Trends in British public investment

British public investment has declined sharply both as a share of GDP and as a share of government spending since the 1970s. Only part of this decline is explained by privatisation, which transferred some public investment to the private sector. More important was the very large and permanent reduction in public house‐building between the mid‐1970s and the early 1980s. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rate of public investment recovered somewhat, but after that time it declined again, reaching a record low in 1999. The most recent decline in public investment has affected a range of central government programmes, and it has not been significantly offset by investment under the Private Finance Initiative. The government now plans to increase investment spending, although levels look set to remain low by historical standards for some time to come.     

On the optimality of optimal income taxation

The Mirrleesian model of income taxation restricts attention to simple allocation mechanism with no strategic interdependence, i.e., the optimal labor supply of any one individual does not depend on the labor supply of others. It has been argued by Piketty (2009) [12] that this restriction is substantial because more sophisticated mechanisms can reach first-best allocations that are out of reach with simple mechanisms. In this paper, we assess the validity of Piketty?s critique in an independent private values model. As a main result, we show that the optimal sophisticated mechanism is a simple mechanism, or, equivalently, a Mirrleesian income tax system.     

Do exporters have anything to learn from foreign multinationals?

International technology diffusion through FDI has been examined mainly at macro or industry level whereas micro studies have been concerned mostly with spillovers. Using recent data on the UK manufacturing firms, this paper uncovers evidence that acquisition FDI is an important channel of direct technology transfer from foreign multinationals to domestic exporters. This finding accords with the prediction of the internalisation theory of FDI which postulates that multinational firms transfer a range of intangible proprietary assets to their affiliates.     

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SA213TP310HCbN(HR3C)、CodeCase 2328(SUPER304H)、SA213 TP347H、SA335P91(SA213T91)、SA213T122、SA335P92等钢种在焊接上有比较大的难度。因此在焊接方案应采取相应的措施。     

Nonlinear effects of government debt on private consumption: Evidence from OECD countries

This paper investigates nonlinear effects of government debt on private consumption. The estimated consumption function shows smooth regime switching depending on the debt-to-GDP ratio, and a higher level of government debt crowds out private consumption to a greater extent.     

Foreign direct investment and host country policies: A rationale for using ownership restrictions

This paper examines host governments' motivation for restricting ownership shares of multinational firms (MNFs) in foreign direct investment (FDI) projects. An MNF with a productivity advantage is willing to invest in a host country. The host government wants to capture the MNF's surplus yet cannot observe it due to the MNF's private information about its firm-specific advantage. In contrast, a joint venture (JV) partner might observe this surplus depending on its ownership share. The host government can alleviate its informational constraints by using ownership restrictions to force a JV. This calls into question the wisdom of calls for ‘liberalizing’ FDI flows by the wholesale elimination of domestic JV requirements. We show that the optimal mechanism involves ownership restrictions that decrease as the size of the MNF's firm-specific advantage increases.     

Disability benefit microsimulation models in the Netherlands

Disability rates in the Netherlands used to be among the highest in the world. In 2002 the number of disability recipients approached one million. However, since then the number of disability cases has dropped remarkably due to a number of policy changes, the last of which being the new 2006 disability insurance scheme. On the other hand, in recent years the number of beneficiaries in the special scheme dedicated to the young handicapped has increased rapidly.     

Grants-in-aid and election outcomes in recipient jurisdictions: The impact of EU funds on mayoral elections in Poland

We analyze the impact of EU funds on the outcomes of Polish mayoral elections in 2010 and 2014. We employ an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of EU funds. Our instruments approximate the availability of EU funds. The first instrument builds on the alignment of the local electorate with the regional donor government. The second instrument uses the funds spent in municipalities in the same sub-region dropped from the sample because the mayors do not run again. We do not find convincing empirical evidence in favor of the notion that EU funds increase the vote shares of mayors. We go on to test whether the electoral effect of EU funds is conditional on the attitude towards the donor institution among the population in the recipient population. This conditional factor is under-researched and politically virulent – given citizens’ skepticism towards the EU that Krastev (2017) describes for Central and Eastern European EU members. Our results are affirmative. EU funds increase the vote shares of mayors in municipalities where Krastev (2017) predicts the degree of EU skepticism to be low while they are not found to do so in municipalities where EU skepticism is predicted to be widespread. These results suggest that citizens’ attitudes towards the donor of vertical grants determine the political gains of recipients from using them.     

FISCAL POLICY AND ASSET PRICES

We analyse the impact of fiscal policy on asset prices using a panel vector auto‐regressive (PVAR) approach and quarterly data for ten industrialized countries. We find that positive fiscal shocks lead to a temporary fall in stock prices and a gradual and persistent decrease in housing prices. The empirical findings also point to: (i) a contractionary effect of fiscal policy on output in line with the existence of crowding‐out effects and the deterioration of credit conditions; (ii) a weakening of the effectiveness of fiscal policy in recent times; (iii) a more persistent response of asset prices for countries with a lower degree of openness; (iv) a larger impact of fiscal policy on asset prices for small countries; (v) a close link between the responsiveness of asset prices to fiscal policy and the government’s size; (vi) an increase of the sensitivity of asset prices to fiscal policy shocks following the process of financial deregulation and mortgage liberalization; and (vii) significant fiscal multiplier effects in the context of severe housing busts. Finally, the evidence suggests that changes in equity prices may help governments towards consolidation of public finances.