面对经济新形势的理性思考

“十五”第一年开局良好 ,扩大内需的战略方针仍需坚持。但扩张型财政政策和货币政策已经出现边际效应递减的势头和政策长期化的危险倾向 ,应当适时把政策的重点转向化解经济风险。     

What explains the Differences in the Tax Burden Between Swiss Cantons?

In the present article, we empirically analyse a series of competing hypothesis that try to account for the considerable disparity in the tax burden between Swiss cantons. Three hypotheses focus on differences in spending levels: The first explains differences in the tax burden with differences in citizens' demand for government services. The second emphasizes the differences in efficiency between cantonal administrations, whereas the third insists on the more or less easy access to cantonal instruments of direct democracy. However, when confronted to the data, none of these three expenditure‐based hypotheses are confirmed by our cross‐sectional estimations. On the contrary, our regressions lend support to the hypotheses which highlights the differences in tax revenues between cantons. These results suggest that it is not differences in government spending which account for the disparity in cantonal tax levels, but differences in the cantonal endowment with resources. This indicates that some financial equalization on the cantonal level might strengthen the equity of Switzerland's tax system.     

Federalism, Political Structure, and Public Policy in the United States and Canada

Two of the three large countries on the North American continent—the United States and Canada—share a number of similarities that often make it difficult for the untrained observer to differentiate between the two nations. On the surface, the two are structured similarly as federal systems that, by definition, exhibit shared power between the national government and provincial or state political entities.Although there are other important social and economic characteristics of the two countries that help explain differences in policy processes and outcomes, it is the contention of this article that one gets the clearest sense of what Elazar has called thinking federal by utilizing an analytical approach that joins questions related to federalism with some conceptual frameworks of the public policy field. Two frameworks undergird the argument in this article—the Lowi typology of different types of policies and Deil Wright's typology of different models that describe the American inter-governmental system.In both countries, policies must be sensitive to the greater interdependencies between units of government as well as to linkages between policy areas. The mechanisms or instrumentalities for dealing with policy issues are intrinsically complex. It is also clear that the intergovernmental networks that exist in both the U.S. and Canada are composed of an array of actors. The differing political structures of the systems do impact the types of intergovernmental policies that have emerged in the two countries. The executive dominance so imbedded in Canadian governments has contributed to their ability to adopt and implement certain controversial redistributive policies, such as a national health insurance program. By contrast, the fragmentation of the U.S. system makes redistributive policies more difficult.     

政府财政支持高新技术发展的理论与对策研究

本文以高新技术的准公共性分析为切入点,分别从规范分析与生产函数模型分析角度论证高新技术产业发展中政府财政支持的必要性与理论依据,并进一步分析在高新技术领域中我国财政投融资总量与结构以及财税优惠政策等方面存在的问题,在此基础上提出财政支持高新技术发展的政策建议。     

State Government,Political Competition and Education Reform: Comparative Lessons from Brazil

The article explores the connection between democratisation, decentralisation and sub‐national policy making. It seeks to explain variation in the policy choices that were made by Brazilian state governments in the definition of school governance structures following the return to democracy. Whereas some state governments decided to institute the election of school principals by parents, students and teachers, others decided on the maintenance of opaque and discretionary practices that secured the distribution of school posts according to political criteria. The research relies on primary comparative evidence from three states: Bahia, Ceará and Minas Gerais. The argument is that the institutional choices made by state governments depended on the structure of political competition and on the extent and intensity of elite divisions at the state level.     

Striking the federal bargain in Russia: comparative regional government strategies

The central research goals of this article are to classify and explain the positions of the 89 state “governors” of Russia with regard to the most desirable federal division of power. The state governors are classified along a 5-item autonomy index based on events data and content analysis of their speeches, declarations, petitions, threats and actions from 1991–1995 as reported in two regional sources. Theoretical propositions derived from four schools of thought (essentialism, instrumentalism, relative deprivation and resource mobilization) are tested to discover which, if any, provide useful insights into the preferences and behavior of regional elites in Russia. In the end, a combined model that synthesizes elements of the above is shown to be most useful in explaining variation in elite positions.     

Die Prämienverbilligung im Krankenversicherungsgesetz: Vollzugsföderalismus und sekundäre Harmonisierung

Subject of the report is the question about factors of influence on the development of a common policy between the cantons in implementing the subsidizing of contributions to health insurance of persons living in modest economic circumstances. It clearly appears that this so‐called secondary harmonization in the first place has been pushed by the concretization of the executive program by the federal administration. Secondly, the influence of various forms of horizontal cooperation is mentioned, which facilitated the exchange of information and reflection between the cantons and promoted the development of a common model for a solution. Thirdly, the paper refers to the role of the evaluation, in which a comparative analysis of the sociopolitical effectiveness of the cantonal implementation systems was made. This studies induced a number of cantons to make adaptations. In spite of all tendencies towards harmonization, however, the cantonal implementation systems still differ greatly also in this public policy. This fact is explained by fundamentally differing policy cores as well as by the varying extent to which information required for the implementation of subsidizing contributions is available in the cantons.     

First‐Hand Experience and Second‐Hand Information: Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government

Little is known about how different sources of information drive citizen trust in government. To address that gap this article compares disaster evacuees to observers, noting how trust differs as attention to media coverage increases. First‐hand experience supplies information to update trust through biological and personal processes and performance assessments, while secondary sources provide information about other people's experiences, filtered through lenses that take an active role in crafting information. These two types of information have varying effects depending on the level of government being trusted. Using surveys administered a year after Hurricane Katrina, I find that Katrina evacuees have the highest trust in federal government, until they start paying attention to media coverage, and that attention to coverage has the most dramatic effect on these evacuees compared to all other groups. I also find that increasing attention to second‐hand information corresponds with higher trust in local officials, and that this effect decreases as the level of government increases. It appears media coverage creates a comparison in the mind of hurricane evacuees, causing them to update their performance assessments based on comparing their own experience to that which they observe, thereby updating their political trust.     

扩大内需的基本经验

扩大内需表明增长方式的变革,需要注意的是,我国扩大内需政策所依赖的经济基础、 经济机制及其根本原因有自己的特点。我们应把握这些基本特征,针对本国实际来制定宏观调控对策。     

The Eurozone as a Flawed Currency Area

The European single currency system has come under unprecedented strain during the past three years and there is little reason to assume that this will diminish, in any significant way, in the near future. This article briefly explores the background to the current eurozone crisis before outlining a number of potential solutions. Specifically, we discuss how the credit crunch induced recession of 2008 triggered the problems within the eurozone regarding sovereign debt, looking at the issues of spill‐over and free‐rider effects, together with the implementation of EMU fiscal rules. The analysis is then extended by outlining a series of potential remedies. This consists of a critical evaluation of solutions that the EU has already instigated (i.e. moral persuasion, financial relief measures and debt default), together with a series of alternative propositions (i.e. fiscal federalism and a European Clearing Union) and even the collapse of the euro.