TAXATION OF ECONOMIC RENTS

Economic rents have long been identified as an efficient tax base. In addition, the recent literature documents that rent income is highly concentrated and that rents are quickly increasing. Rent taxation thus seems attractive for reasons of both efficiency and equity. Nevertheless, rent taxation remains a marginal topic in research and policy making. In a systematic review of the neoclassical literature on different rent types, we find that some types of rents reflect inefficiencies and should thus be minimized, while others reward investments and should be supported in line with social welfare. What remains for taxation are land rents, one of the few true scarcity rents. Land rents have significant potential to improve the efficiency of the tax system. We then begin to develop a comprehensive theory of land rent taxation by identifying relevant efficiency and equity effects. The interaction of many of these effects remains unexplored, which might explain policymakers' hesitation in using land taxes to date.     

Market Failure and Japanese Farmland Rents

Since the early 1950s, Japanese farmland rents have been regulated and a consensus emerged that rent control led to market failure. Hypothesising a rent‐formation model where rents are determined by prices, this paper estimates a threshold autoregressive model which integrates three tests of market failure, namely, inefficiency, bias and asymmetry. There are four results. First, a long‐run relationship exists between rents and prices, and the Japanese farmland rental market is efficient. Second, the rent‐price elasticity is unity and the market is unbiased. Third, rents are Granger‐caused by prices which supports the rent‐formation model. Fourth, asymmetry exists where more rapid error‐correction occurs immediately after policy reform when rent growth exceeds price growth by 3.6% or more, and rent control has benefitted tenants.     

基于机器学习方法的城市社区尺度商铺租金空间布局分析

研究目的：通过引入机器学习方法,利用地理时空大数据研究精细尺度的商铺租金分布,以弥补传统基于计量模型的租金分析中样本量不足、要素量化方式主观、模型形式僵化等问题。研究方法：研究利用网络爬虫技术获取相关时空大数据,随后采用密度制图、空间句法分析等量化相关指标,并通过LASSO模型筛选影响因子,最后采用机器学习方法对社区尺度商铺租金进行空间布局分析。研究结果：基于机器学习方法的广州市中心城区社区尺度商铺租金布局分析能较好拟合估计值和观测值,其分析结果显示广州市中心城区中荔湾区、越秀区、天河区和海珠区各自形成了成熟的高租金核心,商铺租金从高值区域向外逐渐下降。研究结论：该研究方法可以应用于房租、房价空间分布估计等领域,研究成果可作为基准地价更新、城市异值空间发现等的参考。     

Stumpage prices in Sweden 1909–2012: Testing for non-stationarity

The price of timber stumpage is one of the few natural-resource rents that can be directly observed as a market price. Rules for optimal timber harvesting under uncertainty have been found to depend on whether the timber rent price is non-stationary or stationary. In this study we extend previous research by Hultkrantz (1995) that tested for unit-root with an exogenous break point in Swedish stumpage prices from 1909 to 1990, employing data up to 2012, hence for 104 years, and unit-root tests with endogenously selected break points. We find support for a structural level break at the end of WW2 and that non-stationarity can be rejected. We show that this is a robust conclusion. There is thus no sign of a new break in the extended recent time period and no signal of a secular increase of timber resource scarcity.     

李嘉图等价定理及其在中国的适用性分析

李嘉图等价定理认为,政府的财政收入形式的选择,不会引起人们经济行为的调整。但是,现代经济学家们并非完全同意李嘉图的见解,无论是对其必要条件的检验还是对其结论的检验都存在着争论。而通过实证分析我国1989—2004年的政府发债分别与消费和投资的关系,可以得出结论：从历史数据来看,李嘉图等价定理在我国并不适用。     

Continuity of the equilibrium price density and its uses in peak-load pricing

Summary. With as the commodity space, the equilibrium price density is shown to be a continuous function of the commodity characteristics. The result is based on symmetry ideas from the Hardy-Littlewood-Pólya theory of rearrangements. It includes, but is not limited to, the case of symmetric (rearrangement-invariant) production costs and additively separable consumer utility. Examples arise in continuous-time utility pricing, e.g., electricity pricing. In this context, a continuously varying price has two uses. First, it precludes demand jumps that would arise from discontinuous switches from one price rate to another. Second, in the problems of operating and valuing hydroelectric and pumped-storage plants (studied elsewhere), price continuity guarantees that their capacities (viz., the reservoir and the converter), the energy stocks, and in the case of hydro also the river flows, have well-defined marginal values.Received: 9 May 2001, Revised: 8 July 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: C62, D51, D58, L94. Correspondence to: Anthony HorsleyPart of this work (CentER DP 9014) was completed at the Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, whose financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The extension to storage was supported by ESRC grant R000232822. We also thank the referee and the editor for their comments.     

Dynamic Linkages among Budget Deficits,Interest Rates and the Stock Market*

This paper examines the dynamic linkages among the federal budget deficit, interest rates and the stock market for the United States from 1960 to 2006. The empirical strategy includes vector autoregression (VAR) and Granger causality analyses. The results suggest that budget deficits negatively impact upon stock returns, which implies a violation of the Ricardian Equivalence Proposition. Further analysis shows a higher sensitivity of stock returns to corporate taxes than to public spending. Finally, it is shown that although taxes are relevant for corporate profits in the short run, budget deficits are important for the stock market in the long run.     

创业资源整合的战略选择和实现手段——基于租金创造机制视角

大部分创业者在创业之初都受到资源环境的约束,但成功的创业者往往能突破约束创办企业。本文基于租金创造机制视角指出,创业者资源整合有两种不同战略:一种是能力构建机制导向下的现有资源开发战略,另一种是资源攫取机制导向下的潜在资源探索战略。并进一步分析了不同资源整合战略可能采用的实现手段,即开发现有资源可以考虑创造性拼凑,而探索潜在资源可以考虑利用杠杆资源的杠杆作用。     

Land-use zoning in a local economy with optimal property taxes and public expenditures

A three-sector, open-city framework is used to study the impact of changes in land-use zoning on a local economy. In addition to the customary direct supply effects, a rezoning prompts changes in local property tax rates, public expenditures, and the location decisions of households and firms. Simulations are used to trace these general equilibrium adjustments. The final effects of a residentialto-commercial rezoning on crucial local economic variables, including residential and commercial site rents, property tax rates and the mix of public services, may contrast sharply with popular expectations based solely on a partial equilibrium analysis.     

Search costs and apartment rents

Differences in apartment rents are explained with a hedonic equation that includes property management variables omitted in prior studies. Our joint hypotheses are that differences in contributions to rent exist among property managers as a function of their ability to reduce search costs to renters and that the manager's fee for providing search-cost-reducing information is reflected in the amount of rent paid. Two proxies for the level of search costs are found to be positively and significantly related to the rent level.