CORRUPTION AND CORPORATE FINANCE PATTERNS: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract.  This study demonstrates the importance of government corruption in shaping corporate finance patterns across countries. Corruption contributes to a more prevalent and higher degree of corporate equity ownership concentration and more reliance on bank financing in raising external finance. It argues that corporate governance under corrupt governments is particularly poor. Firm management, taking advantage of political capital acquired through bribery, is especially powerful in expropriating from outside investors. Ownership concentration and reliance on bank financing are means of mitigating the corporate governance problem under a corrupt government.     

PUBLIC FINANCE AND REGIONAL ACCOUNTS*

This paper discusses the problems that arise in the regional allocation of public sector accounts. These problems arise mainly in connection with the regional allocation of government expenditures on a governing rather than a procurement basis, and in the derivation of a meaningful surplus or deficit. The latter in turn requires an examination of the real geographic incidence of government revenues—to avoid, for instance, the assignment of the whole tobacco tax to Virginia and North Carolina. The use of a procurement basis for government product and the real geographic distribution of direct tax incidence for government revenue would produce a more complete and meaningful regional surplus or deficit measure, and gross regional products will not be as subject to spurious inter-regional variation.     

EDUCATIONAL VOUCHERS AND CREAM SKIMMING*

Epple and Romano (1998) show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most‐able students, and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming. Here we study voucher design that injects private‐school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming. Conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools' policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming. However, by adding restrictions like tuition constraints, such vouchers can reap the benefits of school competition without increased stratification. This is accomplished while allowing voluntary participation in the voucher system and without tax increases.     

FIRM FRAGMENTATION AND URBAN PATTERNS*

We document several empirical regularities regarding the evolution of urban structure in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas over the period 1980–90. These regularities relate to changes in resident population, employment, occupations, as well as the number and size of establishments in different sections of the metropolitan area. We then propose a theory of urban structure that emphasizes the location and internal structure decisions of firms. In particular, firms can decide to locate their headquarters and operation plants in different regions of the city. Given that cities experienced positive population growth throughout the 1980s, we show that firm fragmentation produces the diverse set of facts documented in the article.     

金融资源空间分布规律:一个金融地理学的分析框架

金融地理学的研究角度可以归纳为空间差异、空间过程与空间的相互作用三个层次.从这三个层次来看,金融资源空间分布呈现非均衡态势;金融资源空间分布是一个金融集聚与扩散的过程;金融资源空间分布的相互作用是金融效率的空间调整和提高的过程,也是金融功能的空问深化和完善的过程.     

A DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT,OCCUPATIONAL CHOICES,AND JOB SEARCH*

This article examines career choices using a dynamic structural model that nests a job search model within a human capital model of occupational and educational choices. Wage growth occurs in the model because workers move between firms and occupations as they search for suitable job matches and because workers endogenously accumulate firm and occupation specific human capital. Simulations performed using the estimated model reveal that both self‐selection in occupational choices and mobility between firms account for a much larger share of total earnings and utility than the combined effects of firm and occupation specific human capital.     

DEGREASING THE WHEELS OF FINANCE

Can there be too much trading in financial markets? We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model, where agents face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. A financial market allows agents to adjust their portfolio of liquid and illiquid assets in response to these shocks. The optimal policy is to restrict access to this market because portfolio choices exhibit a pecuniary externality: Agents do not take into account that by holding more of the liquid asset, they not only acquire additional insurance against these liquidity shocks, but also marginally increase the value of the liquid asset, which improves insurance for other market participants.     

PATTERNS OF TRADE AND GROWTH UNDER INCREASING RETURNS: ESCAPE FROM THE POVERTY TRAP*

We consider a two-sector model of intertemporal resource allocation in which the investment good sector exhibits an initial phase of increasing returns in production. The economy maximizes a discounted sum of one period utilities derived from the consumption good. If it is autarkic, it may face a poverty trap from which it cannot escape even if it follows an optimal policy. If it engages in trade with the outside world as a price taker, it may escape from the trap. The optimal patterns of production and trade are analysed for such an economy.     

土地财政制度对房地产价格的影响因素研究*

本文基于动态系统GMM模型,运用Stata软件和计量经济学方法,对2009—2015年中国15个大中城市房价水平的变化趋势进行研究。结果表明：（1）地方政府依靠土地财政和房地产维持地方财政,土地财政是导致房价上涨的根本原因。（2）在经济下行的背景下,地方政府和房企共同经营土地,地方政府试图通过做大土地财政拉动地方经济。（3）中央政府选择有利于中央政府效用水平增加的经济发展方式。所以中央政府、地方政府与房企会形成经济增长联盟共同推动房价上涨。（4）房企行为对土地财政导致的高房价具有放大效应,且作用效果在东部、中西部地区呈现明显的区域差异。本文的贡献是发现了房企行为与土地财政、房价上涨之间相互作用的逻辑关系,为找到缓解房地产价格上涨的措施提供了新的可能性。     

ON FINANCE AS A THEORY OF TFP,CROSS‐INDUSTRY PRODUCTIVITY DIFFERENCES,AND ECONOMIC RENTS*

We develop a theory of capital‐market imperfections to study how the ability to enforce contracts affects resource allocation across entrepreneurs of different productivities, and across industries with different needs for external financing. The theory implies that countries with a poor ability to enforce contracts are characterized by the use of inefficient technologies, low aggregate TFP, large differences in labor productivity across industries, and large employment shares in industries with low productivity. These implications are supported by the empirical evidence. The theory also suggests that entrepreneurs have a vested interest in maintaining a status quo with low enforcement.     

风险偏好的差异性与融资的多样性

我们认为,公众公司(public company)的企业价值不仅依赖于企业家事后的管理行动,而且依赖于企业家的事前努力。为了实现企业价值最大化,不仅需要给予投资者企业的控制权以遏止企业家的机会主义行为,而且还需要激励企业家的事前努力。也就是说,企业价值不仅受到控制权安排的影响,而且离不开一份企业家收益与企业绩效直接挂钩的激励计划。在如此一份激励计划下,投资者的风险偏好差异性不再是无关紧要的,因为一种区分投资者偏好的融资方式可以节约企业的融资成本,使企业有更多的现金流来激励企业家努力工作。本文证明了,多样性的融资方式,即适当比例的债权—股权融资,在一定的条件下是一种最优的融资机制。而且,在企业家拥有一定初始财富的假定下,我们解释了为什么存在各种各样的资本结构。     

USING LOTTERIES TO FINANCE PUBLIC GOODS: THEORY AND EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE*

This study explores the economics of charitable fund‐raising. We begin by developing theory that examines the optimal lottery design while explicitly relaxing both risk‐neutrality and preference homogeneity assumptions. We test our theory using a battery of experimental treatments and find that our theoretical predictions are largely confirmed. Specifically, we find that single‐ and multiple‐prize lotteries dominate the voluntary contribution mechanism both in total dollars raised and the number of contributors attracted. Moreover, we find that the optimal fund‐raising mechanism depends critically on the risk postures of potential contributors and preference heterogeneity.     

PRODUCTIVE GOVERNMENT SPENDING,PATTERNS OF SPECIALIZATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN A SMALL OPEN ECONOMY*

Constructing a two‐sector small open endogenous growth model with productive government spending, this paper examines patterns of specialization and the growth effects of fiscal policy. It is shown in this model that a change in income tax rate can cause a change in an equilibrium pattern of specialization. Because of this property, the relationship between the tax rate and the growth rate yields either a humped shape or a two‐humped shape, depending on world commodity prices. We also show that the growth maximizing tax rate is not necessarily equal to the tax rate that maximizes the level of social welfare.