INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE: A LOAN MECHANISM-DESIGN APPROACH

International Financial Institutions (IFIs) tie resource transfers to capital-scarce countries to improvements in their economic policies and institutions. The objective of this assistance is twofold: to augment the recipient's capital base and to improve its allocation of resources. This paper offers a political-economy explanation for the limited success of some of these loan programs. In our model, governments select policies under the influence of interest groups. Their capacity to absorb IFI loans and their reform efforts are both unobservable to the IFI. An optimally designed loan mechanism must create sufficient incentives – in the form of rewards and punishments – to counter the influence of interest groups on economic policy choices. The loan mechanism is, however, constrained in two ways: it cannot punish a country so severely as to threaten its political stability and it must remain affordable to the IFI. Whenever reform incentives are inadequate, a government will accept the loan but cheat on the implementation of reforms. If, on the other hand, the mechanism design is optimal, it might be so costly to the IFI that a well-entrenched interest group can block the reform program. Nonetheless, the availability of properly designed loan mechanisms will push governments to implement partial reforms even if the optimal mechanism is too costly for the IFI.     

Welfare effects of competitive lobbying efforts in international oligopoly markets

Conventionally, rent-seeking activities have been considered to deteriorate social welfare and to distort resource allocation. This paper examines whether rent-seeking behavior can improve social welfare by focusing on the welfare effects of firms’ competitive lobbying efforts when governments can impose market entry regulation against foreign firms. We demonstrate that competitive lobbying efforts can improve social welfare when such lobbying efforts are directed to reduce market entry barriers. In addition, social welfare can be maximized when the government shows the maximum sensitivity to the foreign firm's political contributions while maintaining competitive market structure. Moreover, it is shown that the dominant strategy for a domestic firm is to allocate more resources to R&D sectors while it is optimal for foreign firms is to exert more efforts in lobbying to reduce the market entry barriers when a government makes political economic approach in market entry regulations.     

中西部地区的经济发展与吸引外资:政策取向及其实效分析

自70年代末期以来，中国中西部地区的经济发展速度明显慢于东部沿海地区，外资注入较少是导致这种状况的一个重要原因。本文的前半部分，将分析造成这种差距的原因。今后十年，两个重要因素将引导更多的外资投向中西部地区。第一，中央和地方政府都在致力于通过投资环境和制定优惠政策，引导外资流入中西部地区。第二，随着中国加WTO，中国的外资政策更加开放，允许外同进入更多的领域和采用更加多样灵活的投资方式。本文的后一部分，将分析这两个方面的因素对中西部地区利用外资和地区经济发展的影响。     

居民对中、外资金融机构的比较评价研究——来自中国九个城市的证据

Between domestic financial institutions and foreign or joint venture ones in China, which ones do Chinese people give better assessment to? And what factors affect those comparative assessments? With a household survey in nine cities in China in 2006, we find that China’s domestic financial institutions are considered better than foreign or joint venture ones in terms of financial products, communication with investors, security and prudence, operation standardization and service attitudes. When taken into account the endogeneity of people’s trust on government regulation agencies, empirical results show that people’s more attention to returns or the more trust on government regulation agencies leads to their better assessments on domestic financial institutions than foreign or joint venture ones. The policy implications are: Chinese governments have to take measures to improve residents’ trust in governmental regulation and create a fair competition environment for domestic and foreign financial institutions in China. Domestic and foreign financial institutions make efforts to develop a higher rate-of-return and attractive financial products to service more customers.     

Military aid,direct intervention and counterterrorism

We analyze the choice often faced by countries of whether to directly intervene to counter an external terrorist threat or to subsidize a foreign government to do it. We present a model which analyzes this policy choice where two countries, home and foreign, face a terrorist threat based in the foreign country. The home country chooses how much to invest in defending itself and in reducing terrorist resources either indirectly by subsidizing the foreign country or by directly by intervening itself and risking destabilizing the foreign country. Using a calibrated model, we are able to show that direct intervention is only an equilibrium if foreign and home efforts are not good substitutes in the technology used to reduce the resources of the terrorist group. A higher relative military efficiency by the home country makes intervention more likely.     

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.     

财政可持续性与地方政府教育努力程度*

财政可持续性是影响政府教育努力程度的重要因素。本文基于2015—2019年城市面板数据测算了地方政府的财政可持续性指标，考察了财政可持续性对地方政府教育投入水平的影响。研究发现：我国大部分地级市都处于财政可持续状态，地方政府逐年上升的财政可持续性风险将降低政府教育努力程度，这一效应在东部地区和中部地区以及经济较发达城市尤为显著。     

中国转型期地方政府行为取向及调控策略研究

本文基于多任务委托—代理的视角分析了中国转型时期的地方政府行为取向及其调控策略。地方政府既可以付出与中央政府利益一致的合作性努力,也可以付出与中央政府利益不一致的自私性努力,合作性努力水平和自私性努力水平取决于既定体制下的激励机制。在制度安排既定的情况下,中央政府既可以通过采取适当的补偿措施来提高地方政府的合作性努力水平,也可以通过适当的惩罚措施来降低地方政府的自私性努力水平,这其中有规律可循。     

Managing Foreign Direct Investment: Commitment, Deterrence, And Diversion

The paper models the multinational choice between foreign direct investment in and exporting to a domestic market as an equilibrium outcome of strategic play between domestic and foreign firms. Two cases are considered, one in which the domestic firm can precommit to output levels (as, for example, through investment in a distribution network), and one in which such precommitment is not possible. The domestic firm's strategy in the case of precommitment includes aggressive efforts to deter or divert foreign investment and results in fewer observed equilibria with foreign investment than would otherwise occur. Tariffs designed to switch the foreign decision from exporting to direct investment may lead instead to monopolization of the market by the domestic firm.     

Outward foreign direct investment and sovereign risks in developing host country

Outward foreign direct investment can affect developing, technology-receiving host countries mainly through tax revenue, technology spillover and the competition effect. With the consideration of these three effects of the outward foreign direct investment on host country, we develop a dynamic game model of interaction between foreign investors and host country from a dynamic perspective, to reveal the dynamic evolution mechanism of the sovereign risk faced by outward foreign direct investment. The result shows that: host governments usually give a specific tax holiday for outward foreign direct investors, and during the period of tax holiday investment decision of investors would be influenced by technology spillover effect, specifically, the greater the technology spillover the slower the growth of investment stock. Once the system reaches a stable state, the host country will impose a tax on multinational corporations. If the equilibrium tax rate of industries or regions which makes it easy to obtain technology spillover is high, then the equilibrium capital stock would be low.     

Separation of the redistributive and allocative functions of government: A public choice perspective

The implications of not separating the redistributive and allocative functions of government are examined from a public choice perspective. Many democratic governments lump transfers and public services into a single unified budget. This can distort voter perceptions of the marginal cost of public services relative to the marginal tax price embodied in the taxing institutions employed to generate public revenue. If the median voter's perception of marginal cost is affected, the majority rule outcome with respect to public goods spending will be altered correspondingly.     

Assist or desist? Conditional bailouts and fiscal discipline in local governments

Central government bailouts of local governments are commonly viewed as a recipe for local fiscal indiscipline, as local governments learn that the center will come to the rescue in times of trouble. However, little is known about the consequences of bailouts granted conditional on local governments first making efforts to improve the situation. We examine a case in which the Swedish central government provided conditional grants to 36 financially troubled municipalities. We use the synthetic control method to identify suitable comparison units for each of the 36 municipalities. To compare the development of costs and the fiscal surplus of admitted municipalities to that of their most similar counterparts during the decade after the program, we then estimate fixed effects regressions on the resulting sample. The analysis suggests that conditional bailouts did not erode, and may even have improved, fiscal discipline.     

INTEREST GROUPS AND ECONOMIC POLICY: EXPLAINING THE PATTERN OF PROTECTION IN THE BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

This article examines the determinants of the pattern of protection across products in the Brazilian agricultural sector from 1969 to 1989. Three key determinants of policy are explored: interest group pressure, government objectives, and structural change associated with economic crisis and a change in political regime. The principal agricultural policies are analyzed, and nominal protection coefficients (NPCs) and producer subsidy equivalents (PSEs) are calculated. When NPCs are used as the dependent variable, econometric results indicate that interest group characteristics such as group size were an important determinant of the pattern of protection. With PSEs, government efforts to raise tax revenues, generate foreign exchange, and control inflation played a more significant role. The results of this paper suggest that future studies of the political economy of protection should pay more attention to the specification of the dependent variable because the conclusions can depend crucially on this choice.     

外商直接投资与东亚金融危机——一个新的分析视角

关于东亚金融危机爆发原因的研究很多。但是大多数研究没有注意到FDI的大量流入对于东亚国家爆发金融危机的影响。虽然FDI没有直接引起金融危机的爆发,但是它确实对危机国家经济脆弱性的形成发挥了作用。FDI给东道国带来的金融风险往往是潜在的,如果不能有效监管,这种潜在金融风险就有转化成现实金融风险的可能。所以,一味提高FDI的引资比重并不能使发展中国家摆脱金融危机的侵扰,发展中国家有必要加强对FDI的监管。     

Democratic Accountability,Regulation and Inward Investment Policy

We examine the effect of domestic political accountability on leaders' strategies for attracting foreign direct investment to less developed countries. We consider two policy areas: the tax burden imposed on firms and the regulatory environment in which they operate. We find that democratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lower tax rates to foreign investors, whereas autocratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lax regulation. This result is driven by the greater elasticity of the political survival function to environmental and labor regulations in more democratic countries. Analyses of firm‐level survey data confirm our main theoretical conclusions.     

THE POLITICS OF INVESTMENT PARTISANSHIP: AND THE SECTORAL ALLOCATION OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

This paper explores the existence of partisan cycles in foreign direct investment performance. Our theoretical model predicts that the incumbent government's partisanship should affect foreign investors' decision to flow into different sectors of the host country: pro-labor governments would encourage the inflow of the type of investment that complements labor in production; pro-capital governments would promote the entry of investment that substitutes for labor. Empirical evidence from a sample of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries reveals a pattern of foreign investors' response to partisan cycles consistent with the predictions of the model. First, foreign investment systematically flows into different sectors of the host economy under left- and right-leaning incumbents. Second, we find a positive correlation between foreign investment and changes in average wages under left-leaning incumbents, but no effect on wages under right-leaning governments.     

Foreign direct investment, political resentment and the privatization process in eastern Europe

Foreign direct investment has been disappointingly low in eastern Europe, which has been reluctant to make existing assets available to foreign investors. To mitigate any such resentment, we propose a participation model in which foreign investors compete for joint venture contracts. Host governments contribute existing assets and receive non-voting stocks. Foreign investors, contributing capital and know-how, receive voting shares and control of operational decisions.{}This has several advantages over the cash sale of assets to foreigners. First, stock flow problems are eased, raising both asset prices and FDI flows. Second, by retaining some stake in the firm, transition countries share in the risk premium. Third, governments can hand over their shares to households, creating private collateral to foster new small businesses. Fourth, and crucially, compared to cash sales the auction of participation contracts offers higher privatization revenues in cases where governments cannot assess investors' knowledge and abilities. This reduces the risk of selling the family silver too cheaply, and should alleviate the host countries' resentment.     

Contracting for Infrastructure Projects as Credence Goods

Large infrastructure projects are a major responsibility of urban and regional governments, who usually lack expertise to fully specify the demanded projects. Contractors, typically experts on such projects due to experience with similar projects, advise of the needed design as well as the cost of construction in their bids. Producing the right design is costly. We model such infrastructure projects taking into account their credence goods feature and the costly design effort they require and examine the performance of commonly used contracting methods. We show that when building costs are homogeneous and public information, simultaneous bidding involving shortlisting of two contractors and contingent compensation of both contractors on design efforts outperforms sequential search. If building costs are private information of the contractors and are revealed to them after design cost is sunk, sequential search may be superior to simultaneous bidding.     

Towards a change in the economic paradigm through the experience of developing countries

Outside the conventional economic paradigm, chronic and recurrent bottlenecks are treated as pathological disorders instead of inherent problems in the growth of developing nations. Bottlenecks are either an insufficiency of foreign exchange to purchase an item needed to carry out production, or a shortage of a raw material. A new kind of recessive inflation occurs when markets provoke a regressive distribution of income to reduce bottlenecks and clashes with social pressure for higher wages. The trend toward bottlenecks in primarily exporting countries results in chronic and cumulative foreign indebtedness, recurrent stop and go cycles, and conflicts about income distribution which are solved through recessive inflation. Any balancing action on bottlenecks implies changes in relative prices entailing transfers of income to suppliers of scarce items. Investments should be stimulated by governments at the international level according to a global plan. A network of the largest world banks should be stabilized for most important raw materials and foodstuffs. This would encourage investment and discourage excessive price changes. If a rule were adopted whereby each country would have to live with its own oil deficit, the individualist/opportunism would disappear.     

Political regimes and foreign intervention

We present a theory of endogenous political regimes that emphasizes foreign direct investment as a motive for foreign governments to either induce regime transitions or promote regime consolidations. We characterize different forms of foreign intervention and identify the conditions under which they occur. We highlight new channels through which economic factors affect political regime choices. Foreign intervention is most likely to originate from countries where the government has a substantial pro-investor bias and to be directed at destinations where FDI is highly profitable and where income inequality is high. Foreign-sponsored coups d'état are more likely to be directed at democratic governments of poor countries. In destinations where FDI is highly profitable but the domestic elite is weak, foreign intervention tends to be aimed at stabilizing dictatorships. We relate the analysis to evidence on foreign intervention from around the world.