How accurate are government forecasts of economic fundamentals? The case of Taiwan

A government’s ability to forecast key economic fundamentals accurately can affect business confidence, consumer sentiment, and foreign direct investment, among others. A government forecast based on an econometric model is replicable, whereas one that is not fully based on an econometric model is non-replicable. Governments typically provide non-replicable forecasts (or expert forecasts) of economic fundamentals, such as the inflation rate and real GDP growth rate.In this paper, we develop a methodology for evaluating non-replicable forecasts. We argue that in order to do so, one needs to retrieve from the non-replicable forecast its replicable component, and that it is the difference in accuracy between these two that matters. An empirical example to forecast economic fundamentals for Taiwan shows the relevance of the proposed methodological approach. Our main finding is that the undocumented knowledge of the Taiwanese government reduces forecast errors substantially.     

资本结构与代理成本关系研究评述

资本结构与代理成本之间的关系始终是研究者关注的焦点。本文认为,资本结构中权益资本和债务资本会引发不同的代理成本,其产生的根源在于管理者与股东以及债权人与权益投资者之间存在不同的利益格局。在第一类和第二类代理冲突中,债务均具有重要的地位,但债务在第二类代理冲突中的作用与第一类冲突中显著不同。当企业股权集中时,大股东掌握着企业的实际控制权,企业的主要代理问题成为控股大股东与中、小股东之间的代理问题,这会导致其资本结构的代理成本与第一类和第二类代理成本显著不同。     

Government Consumption and Industrial Productivity: Scale and Compositional Effects

Within a production function framework in which government spending produces public goods which enter firms production functions, empirical tests using time series data spanning eleven countries and thirty industries find both the scale and the composition of government consumption spending to affect the level and the rate of growth of total factor productivity at the industry level.Jel Classification: H50, D24     

Integrating expected coverage and local reliability for emergency medical services location problems

Daskin's MEXCLP model [Daskin M. A maximum expected covering location model: formulation, properties, and heuristic solution. Transportation Science 1983;17:48-70] was one of the first efforts to capture the stochastic nature of emergency medical services (EMS) location problems within a mixed-integer formulation. With their subsequent introduction of MALP, ReVelle and Hogan [The maximum availability location problem. Transportation Science 1989;23:192-200] offered two key advances, local vehicle busyness estimates and the α-reliability objective. While these constructs have influenced many subsequent EMS location models, they have been subjected to relatively little empirical analysis. To address this, we introduce the LR-MEXCLP, a hybrid model combining the local busyness estimates of MALP with the maximum coverage objective of MEXCLP. We then solve a series of problems with all three models and employ simulation to estimate aggregate service levels. We find that LR-MEXCLP leads to modest but consistent service gains over both MALP and MEXCLP. These results support the merits of local busyness estimates, but they also suggest that the α-reliability objective may be inappropriate when seeking to maximize aggregate system response capabilities. More generally, our research underscores the utility of (a) linking modeling assumptions and goals with real-world application contexts, and (b) employing simulation or other techniques to validate theoretical results.     

会计信息责任的再认识

会计信息能引导社会经济资源的优化配置,进而影响整个国民经济的发展。因此,对会计信息质量有一定的要求。但是目前会计信息的质量状况令人堪忧。因而,有必要对保证会计信息质量的责任体系进行分析,以期对会计信息责任体系有全面的认识。     

新公共管理理念与政府财务报告的完善

新公共管理是目前世界各国政府公共管理改革的方向,信息透明性是建立新公共管理模式的基础。本文根据新公共管理的特点结合我国政府公共财政管理改革的实际,针对目前我国政府财务报告中存在的问题,提出了相应的改进建议。     

Fostering entrepreneurship in distressed urban neighbourhoods

During the last decade entrepreneurship research has focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurship. Many systematic studies have been conducted on the national or regional scale, although other geographical scales—cities and their single districts and neighbourhoods—have drawn less attention. In this context, the paper aims, firstly, at identifying spatial success factors of entrepreneurial activities and their promotion at the local scale. Secondly, the paper aims at contributing to the development of a conceptual frame at the interface of entrepreneurship research, urban and economic geography, and regional economics. Empirically, the paper draws on results from explorative case studies in two distressed urban areas.     

科学发展观背景下城市公共治理的挑战与对策

在科学发展观背景下我国城市发展面临新要求、新导向和新约束,目前大规模、高速度的城市化已不能适应新形势的需要.如何因地制宜,探索可持续城市化的道路是每个城市政府必须面对的机遇和挑战.本文着重探讨目前我国城市发展公共治理体制方面的问题,认为影响可持续城市发展的体制因素包括国家目标和政绩考核对发展的要求、城市政府的财政压力、以及对城市政府资源配置权缺乏有效制约.针对以上问题,论文以公共治理创新的角度,从国家制度建设和地方实践两个方面提出实现新型、可持续城市化模式政策建议.     

Spatial wage disparities: Sorting matters!

Spatial wage disparities can result from spatial differences in the skill composition of the workforce, in non-human endowments, and in local interactions. To distinguish between these explanations, we estimate a model of wage determination across local labour markets using a very large panel of French workers. We control for worker characteristics, worker fixed effects, industry fixed effects, and the characteristics of the local labour market. Our findings suggest that individual skills account for a large fraction of existing spatial wage disparities with strong evidence of spatial sorting by skills. Interaction effects are mostly driven by the local density of employment. Not controlling for worker heterogeneity leads to very biased estimates of interaction effects. Endowments only appear to play a small role.     

Transboundary pollution externalities: Think globally,act locally?

We analyze the implications of transboundary pollution externalities on environmental policymaking in a spatial setting, in which pollution diffuses across the global spatial economy independently of the specific location in which it is originally generated. This framework gives rise to a simple regional optimal pollution control problem allowing us to compare the global and local solutions in which, respectively, the transboundary externality is and is not taken into account in the determination of the optimal policy by individual local policymakers. We show that it is not obvious that transboundary externalities are a source of inefficiency per se since this is strictly related to the spatial features of the initial distribution of pollution. If the initial pollution distribution is spatially homogeneous then the local and global solutions will coincide and thus no efficiency loss will arise from transboundary externalities, but if it is spatially heterogeneous the local solution will be suboptimal and thus a global approach to environmental problems will be needed to achieve efficiency. From a normative perspective, in this latter (and most realistic) case we also quantify the amount of policy intervention needed at local level in order to achieve the globally desirable goal of pollution eradication in the long run. Our conclusions hold true in a number of different settings, including situations in which the spatial domain is either bounded or unbounded, and situations in which macroeconomic–environmental feedback effects are taken into account.