Income Distribution, Redistributive Politics, and Economic Growth

This article studies the political economy of inequality and growth by combining the political economy approach with an imperfect capital market assumption. In the present model, there emerges a class of individuals whose members do not invest privately beyond the state-financed schooling, due to their initial wealth constraint. We show that inequality affects private investment not only through the political effect, which relates inequality to private investment negatively, but also through what we call the threshold effect, which associates inequality to private investment positively. In general, private investment and inequality do not show a monotone negative relationship.     

学习、制度与经济绩效

本文分析了认知、信念体系与制度之间的互动关系，并探寻了它们影响经济绩效的方式。我们认为要更深刻地理解制度的产生、其运行的特征及其对经济政治结果的影响，应该从分析认知过程开始。我们分析了个人和集体学习的性质，认为问题并不在于行为体是完全理性还是有限理性的，而在于人们是如何进行推理和做出选择的，无论这种选择和推理是个体做出的还是集体做出的。接下来我们将学习过程同制度分析联系起来，提出了一种我们可以称之为“认知制度主义”的观点。同时我们认为要充分理解路径依赖现象，应该从对认知层面的分析开始，以制度层面的分析为主干，以经济层面的分析为终结。     

Reexamination of Economic Growth, Tax Policy, and Distributive Politics

The paper examines the relationship between economic growth, tax policy, and distribution of capital and labor ownership in a one‐sector political‐economy model of endogenous growth with productive government spending financed by a proportional tax on capital income. The analysis shows that inequality in wealth and income can be positively or negatively related to the optimal tax rate. In either environment, higher inequality leads to a lower after‐tax return to capital, thereby reducing the economy's growth rate.     

Bureaucracy, Tax System, and Economic Performance

This paper investigates the consequences for government size, growth and welfare if a selfish bureaucracy provides a congested input. Alternative exogenous tax systems are introduced and numerical analyses are carried out. The welfare optimum is only met under very specific assumptions: proportional congestion, a tax system only consisting of distortionary taxes and a bureaucracy that maximizes the budget's growth rate. Otherwise the relative size of the public sector becomes suboptimally large thus inducing welfare losses. From a welfare economic point of view bureaucratic selfishness is worse than a suboptimal taxing regime that does not (completely) internalize the congestion externalities.     

Economic Mode1ling, Ideology, Politics and Social Research:

In March this year, Peter Dixon became the second Director of the Institute, succeeding Professor Ronald Henderson, In this article, he comments on media reaction to his appointment and gives some views on the future direction of the Institute.     

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.     

Economic integration in China: Politics and culture

The aim of the paper is to explicitly disentangle the role of political and cultural boundaries as factors of fragmentation of economies within large countries. On the one hand, local protectionism plays a substantial role in many federations and decentralized states. On the other hand, if the country exhibits high level of cultural heterogeneity, it may also contribute to the economic fragmentation; however, this topic has received significantly less attention in the literature. This paper looks at the case of China and proxies the cultural heterogeneity by the heterogeneity of local dialects. It shows that the effect of politics clearly dominates that of culture: while provincial borders seem to have a strong influence disrupting economic ties, economic linkages across provinces, even if the regions fall into the same linguistic zone, are rather weak and, on the contrary, linguistic differences within provinces do not prevent economic integration. For some language zones we do, however, find a stronger effect on economic integration.     

Income Inequality, Human Capital Accumulation and Economic Performance

We show that greater income equality implies higher human capital accumulation and economic performance in an overlapping-generations model with heterogeneity in income and talent. Given liquidity constraints and declining marginal utility, individuals with a given level of talent receive education if their initial income is higher than a threshold level and the threshold is lower for more talented individuals. Assuming the more talented create more human capital when educated, greater initial income equality for one generation then imply not only higher aggregate human capital accumulated by that generation but an improvement in all subsequent generations' initial income distributions.     

Quality of Education,Economic Performance and Institutional Environment

This paper addresses two questions. First, how does the quality, rather than the quantity, of education impact economic performance? Second, does the quality of education have a larger impact on economic performance in countries with better institutions (i.e., social and political variables which affect economic outcomes)? Using data from more than fifty countries, we observe that there is a positive relationship between the quality of education and GDP per capita. In addition, we find that the quality of education has a more beneficial effect on GDP per capita in countries with better law and order conditions, government stability, and overall institutional environment. These results remain unchanged under various scenarios.     

政治中的效率:挑战经济学方法

本文回顾了最新的四本关于民主制中的效率的经济学著作。特别强调了两种野心勃勃的挑战性的研究方法 :曼库·奥尔森的包含利益理论和唐纳德·威特曼的“民主失败的神话”。本文论证了民主一般意味着高效的命题在很多方面是有问题的。用肤浅的经济学类比得出的概括性结论 ,抽走了民主政治的许多关键性特征 ,如信息不全、激励结构薄弱以及集体行动失败。取得高效结果的根本原因更多的是统治者在经济中赌注规模的大小 ,而不是自发的科斯式的交易。     

经济发展方式转变与国家政治安全

加快转变经济发展方式是我国经济社会领域的一场深刻变革,既包含着维护国家政治安全的迫切要求,又发挥着巩固国家政治安全的重要功能。因此,从政治安全的角度审视经济发展方式转变,有助于我们进一步深刻理解加快转变经济发展方式的重大战略意义、丰富内涵和实现机制。     

Exchange-Rate Uncertainty and Economic Performance

Some models support the notion that exchange-rate uncertainty promotes economic growth while others suggest that exchange-rate uncertainty slows growth. Most empirical work supports the latter hypothesis, leading policymakers to strive for more stable exchange rates. The authors question the appropriateness of the methodology usually employed, and variables constructed to measure the impact of exchange-rate uncertainty on growth. They use an alternative approach and find no discernable impact of exchange-rate uncertainty on economic performance as captured by production.     

Contract-Intensive Money: Contract Enforcement, Property Rights, and Economic Performance

We introduce a new, easily accessed and objective measure of the enforceability of contracts and the security of property rights. This measure, called contract-intensive money or CIM, is based on citizens decisions regarding the form in which they choose to hold their financial assets. Country case studies show that CIM varies over time in response to political events in ways predicted by our arguments. We also show that CIM is positively related to investment and growth rates, and to the relative size of contract-dependent sectors of the economy.     

经济增长、经济政策与公司业绩关系的实证研究

本文以1995年至2004年上市公司为样本,考察了经济增长、经济政策与公司业绩之间的关系。通过构筑IS-LM模型,本文测算了我国的各项财政政策与货币政策乘数,以量化我国宏观经济政策的变化,并在此基础上,研究了经济增长、经济政策对公司会计业绩和股票报酬的影响,发现经济政策显著影响公司会计业绩与股票报酬,但不同的经济政策对会计业绩和股票报酬的影响不尽相同;另外,我们还发现,在控制了经济政策因素后,经济增长并没有和公司业绩相背离。本文的发现为诠释我国股市是否是宏观经济的"晴雨表"提供了一个新的研究视角。     

内部人控制、外部监控与国有企业经济绩效

本文主要分析了我国国有企业内部人控制现象形成的特殊原因,并运用一个理论模型对几种激励和约束方式的效果进行了分析,在上述基础上,反思了国企改革历程中激励制度和约束制度构建的失误之处,并提出了建立和完善企业外部监控制度的建议。