Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers and Local Incentives and Responses: The Case of Indonesia

Indonesian policymakers are convinced that a number of perverse incentives are embedded in their system of intergovernmental transfers. Officials in countries throughout the developing world have similar views about their own intergovernmental frameworks. In Indonesia, perverse incentives are thought to negatively influence a wide range of local government fiscal behaviours, including as regards own‐source revenues, spending and savings. An empirical analysis of the local government response to transfers, however, offers only mixed support for the existence and strength of the presumed incentives. Overall, the findings in this paper highlight the benefits to central governments of rigorously examining assumed perverse incentives in their intergovernmental frameworks before embarking on attempts to expunge them.     

教育券理论及其对我国高等教育投资的启示

现阶段我国高等教育投资整体效率偏低,漠视求学者需求的情况时有发生.教育券理论的合理内核是自由择校,公平竞争,以教育券来构建高等教育市场运行机制可以解决这些问题.运用教育券理论,可以促进我国高等教育投资提高效益;重构高等教育市场运行机制;确立高等教育服务理念;完善高等教育服务价格机制;推动高等教育竞争;吸纳高等教育投资.     

Central/Local Fiscal Relations: The Macroeconomic Dimension

Central/local fiscal relations are being re-evaluated by policy makers intent upon reducing the alleged burdens of a large and growing public sector. The reforms of the Thatcher administrations during the 1980s placed central-local relationships high on the policy agenda and many powers were taken back to central government in an effort to achieve greater control over public spending. Behind many of the reforms in the 1980s was a set of economic arguments advocated primarily by the Treasury. More recently in its evidence to the Hunt Committee (1996) the Treasury has reaffirmed these arguments, despite the counter-evidence supplied by academic economists and others over the past 20 years. This article rehearses some of the earlier arguments and reviews the most recent contributions. Arguments which were contingent upon the prevailing conditions of the late 1970s and early 1980s might no longer be relevant to the world of the late 1990s.     

Managerial Incentives and Corporate Fraud: The Sources of Incentives Matter

Operating performance and stock return results imply that managerswho commit fraud anticipate large stock price declines if theywere to report truthfully, which would cause greater lossesfor managerial stockholdings than for options because of differencesin convexity. Fraud firms have significantly greater incentivesfrom unrestricted stockholdings than control firms do, and unrestrictedstockholdings are their largest incentive source. Our resultsemphasize the importance of the shape and vesting status ofincentive payoffs in providing incentives to commit fraud. Fraudfirms also have characteristics that suggest a lower likelihoodof fraud detection, which implies lower expected costs of fraud.     

基层实践与顶层设计的哲学——评焦作之事

神奇二字曾多少次成为我们谈及焦作财政改革时的前缀词,它来自于新闻报道的字里行间,来自于对焦作财政改革的触动,而这一次当我们来到焦作,踏上这片沃土时,才真正感受到这神奇的具象。     

中央与地方在物业税税权划分中的博弈行为研究

物业税又称房地产税或者不动产税,主要是针对房屋、土地等不动产,要求其承租人或保有者每年都按物业评估价值缴付一定税款。本文利用博弈分析的方法,分析了即将开征的物业税和中央与地方政府财政分权之间的关系,并得出结论,由于信息不对称,物业税的开征所带来的效率损失是在所难免的,其开征的关键还在于理清中央和地方政府之间的财税关系。     

Central Government Control over Local Authority Expenditure: The Overseas Experience

This article compares the macroeconomic performance of centralized countries and decentralized countries in the OECD between 1984 and 1995. It considers three views of decentralization: the level of state and local taxes, the degree of decentralized power over tax rates, and the freedom of access for states or local authorities to capital markets. The evidence does not support the commonly held fear that decentralized countries may perform worse. In terms of growth, the two types of country seem evenly matched, and in terms of inflation and unemployment, decentralized countries actually seem to perform consistently better. It is possible, because central governments in decentralized countries concentrate on fewer activities, such as macroeconomic policy, that they tend to perform these activities better.     

跨部门信息分享与地方税收入增长:基于联合激励的视角

本文以信息互惠产生的联合激励机制为切入点,基于一项税务部门与自然资源部门交换土地管理信息的以地控税税收征管改革试点,实证检验跨部门涉税信息分享的税收增长效应.结果 显示:(1)跨部门涉税信息分享有利于土地使用税收入增长;(2)信息互惠的联合激励机制解释了跨部门涉税信息分享的原因;(3)主要结论只在土地使用税收入增长模型中成立,在其它房屋、土地税的收入增长模型中不成立.如何设计有效的激励制度、鼓励更多的政府行政部门在更广的范围内自愿交换信息仍是下一阶段税收征管信息化工作的重点.     

The Capital Budgeting Process: Incentives and Information

We study the capital allocation process within firms. Observed budgeting processes are explained as a response to decentralized information and incentive problems. It is shown that these imperfections can result in underinvestment when capital productivity is high and overinvestment when it is low. We also investigate how the budgeting process may be expected to vary with firm or division characteristics such as investment opportunities and the technology for information transfer.     

Measuring Selection Incentives in Managed Care: Evidence From the Massachusetts State Employee Insurance Program

Capitation gives insurers incentive to manipulate their offerings to attract the healthy and deter the sick. We calculate the incentives for such service-specific quality distortions using managed care medical and pharmacy spending data for fiscal years 2001 and 2002 from the Massachusetts State Employee Insurance Program. Services most vulnerable to stinting are cardiac care, diabetes care, and mental health and substance abuse services. Empirically, the financial temptation to distort service quality increases nonlinearly with supply-side cost sharing. Our empirical results highlight how selection incentives work at cross-purposes with efforts to reward excellent chronic disease management. Initiatives coupling pay-for-performance with risk adjustment and mixed payment hold promise for aligning incentives with quality improvement.     

Competing for Securities Underwriting Mandates: Banking Relationships and Analyst Recommendations

We investigate whether analyst behavior influenced banks' likelihood of winning underwriting mandates for a sample of 16,625 U.S. debt and equity offerings in 1993–2002. We control for the strength of the issuer's investment banking relationships with potential competitors for the mandate, prior lending relationships, and the endogeneity of analyst behavior and the bank's decision to provide analyst coverage. Although analyst behavior was influenced by economic incentives, we find no evidence that aggressive analyst behavior increased their bank's probability of winning an underwriting mandate. The main determinant of the lead‐bank choice is the strength of prior underwriting and lending relationships.     

Inside Decentralization: How Three Central American School-based Management Reforms Affect Student Learning Through Teacher Incentives

Despite decentralization reforms of education systems worldwide,there is little empirical evidence about the processes throughwhich decentralization can improve student learning. Proponentstheorize that devolving decisionmaking authority to the locallevel can improve communication, transparency, and accountability,making teachers and school principals more responsible for betterperformance and more capable of bringing it about. Yet someresearch has shown that decentralization can increase inequalityand reduce learning for disadvantaged students. This articlereports on retrospective evaluations of three Central Americanschool-based management reforms. Using matching techniques,these evaluations investigate whether the reforms enhanced studentlearning and how they affected management processes and teachercharacteristics and behaviors. The evidence indicates that allthree reforms resulted in substantive changes in managementand teacher characteristics and behavior and that these changesexplain significant portions of resultant changes in studentlearning. This article contributes to the understanding of howdecentralization reforms can improve learning and shows howeducation reforms, even when not conceptualized as affectingteacher incentives, can generate important changes for teachersthat, in turn, affect student learning. JEL codes: I21, I28, H52, H75     

阮光立:资金管理大有“文章”

对资金管理软件行业来说,这是一个"最好"的时代,也是"最坏"的时代。好的是,在货币紧缩的背景下,资金管理软件行业也成为管理软件行业的重要细分领域,成为商界新宠。不好的是,企业对于资金管理软件的需求现状及未来发展趋势的判断上,还有待加强,如何更好地提升企业资金管理水平,引导中国资金管理软件行业的规范化发展,依然任重道远。     

From Central Research to Local Practice: Identifying and Addressing Repeat Victimization

This article describes the action taken by a central government research group to ensure the implementation of recommendations for both policy and practice, which arose from a major programme of research on the prevention of crime. The research, which demonstrated that significant reductions in a range of offences could be achieved by focusing on the protection of first-time victims, is used as an example of what needs to be done to ensure implementation. The article outlines the research findings and describes what the staff of the research group did to increase the likely uptake of these findings by policy-makers and practitioners.     

高等教育领域中央与地方财政事权和支出责任划分问题研究

高等教育产生社会效用的外溢性特点,是科学划分高等教育领域政府间财政事权与支出责任的基本依据.我国相关改革经历了"集权—下划—适度集中"的过程,2019年教育领域中央与地方财政事权和支出责任划分改革方案开启了高等教育政府间财政关系调整完善的新进程.当前划分框架存在央地间、省际间高等教育财政保障水平差异,高等院校科研职能未充分纳入统筹范围,部分权责划分还不够明确等问题.为此,下一步应强化中央政府的财政事权和支出责任,加大对地方高等院校科研方面的政策导向性投入,推动财政转移支付规范化、明晰化,注重发挥省级政府对高等教育的统筹作用,并以制度化为先导逐步推进法制化.     

Conditional Mandates on Management Earnings Forecasts: The Impact on the Cost of Debt

Exploiting a unique conditional disclosure mandate on management earnings forecasts (MEFs) in China, we examine the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on the cost of debt. We find that firms providing voluntary MEFs have lower cost of debt than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters. The results of the channel analyses reveal that voluntary forecasters have greater commitment to voluntary MEFs in future periods than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters, and the precision, accuracy, and timeliness of MEFs are higher for voluntary forecasters than for mandatory forecasters. Additional analyses show that the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on cost of debt are stronger for voluntary forecasters operating in opaque information environments, issuing high-quality and confirming forecasts, controlled by private shareholders, and operating in highly competitive product markets. Overall, our results indicate that, compared with mandatory MEFs, voluntary MEFs are more informative for credit investors, particularly for firms facing greater information risk and operating uncertainty.     

政府间税收划分的规律性:基于OECD国家的例证

实践中,尽管流动性税基在政府间的划分呈多元化,但依然存在规律性.这种规律并不是仅依据税种属性,而是追求较高的税收效率.其关键在于,在客观条件和制度设置约束下,税基是否发生流动.只要具备相应的约束条件,流转税与所得税都可以划给地方政府.基于这种规律性,我国政府间税收划分制度需要进一步改进,完善的思路应该是在增加地方对个人所得税分享的基础上,降低对增值税的分享比例.     

Mutual Funds and Bubbles: The Surprising Role of Contractual Incentives

This article studies one of the potential causes of the financialmarket bubble of the late 1990s: the herding behavior of mutualfunds. We show that the incentives contained in the mutual funds'advisory contracts induce managers to overcome their tendencyto herd. We argue that investing in bubble stocks amounts toherding and contracts with high incentives induce managers todiverge from the herd, thus reducing their holding of bubblestocks. The differential exposure to bubble stocks significantlyimpacted the funds' performance both in the period prior toMarch 2000, as well as afterwards.