Fiscal Policy,Economic Integration and Unemployment

In this paper fiscal policy is examined for an open economy characterized by unemployment due to efficiency wages. We allow for capital and firm mobility in a model where the government chooses the level of wage, source-based capital and profit taxation. The taxing choices of governments are analyzed in scenarios which differ with respect to the constraints imposed on the set of available taxes and on the mobility of firms. As a general result, the welfare loss from labor market imperfections increases when tax bases become internationally mobile, which suggests an increasing relevance of domestic labor-market reforms when tax bases become global.     

Tax Competition and Economic Integration

This article examines the role of tax competition and economic integration in a core–periphery setting, where agglomeration forces are present. I present a New Economic Geography model, which accounts for firm entry/exit and international mobility of skilled labor employed in the public R&D sectors. In contrast to other literature on tax competition, I focus on its impact on labor migration and net earnings of skilled and unskilled labor. Economic integration is modeled as trade liberalization, an easing of factor mobility restrictions and technology diffusion. I find that tax competition favors skilled labor when trade costs are reduced. In contrast, unskilled labor benefits when factor mobility restrictions are eased and technology diffusion is enhanced.     

Intergenerational Redistribution and Fiscal Policy

This article argues that although the intergenerational stance of fiscal policy is hard to measure accurately, a goal of approximate generational balance is reasonable.     

财政支出竞争、城投债发行与城市经济增长——基于财政支出压力视角

本文使用2008～2016年中国286个地级市的面板数据,运用面板分位数模型实证分析了财政支出竞争对城市经济增长的影响。研究表明:财政支出竞争显著促进了城市经济增长,且这种促进作用在发达地区更为明显;城投债发行是财政支出竞争促进城市经济增长的重要传导渠道;特大城市的财政支出竞争对城市经济增长的促进作用比大城市更加明显;非社会性支出竞争比社会性支出竞争对城市经济增长具有更强的拉动作用;官员变更在财政支出竞争对城市经济增长的影响方面产生了重要的调节效应,其中发生市委书记变更、市委书记和市长同时变更的城市均削弱了财政支出竞争对城市经济增长的促进作用,而发生市长变更的城市则无影响。     

Inequality, Redistribution, and Economic Growth

This paper provides a critical review of the recent literature on inequality and growth. After discussing historical and more recent distributional trends as well as empirical evidence on the relationship between inequality and growth, I focus on recent explanations of the inequality-growth puzzle. I consider both the impact of the functional and the personal distribution on long-run growth rates. A final section discusses a rather neglected issue in the recent literature: the impact of expected demand for innovation decisions.     

Intergenerational Politics, Fiscal Policy and Productivity

A political–economic theory of fiscal policy is presented in which tax policy preferences are derived from a conflict of interest between individuals of different ages. Policy formation is fully rational in that an individual's beliefs regarding future policies are consistent with state-contingent policy outcomes. The overlapping generations friction that prevents the young from transacting with future members of society implies that young policymakers strategically manipulate the policy preferences of the yet unborn to lower their own expected old-age tax burden. A comparison of the original equilibrium to one induced by the “constitutional commitment” of fiscal policy isolates the strategic component of tax rates and demonstrates that aggregate labor productivity is biased as a result of the conflict.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: E62, H30, O40.     

财政分权、地区间竞争与中国经济波动

中央与地方政府在中国转型经济中扮演了关键角色,而多级政府结构往往为传统的财政政策文献所忽略。本文将中央与地方两级政府结构引入主流的动态一般均衡模型中,考察财政分权下地方性财政政策对中国宏观经济的动态影响。研究发现:(1)具有财政分权的多级政府基准模型可以解释约64%的总产出波动、47%的投资波动以及62%的消费波动;(2)地方性公共投资对本地经济具有促进作用,同时通过地区间贸易对其他地区产生正的溢出效应;且该溢出效应会随着地区间财政竞争程度的加深而显著加强,因此财政竞争为地方性投资政策提供了重要的传导机制;(3)反事实分析表明,深度财政分权会在短期内加强地方财政支出的波动效应而削弱中央财政支出的波动效应,同时又在长期提高整个经济总产出与社会总福利。本文为定量研究我国经济转型期的财政政策动态效应提供了一个新的视角。     

市场化改革中的地方财政竞争

地方财政竞争是指一国国内地方政府间为增强本辖区的经济实力、提高辖区内的社会经济福利,以财政为手段进行的各种争夺经济资源的活动.地方财政竞争包括支出竞争和税收竞争,其理论基础是财政分权理论.在一个国家发展的不同阶段,地方财政竞争的表现形式是不同的.改革开放以来,我国的地方财政竞争经历了以税收竞争为主,到税收竞争和支出竞争并存.随着我国加入wTO和财政分权化程度的提高,财政支出竞争的作用将愈加突出.本文试图以地方财政竞争为主线,从一个新的视角来分析我国分权化的市场经济改革.     

Globalization, Asymmetric Tax Competition, and Fiscal Equalization

Trade integration and the increasing mobility of firms have raised the need for international coordination in corporate tax. In this paper, we study the ability of fiscal equalization to avoid the misallocation of capital across asymmetric countries arising from tax competition. Such a reform respects the principle according to which the tax decision is entirely left up to the nation and links nations engaged in strategic tax policy by transfers. We use a model of trade and location where firms produce under imperfect competition. Our analysis suggests that falling trade costs increase the distortion created by tax competition in the international allocation of production. However, we show that fiscal equalization based on differences in tax revenues or tax base can implement a more efficient tax wedge and spatial allocation of the tax base.     

Fiscal Coordination and Political Competition

This contribution investigates fiscal coordination in the framework of two countries asymmetric in respect of their capital–labor endowment. When tax policies are decided by majority voting inside each country, and they are not coordinated at a supranational level, factors of production are inefficiently allocated, at equilibrium. Our main result shows that fiscal coordination, via a minimum capital tax, does not always lead to a Pareto–improvement for the median voter's welfare, with respect to the noncooperative outcome.     

中国财政再分配与减贫效应的数量测度

中国正致力于践行共享发展新理念,测算现行财政再分配体系是否以及在多大程度上缓解收入分配差距、减轻贫困,从而实施更为"精准"的财政再分配,是关键一环。本文拓展了传统财政再分配分析方法,将财政收入端和支出端纳入统一研究框架,基于CFPS2012入户调查数据和投入产出表,构建居民收入核算账户,运用标准财政归宿法,测算出中国居民的财政净受益;采用"匿名"与"非匿名"评价指标,综合测度了"一揽子"财政工具的再分配和减贫效应。结果显示:中国财政分配体系对市场分配整体上呈微弱的正向调节效应,财政体系整体使全国基尼系数下降了4.06%,其中,基本社会保险、公共服务、转移支付和直接税的边际贡献分别是2.48%、2.34%、1.75%、1.19%,而间接税的边际贡献为-1.57%,起逆向调节作用;中国财政再分配工具具有显著减贫效应,财政再分配使全国贫困广度、深度和强度均下降20%以上,其中,支出端具有"济贫"性,收入端的间接税具有显著"劫贫"性。总体上,弱累进财政再分配体系甚至逆向调节的财政再分配工具,与共享发展存在矛盾。实现共享发展,迫切需要重构"精准"财政再分配体系,加快构建以税负归宿公平和公共支出受益归宿公平为核心的现代财政制度。     

Lobbying, the Composition of Government Expenditures, and the Politics of Fiscal Policy

This paper constructs a one sector growth model to examine the impact of political lobbying on the formation of fiscal policy. The model predicts that lobbying can induce endogenous regime switches, development traps, and a sub-optimal allocation of government expenditures between productive and unproductive ends, leading to long run income losses in the economy. A calibrated version of the model is used to generate estimates of the dynamic social costs of lobbying by estimating the optimal savings rates necessary to induce balanced growth in the economy. Finally, the model predicts that lobbying may influence the growth of government.     

Brain Drain,Fiscal Competition,and Public Education Expenditure

A two‐country model is developed in this paper to examine the implications of fiscal competition in public education expenditure under international mobility of high‐skilled labor. The authors allow for educational choice, asymmetry of countries with respect to total factor productivity, and tax base effects of migration in source and host country. As the latter may give rise to multiplicity of equilibrium, alternative belief structures of mobile high‐skilled workers are carefully taken into account. The paper also looks at the consequences of bilateral policy coordination. While in line with other studies on tax competition, bilateral coordination can reduce the under‐investment problem in public education spending, it also tends to hinder migration or may even reverse the direction of the migration flow that materializes under non‐cooperative policy setting. As a result of its potentially adverse effects on migration patterns, bilateral coordination may therefore reduce global welfare and bring the world economy further away from the social planner's solution.     

Protecting Property: The Politics of Redistribution,Expropriation, and Market Openness

This paper develops a formal model to disentangle the competing political incentives for redistribution, expropriation, and market openness. Although redistribution and expropriation are both types of government extraction, redistribution re‐allocates wealth within the citizenry, while expropriation re‐allocates wealth from citizens to the government. Representative political institutions increase redistribution and reduce expropriation. Market openness changes these incentives, as foreign investors prefer reductions in both redistribution and expropriation. When political institutions are representative, the government will rely more on reducing expropriation, rather than limiting redistribution, to attract foreign investment. Under representative institutions then, openness partially reinforces the preferences of voters rather than undermining them. In addition, market liberalization occurs only when the policy changes needed to attract foreign investment are relatively small. If existing policies are satisfactory to foreign investors, moves toward openness may be accompanied by greater redistribution and expropriation, as governments are tempted by a larger base for extraction. Thus, openness has ambiguous effects on economic policy, at times encouraging and at times constraining extraction.     

Labor-Market Search, Financial Market Integration, and the Fiscal Multiplier

We used a two-country optimizing new-open-economy macroeconomics model to analyze the implications of financial market integration for the fiscal multiplier. The fiscal multiplier measures the accumulated effect of fiscal policy on output. Our model features a labor-market friction in the form of labor-market search. The conventional wisdom derived from the basic textbook version of the classic Mundell–Fleming model has been that financial market integration diminishes the fiscal multiplier. We show that labor-market search implies that financial market integration should increase rather than decrease the fiscal multiplier.     

人口老龄化、经济增长与财政政策

本文通过建立一个拓展的交叠世代模型,探讨了人口老龄化对经济增长的影响以及实现均衡增长的财政政策。研究发现,当人口老龄化对经济增长起到促进作用时,均衡增长政策是增加财政支出规模并加大健康保障支出;反之则是减少财政支出规模并加大公共教育支出。实证检验支持了理论模型的结论,并发现人口老龄化对中国经济增长的影响正在从积极转向消极。因此,中国应当逐步降低财政支出规模,并将更多的财政资金分配到公共教育领域。     

Ethnicity, Politics and Economic Performance

The paper investigates the effects of ethnic diversity on economic performance. Previous studies have found that diversity has various detrimental microeconomic effects, tending to reduce public sector performance, and has large detrimental effects on the overall growth rate. I develop a simple model of the effect of ethnic diversity on a government decision problem in which there is a tradeoff between growth and distribution, in the contexts of democracy and dictatorship. I find that in democracy ethnic diversity has no effect upon the decision, whereas in dictatorship ethnic diversity leads to a government choice which reduces the growth rate. I then test these propositions on two data sets. The first is for 94 countries over the period 1960–1990. I find that whether diversity adversely affects overall economic growth depends upon the political environment. Diversity is highly damaging to growth in the context of limited political rights, but is not damaging in democracies. The second is for World Bank projects in 89 countries. I find that the same relationship between diversity and democracy affects the proportion of projects which are successful.     

财政分权、政府竞争与土地价格结构性偏离

财政分权背景下地方政府的财政约束和政府竞争是导致土地价格结构性偏离的根本原因。地方政府存在拉升商业用地和居住用地出让价格的倾向,金融宽松环境和投机行为盛行会使这两种土地出让价格存在正向偏离其理论地价的可能;而地方政府对流动性税基的争夺过程会导致工业用地出让价格低于其理论价格。工业用地价格与商业和居住用地价格正是在政府这两种反作用力量的作用下出现结构性偏离。     

Distributive Politics and Electoral Competition

Within the framework of pure redistribution (dividing one unit of a homo- geneous good among identical individuals), the paper analyses the redistribution that arises from Downsian, two-party, electoral competition. It appears that the strategic behavior of vote-maximizing parties leads them to propose divisions which are not far from the egalitarian one. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, D63, D72.