Growing up with capital flows

We examine the capital flows-domestic investment relationship for 60 developing countries from 1979 to 1999. In the 1990s, even as liberalization attracted new flows, foreign capital stimulated less domestic investment than in the preceding decade. With greater financial integration, governments accumulated more international reserves and domestic residents diversified by investing abroad. Foreign investors were also motivated by diversification objectives rather than by unmet investment needs. Inflows were channeled increasingly through portfolio flows—or through foreign direct investment (FDI) with the characteristics of portfolio capital—resulting in weak investment stimulus. However, stronger policy environments strengthened the link between inflows and investment.     

Global capital flows and development: A Survey

Abstract

From a development perspective, capital flows can both provide significant benefits and entail significant costs. Consequently, the development impacts of capital flows do not readily lend themselves to simple generalizations. This survey considers the development benefits and costs of four kinds of capital flows: foreign direct investment, equity portfolio investment, bond finance, and commercial bank lending. The survey suggests that the development impacts of these flows are conditional on both their specific characteristics and the larger policy environments in which they take place. It claims short-term superiority for foreign direct investment and equity portfolio investment over bond finance and commercial bank lending, and offers a set of policy recommendations to make capital flows more development-friendly.     

基于家庭数据的燃油税制改革福利分析

燃油税制改革是一个复杂的问题,涉及政府(G)、居民消费者(RC)、客运和货运消费者(DC)、出租车消费者(TC)、公交车消费者(PC)、公路建设者(PB)、原油和成品油供应者(S)、汽车行业(CI)等多方利益体,需要用整体的眼光来看待和分析.本文运用定量研究法,首先依据居民消费者需求行为的数据估计出货币效用函数及其参数,并在效用最大化和预算约束的限制下构造拉格朗日辅助函数求解得到需求函数.同时将政府的燃油税制改革政策选择作为参数引入该模型中,求得燃油税制改革前后的不同需求值,进而得到在政府政策选择变化情况下的效用改变量.通过将福利改变情况与政府初始多重政策目标相比较,最后得出结论和相应的政策指导意见.     

International capital flows and development: Financial openness matters

Does capital flow from rich to poor countries? We revisit the Lucas paradox to account for the role of capital account openness. We find that, when accounting for such openness, the prediction of the neoclassical theory is empirically confirmed: among financially open economies, less developed countries tend to experience net capital inflows and more developed countries tend to experience net capital outflows. The results hold also when taking into account private flows, institutions, and numerous controls. We also show that reserve intervention has an effect on the current account only in financially open economies.     

Optimal tax and debt policy with endogenously imperfect creditworthiness

This paper studies the patterns of optimal tax rates and borrowing in a developing country characterized by a costly tax collection. Its access to the international credit market is determined by the efficiency of the tax system, the relative bargaining power of creditors, and the outstanding debt. Country risk modifies considerably the pattern of taxes and borrowing in recessions. The tax rate exhibits strong counter-cyclical patterns in economies operating close to the credit ceiling, whereas the tax rate exhibits very few cyclical patterns in economies operating on the elastic portion of the supply of credit, where country risk factors are absent.     

Trade policy with endogenous entry revisited

This paper revisits the effects of tariffs and quotas in a competitive setting where three results are thought to hold. These are: that quotas are equivalent to specific tariffs, the form of tariffs—specific or ad valorem—does not matter, and that the way in which a quota is allocated has no real effects as it only affects the allocation of rents, not their size. We show that all three of these results are false when entry/exit is endogenous. Equivalence holds only if the initial level of entry is set at the long-run level under the quota.     

Outsourcing, unemployment and welfare policy

The paper investigates the consequences of outsourcing of labor intensive activities to low-wage economies. This trend challenges the two basic functions of the welfare state, redistribution and social insurance when private unemployment insurance markets are missing. The main results are: (i) outsourcing raises unemployment and labor income risk of unskilled workers; (ii) it increases inequality between high- and low-income groups; and (iii) the gains from outsourcing can be made Pareto improving by using a redistributive linear income tax if redistribution is initially not too large. We finally derive the welfare optimal redistribution and unemployment insurance policies.     

Economic growth,trade and capital flows: A causal analysis of post-liberalised South Africa

Development Finance and EconometricsThis paper investigates the causal relationships between trade, capital inflows and economic growth in post-liberalised South Africa over the period from 1995 to 2011. The results show that economic growth in South Africa is driven primarily by trade and fixed investment rather than by capital inflows. However, the relationship between economic growth and imports is bidirectional, and thus economic growth in South Africa is associated to a greater extent with the export-led growth hypothesis than the import-led growth hypothesis. In addition, the results find in favour of growth-led FDI rather than FDI-led growth, and that portfolio inflows rather than FDI are integrated into the country's trade-led growth dynamics.     

财税政策与环境保护

环保问题作为一个公共产品,首先应该是政府的一项职能,在财税政策方面应该大力支持,主要从两个方面着手:一、从财政上加大环保方面资金的投入;二、税收政策方面。     

The true art of the tax deal: Evidence on aid flows and bilateral double tax agreements

Of a total of 2,976 double tax agreements (DTA s), some 60% are signed between a developing and a developed economy. As DTA s shift taxing rights from capital‐importing to capital‐exporting countries, the latter inherently benefit more from the agreements. In this paper, we argue that capital exporters use foreign aid to incite capital importers into signing DTA s. We demonstrate in a theoretical model that in a deal, one country does not trump the other, but that the deal must be mutually beneficial. In the case of an asymmetric DTA , this requires compensation from the capital‐exporting country to the capital‐importing country. Examining DTA s that are signed between donor and recipient countries between 1991 and 2012, and using a fixed effects Poisson model, we find that bilateral foreign aid commitments increase by 22% in the year of the signature of a DTA . Evaluated at the sample mean, this translates into around US$ six million additional aid commitments in a DTA signatory year.     

激励企业自主创新的财税政策浅析

自主创新能力是一国综合实力的象征,也决定着一个国家的命运.为了更好的激励企业自主创新,我国政府必须进一步完善财税政策,系统设计税收政策目标;完善税法体系;建立有利于自主创新的税收征管制度等是必须的税收政策的调整.加大财政补贴力度;调整财政支持方式;与政府采购相结合等使财政政策需要作出的改变.     

Inequality and endogenous trade policy outcomes

An enduring puzzle in international economics is why trade interventions are biased in favor of import-competing rather than export sectors and therefore restrict trade. In this paper, we show that if the government's objective reflects a concern for inequality then trade policy generally exhibits an anti-trade bias. Importantly, under neutral assumptions, the mechanism that we analyze generates the anti-trade bias independently of whether factors are specific or mobile across sectors. The mechanism also generates an anti-trade bias between large countries even after they sign reciprocal trade agreements that eliminate any terms-of-trade motivation for the use of trade protection.     

Efficient bargaining,welfare and strategic export policy

We present an efficient bargaining model and analyse the welfare effects of unionization, where rival exporting governments employ strategic export policy. The domestic firm is unionized and conducts a Nash bargain with its union to determine wage and employment. The union may be wage oriented, wage neutral or employment oriented. The foreign firm is non-unionized. Stability of the reaction function equilibrium in policy space is sufficient for the following results: (i) domestic welfare increases with the degree of wage orientation; (ii) an increase in the union's bargaining power leads to higher (lower) domestic welfare if the union is wage (employment) oriented; (iii) if the domestic social marginal cost of labour is less than or equal to the foreign marginal cost, domestic market share is higher under wage orientation.     

Incomplete market participation, endogenous endowment risks and welfare

This paper investigates the equilibrium growth rate of capital stock and social welfare when risk-sharing externalities are incorporated into the infinite-horizon model where endowment risks are endogenized by the degree of incomplete market participation. There exist Nash equilibria depending on the degree of market participation. Under equilibrium with incomplete market participation, the endowment risks cannot be fully diversified as they induce precautionary savings and the over-accumulation of capital stocks while spillover effects on production technologies lead to the under-accumulation of capital stocks. This may have desirable effects on economic growth and improve social welfare.     

Capital controls,capital flows and external crises: evidence from India

Despite the widespread use of capital controls, India has experienced several balance of payments crises. This paper examines the solvency and sustainability of India's external imbalances and analyses the optimality of its capital flows. We use two approaches: an intertemporal model of the current account that allows for capital controls, and a composite model of macroeconomic indicators that yields probabilities of future balance of payments crises. The results indicate that India's intertemporal budget constraint is satisfied and that the path of its current account imbalances is sustainable, with some support for the optimality (given capital controls) of its external borrowing.     

International capital flows,returns and world financial integration

International capital flows have increased dramatically since the 1980s, with much of the increase being due to trade in equity and bond markets. Such developments are often attributed to the increased integration of world financial markets. We present a model that allows us to examine how greater integration in world financial markets affects the behavior of international capital flows and financial returns. Our model predicts that international capital flows are large (in absolute value) and very volatile during the early stages of financial integration when international asset trading is concentrated in bonds. As integration progresses and households gain access to world equity markets, the size and volatility of international bond flows decline. This is the natural outcome of greater risk sharing facilitated by increased integration. This pattern is consistent with declining volatility observed during 1975–2007 period in the G-7 countries. We also find that the equilibrium flows in bonds and stocks predicted by the model are larger than their empirical counterparts, and are largely driven by variations in equity risk premia. The model also predicts that volatility of equity and bond returns decline with integration, again consistent with the data for G-7 economies.     

Portfolio autarky: A welfare analysis

A variant of the standard Heckscher-Ohlin model, a model of a two-country world economy populated by Samuelsonian overlapping generations, is presented and then used in a welfare analysis of two international economic policy regimes: A laissez-faire regime, characterized by free trade in goods and complete freedom of portfolio choice; and a portfolio autarky regime, characterized by free trade in goods and a prohibition, applicable world-wide, on the ownership of foreign assets (land). Using a ‘growth model’ version of the traditional welfare criterion, it is shown that the laissez-faire regime is optimal and that the portfolio autarky regime is not.     

China's exports,export tax rebates and exchange rate policy

This paper examines the relationship between China's exports, export tax rebates and exchange rate policy. It offers an explanation for why China's exports continued to rise under RMB real appreciations during the Asian financial crisis. Based on a traditional export demand model, we test our hypothesis that the counteracting effects of China's export tax rebate policy have diminished the effectiveness of real exchange rates in facilitating the resolution of trade imbalances under the current pegged exchange rate regime. We find evidence that RMB real appreciations during the crisis negatively affected China's exports, but the negative effects were mitigated by the positive effects of export tax rebates. We also find evidence of a long‐run relationship between China's exports and the other explanatory variables. The empirical evidence suggests that under the pegged exchange rate regime with limited adjustments, real exchange rate movements alone cannot resolve China's external imbalances. The policy implication of this study is that China needs to redirect its decades‐long export‐oriented development strategy to one that emphasises domestic demand‐oriented development and to replace the current pegged exchange rate regime with a market‐oriented more flexible exchange rate regime.     

Staging of venture capital investment: a real options analysis

This paper uses contingent claims analysis to investigate the staging decision of venture capitalist (VC) in a principal-agent framework. Venture capital investment opportunities are modeled as real options with multiple volatilities, and the entrepreneur’s incentive is assumed to maximize the probability of getting funded in the next financing round. Two celebrated formulae in the option pricing literature are generalized to evaluate these real options. We find that staging not only gives the VC a waiting option but also mitigates the agency problem of the entrepreneur undertaking too conservative activities. Moreover, we find that the VC tends to stage her investment when the expected growth rate of the venture’s market value is lower. However, the risk-free interest rate is not an important factor in the staging decision. Our model also provides a good explanation for existing empirical evidence on the staging of venture capital investment.