Contemporary Economics and Policy Issues in the U.S.

This paper outlines a variety of contemporary policy issues facing the U.S. economy. These issues include impediments to sustained economic growth and reduced unemployment, such as tax uncertainty and ill-conceived federal income tax policies. In addition, it provides an overview of four studies that deal with such topics as budget deficits and reduced economic freedoms, the implications of raising property taxes as a source of funds for revenue-starved local governments, the regional impacts of the world-wide recession for a specific locality in the U.S., namely, Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the relationship between yield curve inversion and the incidence of recession.     

基于RIMS Ⅱ的国防支出区域经济效应分析——以美国圣迭戈县为例

国防支出对区域经济影响的主要分析工具之一是投入产出分析技术。本文在RIMS Ⅱ(Regional Input-Output Mod-eling System,区域投入产出模型化系统)基础上,讨论了区域投入产出分析的主要乘数模型:产出乘数、就业乘数和收入乘数。将乘数模型应用于国防支出的区域经济效应研究,我们发现,国防支出通过驻地军事基地和装备采购支出对区域经济发展的影响是显著的。由于国防支出由中央政府支付,经济区域内国防支出的流入意味着为区域经济注入了必要的生产发展资金,推动经济区域内循环往复的生产、消费、税收和就业。同时,不同类型的国防支出流入在区域经济内发挥的经济效应是不同的。以生产武器装备,承接国防合同为主而流入大量国防采购资金、国防R&D资金的地区,显然要比经济区内单纯驻有军事基地的地区有更高的乘数效应,国防支出对区域经济的产出、收入和就业的经济效应更为明显。     

DID THE GREAT RECESSION REDUCE VISITOR SPENDING AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR NATURE‐BASED RECREATION? EVIDENCE FROM 2006 AND 2009

Outdoor recreation is a large industry that can diversify public land‐based economies that have traditionally relied upon resource extraction. However, what happens to nature‐based recreation visitor spending and benefits during times of national economic recession? To address this question, we replicate a 2006 high mountain recreation study in the same region 3 years later during the 2009 recession. Results indicate that nature‐based public land recreation in this area did not experience reductions in most categories of visitor spending or total number of visits during the recession. These results imply that nature‐based recreation may represent an economically stable industry in public land mountain economies. Total benefits to the visitors are also quite stable, only dropping from $129 per person per trip in 2006 to $120 in 2009. This 7% drop in willingness to pay is not statistically significant at conventional levels. (JEL Q26)     

Should Portuguese economy invest in defense spending? A revisit

In this paper, we investigate the causal relationship between defense spending and economic growth in Portugal during the period of 1980–2010. We apply the ARDL bounds testing approach in the presence of structural break. The ARDL–ECM estimation results disclose that the relations between defense spending, capital, labor and economic growth are country specific. The interesting finding of this study is that there is a U-shaped relationship that exists between defense spending and economic growth. In addition, the unidirectional causality from defense spending to economic growth exists in the case of Portugal. Therefore, defense spending can play an important role in economic development of Portugal.     

国防支出与经济增长关系的战略选择——一个数理模型的分析与模拟

国防支出与经济增长之间的关系到底如何、怎样安排国防支出才能有利于国防和经济建设,这是国防经济学必须回答的基本问题。文章在一系列假设前提下,构建了一个简单的数学模型,描述了经济总量制约国防支出、国防支出又反作用于经济增长的内在机理,并通过数字模拟比较了三种国防支出战略对于经济增长和国防资本积累的不同影响,对现实中的很多问题给予了解释,得出了一些有意义的结论。     

The impact of defense expenditure on economic productivity in OECD countries

Evaluating the effects of defense spending on macroeconomic performance and, in particular, on economic productivity is a critical issue. This study integrates Malmquist productivity index (MPI) with bootstrapping to establish statistical inferences that provide a complete, effective analysis of the impact of defense expenditure on economic productivity between 1993 and 2009 for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries. The findings indicate that the average MPI with defense expenditure is higher than that without defense expenditure. Additionally, region based productivity analysis indicates that the appropriate allocation of defense expenditure can increase regional economic productivity effectively across Asia, Oceania and Europe. Moreover, the results further prove that the effective defense expenditure strategies undertaken by government are important for improving economic productivity of countries. The integrated methodology approach applied in this study can be used for further similar studies.     

Image and Reality in Economic Development

Since the financial meltdown of 2007, unemployment has consistently been above 6.0 percent. On one level, long-term unemployment can be accounted for by structural changes. But, on another level, the problem of long-term unemployment is really no more complicated than the absence of effective demand. This study looks at the demographics of the long-term unemployed for the years 2007-2010, and compares them to the years 1991-1994 to see what changes have occurred specifically among the long-term unemployed. The data shows that, in terms of structural changes, the 1991-1994 and 2007-2010 periods were not much different. Rather, the nature of this recession resulted in an altered composition of the long-term unemployed. Because long-term unemployment in this recession is a function of a particularly deep recession, a new approach is needed. Based on the data, this study argues for a wage policy that would allow for people to increase their effective demand for goods and services.     

Does higher government debt link to higher social expenditure? New method,new evidence

Scholars believe that higher social expenditures are usually linked with higher government debts, whereas higher debts reduce social expenditures. However, it is reasonable to speculate that higher government debt may contribute to higher social spending, while fiscal deficits occur during a recession, which commonly creates greater demand for social expenditure. For a deeper investigation, this paper revisits the dynamic relationship between social spending and public debts in the time-frequency domain, using the novel wavelet-coherency analysis as well as the phase-difference technique to derive the co-moved and causal relationships between social spending and public debts in 13 OECD countries. The evidence identifies a dynamic relationship between variables. While higher social expenditures increase government debts, the shocks from government debts to social expenditures are conversely uncertain. We discover that higher government debt does reduce social expenditures, but it may be linked to higher social spending. The robustness of partial coherency and phase-difference discovers the role of a political party in the decision over social welfare programmes in the sample countries.     

Demographics and medical care spending: standard and non-standard effects

"In this paper, [the authors] examine the effects of likely demographic changes on medical spending for the elderly. Standard forecasts highlight the potential for greater life expectancy to increase costs: medical costs generally increase with age, and greater life expectancy means that more of the elderly will be in the older age groups. Two factors work in the other direction, however. First, increases in life expectancy mean that a smaller share of the elderly will be in the last year of life, when medical costs generally are very high.... Second, disability rates among the surviving population have been declining in recent years by 0.5 to 1.5 percent annually.... Thus, changes in disability and mortality should, on net, reduce average medical spending on the elderly. However, these effects are not as large as the projected increase in medical spending stemming from increases in overall medical costs."     

国防支出与经济增长均衡关系的理论和实证研究——基于门槛回归模型的检验分析

文章首先将国防支出纳入Solow增长模型进行理论分析,假定国防支出通过影响技术进步对经济增长产生影响。与现有实证分析不同,文章基于1952-2008年中国的有关时间序列数据,尝试运用非线性门槛回归模型来分析国防支出与经济增长之间的数量关系。研究发现:国防支出与经济增长之间存在门槛效应,国防支出占GDP的比例低于3.434%时,国防支出占GDP的比例的增加不利于经济增长,且这种负面作用较为显著;当该比例高于3.434%时,该比例的增加将显著促进经济增长。当然,该比例并非越低越好,也并非越高越好,其局部最优规模由次级门槛值决定。     

Lax money supply under globalization and detecting an early sign to anticipate deep recession

This article uncovers a macroeconomic threshold for avoiding deep recession under globalization. The analysis shows that there is a long-run natural rate of substitution between the broadest measure of money balances and nominal government spending, namely the natural fiscal velocity. Applying this threshold to the actual economy can give us two benefits: first, comparing the actual rate of substitution between the broadest measure of money balances and nominal government spending with the natural fiscal velocity can provide an early sign to anticipate deep recession under globalization. Second, controlling the actual fiscal velocity so as not to exceed the natural one is such a macro calibration that the authorities can easily justify their pre-emptive actions as a means of avoiding a deep recession trap under globalization.     

Conflict, defense spending, and the number of nations

This paper provides a formal model of endogenous border formation and choice of defense spending in a world with international conflict. We examine both the case of democratic governments and of dictatorships. The model is consistent with three observations. First, breakup of countries should follow a reduction in the likelihood of international conflicts. Second, the number of regional conflicts between smaller countries may increase as a result of the breakup of larger countries. Third, the size of the peace dividend (the reduction in defense spending in a more peaceful world) is limited by the process of country breakup.     

Identifying fiscal policy (in)effectiveness from the differential counter‐cyclicality of government spending in the interwar period

Differences across decades in the counter‐cyclical stance of fiscal policy can identify whether the growth in government spending affects output growth and so speeds recovery from a recession. We study government‐spending reaction functions from the 1920s and 1930s for twenty countries. There are two main findings. First, surprisingly, government spending was less counter‐cyclical in the 1930s than in the 1920s. Second, the growth of government spending did not have a significant effect on output growth, so that there is little evidence that this feature of fiscal policy played a stabilizing role in the interwar period.     

How does population aging affect the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus over the business cycle?

What is the impact of population aging on the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus over the business cycle? We address this question by estimating state-dependent fiscal multipliers in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). A government spending shock is identified as a forecast error of government spending and its output effect is estimated by using the local projection method. We find that there is no effect of population aging on output effects of fiscal spending shocks in expansionary times, whereas in recessions the output effects of fiscal spending shocks are weakened as population ages. This result points to important policy implications in that population aging would call for a larger fiscal stimulus to support aggregate demand during recession. Thus, this requires a larger fiscal space to allow for a wider swing of the fiscal position without creating concerns for fiscal sustainability.     

财政科技支出、企业生命周期与技术创新

基于中国经济高质量发展目标导向，利用2007—2017年中国沪深A股上市公司数据，针对“财政科技支出—企业技术创新”范式进行分析并基于生命周期视角加以检验。结果发现，财政科技支出对企业技术创新活动产生正向驱动并展现出明显的结构性创新动力，即财政科技支出对于实质性技术创新活动的驱动更强，对于非实质性技术创新活动的促进作用不明显。在界分企业生命周期后发现，在企业成长期及成熟期，财政科技支出在驱动技术创新方面卓有成效，但在衰退期创新增益并不显著。此外，政府激励结构是影响财政科技支出效力释放的重要条件。地方政府在“为增长而竞争”导向下，财政科技支出的创新驱动效果被限制；在“为创新而竞争”导向下，财政科技支出能够充分发挥其结构性创新驱动作用。研究结论可为合理规划财政科技支出、完善政府激励体制构架提供实证依据。     

Property rights in land and output growth in Russia

This paper tests whether the implementation of a key market‐oriented reform in post‐Soviet Russia, property rights in land, proxied by the percent of privatized land by region, affected the pace of sub‐national economic growth during two unprecedented expansion periods: 2001–2008 and 2010–2014. Individuals gained the Constitutional right to own land in 1993, but implementation was stalled. The pace of land privatization can be explained by arguably exogenous factors such as distance to Moscow, as well as climate and also regional political culture, proxied by concentration of votes in the 2004 presidential election. We show that this rate of land privatization in Russia's regions was significantly associated with output growth in 2010–2014, confirming the policy importance of this measure for developing economies. Regions where private holdings expanded most rapidly with the enforcement of property rights in land, gained a competitive advantage in the growth process through increased investment in fixed assets and private consumption.     

Aggregate economic fluctuations and regional convergence: the Finnish case 1988-95

This paper analyses the connection between aggregate economic fluctuations and regional productivity convergence in Finland during the period 1988–95. Markov chain transition matrices and mobility indices were used to examine the regional distribution of productivity. The results indicated that high intra-distribution mobility occurred during booms, when regional convergence potential was also at its highest. Conversely, recession years were characterized by much lower mobility and a more divergent regional pattern. These findings bear important implications in terms of regional policy planning, as it seems that poor regions do not manage to keep up with the rich ones during slumps, whereas regional disparities diminish naturally during boom years.     

The political determinants of government spending allocation and growth

I study the allocation of spending, and the impact of politics on regional growth in Greece, using a large dataset that covers the period between 1959 and 2010. I find that electoral districts that vote for the majority party and are represented by majority MPs receive more spending from the central government, and grow faster. Districts do not seem to enjoy any additional benefits when their elected representatives also occupy positions in the executive branch of the government.     

Regional Accounts of India: Methods,New Estimates,and Their Uses

For large economies with substantial regional variation, it is of great importance for policymakers and economic analysis that macro‐economic statistics are broken down by region. This paper reviews the regional accounts in India, discusses their role in Indian federal and state policies, and provides new estimates to cover major data gaps. Statistics on domestic product by Indian state, broken down by industry, are regularly published. But despite demands and recommendations by various commissions and policymakers, a comprehensive system of regional accounts is yet to be developed. New estimates for the period 1993–2010 are presented for saving and the macro‐economic expenditure by Indian states, like final consumption, capital formation, and trade balance. They show, for example, that some of the fastest growing Indian states have increased their saving and investment rates to 50 percent of their domestic product.     

Does democracy affect taxation and government spending? Evidence from developing countries

Focusing on developing countries in three geographical areas (South-East Asia, Latin America and European Union), we explore the relation between political variables and tax revenue, public spending and their structure. We build a new dataset for the 1990–2005 period with fiscal, political and socio-economic variables. Since democracy is a complex and multidimensional concept, we measure it using two variables, the political strength of democratic institutions, and the protection of civil liberties. We perform three sets of estimates: (i) cross-country pooled OLS regressions with region fixed effects, (ii) country fixed effects regressions and (iii) region specific regressions with country fixed effects. While the first model delivers some significant correlations between political variables and tax items, when controlling for country fixed effects we find that tax revenue and tax composition are in general not significantly correlated with the strength of democratic institutions and the protection of civil liberties. The only exceptions are indirect, trade and property taxes. A similar result applies to public spending, with the exception of defense expenditure. Overall, our findings cast some doubt on the exact public policy channels through which political institutions affect economic development.