社会保险税:一个新制度经济学的分析框架

征收社会保险缴款的交易费用分为征收费用和损失费用。制度的变迁将使征收费用发生分流和转移,其承担主体也会发生变动。在中国社会保险缴款征收制度变迁过程中,交易费用的存在形式是不断变化的。决策机构在进行社会保险税的制度设计时应考虑留有一定的弹性空间。社会保险费改税付出的代价和取得的效益在整个制度变迁的进程中的分布将会是不均衡的。     

地区官员腐败与企业代理成本——基于中国上市公司的实证研究

与已有围绕腐败对经济增长、财富分配、社会稳定等宏观效应的研究不同,文章将宏观制度环境与微观企业决策有机结合起来,重点考察官员腐败对企业代理成本的影响效应和传导机理.基于中国A股上市公司2000-2012年面板数据的实证研究表明,官员腐败显著提升了企业代理成本.具体表现为,随着企业所在地区官员腐败程度的上升,企业费用率显著增加,资产利用率则显著降低.研究还发现,相对于国有企业,官员腐败对非国有企业代理成本的影响效应更明显;同时,市场化改革也有利于缓解官员腐败对企业代理成本的影响强度.     

非营利组织中的产权交易成本问题分析

与营利性企业一样,在非营利组织组织中也存在着广泛的产权交易成本。这些成本主要包括组织运作成本、各种风险成本以及监督成本等。它们的存在在很大程度上影响了非营利组织的发展。而在已有的诸多非营利组织研究文献中,此类讨论并非多见,且在很大程度上没有引起人们的关注。因此,本文将就非营利组织中的产权交易成本问题以及如何减少成本以促进组织发展问题展开讨论。     

微观与宏观交易费用测量的进展及其关系研究

交易费用测量包括微观和宏观两个层次,微观层次又分为市场型、管理型和政治型交易费用测量。宏观层次即是对一国(或地区)总量交易费用的测量。在总量交易费用测量上,沃利斯和诺思1986年提出的交易行业测量法具有一定的开创性。依据该方法测量总量交易费用会发现,经济越发达,总量交易费用占GNP的比重越大,而每笔交易的交易费用越低。反之则反是。这就提出一个问题,即:总量交易费用和每笔交易的交易费用是否就是这种反比关系?要搞清这二者的关系,关键是必须将理论上的和测量到的总量交易费用两个概念区分开。事实上,理论上的总量交易费用和每笔交易的交易费用并非反比关系。     

Priority Rules for Multi‐Task Due‐Date Scheduling under Varying Processing Costs

We study the scheduling of multiple tasks under varying processing costs and derive a priority rule for optimal scheduling policies. Each task has a due date, and a non‐completion penalty cost is incurred if the task is not completely processed before its due date. We assume that the task arrival process is stochastic and the processing rate is capacitated. Our work is motivated by both traditional and emerging application domains, such as construction industry and freelance consulting industry. We establish the optimality of Shorter Slack time and Longer remaining Processing time (SSLP) principle that determines the priority among active tasks. Based on the derived structural properties, we also propose an effective cost‐balancing heuristic policy and demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed policy through extensive numerical experiments. We believe our results provide operators/managers valuable insights on how to devise effective service scheduling policies under varying costs.     

Menu Costs,Multiproduct Firms,and Aggregate Fluctuations

Golosov and Lucas recently argued that a menu‐cost model, when made consistent with salient features of the microdata, predicts approximate monetary neutrality. I argue here that their model misses, in fact, two important features of the data. First, the distribution of the size of price changes in the data is very dispersed. Second, in the data many price changes are temporary. I study an extension of the simple menu‐cost model to a multiproduct setting in which firms face economies of scope in adjusting posted and regular prices. The model, because of its ability to replicate this additional set of microeconomic facts, predicts real effects of monetary policy shocks that are much greater than those in Golosov and Lucas and nearly as large as those in the Calvo model. Although episodes of sales account for roughly 40% of all goods sold in retail stores, the model predicts that these episodes do not contribute much to the flexibility of the aggregate price level.     

The trinity of wage setting in EMU: A policy proposal

Diverging labor cost developments are often considered to be one of the most important factors that led to large current account imbalances in the euro area (EA) in the run-up to the global financial crisis. It has also been shown that wage growth differentials have significantly lowered the co-movement of EA countries’ business cycles – the most widely used meta-criterion for optimum currency areas. Against this background, this paper develops a wage-setting benchmark that aims to keep the economy in internal equilibrium and to maintain price stability, while it also exhibits the capacity to correct for external imbalances. The proposed wage benchmark is very simple and may serve as an anchor for the macroeconomic dialogue in Economic and Monetary Union. In order to demonstrate the potentially beneficial effects of such a wage benchmark we present some simulations showing how current account balances and labor costs would have developed across EA countries if the rule had served as a benchmark already in the run up to the crisis.     

The impact of quasi-markets on processes and factors affecting the costs of contracting

The aim of this paper is to ascertain the impact of quasi-markets on contracting processes and factors affecting the costs of contracting in Finnish health care in the specific case of laboratory services. By means of a comparative case analysis, we ascertained the changes in organizational contracting practices and identified the actions affecting the transaction costs of contracting in the case of an autonomous municipal enterprise laboratory compared with the same laboratory as a hierarchically run municipal unit. The research was conducted during the years 2007–2011. The results suggest that introducing quasi-markets into laboratory services increased the cost factors of contracting; and had a negative impact on the laboratories’ willingness to create new market relationships.     

The effect of alternative staff time data collection methods on drug treatment service cost estimates

Although a limited number of service cost estimates exist, no study has evaluated how differences in the method used to collect the staff time allocation across treatment services contribute to differences in service cost estimates. Three alternative data collection methods for estimating service-level costs in methadone treatment programs were evaluated: key informants, staff surveys, and staff diaries. We analyzed data from 25 methadone clinics across the United States. Results indicate that for the three primary services offered at methadone clinics—individual counseling, group counseling, and methadone dosing—no statistically significant differences exist in the mean estimates of costs per session across programs. Of the other five services analyzed, we found no statistically significant differences in two of the mean costs per session and a small but statistically significant difference in another service. We found large and statistically significant differences in mean costs for two services, initial patient assessment and initial medical services. Although there is no gold standard available to judge which method is the best to use, we concluded that the key informant method yields more reliable cost estimates compared with the staff methods and is less burdensome to both the treatment programs and to researchers. Our findings suggest that the key informant method is the preferred method for costing substance abuse treatment services.     

Births,debts and mirages: The impact of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and other factors on Australian fertility expectations

This paper uses survey data to examine the effect of the income-contingent charge mechanism, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), and other demographic and attitudinal variables on fertility expectations in Australia over the recent past. HECS requires former Australian students to fund some of the costs of higher education through the repayment of interest-free loans made by the Australian government. Its defining characteristic is that repayments only occur when and if students future incomes exceed a particular level. Since its introduction in 1989, media and other populist commentary has suggested that HECS has had unanticipated effects on behaviour. Most recently, attention has focused on the effects of HECS on fertility, with some arguing that university graduates are delaying births, and having fewer children, because of their HECS debts. This paper demonstrates that the introduction of HECS has had no discernible impact on Australian fertility rates, nor on the number of children that people expect to have. However, education, age and a number of attitudinal factors are associated with significant differences in fertility expectations.