Malaysia's outward FDI: The effects of market size and government policy

This paper extends the empirical literature of Malaysia's outward FDI (OFDI) by considering the impact of foreign market size and home international reserves using multivariate cointegration and error-correction modeling techniques. The empirical results reveal that there is a positive long-run relationship between Malaysia's OFDI and its key determinants, viz. foreign market size, real effective exchange rate, international reserves and trade openness. The main findings suggest that apart from the market-seeking incentive and the adoption of outward-oriented policies, the Malaysian government could also encourage OFDI by implementing liberal policy on capital outflows. On the basis of these findings, we draw some policy implications for the country's economic development and the internationalization of Malaysian firms in the era of globalization.     

转型期地方政府信用资源流失的制度分析

信用资源不断流失、信用能力不断下降是转型期地方政府面临的一个严峻挑战。它极大地损害了政府的权威 ,提高了政府运作成本 ,并使政府的政治合法性基础受到侵蚀。从公共管理的制度层分析政府信用资源流失的主要根源 ,并探讨如何通过优化公共管理的政治制度架构 ,改革公共政策制订实施的相关制度 ,建立政府信用责任机制和制约机制 ,不失为一种提升地方政府信用能力的对策思路。     

农业现代化与政府行为

政府在农业现代化进程中的重要任务之一是安排所需要的制度。农业现代化需要政府通过外在制度来加以规范。政府在农业现代化进程中出现市场失灵和收入差距过大时应有所作为。关税、配额、出口补贴和汇率政策等政府行为都会对农业现代化产生影响。     

Trust, inequality and the market

This article examines, experimentally, whether inequality affects the social capital of trust in non-market and market settings. We consider three experimental treatments, one with equality, one with inequality but no knowledge of the income of other agents, and one with inequality and knowledge. Inequality, particularly when it is known, has a corrosive effect on trusting behaviours in this experiment. Agents appear to be less sensitive to known relative income differentials in markets than they are in the non-market settings, but trust in markets appears generally more vulnerable to the introduction of inequality than in the non-market setting.     

The catastrophic effects of natural disasters on insurance markets

Natural disasters often have catastrophic risks on insurance companies as well as on the insured. Using a very large dataset on homeowners’ insurance coverage by state, by firm, and by year for the 1984 to 2004 period, this paper documents the positive effect on losses and loss ratios of both unexpected catastrophes as well as large events that the authors term “blockbuster catastrophes.” Insurers adapt to these catastrophic risks by raising insurance rates, leading to lower loss ratios after the catastrophic event. There is a widespread event of unexpected catastrophes and blockbuster catastrophes that reduces total premiums earned in the state, reduces the total number writing insurance coverage in the state, and leads to the exit of firms from the state. Firms with low levels of homeowners’ premiums are most adversely affected by the catastrophes.     

The time frame problem: the law, social construction, and the sciences

Among our official noblest virtues are truth and justice. In the sciences, officially, truth overrides every other virtue. In the law, officially, justice likewise overrides. That is neither to deny that justice should be tempered by mercy, nor that truth should be qualified by wisdom. Any discussion of law and the sciences is potentially high philosophy, the meeting ground of truth and justice. But there are also more practical concerns. How should scientific information and advice be used in the law courts? There is now a rather staid but thoroughly solid assessment of the current state of play in the United States Federal Court systems, Foster and Huber’s(1997) Judging Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Federal Courts. Far more challenging to the philosopher, the scientist and the student of jurisprudence is Sheila Jasanoff’s(1995) Science at the Bar because she enters current debates as a professed social constructionist, with a distinguished career of investigating science and public policy (Jasanoff and Jasanoff).     

The health insurance market,labor unions,and utilization of cancer screening

The present study examines the effect of labor market characteristics, especially labor unions, on the use of two representative cancer screening services, namely the mammogram and the Pap smear, given the level of competition in the health insurance market. The role of labor unions is illustrated by means of estimated probabilities based on regression results that consider, for the first time, both health insurance and labor market variables in the same model by employing a multilevel analysis, a technique not previously used in prevention studies. The results suggest that competition among health insurance plans may actually reduce the use of preventive care whereas union membership may mitigate such negative impacts.     

The size and structure of China's government debt

This paper analyzes the size and structure of China's government debt. In addition to explicit government debt, we consider three types of government contingent liabilities: local government debt, university debt, and state banks’ nonperforming loans. The size of each types of debt is estimated and the reasons for the emergence of each type of debt are analyzed. International comparisons are made and it is found that China's government debt is larger than many other developing countries. To insure fiscal sustainability and to leave rooms for future expansionary fiscal policies, the government should reduce contingent liabilities.     

Moral hazard,monitoring costs,and optimal government intervention

When insurance firms can monitor with non-prohibitive costs the consumption of risk-influencing goods by an insured, they have incentives to tax-subsidize the insured's consumption of the goods. If the government cannot monitor at a lower cost than private insurers, intervention is neither needed nor desirable. Where the government does have a monitoring-cost advantage, it cannot achieve a constrained optimum by commodity tax-subsidies alone. It must also augment the level of insurance and, in some cases, prohibit private tax-subsidies by insurers. Such “invasive” intervention can be avoided if the government regulates the consumption of the risk-influencing goods.     

研究型政府:公共管理的新愿景

近年来,在“学习型组织”的话语背景下,学习型政府成为流行的新概念。相对于“长官意志”和“论资排辈”而言,学习型政府无疑具有进步意义。但学习型政府存在着被动学习、目标不明、学用脱离、成本高昂等局限性。为了提高各级政府的政策驾驭(掌舵)能力,为了更好地推进我国的公共管理创新,政府管理在理念上需要从学习型政府走向研究型政府,并通过推进政府信息公开、完善决策咨询机制、建立政府与学者互动机制,建构具有前瞻性思维和追求卓越境界的公共治理新体制。     

Uncertainty,the bargaining problem,and the Nash-Zeuthen solution

The Zeuthen bargaining model occupies a prominent place among those theories of the bargaining process that have been formulated and expounded by economists. Its solution to the bargaining problem is essentially economic, since invariant utility functions based on economic factors alone determine the outcome. However, this paper shows that a necessary condition for reaching the Zeuthen solution (shown by Harsanyi to be mathematically equivalent to the game-theoretic solution of Nash's theory) is that bargainers initially take up positions on opposite sides of the outcome that maximizes their utility product. Whether utility functions are mutually known or unknown, inherent in the bargaining situation itself is the requirement that bargainers be at least initially uncertain as to each other's subsequent concession behaviour. With uncertainty, von Neumann-Morgenstern rationality implies that each bargainer would make an initial demand that maximizes the expected gain from holding fast. Therefore, even if Zeuthen's concession criterion should subsequently dictate concession behaviour, expected utility maximization within the context of subjective uncertainty may well yield initial demands that are inconsistent with reaching the Nash-Zeuthen solution. Finally, a general methodological conclusion that emerges from the analysis is that, since the bargaining process necessarily proceeds from a context of subjective uncertainty, greater emphasis needs to be placed on its role as a device for affecting expectations.     

小农经济的政治传统与法国半总统制

根源于小农经济的集权政治传统对法国半总统制的形成具有深刻的影响。农耕文明传统深厚的国家的政治特点表现为轻民主价值的立法协商而重秩序价值的行政集权。法国议会制的发展之所以一波三折,无能低效,最终为具有集权特点的半总统制所取代,其深层原因,即在于深受小农生产方式制约的法国社会的组织和整合机制脆弱。议会不能有效融会和表达民意,因而难孚众望,国家意志的形成不得不更多依赖传统集权政治的整合机制。     

Trend inflation,the labor market wedge,and the non-vertical Phillips curve

Recent developments in macroeconomics resurrect the view that welfare costs of inflation arise because the latter acts as a tax on money balances. Empirical contributions show that wage re-negotiations take place while expiring contracts are still in place. Bringing these seemingly unrelated aspects together in a stylized general equilibrium model, we find a disciplining effect of a positive inflation target on the wage markup and identify a long-term trade-off between inflation and output. This has important policy implications, ranging from the opportunity of revising the target in response to shocks, to the possibility of exploiting inflation as a tool to increase tax revenues via its employment-enhancing effect.     

The nexus between income distribution,trade policy,and monopoly power: An assessment of the tin market

The article suggests a manner in which degrees of monopoly power can be introduced into a trade policy model of the computable general equilibrium type. The distributional effects of tariffs and subsidies are compared, first under competitive conditions and then under conditions of monopoly power.The tin market, for which Malaysia can be assumed to exert monopoly power, is used as an example to show the distributional consequences of applying a competitive model in cases where a model allowing for monopoly power would have been more appropriate. The existence of monopoly power is shown to have important distributional effects. Policy modelers, dealing with distributional issues, should therefore be careful about the assumptions made about market forms.     

政府创新与民主:一个分析框架

随着我国社会主义市场经济的深入发展和全球化趋势的日益明显,我国各级地方政府开始主动地在政府观念、体制、过程等方面进行创造性的变革。这种变革的价值取向是民主、效率与公正。民主创新是政府发展的首要选择,发展民主是政府创新的根本方向。     

五卅事件与北京政府后期的国内政局

五卅事件使国内政局出现一系列重大变化,这种情况在北方尤其明显。一个地方性的"惨杀"行为迅速演化为全国性的"事件",巨大的民族自觉浪潮兴起;国家政治的重心由各派军事势力的"内斗"转向"一致对外",但举国一致的局面迅速形成又很快瓦解,北京政府作为"中央政府"的权威不复存在,社会陷入更加混乱与无序的境地,并深刻影响到此后国内政局的走向。     

西方政府绩效评估:理论、实践及启示

政府绩效改革是西方国家在新公共管理思潮影响下风靡起来的一项管理改革举措,旨在提高政府机构的效率和公信力。作为“重塑政府”活动的重要内容,政府绩效评估在英美等国都得到了很大发展。本文主要介绍了政府绩效评估在英国、美国、澳大利亚、韩国的实施过程,从而为我国政府绩效改革提供有价值的借鉴,以期全面提高我国政府的执行力。     

政府失灵及其矫正

政府失灵的原因主要体现在制定和实施公共政策的制约因素、政府机构的低效率、政府机构及其官员的寻租与腐败 ,等等。政府失灵的矫正措施是 :建立健全法律制度 ,规范政府行为 ;遵守效能原则 ,选择最佳政府规模 ;引入竞争机制 ,提高政府机构效率 ;转变政府管理方式 ,提高政府行政水平 ;强化事前监督与事后惩罚机制 ,对政府实施有效的社会监督