Issues in the Design and Reform of Commodity Taxes: Analytical Results and Empirical Evidence

The motivation of this paper is two fold: (a) review the literature on design and reform of commodity taxes, (b) describe attempts at extending the traditional framework. The paper states the principal results in optimal commodity taxation with attention paid to assumptions made in their derivation. Empirical evidence on the structure of optimal commodity taxes is presented with special reference to the issue of uniformity versus selectivity, and the redistributive potential of commodity taxes. The paper, then, provides analytical and empirical evidence on the following extensions to the traditional framework: (i) presence of child subsidy and demographic effects on demand, (ii) fiscal federalism, (iii) tax evasion.     

Employment in the EC,EFTA, and the EEA: A regional analysis

This study examines free trade zones from a regional perspective. These trade agreements are an attempt to create a large functional and administrative region that can improve the competitive position of member countries. With this in mind, techniques commonly used in regional economics can be employed to study the competitive effects of free trade zones. This paper develops the application of shift-share analysis to free trade zones. More specifically, the paper conducts a shift-share analysis of Europe over two time periods to asses the competitive advantages from belonging to the European Common Market.     

解析中国投资高增长

近年来中国投资增长迅速,投资占GDP百分比已经超过40%。尽管银行和国有企业改革都取得了很大进步,但是影响投资决策有效性的因素依然存在。制造业、基础设施和房地产推动了固定资产投资。本文的经济计量分析表明,制造业投资与企业流动性(大部分来自于留存收益)显著相关。住宅房地产投资与真实居民收入的增长和真实抵押贷款利率的相关性很弱。这些发现的政策意义是减少企业的流动性,如:要求国有企业向政府支付股利、运用货币政策减少流动性、提高真实利率,以减缓制造业和房地产的投资增速。     

Child Labor, Child Schooling, and Their Interaction with Adult Labor: Empirical Evidence for Peru and Pakistan

Using data from Peru and Pakistan, this article tests two hypotheses:there is a positive association between hours of child laborand poverty, and there is a negative association between childschooling and poverty. Both of these hypotheses are confirmedby the Pakistani data, but not by the Peruvian data. The reductionin poverty rates due to income from children's labor is greaterin Pakistan than in Peru. The nature of interaction betweenadult and child labor markets varies with the gender of thechild and the adult. In Peru rising men's wages significantlyreduce the labor hours of girls, whereas in Pakistan there isa strong complementarity between women's and girls' labor markets.Both data sets agree on the positive role that increasing adulteducation can play in improving child welfare.     

Debt, Growth and Budgetary Regimes

Within the Barro (1990) model of productive public services, but with the inclusion of public debt, we derive and characterize on the balanced growth path, a set of welfare‐maximizing fiscal rules under two budgetary regimes – one with only the standard dynamic government budget constraint, and the other involving the golden rule of public finance. We demonstrate analytically that the optimal fiscal policy differs in the two budgetary regimes considered. We also analyse two cases within the second regime: one, where the ratio of current spending to tax revenues is parametrically given, and another, where this ratio is optimally chosen by the government.     

Bank-based versus market-based financial systems: A growth-theoretic analysis

We study bank-based and market-based financial systems in an endogenous growth model. Lending to firms is fraught with moral hazard as owner-managers may reduce investment profitability to enjoy private benefits. Bank monitoring partially resolves the agency problem, while market-finance is more ‘hands-off’. A bank-based or market-based system emerges from firm-financing choices. Neither system is unequivocally better for growth, which crucially depends on the efficiency of financial and legal institutions. But a bank-based system outperforms a market-based one along other dimensions. Investment and per capita income are higher, and income inequality lower, under a bank-based system. Bank-based systems are also more conducive for broad-based industrialization.     

Generalised cost scaling: A new approach to demographic variables in demand analysis

A new approach to modelling equivalence scales and household demand systems is introduced and its usefulness empirically demonstrated. The empirical results suggest that price effects on the general equivalence scale are more important than utility effect.