技术积累提高了区域创新数量还是创新质量

在创新型国家建设背景下，提高创新质量至关重要。以高技术产业为例，综合采用联立方程模型、面板门槛模型、贝叶斯向量自回归模型，研究技术积累与创新数量、创新质量的关系。研究结果表明：技术积累对创新数量的贡献大于创新质量；创新数量与创新质量间的协调性不高；技术积累对创新数量的贡献中其自身、研发人员、创新质量的门槛效应呈递减趋势；随着创新数量增大，技术积累对创新数量的作用弹性逐步提高；当研发经费处于中等水平时技术积累对创新数量的弹性影响最大，对创新质量具有较强的规模经济效应。     

BALANCED BUDGETS: ECONOMIC NIRVANA OR FISCAL CHAOS?

This paper investigates the effect of a pay-as-you-go, balanced budget policy on macroeconomic performance. It uses a simple model of the aggregate demand for money and goods, with temporary monetary equilibrium and quantity adjustments on goods markets. Within this framework, if the monetary/real interaction is strong enough, a balanced budget with sufficiently high tax rates (≡ sufficiently high government expenditures) is consistent with typical bounded fluctuations around a relatively high income, low unemployment equilibrium. Lower tax rates (≡ lower government expenditures) can trigger a sharp decline in revenues, expenditures, employment, and output.     

中国专利质量研究：开放经济的视角

基于全球经济一体化的背景,将表明一国贸易竞争力的指标NTB指数引入到专利质量的评价当中,并建立模型证明了其可行性。通过计算国际收支专有权利使用费和特许费的NTB指数对中国专利的竞争力进行了国际比较,发现中国专利的质量总体上十分低下;对其近11年间的NTB指数动态分析后发现其值始终接近于-1,表明中国研发经费投入的增长并未换来专利产出质量的提高。同时,对中国专利数据本身进行了分析,通过发明专利占总授权专利数量中的比例、发明专利的有效量、专利授权量中职务和非职务专利的结构、国内职务发明专利主体的结构等多个维度验证了使用NTB指数对中国专利质量进行分析的结果,表明将NTB指数引入到专利质量的评价当中是可行的。     

How does public spending affect technical efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries

The relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Revisiting the subject from a distinct angle with respect to the mainstream approach, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of public sector's size and of public expenditure components on 15 European countries’ technical efficiency from 1996 to 2014 by using a True Random Effect model. Using the total public expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function and technical efficiency by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings show that the effect of public sector's size on efficiency is positive while the type of public expenditures may have both positive and negative impact. In more details, results suggest that education and health expenditures have a positive effect on technical efficiency, while others have a negative impact.     

Advertising media strategies in the film industry

The primary aim of this article is to estimate the multiple determinants of film advertising expenditures in four important media, namely television, press, outdoor and radio, in the UK. First, television advertising, the leading film advertising medium, is examined as part of a system of equations, capturing the interdependences between advertising, the number of screens on which films are initially shown and box office revenues. Then a reduced form model is put forward to reveal the determinants of film advertising in the four media. While major distribution companies have different preferences for the use of the alternative advertising media, results highlight the importance of quality signals, such as critical reviews, in determining advertising expenditures in the film industry. Moreover, advertising expenditures can themselves be considered to offer potential cinema goers signals of film quality.     

Correcting NDP for SO2 and NOx Emissions: Implementation of a Theoretical Model in Practice

The theoretical and the practical studies in the field of environmental accounting are often two separate lines of work. In this study, we develop an optimal control theory model for adjusting NDP for the effects of SO₂ and NO_x emissions, and subsequently insert empirically estimated values. The model includes correction entries for the effects on welfare, real capital, health and the quality and quantity of renewable natural resources. In the empirical valuation study, production losses were estimated with dose-response functions. Recreational and other welfare values were estimated by the contingent valuation (CV) method. Effects on capital depreciation are also included. For comparison, abatement costs and environmental protection expenditures for reducing sulfur and nitrogen emissions were estimated. The theoretical model was then utilized to calculate the adjustment to NDP in a consistent manner. The estimated damage value of sulfur is close to the Swedish sulfur tax.     

Minimum Quality Standards Under Cournot Competition

I study the consequences of imposing a minimum quality standard on an industry in which firms first incur fixed quality development costs and subsequently compete over quantity. I find that a mildly restrictive minimum quality standard unambiguously reduces total welfare, in contrast to previous findings derived in the literature where it is assumed that firms compete over prices.     

An empirical examination of government expenditures and the ex-ante crowding-out effect for the British economy

The conventional macroeconomic view that consumers make their consumption decisions without regard for goods provided by the government has been examined in the literature. Moreover, the line of research that questions this conventional view argues that this separation does not have a firm theoretical backing. If consumers take government expenditures into account when maximizing their utility functions then the effects of fiscal policy actions will tend to appear weaker than those suggested by most conventional analyses. The examination of this issue should therefore have far-reaching political as well as economic implications within the context of traditional fiscal policies.

This paper will empirically examine the ex antecrowding-out effect of government expenditures upon private consumption expenditures for the British economy. An aggregate consumption function is derived and estimated in the context of a simultaneous equations model based on intertemporal consumption theory. The empirical results should shed some light on the real effects of fiscal policy on the British economy.     

On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime

This article analyzes a general equilibrium model in which agents choose to specialize in either legitimate or criminal activities. Expenditures on police to apprehend criminals, as well as income redistribution, are determined endogenously through majority voting. We investigate how crime, redistribution, and police expenditures depend on characteristics of the underlying distribution of income-earning abilities and on the apprehension technology. Our model accounts for the positive correlation between inequality and crime, the positive correlation between expenditures on police and redistribution, and the lack of correlation between crime and redistribution observed in U.S. data.     

The retirement consumption puzzle revisited: Evidence from the mandatory retirement policy in China

Using data from China's Urban Household Survey and exploiting China's mandatory retirement policy, we use the regression discontinuity approach to estimate the impact of retirement on household expenditures. Retirement reduces total non-durable expenditures by 19%. Among the categories of non-durable expenditures, retirement reduces work-related expenditures and expenditures on food consumed at home but has an insignificant effect on expenditures on entertainment. After excluding these three components, retirement does not have an effect on the remaining non-durable expenditures. It suggests that the retirement consumption puzzle might not be a puzzle if an extended life-cycle model with home production is considered.     

Choosing Children’s Environmental Risk

A model of endogenous risk provides a foundation to study a parent’s child care decisions when the child could be exposed to an environmental hazard (e.g., toxic substance, foodborne pathogen). The parent invests in childcare quality and quantity to reduce the likelihood of a hazard exposure occurring and to reduce its severity if the exposure is realized. We supply conditions to sign unambiguously the effects on a child’s hazard exposure of an increased probability a parent fails to access or have command over a technique of exposure prevention or that a technique is ineffective in preventing exposure. Also, we consider these effects when the parent is unsure what a technique can do to reduce the child’s probability of exposure. We conclude public policies designed to encourage use of a particular childcare technique, if childcare quality and quantity are stochastic substitutes, can reduce parental use of other techniques. The net impact of the policy could increase the chance the child suffers. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provided financial support through Grant #R82871601, this research has not been subjected to the Agency’s required peer and policy review and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency. Thanks to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their funding support as well. Thanks to David Finnoff, Michael Caputo, the reviewers, and participants at the conference on Risk Perception and Valuation at University of Central Florida for their helpful comments. All views remain our own.     

HEALTH-CARE COMPETITION: INTRODUCTION

Medicare expenditures increased 497 percent, federal medicaid expenditures 484 percent, and state and local medicaid expenditures 458 percent between 1970 and 1981. Private health-insurance premiums increased 329 percent, while patient direct payments rose 214 percent.¹ Although these results include quantity and price changes, Waldo and Gibson (1982) show that "price inflation has been a major factor in the increase in health-care spending." Moreover, health-care expenditures exceeded 10 percent of GNP (10.5 percent) for the first time in 1982 (Office of the Secretary 1983); the comparable figure in 1960 was 5.3 percent of GNP.
This rapid growth in price and quantity ("expenditures" or "costs"in the nontechnical literature) has raised a cry across the land for cost containment or increased competition in the health-care sector. Curiously, when one searches for a definition of "competition" in the same nontechnical literature, it is not immediately obvious what the word means.     

Tariffs,Quality Choice,and Cost Functions: a Foreign Monopoly Case*

It has been shown that trade restrictions such as tariffs, import quotas, and voluntary export restrictions, lead to quality upgrading of imports. In this paper, however, we reconsider this proposition by focusing on the nature of cost functions. Based on a standard vertical differentiation model, we analyze the effects of tariffs on quality and quantity of imports. We show that if a fixed cost is an increasing function of quality, tariffs lead to quality downgrading of imports. Moreover, we discuss minimum quality requirements (MQR) for such a trade policy. We show that MQR increases the amount of imports and an importing country's welfare in the presence of the fixed cost function. These issues will be addressed in the context of a foreign monopoly.     

Government investment in natural capital

This paper presents a new approach to the measurement of natural capital. A distinguishing feature of this approach is the use of investment criteria that are consistent with the main features of physical capital, thus maintaining consistency in the measurement of different types of capital. This new approach was applied to the expenditures of the federal government in Canada as recorded in the Public Accounts for fiscal year 2004-05. My results indicate that, in 2004-05, total investment in natural capital by the federal government amounted to 2.6% of net budgetary expenditures. Spending on physical capital, the only component that is currently included as investment in the National Accounts, represented only 5% of total investment in natural capital.     

U.S. INCOME, SAVING, AND WEALTH, 1929—1969

The objective of this paper is to present income and expenditure accounts, accumulation accounts, and the asset side of the wealth accounts for the U.S. private national economy in current and constant prices. These accounts are integrated with the production and factor outlay accounts for the U.S. private domestic economy in current and constant prices given in our earlier papers. Taken together, these accounts constitute a complete accounting system in current and constant prices for the private sector of the U.S. economy.
Our complete accounting system incorporates a new concept of the standard of living, defined as the ratio of the quantity index of gross private national expenditures to the quantity index of gross private national consumer receipts. Our concept of the standard of living is similar but not identical to our concept of total factor productivity. Changes in the private standard of living reflect both changes in total factor productivity and changes in the proportion of the total product consumed in the public sector.     

R&D税收激励、知识产权保护与企业的专利产出

文章以中国上市公司微观数据为样本,运用能克服样本自选择性的计量方法估计R&D税收激励的专利效应,并以知识生产函数分析其作用机制.结果表明,与没有获得R&D税收激励的厂商相比,获得R&D税收激励的厂商并不具有更高的专利产出.从作用机制上看,尽管R&D税收激励产生了显著的额外研发支出效应,但该效应并未直接增加企业的专利产出,中国的R&D税收激励面临类似"欧洲悖论"的困境.仅在知识产权保护的调节下,R&D税收激励引致的额外研发支出能间接增加专利产出,知识产权保护缓解了R&D税收激励政策失灵的风险.前述结论通过了稳健性检验.未来,为改善我国R&D税收激励的创新效应,走出"欧洲悖论"困境,需要优化R&D税收激励政策设计和强化知识产权保护的激励功效.     

Does environmental quality influence health expenditures? Empirical evidence from a panel of selected OECD countries

In this paper we examine the role of environmental quality in determining per capita health expenditures. We take a panel cointegration approach in order to explore the possibility of estimating both short-run and long-run impacts of environmental quality. Our empirical analysis is based on eight OECD countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK for the period 1980-1999. We find that per capita health expenditure, per capita income, carbon monoxide emissions, sulphur oxide emissions and nitrogen oxide emissions are panel cointegrated. While short-run elasticities reveal that income and carbon monoxide emissions exert a statistically significant positive effect on health expenditures, in the long-run in addition to income and carbon monoxide, we find that sulphur oxide emissions have a statistically significant positive impact on health expenditures.     

Applying DEA, MPI, and grey model to explore the operation performance of the Taiwanese wafer fabrication industry

The study applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to explore the operation performances of the Taiwanese wafer fabrication companies from 2004 to 2007. The input variables are total assets, operation costs, and selling and administrative expenditures, while the output variable is net sales. The results show that if Taiwanese wafer fabrication companies want to increase their operation performances, they should improve their CRS and VRS efficiencies not scale efficiency. Furthermore, this paper utilizes GM (1,1) - one order and one variable in the grey model - to forecast the growth trend of the Taiwanese wafer fabrication industry from 2008 to 2010, and then employs GM (1,N) - one order and N variables in the grey model - to measure the influences of the input variables upon the output variable. This study demonstrates that the most influential factor for the output variable, net sales, is selling and administrative expenditures.     

On the Estimation of Total Expenditure Elasticities from Derived Engel Functions with Applications to Australian Micro-Data*

This paper proposes a method of estimating total expenditure elasticities based on the implicit Engel equations derived from the Lorenz curve of total expenditure and concentration curves of commodity-specific expenditures. The proposed procedure is computationally easy to implement and produces elasticity estimates which appear to satisfy the adding-up criterion well For illustration, the method is applied to the 1984 Household Expenditure Survey and an attempt is made to compare the present estimates with those generated in previous Australian studies.     

Product quality and firm heterogeneity in international trade

This paper quantifies the separate contributions of product quality and technical efficiency in explaining variation in export outcomes across US manufacturing plants. Unlike previous studies that rely on unit values, I estimate idiosyncratic demand from price and quantity information. I find substantial across‐plant heterogeneity in demand, and consistent with the quality interpretation, demand is positively correlated with advertising expenditures, wage rates and material costs. I use this variation to explain across‐plant heterogeneity in export outcomes. The results show that, in addition to productivity, idiosyncratic demand is an important determinant of selection into exporting and the levels of foreign sales.