The Effect of Privatization on Public Transit Costs

In an effort to reduce operating deficits, increase productivity, and improve the quality of services, the public transit sector has been moving away from public ownership and operation and towards a franchising arrangement whereby a local government authorizes a private firm to manage and operate the city's public transit system. Profit maximization considerations imply that private managers have stronger incentives for cost efficiency. One such example is the city of Indianapolis which began privatization efforts in its transit operations in 1996. Based upon monthly data from January 1991 through March 1997, this study examines the effect of privatization on the city's cost of providing mass transit. The primary implication of the study is that Indianapolis has experienced an annual 2.5% reduction in operating costs since privatizing the management of its public transit system.     

Income Taxes,Subsidies to Education,and Investments in Human Capital

We study a two‐sector economy with investments in human and physical capital and imperfect labor markets. Investments are irreversible and noncontractible, due to random matching between firms and workers. Income is allocated according to the Nash bargaining mechanism. At equilibrium, given the distribution of the agents across sectors, there is underinvestment in both human and physical capital, due to the holdup problem generated by bargaining and noncontractibility. Self‐selection of the agents into the two sectors typically induces too many workers to invest in high skills. Compared to the constrained efficient allocation, at each equilibrium, there are too many people investing too little effort in the high‐skill sector. We also study the effects of several tax policies on total expected surplus.     

Trading Taxes vs. Paying Taxes to Value and Finance Public Environmental Goods

The potential sensitivity of environmentalresource valuation to payment vehicles is ofinterest to researchers and decision-makersinvolved in estimating and applying thesenumbers. A conceptual model is developed whichprovides insight into how the different paymentvehicles of a special tax and a taxreallocation affects the willingness to pay(WTP) for environmental goods. Hypothesistesting using contingent valuation datasuggests WTP with a tax reallocation is higherthan WTP with a special tax for ground waterquality protection in Georgia and Maine, USA.Technical measurement and welfare analysisimplications and limitations of valuing andfinancing public environmental goods using taxrealloactions are discussed.     

财产税和地方公共支出对财产价值的影响

本文的目的是提供一些关于地方公共预算对社区内财产价值的影响的经验结论。通过财产税的转移理论，本文分析了整体税收对地主租金收入和对佃户付出的影响。研究结果表明了税收和支出方案对地方财产价值的影响方向，以及粗略估计的数量级。     

Wage Indexation: The Treatment of Public Sector Taxes and Goods*

This paper considers the problem of constructing an index, in the presence of a large public sector, which will tell us whether any adjustment to wages or other payments to households in one situation will leave the households better or worse off than in some previous situation with a different set of prices. This index is an extension of the true price index. The paper also proposes an index of the affordable wages with which the first index should be compared.     

Taxes or Fees? The Political Economy of Providing Excludable Public Goods

This paper provides a positive analysis of public provision of excludable public goods financed by uniform taxes or fees. Individuals differing in preferences decide, using majority rule, the provision level and financing instrument. The decisive voter has median preferences in a tax regime, but generally has above median preferences in a fee regime. Numerical solutions indicate that populations with uniform or left‐skewed distributions of preferences choose taxes, while a majority coalition of high‐ and low‐preference individuals prefer fees when preferences are sufficiently right skewed. Public good provision and welfare under fees exceeds that under taxes in the latter case.     

从公共财政角度审视农村税费改革

本文认为，从公共财政的角度看，农村税费没有体现税费与公共服务的对应，税费金额的大小没有考虑纳税能力的因素，不符合税收负担的公平准则；并且当前的农村税费制度一定程度上扭曲了农业生产中资源的配置，已经影响到农村和农业的发展。仅仅将“费”改为“税”是不能根本解决问题的。农村税费改革的根本出路在于建立农村地方公共财政体制。     

改革创新是财政强动力

<正> 当2002年的经济时钟走过一半路程的时候,中国财政状况引起了各界人士的普遍关注。我国财政状况究竟如何?财政与经济是如何运行的?财政改革给我们留下了什么?又对未来发展作了什么准备?这里,我们不妨对近几年来进行的财政改革进行一下回顾和总结。推进财政改革,建立财政收入稳定增长机制当我们回首财政改革时会发现一个     

Welfare Effects of Different Public Expenditures and Taxes in the Netherlands

This paper explores the welfare effects of public consumption, income transfers and public investment financed through different types of taxes. One surprising result is that, contrary to public consumption goods, public capital goods do not necessarily become less attractive if distortionary taxes, rather than lump-sum taxes, are necessary to finance them. The numerical simulations reveal that the net welfare effects of public investments in the Netherlands are typically positive if financed through lump-sum taxes or distortionary taxes on labor. However, if a source-based capital tax is adopted to finance public investments, the overall welfare effect may be negative.     

个人所得税对公司加权平均资金成本的影响

本文利用Dempsey的包含个人所得税的股票价值模型建立了包含个人所得税的公司平均资金成本模型,研究个人所得税对公司资本结构和资金成本的影响.本文还根据中国的实际,研究中国现行的所得税制度对公司资金成本和资本结构的影响.     

Costs of Taxation and Benefits of Public Goods with Multiple Taxes and Goods

The fact that raising taxes can increase taxed labor supply through income effects is frequently and erroneously used to justify greater public good provision than indicated by traditional, compensated analyses. We develop a model including multiple public goods and taxes and derive measures of the marginal benefits of public goods and the Marginal Cost of Funds (MCF) using both compensated and uncompensated measures. We confirm that the desirability of tax‐financed public projects is independent of the method used. An important innovation is to show that the benefits of public goods must be adjusted by a benefit multiplier not previously seen in the literature if an uncompensated MCF is used.     

增税与发债:理论比较与现实选择

增税与发债都是为财政支出融资的方式.本文从理论上分析了二者对经济影响的差别.在中国近年积极财政政策的实施过程中,税收收入出现较快增长,但实际税收负担的增长低于统计显示的水平.在分析这一情况时,要看到税收收入增长的深层原因.而发行国债,则能将居民储蓄转化为公共投资,改善基础设施现状,因而是较为理想的融资工具.     

Estimating the Optimal Scale of Public Investments: The Case of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facilities

This paper addresses the regulatory problem of estimating the optimal scale of public capital investments, such as regional low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) disposal facilities and sports stadiums, when regulators can require information disclosures from firms. I evaluate the efficacy of the Illinois LLRW mandatory forecast disclosure rule against an estimated ARIMA model of LLRW volume disposed over the 1985–1995 period; the ARIMA model is shown to be more accurate. I conclude with an ARIMA model forecast of lifecycle volumetric capacity of a proposed LLRW disposal facility in Illinois.     

The Efficiency of State Taxes

The states have increased their share of national revenue from about 16 per cent in the late 1980s to over 20 per cent. This shift may not have improved the efficiency of raising national taxation revenue. Eight taxes with total revenue in 1995–96 of $26.5 billion are considered. In order of revenue these are payroll tax, business franchise taxes, stamp duties, gambling taxes, government business enterprise taxes, financial institutions taxes, land tax and mineral taxes. Business franchise taxes fall on a few items of consumption that are already taxed heavily by the Commonwealth. Financial taxes and stamp duties are suspect because they are transactions taxes, not taxing economic activity directly. Two important state taxes—on payrolls and on land—have badly fractured bases. The pressure on the states to raise more revenue is continuing. In meeting their revenue requirements efficiently the short-term solution lies in substantial reforms of existing taxes, including repairing the bases of the payroll and land taxes, and removal or reduction of the least efficient ones. The longer term solution lies in the states having access to broader based taxes, particularly consumption.     

The Impact of Transfers and Taxes on Alternative Poverty Indexes

Changes in the headcount rate are the standard metric for gauging how public transfers and taxes affect US poverty. An alternative strategy, one theoretically more appealing and complete, is to rely on distribution-sensitive indexes (Sen 1976, 1981). How would policy's measured impacts change if such an approach were to be used? This study provides empirical evidence using three selected poverty indexes from the class developed by Foster et al . (1984). Pre- and post-policy values of each index are estimated for the total population and for twenty-three demographic sub-groups using data from March Current Population Surveys covering the period 1992 to 1998. The results indicate that the alternative indexes produce consistent ordinal rankings of policy's impact. (In contrast, the measured cardinal effects of policy differ substantially across indexes.) The empirical evidence has a clear implication for anti-poverty policy: government transfers and taxes are effective in lowering poverty headcount rates, in reducing the depth of poverty and in lessening the relative deprivation among the poor.     

论主体税种的确立与完善

主体税种的选择是税制建设的核心问题 ,它决定税制结构的类型。我国税收制度过于依赖流转税 ,存在着诸多弊端 ,应立足本国国情 ,适当借鉴国际经验 ,构建流转税与所得税并重的双主体税制结构。     

Optimal Monetary Policy, Taxes, and Public Debt in an Intertemporal Equilibrium

This article is devoted to a study of the optimal monetary and fiscal policies within the framework of an overlapping generations model with cash-in-advance constraints. We first characterize the intertemporal equilibrium. Then we show how to decentralize the optimal growth path using available policy instruments (i.e., labor income and capital taxes, public debt, money supply). Between the four instruments: wages and capital taxes, debt and monetary policy, one is redundant among the three last which implies that the Friedman Rule is only a special case.     

论正负净投资的不对称性

西方传统的投资理论强调经济的绝对增长,其对于净投资的研究偏重于正的净投资,也即合意的资本存量高于实际的资本存量的情况,而忽略了在合意的资本存量低于实际的资本存量时投资行为的研究.本文从正负净投资的不对称性这一角度出发,通过简单明了的图表分析,对传统的投资模型加以补充,从而将非均衡问题引入投资领域.     

The Dynamics of Pharmaceutical Regulation and R&D Investments

The paper uses a real option approach to investigate the properties of two widely used schemes of regulating the reimbursement of new pharmaceutical products: standard cost‐effectiveness thresholds and performance‐based risk‐sharing agreements. The use of the latter has been quickly spreading and often criticized in recent times. The results show that the exact definition of the risk‐sharing agreement is key in determining its economic effects. In particular, despite the concerns expressed by some authors, the incentive for a firm to invest in R&D may be the same or even greater than under cost‐effectiveness thresholds. The greater flexibility on the timing of commercialization allowed by risk‐sharing schemes plays a key role, by increasing the value of the option to invest in R&D under uncertainty. Under this scheme, a higher value for the firm is associated with earlier access to innovations for patients. The price for this is less value for money for the insurer at the time of adoption of the innovation.     

中国轨道交通的公共政策构建

本文在梳理我国轨道交通公共政策的基础上,分析轨道交通公共政策存在的问题,认为目前轨道交通公共政策只具有行业管理性的特点,缺乏公共政策应具有的公共性、系统性与阶段性等特点,在此基础上,探讨了我国轨道交通公共政策中的一些关键性问题,如实施目标、重点与对象、政府管理及政府与企业的关系,等等.