Public investment,the rate of return,and optimal fiscal policy in a stochastically growing economy

This study examines the optimal fiscal policy in a stochastic endogenous growth model with private and public capital. The government is willing to actualize a socially optimal equilibrium using a lump-sum tax and government debt linked to public investments, subject to the budget constraint under the golden rule of public finance. A socially optimal fiscal policy states that a deterministic rate of return on government bonds sets the marginal product of public capital. Moreover, public investments optimally adjust the ratio of private capital to public capital to equate the rates of return on such capital. The presence of stochastic disturbances results in a disparity between the optimal marginal products of the two types of capital, as reported in previous empirical studies. This disparity significantly affects the socially optimal growth rate in response to investment risk.     

政府公共资本投资的长期经济增长效应

本文首先建立一个包含政府公共资本投资的两部门内生增长模型,并把公共资本投资分为政府物质资本投资和人力资本投资,从而对公共资本投资的长期经济增长效应进行理论分析。结论是,两种形式的公共资本投资对长期经济增长都可能具有正效应也可能具有负效应,取决于民间经济主体消费跨时替代弹性大小。其次,我们利用向量自回归分析框架,对我国1978—2004年间公共资本投资对长期经济增长的影响作实证分析。结论是,我国两种形式的公共资本投资与经济增长之间存在着长期均衡关系,其中政府公共物质资本投资对长期经济增长的正影响更为显著,而政府公共人力资本投资对长期经济增长的正影响较小,且在短期内不利于经济增长。这一结论对我国今后科学制定财政政策和选择公共投资领域都具有重要意义。     

Quantifying Optimal Growth Policy

We determine the optimal growth policy within a comprehensive endogenous growth model. The model accounts for important elements of the tax transfer system and for transitional dynamics. It captures the three main growth engines based on standard ingredients in order to understand the quantitative policy and welfare implications of the existing theory. Our calibrated model indicates that the current policy leads to severe underinvestment in both R&D and physical capital, implying that both R&D and capital investment subsidies should be increased substantially. We argue that previous research has overlooked a strong evidence for the welfare significance of the quest for the optimal growth policy by failing to calibrate the distortionary tax system.     

人口老龄化、公共人力资本投资与 经济增长*

本文利用内生化老龄化的世代交叠模型,探讨了老龄化社会中为了促进经济增长可选择的公共人力资本投资的最优相对规模和结构。本文研究表明,公共人力资本投资相对规模（即占GDP比例）和公共健康支出占比（即占公共人力资本投资比例）均与经济增长呈倒U型关系,且最优值通过老龄化对经济增长的作用表现出来。即当老龄化对经济增长有促进（抑制）作用时,政府促进经济增长的政策是提高（降低）人力资本投资相对规模和公共健康支出占比。基于中国省级面板数据的实证研究发现,老龄化不利于经济增长,公共人力资本投资相对规模及公共健康支出占比偏大,均处在倒U型曲线的下降阶段,分别通过挤出对经济增长更具促进作用的私人投资、公共物质资本投资和公共教育支出而不利于经济增长。本文的政策含义是,政府需提高公共教育支出占比,引导和鼓励更有效率的社会私人资本进行人力资本投资,以逐步降低公共人力资本投资的相对规模。当前公共物质资本投资则需继续加强。     

政府补贴、行业竞争与企业出口技术复杂度

政府补贴作为经济发展的"有形之手",在我国出口技术结构升级中扮演何种角色呢?其内在影响机制又是如何呢?文章基于中国工业企业数据和中国海关统计数据库,利用倾向得分匹配法(PSM)和倍差法考察了政府补贴和行业竞争对企业出口技术复杂度的影响效应及渠道.研究表明:政府补贴抑制了企业出口技术复杂度的提升,而行业竞争促进了企业出口技术复杂度的提升;不同竞争程度的企业样本中,政府对低竞争行业的企业出口技术复杂度的抑制效应显著高于中高竞争行业,这说明行业竞争度的提高有利于纠正政府补贴对出口技术复杂度的抑制效应.进一步的影响机制分析表明:政府补贴促进出口技术结构升级的渠道为研发激励效应,且这种激励效应只在中高竞争行业样本中是显著存在的;从成本渠道考察发现,政府补贴有利于企业出口价格指数的降低,从而对出口技术复杂度的提升产生显著的成本扭曲效应.文章的结论意味着,不能一味地对企业进行补贴,而应该构建有效的激励机制与成本倒逼机制,让企业通过内生动力而非价格竞争形成企业出口技术复杂度的升级.     

Investment subsidies and redistributive capital income taxation in a neoclassical growth model

How do investment subsidies bear on pure redistribution when coupled with capital income taxes? In a heterogeneous agent, neoclassical growth framework it is found that on impact, with no optimizing behavior, investment subsidies are good for growth but bad for redistribution. The opposite holds for capital income taxes. But when the government acts as a Stackelberg leader vis-à-vis the private sector (the follower), the optimal feedback policy is by construction time-consistent and implies that in a long-run optimum the tax scheme does not distort accumulation. This holds regardless of social preferences. For the feedback Stackelberg equilibrium I find that (pure) redistribution can go either way and capital income taxes are nonzero in the long-run, time-consistent optimum, depending on the social weight of those who receive redistributive transfers, the distribution of pretax factor incomes, and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. It is argued that investment subsidies may be an important indirect tool for redistribution, and may allow for the separation of “efficiency” and “equity” concerns.     

How do market reforms affect China's responsiveness to environmental policy?

A large percentage of total investment in China is allocated by the central government at below-market interest rates in pursuit of non-economic objectives. This has resulted in low rates of return and a high number of non-performing loans, threatening the future health of the Chinese economy. As a result, reform of capital markets is a high priority of the Chinese government. At the same time, the country is implementing various environmental policies to deal with serious pollution issues. In this paper we ask how reforms of the capital market will affect the functioning of a carbon tax. This allows us to assess how China's willingness to join global efforts to reduce carbon emissions is influenced by China's current efforts to reduce investment subsidies. We compare the costs of a carbon tax in a reformed economy with the costs of a carbon tax in the current subsidized economy. We find that in the subsidized economy the tax-interaction effect dampens the effect of a carbon tax resulting in smaller reductions in emissions than what would result in a reformed economy. Importantly, we also find that the effect on economic welfare from a carbon tax is lower in the subsidized economy; in fact, for lower levels of reductions, the carbon tax is actually welfare improving. These results have important implications for an economy undergoing economic transition. The carbon tax rate required to achieve a certain level of emission reductions will be higher in an economy with capital subsidies. However, the welfare implications of the tax indicate that the current system with capital subsidies is highly distorting implying that there is a high efficiency cost for the non-economic objectives the government is pursuing by maintaining this system of subsidies.     

On the effects of human capital and R&D policies in an endogenous growth model

We introduce an external effect of existing technologies in human capital accumulation in an endogenous growth model and describe its steady-state and transition. We numerically solve the model to compare the quantitative effects of R&D policy with the quantitative effects of human capital policy in wealth and welfare. Although R&D subsidies have now an overall positive effect on growth, wealth and welfare, the calibration exercise shows that for plausible values for the parameters, human capital policy is simultaneously the most income and welfare-improving and the less expensive to the government.     

Human capital formation,learning by doing and the government in the process of economic growth

We present an endogenous growth model with human capital and learning by doing. Human capital is not an input factor in the production process of final output but it affects the ability to build up knowledge capital as a by‐product of cumulated investment (learning by doing). Human capital is formed in the schooling sector that is financed by the government. The government may run into debt but obeys the inter‐temporal budget constraint. The article analyzes the structure of the model and studies the effects of different budgetary policies as regards the balanced growth rate, transition dynamics and with respect to welfare.     

政府补助、产权性质与定向增发

政府补助效果是学者高度重视的焦点话题。本文以政府补助为切入点，从一级市场、二级市场分别考察定向增发新股的定价效率以及定向增发收益背后的经济逻辑，并采用随机前沿分析法对2007—2017年间获得政府补助且实施定向增发新股的沪深A 股上市公司进行实证分析。结果发现：定向增发新股发行存在溢价现象，新股上市后也存在溢价现象，政府补助加剧了溢价程度，进而导致定价效率降低，且在国有企业中更严重；发行定价泡沫越严重，定向增发收益越高，同时政府补助对定向增发收益能产生积极影响，且在国有企业中更显著。路径检验结果发现：政府补助作用于定向增发收益可能依赖盈余管理、自主创新以及个股成长这三条路径。上述结果表明，政府补助可能被异化为操纵股价的隐形工具，导致政府补助效果“事与愿违”。     

Good Jobs,Bad Jobs and Redistribution*

We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the policy‐maker is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a “good jobs” sector due to the capture of quasi‐rents by trade unions. With strong unions and high planner preference for income equality, the optimal policy is a combination of investment subsidies and progressive income taxation. If unions are weaker, the policy‐maker may instead choose to tax investment.     

Path-dependent economic progress and regress: The negative role of subsidies in economic growth

This paper develops a two-stage economic growth model with real options and examines the effects of various subsidy policies. The economic stages are the deterministic and stochastic AK stages, and the economy may shift between the two, depending upon state variables and technological shocks. This model allows for path-dependent economic growth that accounts for both club convergence and divergence across countries. Moreover, it is shown that under certain conditions, a decrease in the subsidy rate facilitates the shift from the deterministic to stochastic AK stages, which is defined as “economic progress”, even in the face of an economic crisis, while more subsidies delay economic progress and promote the shift from the stochastic to deterministic AK stages, which is defined as “economic regress”.     

公共资本投资、内生经济增长与合理政府债务规模*

本文基于一个具有内生增长机制的三部门世代交叠模型,讨论了政府举债为公共投资进行融资时经济的长期均衡;同时,通过数值模拟方法考察了我国的均衡政府债务规模及其影响因素。结果表明：在特定条件下,经济系统存在一个正的均衡政府债务-产出比重,该债务比重水平明显受到公共投资—产出比重、公共投资的债务融资比重、民间资本产出弹性等参数的影响。但是,均衡政府债务比重并不是无限上升的,当上述参数超过特定临界值时,经济系统无法达到均衡,政府债务-产出之比将持续上升,财政将不可持续。另外,当民间资本产出弹性较低时,较高的均衡政府债务比重可能导致经济运行动态无效率。数值模拟结果还显示,基于不同的假设情形,我国的均衡政府债务-产出比重均在不同程度上高于当前实际的政府债务规模,这为我国在未来期间实施扩张性财政政策提供了有利的依据。     

税收激励与政府资助对企业R&D投入影响的实证研究——基于上市高新技术企业的面板数据

以2007—2009年中小企业板67家上市高新技术企业作为研究样本,采用随机效应面板数据模型,分析税收激励与政府资助对高新技术企业R&D投入的影响效应,并对这两种政策工具的激励效果进行比较。结果发现,税收激励与政府资助对企业R&D投入都有促进作用。与政府资助相比,税收激励的作用更大。     

SHORT‐RUN POLICY COMMITMENT WHEN INVESTMENT TIMING IS ENDOGENOUS: ‘MORE HARM THAN GOOD?’

In our model, firms choose when to set cost‐reducing investment and the government, which only has short‐run commitment power, sets an output subsidy. We show that firms that delay investment without government intervention have an incentive to invest early under policy activism, strategically underinvesting or overinvesting to obtain larger subsidies. The policy scheme thus creates a new, potentially more harmful, distortion. Under oligopoly, a firm has a weaker incentive to manipulate policy than under monopoly, which makes policy intervention less harmful. We investigate when the government may do better by adhering to laissez‐faire than by engaging in active policy intervention.     

资产专用性、淘汰落后产能政策与上市公司资本投资

基于投资支出——投资机会模型,分别考察资产专用性、淘汰落后产能政策及其交互作用,对工业企业上市公司资本投资的影响。研究结果表明：拥有越高资产专用性的企业,其资本投资越大;淘汰落后产能政策加速了政策所属行业企业的投资;但对于拥有较高资产专用性的淘汰落后产能政策所属行业企业,淘汰落后产能政策抑制了其资本投资,这种情况在公司所在地地方政府环境政策支持度较高的地区尤其明显,而在地方政府环境政策支持度较低的地区则不显著。     

Macroeconomic impacts of fiscal policy shocks in the UK: A DSGE analysis

This paper develops and estimates a new-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the analysis of fiscal policy in the UK. We find that government consumption and investment yield the highest GDP multipliers in the short-run, whereas capital income tax and public investment have dominating effect on GDP in the long-run. When nominal interest rate is at the zero lower bound, consumption taxes and public consumption and investment are found to be the most effective fiscal instruments throughout the analysed horizon, and capital and labour income taxes are established to be the least effective. The paper also shows that the effectiveness of fiscal policy decreases in a small open-economy scenario and that nominal rigidities improve effectiveness of public spending and consumption taxes, whereas decrease that of income taxes.     

How to Achieve the Take-off into Sustained Growth: A Case Study for Slovenia

In this paper, we show that successful policy aimed at enhancing economic growth in the long run must be based on policies which improve human capital and technological progress. This is applied to Slovenia, a small open economy in the European Union and the Euro Area. In particular, we investigate how fiscal policies should be designed to support economic growth without violating the European Union Stability and Growth Pact. Using the SLOPOL10 model, an econometric model of the Slovenian economy, we analyse the effects of different fiscal policies in Slovenia over the next few years by means of simulations. The fiscal policy multipliers of the Slovenian economy are small and short-lived, which renders demand-side expansionary fiscal policies inappropriate as a means of achieving higher growth. However, if an increase in government expenditures directly related to technological progress is implemented (such as better funding for tertiary education or subsidies for firms’ investments in research and development), this can trigger a path of output which is permanently higher than that of the baseline simulation. Reducing income taxes and social security contributions has strong positive effects on employment. This result shows that the key to prosperity and sustained growth is investment in human capital and technology, also for a small open economy like Slovenia.     

Public capital,deficit financing,and economic growth in a stochastic economy

This paper examines the relationship among deficit-financing fiscal policy, risk and economic growth in a stochastic endogenous growth model with private and public capital. We show that there are positive balanced-growth rate and a debt-to-GDP ratio that depend on deep parameters such as the income tax rate and the standard deviation of the growth rate of private and public capital. Investment and fiscal shocks influence the mean and variance of the growth rate and the debt dependency rate through portfolio changes and capital accumulation. In particular, an increase in the risk of private investment destabilizes the economy and reduces the mean growth rate if the portfolio change is drastic, and this increase in risk increases the debt-to-GDP ratio. In contrast, an increase in the income tax rate stabilizes the economy, increases the mean growth rate, and has a positive or negative effect on the debt-to-GDP ratio according to the ratio of public to private capital if the income tax rate is sufficiently small.     

Decentralization,social capital,and regional growth: The case of the Italian North-South divide

This paper aims to show how a region's constant level of social capital may have a very different impact on its economic growth depending on whether the central or the local level of government is responsible for regional policy.Our case study is the economic performance of Northern and Southern Italy in the post-World War II period, when a long phase of regional convergence came to a sudden halt in the early 1970s. We focus on the economic effects of the 1970s institutional reforms on government decentralization and wage bargaining. Our main hypothesis is that decentralization allocates the provision of public capital to institutions, the local ones, more exposed to a territory's social capital. Since social capital is lower in the Southern regions, decentralization made their developmental policies less effective from 1970 onwards, and regional inequality increased.We build an endogenous growth model augmented to include the interaction between social capital and public investment as well as the reform of the Italian labour market. We calibrate our model using data of the Italian regions for 1951–71. Our quantitative results indicate that decentralization triggered the influence of local social capital on growth and played a central role in halting the convergence path of the low-social-capital regions.