房产税能否抑制实体经济"脱实向虚"——来自上海和重庆的经验分析

本文利用我国35个大中城市2006-2018年的平衡面板数据,基于上海和重庆在2011年实施的房产税试点政策,运用合成控制法检验房产税政策能否抑制实体经济"脱实向虚"发展的趋势.研究结果显示,房产税政策能够有效地遏制地区房地产业新增产值占GDP的比重的上升,促使实体企业回归主业,增加实体投资,实现促进实体经济朝着"脱虚返实"方向发展的作用.鉴于此,本文提出应加快推进房产税政策在全国范围内的实施,并在政府补贴、银行贷款等方面采取一系列配套措施鼓励实体企业进行更多的实体投资.     

团队科学创造力的提升需重视团队成就目标导向——被调节的中介效应

基于创造力成分等多维理论，构建以团队反馈寻求行为为中介变量，团队凝聚力为调节变量的被调节的中介效应模型，以期深入解释创新团队成就目标导向如何影响其团队科学创造力。基于129个理工科大学生科技创新团队数据，研究结果表明，团队学习目标导向和团队表现目标导向分别与团队科学创造力有显著的正向和负向关系；团队反馈寻求行为在团队成就目标导向与团队科学创造力间起部分中介作用；团队凝聚力负向调节团队反馈寻求行为与团队科学创造力间的关系，并弱化了团队成就目标导向通过团队反馈寻求行为对团队科学创造力的间接影响。结论对提高科技创新团队科学创造力有一定指导价值。     

Hayek on the essential dispersion of market knowledge

The Review of Austrian Economics - A key insight in Hayek’s thought is the importance of so-called “local knowledge” in economic activity. In The Fatal Conceit, he states that...     

Patterns of Investor-State Dispute Settlement Decisions

This paper examines the pattern of settlements, investor wins and state wins in investor-state dispute settlement cases, focusing on the impact of arbitration rules, the resources and experience of the litigants, the type of treaty breach under investigation, and the pattern of state intervention. Logistic regression results show that settlements are more likely when investors do not disclose their allegations publicly, when the host state has been involved in a greater number of past cases, and when the respondent state has a higher control-of-corruption rating. Panel awards to investors are more likely in cases of alleged direct expropriation and less likely for indirect expropriation. Panel decisions favoring the state increase with higher per capita income and rule-of-law ratings.     

Asymmetric effects of housing wealth on college enrolment

We investigate the impact of housing wealth, credit availability and financial distress on college enrolment decisions. We find that housing wealth is negatively related to enrolment in public schools and positively related to enrolment in private schools. This evidence suggests that, on average, students substituted away from private schools towards public institutions during the recent financial crisis.     

Liking what others “Like”: using Facebook to identify determinants of conformity

In this paper we explore the micro-level determinants of conformity. Members of the social networking service Facebook express positive support to content on the website by clicking a Like button. We set up a natural field experiment to test whether users are more prone to support content if someone else has done so before. To find out to what extent conformity depends on group size and social ties we use three different treatment conditions: (1) one stranger has Liked the content, (2) three strangers have Liked the content, and (3) a friend has Liked the content. The results show that one Like from a single stranger had no impact. However, increasing the size of the influencing group doubled the probability that subjects expressed positive support. Friendship ties were also decisive. People were, on average, four times more likely to press the Like button if a friend, rather than a stranger, had done so before them. The existence of threshold effects in our experiment clearly shows that both group size and social proximity matters when opinions are shaped.     

Cuba,Trade Dependency and the GATT/WTO System

Cuba sought economic independence from the U.S. and its reliance on sugar exports after its 1959 revolution, but subsequently developed new dependency relationships. In the meantime, Cuba remained inside the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), despite conducting most of its trade outside it. This paper explores the political economy of Cuba’s participation in the GATT and later the World Trade Organization (WTO). Documents show that Cuba sought to use its participation to gain new markets and influence in the developing world. While Cuba has gained little economically from its participation, in recent years it has diversified its exports and trade partners, and its trade interests now align more closely with WTO rules. Economic reforms will be necessary in order for Cuba to benefit.     

A new perspective on the exporter productivity premium: online trade

We use a unique firm-level data set including 9000 companies from 26 European Union countries covering four different sectors to take a close look at the relationship between online exports and productivity. The online exporter productivity premium is estimated using different techniques (ordinary least squares, quantile regressions and robust estimation). Results consistently indicate that the estimated online exporter productivity premium is statistically different from zero, positive and significant from an economic point of view. European online exporters, according to these results, are approximately 2% more productive than non-online exporters. Productivity differences between firms could be related to variables that are not included in the empirical model. More research would be needed to address this issue in the future.