A note on tax competition in the presence of agglomeration economies

This paper analyzes tax competition in the presence of agglomeration effects. The obtained results are then compared to the results of the traditional model, without agglomeration effects. As is well known, the presence of a fiscal externality affects the provision of the public good in the standard competitive model of tax competition. In the model with agglomeration effects, in addition to this externality, a new effect shows up. This effect reflects heightened government concern about capital flight, which depresses firm productivity by limiting external economies of scale. As a result, capital tax rates end up being lower than in the case where agglomeration effects are not present, worsening the underprovision of the public good. This conclusion holds in both the competitive and strategic versions of the model.     

Fiscal competition and regional differentiation

Regions can benefit by offering infrastructure services that are differentiated. Competition between regions over potential investors is then less direct, allowing them to realize greater benefits from external investors. The two polar cases of full and incomplete information about investors' needs are studied. In both cases, there is regional differentiation. However, fiscal competition is efficient in the former case but not in the latter. Finally, it is shown that free entry in the location market calls for some regulation because of the excessive number of competing regions that would prevail in equilibrium.     

Investment in public infrastructure with spillovers and tax competition between contiguous regions

Two contiguous regions compete to attract a population of heterogeneous firms. They choose infrastructure levels in a first stage and compete in taxes in a second stage. We study the properties of Subgame Perfect Nash equilibria in this stage game depending on the extent to which the benefits of infrastructure spill over from one region to the other. First, we show that the presence of inter-regional spillovers allows jurisdictions to control for the intensity of tax competition and therefore affects the optimal levels of infrastructure selected at equilibrium. Second, by comparing the non-cooperative and cooperative outcomes, we show that the extent to which regions overinvest in infrastructures negatively depends on the intensity of the spillovers.     

The agglomeration of headquarters

This paper uses a micro data set on auxiliary establishments from 1977 to 1997 in order to investigate the determinants of headquarter agglomerations and the underlying economic base of many larger metro areas. The significance of headquarters in large urban settings is their ability to facilitate the spatial separation of their white collar activities from remote production plants. The results show that separation benefits headquarters in two main ways: the availability of differentiated local service input suppliers and the scale of other headquarter activity nearby. A wide diversity of local service options allows the headquarters to better match their various needs with specific experts producing service inputs from whom they learn, which improves their productivity. Headquarters also benefit from other headquarter neighbors, although such marginal scale benefits seem to diminish as local scale rises.     

中国城乡基础设施与公共服务的差异和提升

城乡基础设施接轨与基本公共服务均等化是推进城乡融合发展的重要内容。中国城乡基础设施和公共服务在规模和质量方面的差距依然显著,不能满足农村居民对美好生活的需求。在推进城乡基础设施接轨和基本公共服务均等化的过程中,存在如何破解资金和人才不足的双重约束、如何加快改革城乡管理体制、如何统筹解决区域城乡发展的多重差距等难题。因此,须从城乡规划体系、清单制管理、标准体系建设、多元化投入机制、人才管理制度等方面,谋划推进城乡基础设施接轨与基本公共服务均等化的思路和对策。     

Public infrastructure,input efficiency and productivity growth in the Canadian food processing industry

Canadian food processing is an important manufacturing industry, accounting for 13 percent of shipments. By its nature food processing depends on infrastructure capital. Our objective is to estimate infrastructure’s effects on input requirements, cost and productivity. The increase in capital and decrease in materials were respectively 2.5 and 3 times greater than the −0.07 infrastructure elasticity of labor. Infrastructure investment was cost-reducing by inducing reductions in employment and intermediate inputs. A 1 percent increase caused cost to decline by 0.16 percent. Infrastructure capital was a major contributor to productivity, annually contributing 0.5 percentage points. This was nearly double TFP growth.      

区域间公共基础设施溢出效应研究

运用中国各省(市、自治区)1990-2008年的面板数据,通过建立空间计量模型,对区域问基础设施投资的空间外溢性进行检验.研究结果显示.公共基础设施投资对区域经济的增长不仅在本区域内具有外部溢出效应,在区域间也存在显著的外部溢出效应.这表明莱一地区的公共基础设施投入不仅可以提升本地区的产出,也会对相邻区域的经济增长产生...     

Evaluating Effectiveness in Public Provision of Infrastructure and Equipment: The Case of Spanish Municipalities

Concernabout local government ability to provide public services inan effective way is increasing in Spain as these functions arebeing decentralized from the central to regional governments.The goal of this research is to provide state and local officialswith a decision making tool that allows evaluation of the quantityand quality of the public services--infrastructure and equipment--thatthey are responsible for offering. We characterize performanceamong similar administrative observations, e.g. municipalities,by defining effectiveness improvement strategies--basedon selective funds allocation--that identify and rank thosesectors and variables that present provision deficits and requireprior attention. In order to evaluate provision at the municipalitylevel we define an additive effectiveness measure making useof Data Envelopment Analysis techniques which are enhanced toaccount for the presence of standards. The statistical data arefrom the Spanish Local Infrastructure and Equipment Survey.     

Urban agglomeration, wages and selection: Evidence from samples of siblings

The large and significant relationship between city population and wages has been well-established in the agglomeration literature, and the influence of selection effects on this wage premium is important. This paper contributes new evidence to the understanding of this premium by using two different data sets of siblings in order to estimate the agglomeration premium while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity with a family-specific fixed effect. The inclusion of a familial fixed effect into the regression framework makes the city size wage premium insignificant, and there is a large return to a variable representing the correlation between familial ability and residence in an urban area in all of the data sets used in the analysis. The results are discussed in the context of the existing literature, and they demonstrate the importance of family background and selection effects for interpreting the agglomeration premium, which is small in the fixed effects regression.     

A two-region model with two types of manufacturing technologies and agglomeration

A two-region model is proposed in this paper. Manufactured goods can be produced with cottage technology under constant returns to scale or with modern technology using differentiated intermediate goods, which are produced with increasing returns to scale technology. In the model, there may be multiple equilibria, and, in such cases, the initial conditions determine the equilibrium that the economy reaches. It is shown that strong increasing returns due to specialization and low transportation costs bring about industrialization with agglomeration. This framework explains the mechanism behind the different industrialization process in Japan and in less developed countries.     

Public Management Developments In Australia and New Zealand

The article argues that public manage-ment has undergone fundamental change, generated by developments in public choice and principal agency theories. These theoretical frames are being applied to management strategies and practices, where both competition and contracts feature significantly. The role of the state is subject to change as a result of these developments.     

Job hopping, earnings dynamics, and industrial agglomeration in the software publishing industry

This paper investigates the implications of industrial clustering for labor mobility and earnings dynamics in one large and increasingly important high-technology sector. Taking advantage of longitudinal employee-employer matched data, I exploit establishment-level variation in agglomeration to explore how clustering in the software publishing industry affects labor market outcomes. The results show that clustering makes it easier for workers to job hop within the sector. Higher earnings levels in more agglomerated areas are partly attributable to sorting across locations among workers and firms in the industry on the basis of observable and unobservable characteristics. Controlling for this heterogeneity, workers in clusters have relatively steep earnings-tenure profiles, accepting lower wages early in their careers in exchange for stronger earnings growth and higher wages later. These findings are consistent with theoretical models in which agglomeration improves labor market coordination and facilitates greater learning and human capital formation.     

转变发展模式建设公共服务型公用事业

公用事业是地区经济发展、社会进步,百姓安居乐业的基础,对公用事业的治理历来是政府的重要职能.公用事业发展到今天.历经了政府垄断型公用事业、市场发展型公用事业以及公共服务型公用事业模式转换.本文在简要回顾公用事业发展历程.分析三种不同发展模式的基础上,提出批判地继承市场发展型公用事业模式,倡导以公共利益为导向,公共服务为指导理念的"公共服务型公用事业"的新模式,并对公共服务型公用事业下政府治理方式的转变提出了具体意见和建议.     

中国经济增长中的公共资本外溢

本文估算了中国1952-2010年的水利基础设施的物质资本存量,并在基于政府生产性支出的内生增长框架中估计水利资本的产出效率,证实公共资本具有显著的外溢效应。在此基础上,本文着重揭示,在基于历史数据的中国经济增长研究中,不仅水利等基础设施公共资本存量存在明显的测量误差,而且总的资本存量、劳动投入等生产要素的基础数据,也可能存在严重的准确性问题,影响了对经济增长的准确判断,急需系统深入的研究讨论加以完善以形成理论共识。     

Discrete-space agglomeration model with social interactions: Multiplicity,stability, and continuous limit of equilibria

This study examines the properties of equilibrium, including the stability, of discrete-space agglomeration models with social interactions. The findings reveal that while the corresponding continuous-space model has a unique equilibrium, the equilibrium in discrete space can be non-unique for any finite degree of discretization by characterizing the discrete-space model as a potential game. Furthermore, it indicates that despite the above result, any sequence of discrete-space models’ equilibria converges to the continuous-space model’s unique equilibrium as the discretization of space is refined.     

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM THREE DECADES OF RESEARCH ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF PUBLIC CAPITAL?

The last three decades have witnessed a great deal of research effort devoted to measuring the private output elasticity of public capital. The wide range of available estimates have precluded any consensus so far, however. This paper reconciles the empirical findings of the literature by quantitatively analyzing a sample of 578 estimates collected from 68 studies for the 1983–2008 period. Using meta‐regression analysis, we show how study design characteristics and publication bias can explain a large fraction of the variation across estimates. We find a short‐run output elasticity of public capital supplied at the central government level of 0.083, which increases to 0.122 in the long run. If, in addition, only core infrastructure at a regional/local level of government is considered, these estimates are almost doubled. The average output elasticity of public capital amounts to 0.106. Our results suggest that public capital is undersupplied in OECD economies.     

城市公共经济研究的规划意义

城市规划作为一项重要的政府职能.在目标取向扣研究取向上与城市公共经济研究有着高度的一致性.论文分析了当前城市公共资源开发中存在的问题,然后论述了城市化战略与城市公共经济研究的重要性,最后从城市公共经济学角度探讨了城市规划在维护城市公共利益方面的重要内容.     

Incomplete regulation, market competition and collusion

Regulators often do not regulate all firms competing in a given sector. Due to product substitutability, unregulated competitors have incentives to bribe regulated firms to have them overstate their costs and produce less, thereby softening competition. The best collusion-proof contract entails distortions both for inefficient and efficient regulated firms (distortion ‘at the top’). But a contract inducing active collusion may do better by allowing the regulator to ‘team up’ with the regulated firm to indirectly tax its competitor. The best such contract is characterized. It is such that the unregulated firm pays the regulated one to have it truthfully reveals its inefficiency. We finally compare those contracts.