linear consumption–based–asset–pricing model. It finds that the asset–pricing model is not rejected for some types of properties. However, the differentials between the returns to residential properties and risk–free rate are too large to be explained by the model.     

Hong Kong: The Fragile Economy of Middlemen

The paper shows that standard trade models can be adapted to address crucial policy issues in our dynamic, imperfect-information world. It also shows that intermediated trade is essential to the modernization of the 1.2 billion-person Chinese economy; yet, notwithstanding sincere intentions in Beijing and Hong Kong, subtle changes may deny Hong Kong its irreplaceable catalyst role, leaving China ultimately to technical stagnation.     

Government Expenditure in India: Composition and Multipliers

We estimate fiscal multipliers for total, capital (capex), and revenue (revex) Indian government expenditure using a two variable Structural Vector Auto-Regression (SVAR). Our quarterly data allows us to estimate both short- and long-run multipliers. We then extend and re-estimate the model including supply shocks and the monetary policy response sequentially and together and re-estimate the multipliers. The long-run capex multiplier remains much larger than the corresponding revex multiplier in all the estimations. The short run impact multiplier is the highest for revex, but does not rise after the first quarter. The capex peak multiplier in the 2nd quarter is 1.6–1.9 times larger. The cumulative multiplier is also the highest for capex, 2.4–6.5 times the size of the revex multiplier. Capex also reduces inflation more over the long-term. Despite this, capex shows greater volatility since it is more vulnerable to discretionary cuts. Monetary accommodation of capex and revex is allowed to differ. It varies in the absence/presence of supply shocks. The combination of a direct cut in capex and monetary tightening in response to a supply shock reduces the capex multiplier. The results are consistent with an elastic long-run aggregate supply. Disaggregated evaluation of spending policy, therefore, gives useful insights.

     

政府公共支出理论框架评述

政府公共支出是使得社会经济正常运行的必要条件。政府公共支出对经济增长和社会福利的影响是宏观公共财政理论和经济增长理论的重要研究领域,已经有大量的研究。政府公共支出理论研究涉及的两个基本的问题是:政府公共支出占GDP的最优比例是多少,即最优的政府公共支出规模为多大;分类公共支出占总公共支出的最优比例是多少,即最优的政府公共支出结构应如何确定。本文较为详细地介绍了关于政府公共支出的几类代表性框架、核心假定和主要结论,旨在加深我们对政府公共支出作用于经济增长机制的认识,并为国内学者研究类似问题提供一些研究线索。     

Hong Kong Output Dynamics: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract. Advanced statistical techniques are used to analyze Hong Kong output dynamics. Hong Kong, Japan and the US are found to share some common long‐term and short‐term cyclical variations. While the Hong Kong economy is susceptible to external shocks and Granger‐caused by the other two economies, local factors account for a large proportion of output growth variability and uncertainty. On the transmission mechanism, the selected trade and financial variables have incremental explanatory power but do not lessen the ability of lagged output variables to explain Hong Kong growth dynamics. Interestingly, the US does not appear to exert undue influences on Hong Kong.     

A Cross-country Test of the Permanent Income Hypothesis

The Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) predicts an income innovation has the same size effect on consumption as on permanent income, an implication we examine with a cross-country test proposed by Kormendi & LaHaye (1984). The data from industrial countries support PIH but data from developing countries do not. Also, however, data from countries with high quality national income accounts support PIH whereas data from countries with low quality accounts do not. The stage of economic development and data quality are highly correlated. The evidence suggests that the results may be driven primarily by data quality differences rather than systematically different behaviour between industrial and developing countries.     

有效需求规模假说、研发投入与国家自主创新能力

一国的有效需求规模可用三个基本维度(或要素)和三个补充维度来描述,其中基本要素经济总收入和人均收入的提高,会促进一国研发投入和自主创新能力的提升,而基本要素收入差距的扩大,会降低一国研发投入,并损害其自主创新能力;作为补充要素,进出口规模或开放度的提高对一国研发投入并没有影响,但它可以提升一国研发投入的使用效率和自主创新能力。此外,本文还发现收入差距对一国研发投入和自主创新能力有着十分重要的决定性影响。在一定条件下,收入差距对一国自主创新能力的损害,超过了其他要素的可能影响。     

中国城市化影响政府公共支出的理论分析及实证

工业化向城市化转变的过程中,中国政府的目标发生了变化。工业化时期,政府动员一切可利用的资源发展经济,而在城市化阶段,政府转向福利支出目标。这一转变表现为经济建设费支出比重减小而公共财政支出比重不断增大。本文分析了中国城市化使政府公共支比重增大,并进行了实证分析。城市化率每增加1个百分点,公共财政支出比重就增加0.6293个百分点,且公共财政支出比重随收入差距扩大而增大。     

香港创业板市场初探

１９９８年１２月１日香港联交所通过了设立香港创业板市场的方案。并于１９９９年１２月２日推出第一批公司上市。本文针对这一新型的风险投资市场,分析了创业板市场与主板市场对比所具有的特征。同时指出,创业板市场为风险资本的股份上市提供了最佳退出场所。     

Incentive Effects of Rate-of-Return Regulation in Hong Kong: Reply

Journal of Regulatory Economics -     

A General Test of the Prebisch–Singer Hypothesis

This paper examines jointly the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis of a long-term decline in the relative price of primary commodities and the appropriate framework in which it is tested. A general model is estimated which nests the univariate and bivariate time-series models used in the past literature. The results suggest that the econometric models estimated in the majority of previous studies were misspecified. The evidence strongly supports the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis and rejects recent findings—that the terms of trade are characterized by infrequent negative shocks—in favor of a long-term negative trend.     

Fiscal Autonomy and Total Government Expenditure: An Austrian Case-study

The ongoing debate on the efficiency of a federal system versus a centralized system has lead to a diverse and unclear empirical picture of the effects of fiscal decentralization on public sector growth. For analyzing these effects it is crucial to consider the sub-national decision power on taxing and spending. In the current paper, we test for the effects of fiscal autonomy on total government expenditure using time series from 1955 to 2007 for Austria. Determinants of government expenditure are economic growth, fiscal illusion of policy makers, and the unemployment rate. We additionally account for different degrees of sub-national fiscal autonomy. Our econometric results suggest that the often-hypothesized dampening effects of fiscal autonomy cannot be corroborated for the Austrian system.