Career length: Effects of curvature of earnings profiles,earnings shocks,taxes, and social security

The same high labor supply elasticity that characterizes a representative family model with indivisible labor and employment lotteries also emerges without lotteries when self-insuring individuals choose interior solutions for their career lengths. Off corners, the more elastic is an earnings profile to accumulated working time, the longer is a workerʼs career. Negative (positive) unanticipated earnings shocks reduce (increase) the career length of a worker holding positive assets, while the effects are the opposite for a worker with negative assets. By inducing a worker to retire at an official retirement age, government provided social security can attenuate responses of career lengths to earnings profile slopes, earnings shocks, and taxes.     

Inflation,a disease of society

This paper focuses on financing the welfare state expenditures in the UK. It offers a comprehensive analysis of social expenditures and taxes paid by the working population families, and an estimation of the net benefits received by them. While the subsequent analysis of the welfare state and its development primarily concentrates on the British experience, it has a broader application to other OECD countries. The UK as the most egalitarian “liberal market economy,” offers an interesting case for the study of the interaction between the welfare state expansion and economic growth. In terms of her capitalist economic structure, (interaction between market and economy) she is relatively closer to the USA and other Angelo-Saxon (liberal market) economies. In terms of her level of social expenditures, she is much closer to the European “social market economies” than the USA and other more egalitarian “liberal market economies.”     

经济全球化下我国税收管理的问题与对策

在经济全球化日益扩大的形势下，税收管理也日益复杂、本文试图探讨经济全球化的税收管理问题，并提出一些建议     

Optimal fiscal policy with robust control

This paper analyzes how consumer uncertainty affects optimal fiscal policy in the Lucas and Stokey (1983) framework. The consumers, lacking confidence in their knowledge of the stochastic environment, endogenously tilt their subjective probability model away from an approximating probability model. The government, though, is confident that the approximating probability model characterizes the stochastic environment. This confidence dichotomy reveals a range of possible objective functions for an altruistic government. I assume that the government maximizes the consumers' expected utility under the consumers' own subjective probability model. It is found that this government relies less heavily on labor taxes to absorb the fiscal shock than would be optimal if consumers were fully confident in their probability model. This policy helps mitigate the direct welfare cost associated with consumer uncertainty. I compare this policy to the one implemented by a government that maximizes the consumers' expected utility under the approximating probability model.     

我国碳税制度要素设计研究

碳税是实现节能减排和保护环境的有效政策手段。我国在确立碳税制度框架时,可以借鉴国外的碳税经验,通过降低能源税税收负担和开征碳税相结合的方式来实现从原有相关税种过渡到碳税的制度转换过程。在综合比较碳税制度运行时的经济效率和行政效率的基础上,进一步确立最优的碳税课税主体、课税环节、税率及税收用途,这些碳税制度要素的研究对构建我国的绿色税收制度具有重要启示。     

税率调整、产权安排与实际税负差异——基于两税合并的经验证据

 本文研究了所得税外生性变化对不同产权性质企业实际税收负担的影响。研究发现：（1）新企业所得税法实施后国有企业和民营企业的整体税负以及法定税率下降的国有企业和民营企业的实际税负都有所下降，而且两类企业实际税负下降幅度无差异；（2）新企业所得税法对企业实际税负的调节效应在2008年释放完毕，2009年公司实际税负没有发生持续性变化；（3）进一步的证据表明，新税法实施后国有企业和民营企业整体税负无显著差异。     

The effectiveness of taxes in decreasing candy purchases

We use candy purchase data at the household level to analyze changes in candy purchases due to Colorado’s candy tax. Colorado is one of the many states that exempts candy containing flour from their candy tax. To do this, we construct a dataset of monthly household taxed and tax-exempt candy purchases for the years 2009 and 2010 for the Denver, CO and Omaha, NE metros. Difference-in-differences estimates imply that Colorado’s candy tax led to a decrease in taxed candy purchases of at least 11.2%, which would translate into a reduction of household body weight of at least one pound during the first year the tax is in effect. Conversely, we find no effect on the purchase of tax-exempt candy.     

中国房地产行业的不可能三角问题研究——基于投入产出表的一般均衡分析方法

本文描述了近年来房地产行业的走势,观察了房地产行业的税负状况,提出假设:在我国税收总量不减少的大前提下,是否可以同时实现宏观经济水平提高、房地产行业税收负担降低与保持税收公平效应这三个目标。基于中国投入产出表的一般均衡计算得出,这三个目标如同蒙代尔-克鲁格曼不可能三角一样①,最多同时实现其中两个。最后本文解释了所得结论的现实意义,并结合我国的经济走势及房地产政策变化,提出相关政策建议。     

An Income Tax Increase to Fund Higher Education: A CGE Analysis for Chile

An increase in income taxes to fund education was one of the demands made by the social movements that emerged in Chile in 2011. Currently, the Chilean Congress is enacting a tax reform to raise money for higher education. This study aims to show the dynamic effects on the general equilibrium of the Chilean economy under two alternative approaches: a subsidy to lower the price of higher education (public and private), and greater spending on public higher education to reduce household payments for education. The social accounting matrix (SAM) used to calibrate the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model has 38 economic sectors, including the production structure of private education and public education. The study mainly concludes that a subsidy policy has significant advantages over increasing higher public education spending, regarding its effects on variables such as GDP, investment, and household incomes, while both policies have a similar effect on poverty and income distribution.     

Environmental policy instruments and corruption

ABSTRACT

In this paper we discuss the choice of taxation or regulation of environmental externalities. The subject might appear to be a well-trodden path, but we believe we have a new angle on this well-established question. We think we are being quite realistic when we assume that corrupt practices lurk behind every corner, threatening to derail the good intents of any regulator. With this starting point we compare the result of trying to impose taxation contra regulation in environments where the implementation in both cases will be marred by corrupt practices of under-reporting emissions and bribing inspectors. In a simple and stylized model of these circumstances we show that taxes tend to perform the same or better in the sense that a pollution tax induces greater compliance and lower pollution than does a regulatory standard. We also show that the advantages of a tax are particularly great in countries where the enforcement ability of authorities is weak, which is commonly thought to be the case in developing countries.