FISCAL POLICY IN AN ENDOGENOUS GROWTH MODEL WITH PUBLIC CAPITAL AND POLLUTION

This paper studies the growth and welfare effects of fiscal policy in an endogenous growth model with public capital and environmental pollution. I assume that pollution is due to aggregate production, and that it does not have a direct effect on production but only reduces household utility. I study the growth effects of fiscal policy for the model on the balanced growth path, taking transition dynamics into account. I then analyse the welfare effects of fiscal policy along the balanced growth path. Finally, I show how the fiscal parameters must be set so that the competitive economy replicates the social optimum.     

CAPITAL ADEQUACY REQUIREMENTS AND THE FINANCIAL ACCELERATOR CAUSED BY BANK CAPITAL

This paper develops a computable dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks, a portion of which may be constrained by capital adequacy requirements and the remainder of which may not, in order to examine what effects the capital requirements and bank capital induce in the macroeconomy. Applying the parameterized expectations algorithm, the model economy shows that binding bank capital constraints induce the financial accelerator, the hump‐shaped dynamic behaviour of output, and ineffectuality of monetary policy, and that all the results are derived from the individual banks’ cross‐sectional asymmetric responses that are consistent with the empirical evidence.     

YOUTH ALCOHOL USE AND PUBLIC POLICY

This paper examines the frequencies of youth drinking and heavy drinking in 1982 and 1989 and separately examines the effects of minimum legal drinking ages and beer excise taxes for each year. In both years, drinking is responsive to price changes resulting from higher excise taxes. However, the price sensitivity of youth alcohol use fell after states changed to a uniform minimum legal drinking age of 21 .     

CONTRACTING OUT,PUBLIC POLICY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Relatively little is known about the impact of public policies on the decisions of firms to contract out parts of their production, despite widespread growth in this practice. The present paper uses a simple principal‐agent model to explore the effects of various public policies which affect employers' incentives to outsource by re‐grading their employees as independent self‐employed contractors. Minimum wages are predicted to increase contracting out, as are payroll and income taxes under several plausible conditions, including worker preferences exhibiting constant relative risk aversion.     

DANGERS OF CAPITAL FORBEARANCE: THE CASE OF THE FSLIC AND "ZOMBIE" S&Ls

This paper portrays Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) forbearance and congressional unwillingness to increase the FSLIC's human or capital resources to the size necessary to handle developing economic insolvencies as a joint policy crime that has served to bifurcate the savings and loan industry into the living and the living dead. As agents for the taxpayer, Congress and the FSLIC have assumed too much discretion and have chosen to exercise that discretion myopically. An agent has a duty to represent its principal's economic interests more effectively than this. The FSLIC's policy touchstone should be to negotiate and enforce the same kind of covenant provisions that a prudent private guarantor would require.     

TYPES OF PUBLIC CAPITAL AND THEIR PRODUCTIVITY IN JAPANESE PREFECTURES*

Several researchers have studied the productivity of public capital in Japan but most have not paid attention to the types of public infrastructure or differences in production technology between prefectures. We estimate prefectural production functions with differently aggregated public capital. Through the model selection process, we examine the types of productive public capital. The empirical results show the production technologies used and how types of productive public capital differ between prefectures.     

商业银行设立基金管理公司的障碍及政策建议

从国外的经验来看,商业银行设立基金管理公司是提高银行利润率、增强商业银行综合竞争能力的有效途径,在中国银行业改革的过程中占有重要地位。但是由于中外金融行业的具体情况不同,使得现阶段中国商业银行设立基金管理公司存在若干障碍。文章从收益风险不对称等三方面分析了现阶段商业银行设立基金管理公司存在的种种问题,并基于此提出了7点改进的措施与建议。     

TREASURY NOTE AND BANK BILL RATES, THE RISK PREMIUM AND AUSTRALIAN MONETARY POLICY*

This paper examines a link in the Australian monetary transmission mechanism based on the risk structure of certain interest rates. Monthly data on the bank-accepted bill and Treasury note rates reveal a significant reduction in both the mean and variance of the risk premium linking the two rates towards the end of 1989. The two interest rates cointegrate in each of the periods January 1984 to September 1989 and October 1989 to December 1995, though less significantly so in the earlier period, and formal tests indicate that the risk premium was stationary for each of the sub-periods. Well defined error-correction mechanisms suggest that the burden of adjustment to shocks to the money market was shared by the two interest rates. A stationary risk premium, combined with evidence that the Treasury note rate Granger-caused the bank bill rate in both sub-periods, indicates that the Reserve Bank has been able to influence the bill rate by targeting the note rate.     

西方国家区域规划公共政策属性演变及其启示

二战以后,西方国家的区域规划经历了由技术性控制向公共政策导引转变的显著过程,这是与其经济、社会发展条件及制度环境的总体变迁密切相关的。2000年以来,随着中国经济与制度环境的变化,区域规划的公共政策转向也已经成为一个现实的趋势。系统回顾了西方国家区域规划发展历程及其公共政策属性的演变过程,对不同治理理念下的区域规划组织方式进行了归纳;并以此为借鉴,对中国区域规划的未来发展完善提出相关的建议。     

OPTIMAL CAPITAL TAXES FOR PUBLIC GOOD PROVISION*

This paper constructs a general equilibrium trade model of a small open economy that produces many traded private goods and one non-traded public consumption good. Trade in goods is free, but the country taxes the internationally mobile capital to finance the provision of the public good. Within this framework, the paper identifies the conditions under which the optimal policy on the internationally mobile capital calls for a tax. Under the assumptions that (i) the welfare function is concave with respect to the tax rate, and (ii) the net revenue-maximizing capital tax rate is positive, it is shown that the marginal cost of the public good always understates its social marginal cost.     

GROWTH, R&D AND WELFARE: THE ROLE OF PUBLIC POLICY

This paper analyzes the normative side of an R&D growth model in which market structure and growth are jointly determined in the equilibrium of a one‐sector economy under monopolistic competition. We find that a distortion in the allocation of R&D, namely the presence of technological spillovers between firms, generates two market failures: insufficient growth and excessive entry of firms. We show that this result is driven by the interplay between market structure and growth. A simple tax/subsidy scheme to support the efficient solution is proposed.     

ROBUST MONETARY POLICY UNDER UNCERTAINTY ABOUT CENTRAL BANK PREFERENCES

In this paper, we study the impact of central bank opacity on macroeconomic performances in a new Keynesian framework with model uncertainty using robust control techniques. We identify a new source of central bank opacity, which refers to the lack of information about the central bank's preference for robustness in the sense of Hansen and Sargent . We find closed‐form solutions for the robust control problem, analysing the impact of the lack of transparency about the central bank's preferences for robustness. We show that an increased transparency about the central bank's preference for robustness makes monetary policy respond less aggressively to cost‐push shocks, thus reducing the inflation and output gap variability. As a consequence, inflation and output gap are less volatile than under central bank opacity about its preference for robustness.     

SOME WELFARE IMPLICATIONS OF OPTIMAL STABILISATION POLICY IN AN ECONOMY WITH CAPITAL AND STICKY PRICES

In this paper we review and extend some of the key lessons that seem to be emerging from the Ramsey‐inspired theory of dynamic optimal monetary and fiscal policies. We construct measures of the key distortions in our economy; we label these ‘dynamic wedges’. Inflation, actual or anticipated, distorts these wedges in the present period, shrinks the tax base and increases the deadweight loss. We show that, if possible, labour as well as capital ought to be subsidised in steady state. We point to a number of extensions to the Ramsey literature that may help in the formulation of actual policy.     

中国城乡一体化评析及公共政策探讨

对城乡一体化理论、概念及其形成背景作了讨论,对我国一些地方实施城乡一体化的结果作了实地考察,在此基础上根据若干文献资料对我国一些地方实施城乡一体化的实践作了评价。并得出结论：从制度、机制角度提出的城乡一体化,在实践中发生了概念性误偏,畸变成了物质环境布局的一体化,结果未能收到预定成效,反而影响了地方的可持续发展。最后,提出了实施我国城乡一体化的若干公共政策建议。