The dangers of extended, but incomplete, accounting for measures of economic performance in a world of imperfect knowledge

The conventions currently employed by national statistical agencies for income and wealth accounting leave out many things relevant to economic performance and human well-being. This has lead to proposals for, and attempts at, more comprehensive accounting. Fully comprehensive accounting is impossible, and the question addressed in this paper is whether a fuller, but incomplete, accounting is guaranteed to be nearer to the truth than the conventional accounting. The answer to this question is ‘no’. In general, for example, we cannot be sure that ‘genuine saving’ would be more accurately measured by extending the list of assets that it covers. The paper sets out the conditions under which greater accuracy would be assured.     

Relative Capital Shortage and Potential Output Constraint: A Gap Approach

Focusing on core‐infrastructure capital vis‐à‐vis productive capital, we propose a macroeconomic method to estimate their optimal utilisation ratio in production and their relative shortage in any period. The method is based on an adapted two‐gap model, estimated via linear programming, with application to Chile and Mexico over the 1950–2000 period. Core infrastructure appears to support a variable level of productive investment, relative capital shortage alternating and imposing constraints on potential output over time. This suggests an optimal investment trade off, based on a social opportunity cost that derives from the prevailing gap in any period.     

Institutional Demand-Side Discrimination Against Women and the Human Capital Model

Human capital theorists claim that the gender wage gap is due in large part to supply-side factors. They base this claim on empirical evidence. This paper challenges the interpretation of that empirical evidence. It argues that that interpretation is based on an assumption of a simplified production system that rules out any consideration of institutionally-based demand-side discrimination. It argues that insiders have an incentive to choose production techniques that benefit themselves, and that their choices will bias measures of human capital in their favor. The paper then considers a specific case study - the undergraduate U.S. academic market - where such institutionally-based demand-side discrimination exists, and offers an institutional change which could work to offset it.     

The Commons with Capital Markets

We explore a dynamic commons problem and assess the welfare consequences of access to capital markets. The commons has a high intrinsic rate of return but its fruits cannot be secured by individual agents. Capital market access allows resources to be held securely and intertemporally transferred, but at a lower rate of return. In a two period model, we completely characterise symmetric consumption and extraction behaviour in four environments: under a strategic and a competitive equilibrium concept, and with and without market access. Strategic equilibria dominate competitive ones: while agents disagree over how to divide the resource, all would prefer it to be larger; the strategic concept allows them to anticipate returns to their conservation. As the number of agents becomes infinite, the strategic outcome converges to the competitive; as the number of agents falls to one, it converges to the planner’s. Market access has a positive effect on welfare owing to its consumption and extraction smoothing properties and a negative effect owing to its creation of an outside option to the commons, encouraging its depletion. A sufficient condition for autarky to dominate market access for some levels of communal endowment is that the world market discount factor exceed the subjective discount factor. Multiple equilibria may arise: these result from market access, not the equilibrium concept. The authors thank Ralph Bailey, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Matthew Cole, Carl Devore, Felix Kubler, Chirantan Ganguly, Martin Jensen, Indrajit Ray, Celine Rochon, Dave Rusin, participants at the Royal Economic Society 2005 and an anonymous referee for valuable comments. They are grateful for funding under the ESRC’s World Economy and Finance programme (RES-156-25-0022).     

Economic inequality in Spain: the european community household panel dataset

This article uses data from the 1998 European Community Household Panel to study economic inequality in Spain. It reports data on the Spanish distributions of income, labor income, and capital income, and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the income mobility of Spanish households, and data on income inequality in other European countries and in the US. We find that income, earnings, and, especially, capital income are very unequally distributed in Spain and that economic inequality in Spain is well above the European average.     

Barriers to immigration and the dynamics of emigration

In a dynamic model of emigration and return migration I examine the role of migration costs in the process of capital accumulation of the source country. Every migration attempt reduces the amount of savings available for capital accumulation. It contributes, however, to an increase in the per-capita capital stock of the source country if the migrants leave some of their capital behind or decide to return and repatriate accumulated savings. The interaction among these flows governs the evolution of the economy’s capital stock and factor rewards, which in turn affects the decisions to emigrate and return migrate. Both the quantitative and qualitative effects of host-country policies and other disturbances on the key macroeconomic variables of the source country are found to depend on the level of migration costs.     

Economic theorist and ‘entrepreneur of popularisation’: Schumpeter as Finance Minister and journalist

Abstract

Modern theory of popularisation suggests that the production and the popularisation of scientific knowledge are interlinked and interactive processes. This perspective offers new insights into Joseph A. Schumpeter's main work in public finance, The Crisis of the Tax State, and into his later endeavours as Finance Minister and journalist to popularise two central economic ideas of this work, the once-and-for-all capital levy and the reform of the tax system. We demonstrate that Schumpeter's Crisis contains popularising features and was written with a popularising intention. Furthermore, we show that in his journalistic works popularisation went hand in hand with the development of innovative economic ideas.     

明代中国经济的产权分析与中欧比较研究

资本市场的萌芽和产生是商品经济的发展水平、社会化大生产状况和信用制度的成熟程度等三个因素共同促成的结果。在14~16世纪,中国和欧洲的基本条件相当,但欧洲地区出现了世界最早的资本市场,并逐步发展成为新的世界经济中心,而当时经济同样发达,并具有悠久文明史的古老中国却不仅没有产生资本市场,反而日渐衰落。本文从产权经济学的视角对明代中国和欧洲的经济发展状况和产权制度进行了比较研究,论证了14~16世纪的中国不可能出现资本市场的历史必然性。     

略论构建适于国企改制的财务契约结构之关键环节

要适应国企的现代经营方式,必须以利益相关者行为互动的全新视角,重新审视和界定企业的筹资决策,构建考虑包括股东在内的所有＂要素投入者＂的利益要求的＂财务契约结构＂.＂财务契约结构＂深化了＂资本结构＂的内涵,拓展了＂资本结构＂的外延,是利益相关者合作逻辑下对＂资本结构＂的新诠释.以此为基础,应进一步把握构建国企财务契约结构的关键环节.     

中国证券资本市场的发展状况及趋势

中国证券资本市场发展很快,资本市场对推动我国经济发展作出了不小贡献,但是,由于法规、制度、文化、经验等方面的原因,中国证券资本市场还存在诸多问题,股市“并发症”现象严重,股市畸形运转,股市融资、资源配置等方面的功能极其弱化,股市投机氛围浓重,投资者尤其是中小股民损失惨重。尽管股市存在不少问题,但中国大力推进资本市场改革和稳定发展的环境越来越成熟,股市发展的基础越来越牢固,存在的痼疾会随股权分置改革和监管加强的推进而得到解决,证券资本市场势必走向繁荣。