经济不确定性、资产再平衡与中国经济波动

近年来,全球经济不确定性不断上升,新冠疫情的暴发更是使得宏观经济的不确定性达到新的历史高点,成为影响一国经济波动的新因素.本文使用一种新的识别方法,有效区别了不确定性对宏观经济的直接影响和通过影响居民资产再平衡对宏观经济产生的间接影响,并在此基础上构建了一个同时包含预防性储蓄和金融摩擦的DSGE模型,厘清了经济不确定性对宏观经济的影响机制.研究结果表明:(1)居民资产再平衡会加剧经济不确定性对宏观经济的负面影响,因资产再平衡所导致的累计间接影响约占直接影响的19.38％,对中国宏观经济波动的影响较大;(2)不确定性还会通过提高居民的预防性储蓄动机来扩大其对宏观经济的负面影响,同时预防性储蓄动机也会放大资产再平衡对宏观经济的影响;(3)金融摩擦一方面会加剧居民对风险资产的减持,从而加剧投资下滑,另一方面急剧减少的投资资金会给居民带来足够的流动性,增加居民的消费动机,金融摩擦对宏观经济的影响体现为二者综合作用的结果.     

经济增长、金融深化与全球经济失衡

文章建立了一个囊括经济增长、金融市场和资本流动等诸多因素的全球均衡模型,并采用ECM模型实证检验了这些因素对全球经济失衡的影响.研究发现,由于亚洲新兴国家和美国之间存在经济增长率的差异和非对称的金融市场,导致全球经济失衡.解决全球性经济失衡的根本出路在于改变现有的资产组合的供求关系,降低亚洲新兴国家对美元储备资产的需求,而美元贬值则并不能纠正全球经济失衡.     

学习、制度与经济绩效

本文分析了认知、信念体系与制度之间的互动关系，并探寻了它们影响经济绩效的方式。我们认为要更深刻地理解制度的产生、其运行的特征及其对经济政治结果的影响，应该从分析认知过程开始。我们分析了个人和集体学习的性质，认为问题并不在于行为体是完全理性还是有限理性的，而在于人们是如何进行推理和做出选择的，无论这种选择和推理是个体做出的还是集体做出的。接下来我们将学习过程同制度分析联系起来，提出了一种我们可以称之为“认知制度主义”的观点。同时我们认为要充分理解路径依赖现象，应该从对认知层面的分析开始，以制度层面的分析为主干，以经济层面的分析为终结。     

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.     

Institutions,Lobbying, and Economic Performance

We investigate whether the impact of institutions depends not just on their current state but also on how they came to be. In particular, we hypothesize that while economic freedom that emerges spontaneously may be growth promoting, economic freedom that emerges as a result of costly lobbying efforts may be less fruitful. In an extreme case, costly lobbying efforts may even negate the growth‐enhancing effect of economic freedom. To the extent that lobbying efforts constitute an opportunity cost of resources diverted away from investment and production, our hypothesis also implies that greater the opportunity cost of lobbying, the more efficient is the institutional environment. Panel data analysis reveals the expected positive relation between economic freedom and growth, and consistent with our hypothesis, the findings indicate that the impact of economic freedom on growth does indeed diminish as lobbying efforts increase. In addition, we find that lobbying is more harmful to growth at greater levels of economic freedom.     

浪漫主义，现实主义和经济改革

经济学家的一个重要职责就是研究实现经济“改革”的各种方法和各个步骤，事实上，在许多人看来，学习经济学的主要益处就是学习一种如何“改进”经济的工具，当然，这种改进是通过改革经济秩序中的缺陷来完成，在本文中，我们不否认经济知识在这方面的作用，但我们要指出的是，发挥经济学这方面的作用是一件比常人想像 要复杂和细致的工作。本文尤其要强调指出，改革的社会价值不存在于改革现存的缺陷之中，但存在于创造阻止新缺陷出现的社会安排之中。我们必须承认，真正的改革应该忘记过去而着眼未来；应该与旧缺陷妥协而去努力防止出现新缺陷。     

经济开放、劳动市场与二元经济结构转化

本文在内生经济增长理论的框架内,将对外开放和失业引入二元经济增长模型,分析了在开放条件下存在失业的二元经济结构均衡,并运用数值模拟试算和计量分析等方法探讨了对外开放在二元经济结构转换中的作用。本文的分析表明,一国采取对外开放政策会对其二元经济结构转化产生促进作用,较快的对外开放步伐能加速二元经济结构向现代一元经济结构转化的进程。随着我国对外开放的深入,FDI和对外贸易对我国二元经济结构向现代一元经济结构转化将起到越来越重要的促进作用。     

参数异质性、经济趋同与中国区域经济发展

本文首次采用分量回归方法来研究中国城市间经济的趋同方式。已有文献研究大都采用条件均值回归的实证方法,无法从本质上揭示不同地区本身存在的异质性而导致的增长方式的差别,本文利用中国182个地级及以上城市的数据,先采用OLS方法,然后采用Koenker和Hallock(2001)发展的条件分量回归的方法,对城市之间的经济趋同方式进行了检验。结果表明,与OLS方法不同,我们发现参数异质性的证据,表明不同城市的经济增长方式存在差异。新古典经济增长模型认为存在条件收敛,但分量回归的结论不支持这个预测。我们发现条件收敛不是普遍现象,增长率分布处于低分位点的地区存在条件收敛特点,但对于增长率分布处于高分位点的地区而言,结论并不显著。这一结果对于制定区域经济协调发展的政策非常重要。     

Regional Economic Disparity,Financial Disparity,and National Economic Growth: Evidence from China

The dynamic relations among national economic growth, economic disparity, and financial disparity in China are examined. Specifically, the focus is on whether economic disparity or financial disparity affects national economic growth. As measures of economic and financial disparity across regions and provinces, the Williamson coefficient of disparity is employed using both regional data (eastern, central, and western) and provincial data (from 31 provinces). Overall, it is found that both provincial financial disparity and, to a lesser degree, economic disparity have a negative effect on national economic growth. In addition, financial disparity appears to be exogenous, suggesting that financial disparity is not influenced by either economic disparity or national economic growth.     

Trade,Remittances, Institutions,and Economic Growth

This paper empirically investigates the role of trade, remittances, and institutions in economic development in a large sample of developing countries using recently developed instruments for all these variables. Both cross-country (over 30 years) and dynamic panel data (over 5-year periods) regressions of growth rates on instrumented trade, remittances, and institutions provide evidence of a significant impact of trade, institutions, and remittances on growth. While institutions foster growth, remittances hamper it. The effect of trade on growth is positive in cross-sectional regressions but ambiguous in dynamic panel data regressions. These results are indicative of a more important role for trade in explaining growth in the very long run compared with over shorter horizons.     

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。     

Economic downturns,inequality, and democratic improvements

This paper explores the extent to which discrete improvements in the democratic quality of political institutions can be explained by income inequality. Empirical tests of this relationship have generally yielded null results, though typically test an unconditional relationship. Guided by a theoretical nuance of the “new economic view” of democratization and using an instrumental variable strategy, we re-examine the relationship conditional on the state of the macroeconomy. We demonstrate that the more unequal are societies, the higher the probability of experiencing democratic improvements following economic downturns. Following growth periods, higher income inequality has a slight negative or null effect on the likelihood of democratic improvement. The conditional result provides a simple explanation for why previous literature has found largely null results concerning inequality and democratization and offers additional evidence in support of the new economic view.     

Economic growth, liquidity, and bank runs

We construct an endogenous growth model in which bank runs occur with positive probability in equilibrium. In this setting, a bank run has a permanent effect on the levels of the capital stock and of output. In addition, the possibility of a run changes the portfolio choices of depositors and of banks, and thereby affects the long-run growth rate. These facts imply that both the occurrence of a run and the mere possibility of runs in a given period have a large impact on all future periods. A bank run in our model is triggered by sunspots, and we consider two different equilibrium selection rules. In the first, a run occurs with a fixed, exogenous probability, while in the second the probability of a run is influenced by banks’ portfolio choices. We show that when the choices of an individual bank affect the probability of a run on that bank, the economy both grows faster and experiences fewer runs.     

Industrialization, Economic Growth, and International Trade

This paper analyzes the relationship between economic growth, industrialization, and international trade in a two-sector endogenous growth model. With learning-by-doing, the economy grows perpetually along a balanced growth path, with manufacturing's relative price declining continuously. Under trade, its pattern of trade and growth will be affected by external growth. If it remains diversified under trade, its growth can keep in pace with the rest of the world. If the growth rate of the rest of the world is higher than a certain limit, the economy cannot catch up and will eventually produce agriculture only.     

Public Expenditure,Environment, and Economic Growth

This paper attempts to develop a model of endogenous growth with special consideration to the role of productive public expenditure in the presence of congestion effect of private capital and environmental pollution. We analyze the properties of the optimal fiscal policy in the steady‐state equilibrium when the level of production of the final good is the source of emission. Government allocates its income tax revenue between pollution abatement expenditure and productive public expenditure. In the steady‐state equilibrium, optimum ratio of productive public expenditure to national income is less than the competitive output share of the public input; and this ratio varies inversely with the magnitude of the emission‐output coefficient. The steady‐state equilibrium appears to be a saddle point; and the market economy growth rate is not necessarily less than the socially efficient growth rate in the steady‐state equilibrium.     

Property Rights,Governance, and Economic Development

In this review article we give an intuitive account of why good institutions in general, and secure property rights in particular, matter for economic growth and development. We also discuss implications for good governance, defined as the efficient provision of property rights and other aspects of governance. Finally, we briefly touch on political institutions that might be conducive to good governance and thus economic development.     

Economic Performance, Trade Restrictiveness, and Efficiency

The paper addresses the question of whether trade restrictiveness impacts economic performance, via a trade restrictiveness index that is decomposable into a trade distortion and a domestic distortion component. The paper builds on the Anderson and Neary price index measure of trade distortion, in evaluating trade restrictiveness via a distance function approach. This is accomplished by adding a “dual” version to their trade restrictiveness price index, based on distance functions that scale output quantities. The authors compute the trade restrictiveness quantity index (TRQI) using a parametric frontier approach to model the production side of the economy, and a panel of information on the agricultural sector of a set of European Community countries. The results suggest that the use of TRQI makes a considerable difference to interpretations of the efficiency impact of agricultural trade policies in EC countries, as compared to policy‐oriented aggregates or result‐oriented measures of trade restrictiveness.     

Bureaucracy, Tax System, and Economic Performance

This paper investigates the consequences for government size, growth and welfare if a selfish bureaucracy provides a congested input. Alternative exogenous tax systems are introduced and numerical analyses are carried out. The welfare optimum is only met under very specific assumptions: proportional congestion, a tax system only consisting of distortionary taxes and a bureaucracy that maximizes the budget's growth rate. Otherwise the relative size of the public sector becomes suboptimally large thus inducing welfare losses. From a welfare economic point of view bureaucratic selfishness is worse than a suboptimal taxing regime that does not (completely) internalize the congestion externalities.