土地政策调整对经济发展和社会福利的影响

构建了一个土地对社会福利影响的分析模型,并用天津市的数据进行检验。研究结果表明：（1）政府对于土地供应量的控制减少了均衡资本量;（2）严格的土地政策会使单位资本产生的福利量减少;（3）土地政策的适时调整能使经济发展沿着社会福利最大化的路径发展。因此,土地政策的制定应该以社会需求为导向,并通过适时调整以实现社会福利最大化。     

Economic and Welfare Impacts of Climate Change on Developing Countries

The impact of global climate change on developing countries is analyzed using CGE-multimarket models for three archetype economies representing the poor cereal importing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The objective is to compare the effects of climate change on the macroeconomic performance, sectoral resource allocation, and household welfare across continents. Simulations help identify those underlying structural features of economies which are the primary determinants of differential impacts; these are suggestive of policy instruments to countervail undesirable effects. Results show that all these countries will potentially suffer income and production losses. However, Africa, with its low substitution possibilities between imported and domestic foods, fares worst in terms of income losses and the drop in consumption of low income households. Countervailing policies to mitigate negative effects should focus on integration in the international market and the production of food crops in Africa, and on the production of export crops in Latin America and Asia.     

外资政策、国民利益与经济发展

本文通过建立经济模型对吸引外商直接投资政策的经济效应进行了分析。研究表明 :无论是限制外商直接投资还是对外商直接投资采取过多的优惠政策均不能使短期内国民利益达到最大 ;但从动态考虑 ,外资优惠政策能否提高国内居民的福利水平取决于外资企业对内资企业技术水平的影响。     

中国经济周期的社会福利成本

文章通过建立动态一般均衡模型,测算出中国经济周期的社会福利成本,并在此基础上给出了政策建议。结果显示,与非洲的发展中国家不同,现阶段,消除我国经济周期所带来的社会福利非常小,少于提升消费增长速度0.1%所带来的社会福利,与抑制经济周期相比,政府应该把主要精力放在如何促进经济增长上。     

在转变经济发展方式中提升社会福祉

怎样评价中国经济的高速增长,怎样处理好经济增长与社会福祉的关系,切实转变经济发展方式,这是社会各界都日趋关注的问题,也将成为中共十七大的一个重要议题。该文阐述了经济增长与社会福祉的关系,分析了中国经济增长的福祉转化度低的原因和结果,提出调整政府的目标和定位,构建"社会整体福祉最大化"的新型经济发展方式的基本框架。     

关于经济增长与不平等的综合评价——满意度、熵与社会福利

本文试图探讨关于经济增长与不平等的综合社会福利评价体系.建立社会福利评价体系一般面临两个困难:找出合理的社会福利函数和关于收入的个人效用函数.为此,本文把效用函数和社会福利函数标准化为满意度函数,并证明了,唯一满足齐次性和对称性的社会福利函数是个人满意度的几何平均,不存在常弹性或常相对风险规避的个人满意度函数,常二阶弹性的个人满意度函数意味着效用的收入弹性递减.以地区收入分配为例,计算结果显示我国地区不平等有长期增加趋势,若综合考虑收入增长与不平等,我国的社会福利水平有稍微上升的趋势.     

时滞产品生产的经济增长与社会福利分析

时滞产品生产所带来的负外部性 ,使厂商利益与社会利益往往不一致 ,时滞产品的生产导致经济增长率与社会福利的同步下降 ,并可能引致资本向时滞产品生产领域流动从而加剧其影响程度。在生产领域适当的政府调控是保障经济增长目标实现与社会福利提升的必然选择。     

Economic Valuation of Health for Environmental Policy: Comparing Alternative Approaches. Introduction and Overview

Protecting human health is a primary goal of environmental policy and economic evaluation of health can help policy-makers judge the relative worth of alternative actions. Economists use two distinct approaches in normatively evaluating health. Whereas environmental economists use benefit-cost analysis supported by monetary valuation in terms of willingness-to-pay, health economists evaluate interventions based on cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analysis (CEA), using quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) or similar indexes. This paper provides background on the controversy about the relative merits of these approaches and introduces the remaining papers in the special issue. These papers (with one exception) were presented at a conference sponsored by the Department of Economics at the University of Central Florida with support from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Although CEA might not lead to substantially different implications for environmental policy than benefit-cost analysis, and QALY may provide a benefit transfer tool to fill gaps in the morbidity valuation literature, the papers in this issue raise serious concerns about the suitability of QALY-based CEA for environmental regulatory analysis. QALY does not in general appropriately represent individual preferences for health and CEA is neither independent of income distribution nor adequate to assess efficiency.     

从经济性管制到社会性管制:汽车产业政策的未来走向

我国目前对汽车行业的管理仍然局限于经济性管制。与之相匹配的汽车产业政策已经暴露出保护垄断、遏制创新、缺少法规约束等等诸多弊端。事实证明,这种传统的管理方式已经很难适应WTO规则的要求,也不能满足保护环境和建立节约型社会的需要。从经济性管制向社会性管制转变,已经成为未来制定汽车产业政策的必然走向。管制方式的转变主要包括三方面内容:一是管制理念应当由保护生产者利益转为维护消费者权益;二是管制核心应当由制定产业计划转为完善汽车立法;三是管制重点应当由汽车制造业转为汽车服务业。     

Childcare Policy: An Introduction and Overview

This article summarises the case for public involvement in the provision of childcare and provides an overview of the contributions to the Policy Forum.     

Effects of Unilateral Climate Policy on Terms of Trade,Capital Accumulation,and Welfare in a World Economy

We present a two-good, two-country overlapping generations model where emissions arise from production and each country has a domestic emission permit system. When one country unilaterally reduces her cap on emissions, her output available for domestic and foreign consumption diminishes more than in the other country. With unchanged consumption expenditure shares for both goods the domestic terms of trade improve, while capital stocks decline in the reducing and less strongly in the non-reducing country. Improving terms of trade in the reducing country and falling capital stocks lead in total to welfare losses in both countries. However, if the country which unilaterally reduces her emission permits is a net creditor to the world economy and the Golden Rule applies, her own welfare loss remains below that of the non-reducing country.     

The Corporate State,Economic Performance,and Social Policy

We use the Survey of Consumer Finances to analyze changes in U.S. household debt between 1989 and 2013. We focus on how income and debt levels have changed, and what this means for future economic growth and living standards. Prior to the Great Recession, U.S. households had record high debt levels and record low savings rates. Highly leveraged consumption boosted economic growth. However, large debt burdens have led many families to deleverage. Our study finds that deleveraging has been insufficient. Although debt payments have fallen relative to household income, this is mainly due to low interest rates. Debt levels, especially for home mortgages, remain high by historical standards and portend continued stagnation due to lower consumer spending.     

Potential Welfare Criteria and the Choice of Large Projects

This note compares project evaluation rules for large projects by Negishi (1962) and Harris (1978) and points out that the extensions by Harris depend on his implicit weakening of the criterion for potential welfare improvement compared with Negishi's original welfare criterion.
JEL Classification Number: D61.     

The Impact of the Welfare State and Social Policy on the Working Population: The Recent British Experience

This paper focuses on financing the welfare state expenditures in the UK. It offers a comprehensive analysis of social expenditures and taxes paid by the working population families, and an estimation of the net benefits received by them. While the subsequent analysis of the welfare state and its development primarily concentrates on the British experience, it has a broader application to other OECD countries. The UK as the most egalitarian “liberal market economy,” offers an interesting case for the study of the interaction between the welfare state expansion and economic growth. In terms of her capitalist economic structure, (interaction between market and economy) she is relatively closer to the USA and other Angelo-Saxon (liberal market) economies. In terms of her level of social expenditures, she is much closer to the European “social market economies” than the USA and other more egalitarian “liberal market economies.”     

On Welfare Criteria and Optimality in an Endogenous Growth Model

In this paper, we explore the consequences for optimality of a social planner adopting two different welfare criteria. The framework of analysis is an overlapping generations model with physical and human capital. We first show that, when the social welfare function is a discounted sum of individual utilities defined over consumption per unit of natural labor, the precise cardinalization of the individual utility function becomes crucial for both the characterization of the social optimum and the policies that support it. Also, decentralizing the social optimum requires an education subsidy that is definitely positive, but its size depends in a determinant way on the aforementioned cardinalization. In contrast, when the social welfare function is a discounted sum of individual utilities defined over consumption per unit of efficient labor, the precise cardinalization of preferences becomes irrelevant. More strikingly, along the optimal growth path, the education subsidy is negative, i.e., the planner should tax rather than subsidize investments in human capital.     

Economic Reforms,Social Policy,and the Family Economy in Chile

Chile's long tradition of welfare programs included “generous” benefits for many working women. The social security system, however, perpetuated significant forms of gender and class inequality. In the 1970s and 1980s, poverty was greatly increased by sweeping market reforms. The military government responded to the high social costs with a minimal safety net which targeted expectant mothers, small children and the extremely poor, but was inadequate for most of the population. After the return of democracy, income distribution has improved in the 1990s. Yet, much needs to be done to promote family well-being through effective and participatory social policies.