On the timeliness of tax reform

This paper analyzes efficient government reactions to unanticipated tax avoidance. Quickly reforming tax laws to reduce the effectiveness of new tax avoidance techniques prevents widespread adoption, but indirectly encourages the rapid development of new avoidance methods if prior users are permitted to retain their tax benefits. Tax reforms that immediately prevent new avoidance mean that innovators need not fear imitation by competitors, and cannot rely on copying the innovations of others. Such an activist reform agenda diverts greater resources into tax avoidance activity, and might thereby lead to a faster rate of tax base erosion, than would a less reactive government strategy. Efficient government policy therefore entails either the retroactive elimination of tax savings, with possible associated costs, or else a deliberate pace of tax reform in response to taxpayer innovation.     

Corporate mergers and union wage premiums

Corporate mergers possibly enhance the labor negotiation advantage of employers. This study investigates the association between wage levels and merger activity to test the employer bargaining strength hypothesis. The results indicate significantly lower union wages as a consequence of merging. Merger activity, however, does not influence wage levels of non-union workers. These findings are supportive of the employer bargaining strength hypothesis.     

General training by firms, apprentice contracts, and public policy

Workers will not pay for general on-the-job training if contracts are not enforceable. Firms may if there are mobility frictions. Private information about worker productivities, however, prevents workers who quit receiving their marginal products elsewhere. Their new employers then receive external benefits from their training. In this paper, training firms increase profits by offering apprenticeships which commit firms to high wages for those trainees retained on completion. At these high wages, only good workers are retained. This signals their productivity and reduces the external benefits if they subsequently quit. Regulation of apprenticeship length (a historically important feature) enhances efficiency. Appropriate subsidies enhance it further.     

Retroactive Liability or the Public Purse?

The article addresses the question of whether responsibility for pollution created in the past should be retroactively applied to firms, or if the costs of cleaning up existing pollution should be financed by the public. We show that making firms liable for retrospective environmental costs can weaken the incentive to take precautions against future environmental costs. This follows since public financing of these costs can lead to greater prospective risk deterrence by allowing firms to more fully internalize the costs of future environmental risks. However, an analysis of existing public financing approaches highlights a set of dangers associated with their practical use.     

金融中介及关系银行——基于广东外资企业银行融资数据的研究

本文根据外资银行和国有商业银行向在中国境内的外资企业提供的外币贷款和人民币贷款的数据 ,对金融中介及关系银行进行了实证研究。我们的主要结论有两点 :第一 ,企业与银行建立起来的金融业务关系越长久 ,那么其所获得的外币贷款利率就越低。这是对金融中介理论的支持。另外 ,外资控股、第三方担保等因素 ,也具有降低外币贷款利率的效应。第二 ,人民币贷款的利率随着外资企业与更多的银行建立和保持合作关系而降低。人民币贷款主要是由我国商业银行提供。如果商业银行间的竞争仅仅是用来作为信贷定价的主要决定因素 ,而不是用来推进金融创新 ,提供高质量的金融产品和服务 ,那么这将会损害我国商业银行的获利能力并进而影响金融系统的健康发展。     

OPPORTUNISTIC MATCHING IN THE HOUSING MARKET*

We construct a model of the housing market in which agents differ in their flow values while searching. Agents enter the market relaxed (with high flow values) but move to a desperate state (low flow values) at a Poisson rate if they have not already transacted. We characterize the equilibrium steady‐state matching pattern and the joint distribution of price and time to sale (for sellers). The expected price conditional on time to sale falls with time spent on the market, whereas the conditional variance of price first rises and then falls with time on the market.