WHY IS FISCAL POLICY OFTEN PROCYCLICAL?

Fiscal policy is procyclical in many developing countries. We explain this policy failure with a political agency problem. Procyclicality is driven by voters who seek to “starve the Leviathan” to reduce political rents. Voters observe the state of the economy but not the rents appropriated by corrupt governments. When they observe a boom, voters optimally demand more public goods or lower taxes, and this induces a procyclical bias in fiscal policy. The empirical evidence is consistent with this explanation: Procyclicality of fiscal policy is more pronounced in more corrupt democracies. (JEL: E62, D73, D78)     

THE POLITICAL COLOR OF FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

We propose a dynamic general equilibrium model that yields testable implications about the fiscal policy run by governments of different political color. Successive generations of voters choose taxation, expenditure, and government debt through repeated elections. Voters are heterogeneous by age and by the intensity of their preferences for public good provision. The political equilibrium switches stochastically between left‐ (pro‐public goods) and right‐leaning (pro‐private consumption) governments. A shift to the left (right) is associated with a fall (increase) in government debt, an increase (fall) in taxation, and an increase (fall) in government expenditures. However, left‐leaning governments engage in more debt accumulation during recessions. These predictions are shown to be consistent with the time‐series evidence for the United States in the postwar period, and also with the evidence for a panel of OECD countries. (JEL: D72, E62, H41, H62, H63)     

Anticipating or Accommodating to Public Concern? Risk Amplification and the Politics of Precaution Reexamined

Regulatory use of the precautionary principle (PP) tends to be broadly characterized either as a responsible approach for safeguarding against health and environmental risks in the face of scientific uncertainties, or as “state mismanagement” driven by undue political bias and public anxiety. However, the “anticipatory” basis upon which governments variably draw a political warrant for adopting precautionary measures often remains ambiguous. Particularly, questions arise concerning whether the PP is employed preemptively by political elites from the “top down,” or follows from more conventional democratic pressures exerted by citizens and other stakeholders from the “bottom up.” This article elucidates the role and impact of citizen involvement in the precautionary politics shaping policy discourse surrounding the U.K. government's “precautionary approach” to mobile telecommunications technology and health. A case study is presented that critically reexamines the basis upon which U.K. government action has been portrayed as an instance of anticipatory policy making. Findings demonstrate that the use of the PP should not be interpreted in the preemptive terms communicated by U.K. government officials alone, but also in relation to the wider social context of risk amplification and images of public concern formed adaptively in antagonistic precautionary discourse between citizens, politicians, industry, and the media, which surrounded cycles of government policy making. The article discusses the sociocultural conditions and political dynamics underpinning public influence on government anticipation and responsiveness exemplified in this case, and concludes with research and policy implications for how society subsequently comes to terms with the emergence and precautionary governance of new technologies under conflict.     

“减规模”还是“增绿色”?异质性环保政策工具下的企业环保行为响应

市场机制和绿色投资型环保政策工具既是对命令控制型工具的有益补充,也可能在企业层面引致更加复杂的环保行为响应,企业“减规模”抑或“增绿色”还存在不确定性。为此,本文借助计量模型,基于2011-2019年重污染上市公司的微观数据,探讨企业在不同政策工具下的环保行为响应。研究发现：各类环保政策工具的“增绿色”属性突出;环境监管和排污收费均引致企业环保支出和绿色创新水平提升的“增绿色”响应;环保补助则带来企业以环保支出为主的“增绿色”响应;环境监管和排污收费两种政策工具并不相容,互相阻滞了对环保支出的激励效应;宽松的融资约束和富有的企业家精神将放大排污收费的“增绿色”效果,而环保补助对引导融资约束下的“增绿色”响应更加有效。本文结论启示环保部门需了解不同政策工具的异质性后果,合理进行工具组合,并面向不同特征企业精准施策。     

THE JOINT DESIGN OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION: A FIRST PASS

Unemployment insurance and employment protection are typically discussed and studied in isolation. In this paper, we argue that they are tightly linked, and we focus on their joint optimal design in a simple model, with risk‐averse workers, risk‐neutral firms, and random shocks to productivity. We show that, in the “first best,”unemployment insurance comes with employment protection—in the form of layoff taxes; indeed, optimality requires that layoff taxes be equal to unemployment benefits. We then explore the implications of four broad categories of deviations from first best: limits on insurance, limits on layoff taxes, ex post wage bargaining, and ex ante heterogeneity of firms or workers. We show how the design must be modified in each case. Finally, we draw out the implications of our analysis for current policy debates and reform proposals, from the financing of unemployment insurance, to the respective roles of severance payments and unemployment benefits.     

环境分权、地方政府竞争对绿色技术创新影响的“本地—邻地”效应

随着绿色发展成为五大发展理念之一,各地政府推进绿色技术创新成为降低环境污染和提高增长质量的主要途径。为了考察地方政府环境分权和竞争对绿色技术创新影响的“本地—邻地”效应,本文利用非期望产出EBM模型测度绿色技术创新程度,并将绿色技术创新指数引入动态空间杜宾模型。最后,结合2003-2017年中国省级面板数据进行实证分析。研究发现：(1)绿色技术创新具有显著的路径依赖、空间集聚以及邻近地区的策略竞争效应;(2)环境分权对本地和邻地绿色技术创新的影响呈“U型”变动特征,且现阶段并未跨越分权驱动创新的临界点;(3)环境分权与地方政府竞争的交互效应整体为负,环境行政分权、环境监察分权和环境监测分权等不同类型环境分权采取的策略并不相同;(4)区域环境分权产生的绿色技术创新激励效应存在异质性,中西部地区环境分权对绿色技术创新的激励效果更强。     

A MODEL OF ETHNIC CONFLICT

We present a model of conflict in which discriminatory government policy or social intolerance is responsive to various forms of ethnic activism, including violence. It is this perceived responsiveness—captured by the probability that the government gives in and accepts a proposed change in ethnic policy—that induces individuals to mobilize, often violently, to support their cause. Yet, mobilization is costly and militants have to be compensated accordingly. The model allows for both financial and human contributions to conflict and allows for a variety of individual attitudes (“radicalism”) towards the cause. The main results concern the effects of within‐group heterogeneity in radicalism and income, as well as the correlation between radicalism and income, in precipitating conflict.     

Can governments make credible promises? Insights from infrastructure projects in emerging economies

Despite deregulation and privatization, governments in emerging economies continue to play important roles in private infrastructure projects, thereby exposing private investors to the risk of government reneging. The government's role as deal maker—and deal breaker—in infrastructure investments stems from its role as financier, customer, supplier, competitor, and/or regulator. (The only role governments have shed as a result of recent economic reforms is that of producer.) Based on the literature, I propose three explanations for government reneging: (1) economic uncertainty, which necessitates contract renegotiation; (2) the logic of the “obsolescing bargain,” which makes deals less attractive to governments ex post than they were ex ante; and (3) political change, which puts new leaders in charge with incentives to renege on old promises. I assert that these risks can be contained, respectively, through contract design, investment strategy, and institutional design. Using this framework, I conclude that Enron's strategy in the controversial Dabhol project in India was sensitive to first of the three factors and relatively less mindful of the other two. The policy implication for MNCs is that they should be attentive to all three factors that cause government reneging rather than just one or two.     

Environmental Taxes and the Choice of Green Technology

We study several important aspects of using environmental taxes to motivate the choice of innovative and “green" emissions‐reducing technologies as well as the role of fixed cost subsidies and consumer rebates in this process. In our model, a profit‐maximizing monopolistic firm facing price‐dependent demand selects emissions control technology, production quantity, and price in response to the tax, subsidy, and rebate levels set by the regulator. The available technologies vary in environmental efficiency as well as in the fixed and variable costs. Both the optimal policy for the firm and the social‐welfare maximizing policy for the regulator are analyzed. We find that the firm's reaction to an increase in taxes may be non‐monotone: while an initial increase in taxes may motivate a switch to a greener technology, further tax increases may motivate a reverse switch. For the regulator, we compare the social welfare achievable in the centralized system (which serves as an upper bound) to the highest level achievable under different classes of environmental policies. If the regulator is limited to a tax‐only policy, then when the regulator is moderately concerned with environmental impacts, the tax level that maximizes social welfare simultaneously motivates the choice of clean technology and closes the gap to the upper bound; however, both low and high levels of societal environmental concerns may lead to the choice of dirty technology and significant welfare losses as compared to the centralized case. Supplementing the environmental taxation with fixed cost subsidies and consumer rebates can eliminate this effect, expanding the range of parameters over which the green technology is chosen and often closing the welfare gap to the centralized solution.     

LEGAL STANDARDS,ENFORCEMENT, AND CORRUPTION

Stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement. Because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials, the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials' corruption. In contrast to the “tollbooth view” of regulation, the standard chosen by a self‐interested government is a non‐monotonic function of officials' corruption, and can be either lower or higher than that chosen by a benevolent regulator. International evidence on environmental regulation shows that standards correlate positively with per‐capita income, and negatively with corruption, consistent with the model's predictions for benevolent governments. (JEL: D73, K42, L51)     

Do ‘soft law’ board gender quotas work? Evidence from a natural experiment

In a new era of “open governance”, in which societal and corporate change is taking place, 15 predominantly European countries, including Spain, enacted board gender quotas to increase the share of women on boards. In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of the European Union’s first “soft” quota – the 2007 Spanish Gender Equality Act recommending all large public and private Spanish firms to appoint a target of 40 percent of each gender to serve as board directors by 2015. The Act provides an incentive in that quota compliant firms may receive a preference for the tendering of public contracts. We draw on institutional and resource dependency theories to motivate the first empirical test of a “soft” quota which is distinct from Norway’s “hard law” board gender quota, and more similar to the proposed EU-wide quota. Using a large novel panel of 767 Spanish firms and 2786 firm-year observations from 2005 to 2014, we exploit the Spanish Act as a natural experiment and employ a difference-in-differences model. We find that less than nine percent of targeted firms fully comply with the quota. Firms that depend on public contracts are significantly more likely to increase female representation, although quota compliant firms do not actually benefit from the Act’s potential incentive. The results highlight the Spanish government’s lack of commitment to the quota, and that the quota’s normative obligations did not trigger the adoption of gender-balanced boards.     

INVESTMENT AND TIME TO PLAN AND BUILD: A COMPARISON OF STRUCTURES VS. EQUIPMENT IN A PANEL OF ITALIAN FIRMS

“Time‐to‐build” models of investment expenditures play an important role in many traditional and modern theories of the business cycle, especially for explaining the dynamic propagation of shocks. We estimate the structural parameters of a time‐to‐build model using annual firm‐level investment data on equipment and structures. For expenditures on equipment, we find no evidence of time‐to‐build effects beyond one year. For expenditures on structures, by contrast, there is clear evidence of such effects in the range of two to three years. The contrast between equipment and structures is intuitively reasonable and consistent with previous results. The estimates for structures also indicate that initial‐period expenditures are low and increase as projects near completion. These results provide empirical support for including “time‐to‐plan” effects for investment in structures. More generally, these results suggest a potential source of specification error for Q models of investment and production‐based asset pricing models that ignore the time required to plan, build, and install new capital. (JEL: D24, G31, C33, C34)     

SIDE EFFECTS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

Because campaign finance reform is usually motivated by the concern that existing legislation cannot effectively prevent campaign contributions to “buy favors,” this article assumes that contributions influence political decisions. But, given that it is also widely recognized that interest groups achieve influence by providing political decision makers with policy relevant information, we also assume that lobbies engage in non‐negligible informational lobbying. We focus on a single political decision to be taken and offer a simple model in which the optimal influence strategy is a mixture of both lobbying instruments. Our main result is to show that campaign finance reform may have important side effects: It may deter informational lobbying so that less policy relevant information is available and as a result political decisions become less efficient. (JEL: C72, D72)     

基于演化博弈的绿色技术创新环境政策选择研究：政府行为VS.公众参与

在中国“双碳”目标背景下,如何通过有效的环境政策驱动绿色技术创新以缓解节能减排压力是亟需解决的重要现实问题。本文基于多主体关系分析、演化博弈理论、情景模拟仿真方法,构建政府和企业、公众和企业的两方演化博弈模型以及政府、公众和企业的三方演化博弈模型,并在此基础上,进行不同情景模式和不同执行力度下的政策模拟仿真,综合探究政府、公众、企业在绿色技术创新中的行为策略选择和系统演化轨迹。研究发现：(1)两方演化博弈模型下,企业绿色技术创新行为与其成本收益密切相关,但有效的公众参与为企业在成本小于收益情况下进行绿色技术创新行为提供了可能,即公众参与是企业改变短视行为、进行前瞻性创新的关键因素;(2)三方演化博弈模型下,政府和公众的稳态条件与单独考虑政府和单独考虑公众的稳态条件相同;但企业的稳态条件则需考虑公众举报对企业声誉带来的影响,其是企业进行绿色技术创新行为决策的重要参考因素;(3)情景模拟仿真结果表明,随着环保宣传、技术创新激励、环境管制、公众关注、公众举报强度的增加,企业绿色技术创新行为的演化速度不断加快,即不同类型的政府行为与公众参与均会对绿色技术创新有显著促进作用。总结而言,在政府行为外生引导的基础上,应着重激发公众参与的重要调节效应,从而以企业利润为抓手引导绿色技术创新行为进入内生演化路径。     

政府市场规制、产品消费选择和企业绿色技术创新

本文通过构建由地方政府、企业和消费者组成的绿色技术创新系统演化博弈模型,分析了不同现实情形下系统的均衡策略演化过程,并借助系统动力学实验方法进一步研究了相关因素对系统均衡的影响。研究发现:(1)在绿色技术创新演化博弈系统所有可能的均衡策略中,只存在三个稳定的均衡策略,即地方政府、企业和消费者的策略分别为(市场规制,不绿色技术创新,购买传统产品)、(市场规制,绿色技术创新,购买传统产品)、(市场规制,绿色技术创新,购买绿色产品)。(2)企业绿色技术创新品牌收益和消费者绿色产品消费的经济收益是影响博弈演化系统最终向不同稳定均衡策略演进的主要因素。(3)在第一种均衡状态下,产品的基础价值、绿色偏好收益、绿色消费意识和产品价格等是影响消费者购买绿色产品的主要因素;在第二种均衡状态下,政策收益、规制成本及产品市场需求量是影响政府采取市场规制策略的主要因素;在第三种均衡状态下,绿色技术创新补贴系数、市场规制强度和企业绿色技术创新品牌收益是影响企业采取绿色技术创新策略的主要因素,且各影响因素对博弈主体策略选择的方向和边际的影响均存在较大差异。上述结论将为进一步完善绿色发展理论提供参考,也为构建市场导向的绿色技术创新体系提供借鉴。     

MANAGING CREDIT BUBBLES

We study a dynamic economy where credit is limited by insufficient collateral and, as a result, investment and output are too low. In this environment, changes in investor sentiment or market expectations can give rise to credit bubbles, that is, expansions in credit that are backed not by expectations of future profits (i.e., fundamental collateral), but instead by expectations of future credit (i.e., bubbly collateral). Credit bubbles raise the availability of credit for entrepreneurs: this is the crowding‐in effect. However, entrepreneurs must also use some of this credit to cancel past credit: this is the crowding‐out effect. There is an “optimal” bubble size that trades off these two effects and maximizes long‐run output and consumption. The equilibrium bubble size depends on investor sentiment, however, and it typically does not coincide with the “optimal” bubble size. This provides a new rationale for macroprudential policy. A credit management agency (CMA) can replicate the “optimal” bubble by taxing credit when the equilibrium bubble is too high and subsidizing credit when the equilibrium bubble is too low. This leaning‐against‐the‐wind policy maximizes output and consumption. Moreover, the same conditions that make this policy desirable guarantee that a CMA has the resources to implement it.     

DO PARTIES MATTER FOR ECONOMIC OUTCOMES? A REGRESSION‐DISCONTINUITY APPROACH

A long‐standing issue in political economics is to what extent party control makes a difference in determining fiscal and economics policies. This question is very difficult to answer empirically because parties are not randomly selected to govern political entities. This article uses a regression‐discontinuity design, namely, party control changes discontinuously at 50% of the vote share, which can produce “near” experimental causal estimates of the effect of party control on economic outcomes. The method is applied to a large panel data set from Swedish local governments with a number of attractive features. The results show that there is an economically significant party effect: Left‐wing governments spend and tax 2–3% more than right‐wing governments. Left‐wing governments also have 7%lower unemployment rates, which is partly due to that left‐wing governments employ 4% more workers than right‐wing governments. (JEL: C21, D72, D78, H71, H72)     

Long‐Term Debt and Optimal Policy in the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

The fiscal theory says that the price level is determined by the ratio of nominal debt to the present value of real primary surpluses. I analyze long‐term debt and optimal policy in the fiscal theory. I find that the maturity structure of the debt matters. For example, it determines whether news of future deficits implies current inflation or future inflation. When long‐term debt is present, the government can trade current inflation for future inflation by debt operations; this tradeoff is not present if the government rolls over short‐term debt. The maturity structure of outstanding debt acts as a “budget constraint” determining which periods' price levels the government can affect by debt variation alone. In addition, debt policy—the expected pattern of future state‐contingent debt sales, repurchases and redemptions—matters crucially for the effects of a debt operation. I solve for optimal debt policies to minimize the variance of inflation. I find cases in which long‐term debt helps to stabilize inflation. I also find that the optimal policy produces time series that are similar to U.S. surplus and debt time series. To understand the data, I must assume that debt policy offsets the inflationary impact of cyclical surplus shocks, rather than causing price level disturbances by policy‐induced shocks. Shifting the objective from price level variance to inflation variance, the optimal policy produces much less volatile inflation at the cost of a unit root in the price level; this is consistent with the stabilization of U.S. inflation after the gold standard was abandoned.     

需求不确定情况下绿色产品消费过程中政府的最优补贴

从化解绿色技术创新的环境外部效应出发，对绿色产品消费过程中政府如何给购买者提供补贴问题进行了研究。假定绿色产品的市场需求存在不确定性，讨论了需求函数分别为加法形式与乘积形式时，企业如何确定产品的价格和销量，以及政府如何选择补贴方式的策略问题。研究认为：给定需求函数的具体形式，政府提供的最优补贴或者价格折扣、企业最优产量以及政府实际补贴支出随着政府期望实现销售目标的提高而增加，随着市场风险的增加而增加。从政府补贴支出最小化角度来看，固定额度补贴方式为政府的最优选择。给定政府补贴支出，从实现企业产量最大化角度来看，价格折扣方式为政府的最优选择。对消费者来讲，政府应用价格折扣方式能够降低消费者的购买支出，提高消费者获得的福利剩余。     

Advance Selling in the Presence of Speculators and Forward‐Looking Consumers

This article examines the pricing policy of a monopolist seller who may sell in advance of consumption in a market that comprises of myopic consumers, forward‐looking consumers, and speculators. The latter group has no consumption value for the goods and is in the market with the sole objective of making a profit by reselling the purchased goods shortly after. Consumers, although homogeneous in terms of their valuations, are different with respect to their perspectives. We show that in an “upward” market where the expected valuation increases over time, the optimal pricing policy is an ex ante “static” one where the seller “prices into the future” and prices the myopic consumers out of the advance market. However, in a “downward” market where the expected valuation decreases over time, the seller adopts a dynamic pricing strategy except for the case when higher initial sales can trigger more demand subsequently and when the downward trend is not too high. In this case, the seller prefers an ex ante “static” pricing strategy and deliberately prices lower initially to sell to speculators. We identify the conditions under which the seller benefits from the existence of speculators in the market. Moreover, although the presence of entry costs is ineffective as an entry deterrence, we determine the conditions under which exit costs can rein in speculative purchase.