The religious factor in private education

We quantify the religious factor in private education in the United States by calibrating a political economy model of school choice—among public, private-nonsectarian and subsidized religious schools—in which parents differ in their incomes and in their preferences for religious education. This shows strong latent demand for religious schooling, conditioned on current subsidized tuition levels in parochial schools, which is suppressed by the need to “pay twice” for private education. Applying the results of the calibration to gauge the effect of means-tested school voucher programs on religious and nonsectarian private enrollment, we find that when the amount of the voucher is relatively small, including subsidized religious schools in such programs is necessary for providing low-income families effective access to private education.     

Dissertation abstract: “Essays in applied economics on the intervention of a third player in agency relationships”

Agency theory has established that appropriate incentives can reconcile the diverging interests of the principal and the agent. Focusing on three applications, this dissertation evaluates the empirical relevance of these results when a third party interacts with the primary contract. The analyses provided rely on either laboratory or natural experiments. First, corruption is analyzed as a two-contract situation: a delegation contract between a Principal and an Agent and a corruption pact concluded between this Agent and a third player, called Briber. A survey of the recent microeconomic literature on corruption first highlights how corruption behavior results from the properties of those two agreements. We thereafter show that the Agent faces a conflict in reciprocities due to those two conflicting agreements. The resulting delegation effect, supported by observed behavior in our three-player experimental game, could account for the deterrence effect of wages on corruption. Second, health care is governed by contradictory objectives: patients are mainly concerned with the health provided, whereas containing health care costs is the primary goal of health care administrators. We provide further insights into the ability of incentives to balance these two competing objectives. In this matter, our theoretical and econometric analysis evaluates how a new mixed compensation scheme, introduced in Quebec in 1999 as an alternative to fee-for-services, has affected physicians’ practice patterns. Free switching is shown to be an essential feature of the reform, since it implements screening between physicians. Finally, the demand for underground work departs from the traditional Beckerian approach to illegal behavior, due to the dependence of benefits from illegality on competitors’ behavior. We set up a theoretical model in which the demand for underground work from all producers competing on the same output market is analyzed simultaneously. We first show that competition drastically undermines the individual benefits of tax evasion. At equilibrium, each firm nonetheless chooses evasion with a positive probability, strictly lower than one. This Bertrand curse could then account for the “tax evasion puzzle” i.e. the overprediction of evasion in models that ignore market interactions. We thereafter show that allowing firms to denounce competitors’ evasion is not likely to solve this curse—by providing a credible threat against price cuts, it fosters illegal work. Empirical evidence from a laboratory experiment confirms these predictions. Without denunciation, experimental firms often choose evasion whereas evasion benefits are canceled out by competition. When introduced, denunciation is rarely used by firms, but the threat makes evasion profitable. JEL Classification K42, I18, D21, C25, C91     

农村金融:现实挑战与发展选择

农村金融体制的改革严重滞后，已经成为农村发展的重要障碍。当前中国农村经济已进入新畴发展阶段，其面临的主要矛盾是由增加供给转变为提高效益，传统的数量扩张为主的增长方式受到严重挑战。农村和农业发展对资金要素的依赖程度日趋增强．然而现实表明：由于农村正规金融组织功能不全、农村合作金融明显缺位，农村金融抑制变得更加严重，农村非农产业和农民获得金融服务极为困难已成为普遍存在的现象。     

西部农村金融支持农业产业化经营的困境与对策

西部农村金融支持农业产业化经营的对策--西部农村金融部门应增强支持农业产业化经营的使命感和责任感,建立健全适应农业产业化经营的信贷投资机制;选准信贷的支农载体,进一步完善农行的金融服务功能;进一步加大政策扶农力度,促进农业产业化持续健康发展.     

对农业发展银行改革的思考

中国农业发展银行运行绩效的好坏直接关系到整个农村金融安全体系的构建，事关“三农问题”的最终解决。通过深入分析农业发展银行改革的目标和原则，可发现农业发展银行存在的问题，提出了其运行绩效的一些具体建议。     

对金融活动公平性的伦理关注

在世界金融发展中,金融活动的公平性已经成为金融发展的重要标志之一。中国金融活动的公平问题亦是一个难以回避的问题,对中国金融公平性的关注,不只是对金融活动的伦理关注,也是对金融活动自身完善性的表现。在中国现代金融建设中,如何体现金融活动的公平性是一项长期而艰难的任务,是金融业健康发展的内在动力。     

关于农业保险立法的建议

构建多层次农村金融体系是新农村建设的难点，农业保险在分散和降低农业金融体系系统性风险方面发挥着无可替代的作用。我国应针对现行农业保险法律法规存在缺失的状况，坚持正确的立法原则，逐步完善农业保险立法，促进新农村建设顺利推进。     

论我国农村金融的增量改革

通过考察农村金融组织制度变迁的过程，发现每次变迁几乎都是在政府主导下进行的，其变迁结果却差强人意；而且，由于信用社、农业发展银行等几乎垄断了农村金融，其进行自我变革的内在动力不足，根据制度变迁理论并引入制度变迁的跨时期成本分析，应进行“增量改革”，即发展新的金融组织以对现有的金融机构施加外在压力，利用市场竞争促使其进行自我变革，满足农村金融需求以促进农村发展。     

经济系统中的数学建模

论述了经济系统中数学模型的建立问题,并对数学建模过程进行了理论分析。     

金融自由化与双轨金融体系

经济市场化次序理论和金融约束理论都以财政平衡为改革的前提条件 ,但是 ,为政府寻求新的税收来源 ,建立高效率的金融体系正是发展中国家进行市场化改革所追求的目标之一 ,金融自由化理论颠倒了经济发展与金融抑制之间的因果关系。本文证明了财政压力内生于金融自由化改革 ,并且在对经济市场化次序理论进行评论的基础上 ,讨论了建立双轨金融体系对促进金融自由化改革和经济发展的意义。