入世三年来我国农产品贸易发展态势分析

加入世界贸易组织三年来，我国全面履行了农产品国际贸易方面的入世承诺，农产品的进出口都得到了迅速的发展，取得了良好的成绩。通过分析入世以来我国农产品贸易的发展状况、面临的问题和发展趋势，提出未来我国农产品贸易发展的应对策略，以利于我国经济更加健康地融入世界经济。     

财政分权与义务教育财政管理体制问题探析

我国是成功实施财政分权化的国家之一。作为公共财政框架部分之一的义务教育也实行了分权化管理,义务教育办学的责任主要地落在了县、乡两级地方政府身上。而我国庞大的义务教育事业由县、乡甚至村脆弱的财力来承担,可谓“杯水车薪”：一些农村地区和贫困山区学龄儿童无学可上,无书可读等现象屡见不鲜。可见过度分权化的义务教育财政管理体制是制约当今中国义务教育发展的症结所在。     

商业银行的客户战略

随着我国经济的发展和金融环境的不断变化,商业银行竞争越来越激烈.商业银行已从过去金融产品的竞争转变为对客户的竞争;已从对市场份额占有率的竞争发展为对客户资源的竞争.这些变化给商业银行提出了更高的要求.为了适应当前的竞争,商业银行必须以发展客户战略为重中之重,本人拟从当前商业银行如何实行客户战略谈谈自己的一些看法.     

区域产业结构与就业结构的比较及启示——基于重庆市万州区和涪陵区的分析

产业结构和就业结构的变化反映出区域经济发展的资源分配结构及其发展进程和水平.分析发现,万州区与涪陵区在产业结构上都存在第一产业所占比重与其吸纳劳动力的比重不一致的现象,其中,涪陵区第二产业比重较大但吸纳劳动力能力较弱,而万州区第三产业吸纳劳动力能力要弱于涪陵区.两地应大力发展第三产业以改善就业结构,充分吸纳从第一产业转移出来的劳动力.     

The Tax Man Cometh: Constitutional Principles for Tax Enforcement

Passage of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) overhaul bill in 1998 reflects the depth of American taxpayer frustration with the agency. We bring a constitutional, or rules of the game, perspective to tax enforcement. We examine political costs and benefits and agency discretion as reasons why tax enforcement by the government might deviate from the preferences of a representative citizen. We also examine prospects for reform. Lasting reform must alter the rules for deciding tax enforcement policy or the political pressures which yield excessive enforcement today will reemerge in the future.     

A Note on Regulating Oligopolistic Industries: A Hierarchical Model

In a 1994 paper, extending the well-known incremental surplus subsidy scheme of Sappington and Sibley, Schwermer presented a non-Bayesian incentive scheme for regulating a Cournot oligopoly industry. This note designs an oligopolistic incentive scheme for a hierarchical Stackelberg model in which firms choose outputs sequentially.     

A duration analysis of privatization in the telecom sector

The paper attempts to identify the telecom-sector performance indicators, relevant economic variables, and institutional characteristics of a country that effect the process of privatization of state-owned telecom enterprises. Using standard duration analysis of a panel data, we demonstrate that the privatization incentives are not only shaped by the mobility of financial capital in a country but are also influenced by the degree of competitiveness of private sector participation in policy-making process. The empirical results also reveal the significant impact of productive efficiency in telecom service provision on its course to privatization. We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. We are solely responsible for all mistakes.     

Taxation of Mobile Factors as Insurance under Uncertainty

This paper considers the effects of the taxation of mobile factors, i.e., capital, under uncertainty. The wages earned by residents of a jurisdiction are uncertain due to random shocks. Since the uncertain wages in a jurisdiction depend on the amount of mobile capital employed in the jurisdiction, and since taxation alters the quantity of capital employed, taxation affects the riskiness of uncertain wages. In particular, the taxation of capital moderates the fluctuation of uncertain wages, thereby providing insurance. For this reason, jurisdictions use distortionary capital taxation even if lump‐sum taxation is available. In addition, this insurance effect counteracts the tendency toward too low tax rates on capital arising from tax competition, and possibly improves the efficiency of tax competition.     

Nonlinear IV unit root tests in panels with cross-sectional dependency

We propose a unit root test for panels with cross-sectional dependency. We allow general dependency structure among the innovations that generate data for each of the cross-sectional units. Each unit may have different sample size, and therefore unbalanced panels are also permitted in our framework. Yet, the test is asymptotically normal, and does not require any tabulation of the critical values. Our test is based on nonlinear IV estimation of the usual augmented Dickey–Fuller type regression for each cross-sectional unit, using as instruments nonlinear transformations of the lagged levels. The actual test statistic is simply defined as a standardized sum of individual IV t-ratios. We show in the paper that such a standardized sum of individual IV t-ratios has limit normal distribution as long as the panels have large individual time series observations and are asymptotically balanced in a very weak sense. We may have the number of cross-sectional units arbitrarily small or large. In particular, the usual sequential asymptotics, upon which most of the available asymptotic theories for panel unit root models heavily rely, are not required. Finite sample performance of our test is examined via a set of simulations, and compared with those of other commonly used panel unit root tests. Our test generally performs better than the existing tests in terms of both finite sample sizes and powers. We apply our nonlinear IV method to test for the purchasing power parity hypothesis in panels.