财政学哈维罗森第七版课后习题答案英文全.docx

1、财政学哈维罗森第七版课后习题答案英文全Instructors Manual to accompanyPublic Finance, Seventh Edition, by Harvey S. RosenSuggested Answers to End-of-Chapter Discussion QuestionsSome of the questions have no single “correct” answer reasonable people can go off in different directions. In such cases, the answers provided

2、 here sketch only a few possibilities.Chapter 1 - Introduction1. a. Putins statement is consistent with an organic conception of government. Individuals and their goals are less important than the state.b. Rehnquist makes a clear statement of the mechanistic view of the state.2. a. A person with an

3、organic conception of the state might react favorably, arguing that even if an individual owner is worse off because he must show only French movies, the nation is better off because it achieves more unity.b. A libertarian would certainly reject this policy and the reasoning behind it - there is no

4、“national interest” independent of the interests of individuals, and people should have the right to run their lives in the way that they prefer - including seeing whatever movies they want.c. A social democrat would try to balance these two aims, and it is hard to predict how he or she would come o

5、ut.3. The mechanistic view of government says that the government is a contrivance created by individuals to better achieve their individual goals. Within the mechanistic tradition, people could disagree on the obesity tax. Libertarians would say that people can decide what is best for themselves -

6、whether to consume high calorie food - and do not need prodding from the government. In contrast, social democrats might argue that people are too short sighted to know what is good for them, so that government-provided inducements are appropriate.4. a. If the size of government is measured by direc

7、t expenditures, the mandate does not directly increase it. Costs of compliance, however, may be high and would appear as an increase in a “regulatory budget.”b. Its hard to say whether this represents an increase or decrease in the size of government. One possibility is that GDP stayed the same, and

8、 government purchases of goods and services fell. Another is that government purchases of goods and services grew, but at a slower rate than the GDP. One must also consider coincident federal credit and regulatory activities and state and local budgets.c. The federal budget would decrease if grants-

9、in-aid were reduced. However, if state and local governments offset this by increasing taxes, the size of the government sector as a whole would not go down as much as one would have guessed.5. The inflation erodes the real value of the debt by 0.021 x 311 billion or 6.5 billion. The fact that infla

10、tion reduces the real debt obligation means that this figure should be included as revenue to the government.6. The federal government grew by $450 billion. However, because the price level went up by 16 percent, in terms of 2001 dollars this amounted to a real increase of $224 billion (=$1.86 trill

11、ion - 1.16*$1.41 trillion=$1.86 trillion-$1.64 trillion). Note that the increase in prices of 16 percent in the Rosen text (p. 18) differs from official sources. According to the 2004 Economic Report of the President (Table B-60), the CPI-U was 177.1 in 2001 and was 144.5 in 1993, an increase of 22.

12、5 percent, not 16 percent. If one uses these numbers, government spending increased in constant 2001 dollars from $1.72 trillion in 1993 to $1.86 trillion, or $140 billion. As a proportion of GDP, federal spending in 1993 was 21.2 percent and in 2001 it was 18.2 percent. Hence, by one measure, the s

13、ize of government fell and by the other measure, it grew. To get a more complete answer, one would want data on the population (to compute real spending per capita). Also, it would be useful to add in expenditures by state and local governments, to see if the total size of government fell. Also, alt

14、hough it would be harder to measure, one would want to try to gain some sense of how the regulatory burden on the economy grew during this time period.Chapter 2 Tools of Positive Analysis1. The reality that astronomers are trying to understand is not influenced by any “policies” that astronomers mig

15、ht implement. That is, planets and stars do act any differently when they are being analyzed, whereas people can change their behavior. Moreover, the parameters with which astronomers must deal are constant over time (at least in the “short-run” of hundreds of years), while the parameters in economi

16、cs can quickly change over time and across geography.2. A change in the marginal tax rate changes the individuals net wage. This generates both an income effect and a substitution effect. As long as leisure is a normal good, these effects work in opposite directions. Hence, one cannot tell a priori

17、whether labor supply increases or decreases. One could ask taxpayers to describe how they would change their behavior under the proposal, but it is hard to imagine that this would yield useful results. In a social experiment, a control group would confront the status quo, and an experimental group w

18、ould face the new tax regime. This is clearly infeasible. Econometric investigation of labor supply seems the best approach, particularly if data associated with past changes in tax rates can be brought to bear on the problem.3. Generally, economic outcomes are affected by a number of variables some

19、 of which are observed and others of which are unobserved. Economists often cannot perform controlled, randomized experiments, which makes it difficult to assess how any single variable affects a given outcome. Moreover, even in the cases when experiments are run (e.g., the Negative Income Tax exper

20、iment or the RAND Health Insurance Experiment), a number of unintended behaviors can arise because people know they are in the experiment for a short amount of time and because of lack of generalizability. In the medical example here, brain impairment may be due to a number of factors that are eithe

21、r observed are unobserved. Ecstasy users clearly are not a random sample of the population, but are likely to differ in terms of their attitudes towards risk, their discount rates, and potentially many other ways. Hence, one cannot definitively conclude whether brain impairment is due to Ecstasy or

22、some variable that is correlated with Ecstasy use. There are numerous non-experimental methods that may be helpful in inferring the causal effect of Ecstasy. For example, if there were a plausible “instrumental variable” (perhaps the punitiveness of the drug laws in a state) that was correlated with

23、 the supply of Ecstasy but not otherwise correlated with the outcomes of interest, one may be able to estimate the causal effect of Ecstasy on long-run developmental problems.4. The text points out the pitfalls of social experiments: the problem of obtaining a random sample and the problems of exten

24、ding results beyond the scope of the experiment. Participants in the study had found it to their advantage to be a part of the experiment, which may have resulted in a self-selected population unrepresentative of the wider group of health care consumers. In addition, the RAND Health Insurance Experi

25、ment was of limited duration, after which the participants would move to some other health plan. This design could induce certain behavior in the short-run that would not necessarily be present if the health insurance coverage were permanent rather than transitory. Further, physicians “standard prac

26、tices” are largely determined by the circumstances of the population as a whole, not the relatively small experimental group.5. First, it is important to note that the numbers on page32 of Rosens text actually show the surplus, not the deficit. That is, the negative surplus of $221.2 in 1990 is actu

27、ally a deficit, while the positive surplus of $236.4 is a surplus. There is a very weak, negative relationship between surpluses and interest rates (the correlation coefficient is -.043), or put differently, a weak, positive relationship between deficits and interest rates. However it is expressed,

28、it is weak - by “eyeballing” the data, it might appear that larger deficits lead to lower interest rates (for example, by comparing the data from 1980 with the data from 2000). One clearly would need more data to investigate this question. One would want to look at deficits relative to some benchmar

29、k, such as GDP. One would want to express both interest rates and deficits in real terms, rather than nominal terms. One would like to control for other factors that can affect interest rates, such as monetary policy and the level of economic activity. Finally, one would want to determine which way

30、the causality runs do larger deficits cause higher interest rates, or do higher interest rates cause larger deficits (since, by construction, one of the largest items in the federal budget is interest on the debt).Chapter 4 Public Goods1. a. Wilderness area is an impure public good at some point, co

31、nsumption becomes nonrival; it is, however, nonexcludable.b. Water from a municipal water supply is both rival in consumption and excludable. My consumption of water precludes you from consuming the same water, thus it is rival. The municipality can control who consumes water by shutting off the flo

32、w to customers, thus it is excludable. This is a useful question for showing that not all publicly owned facilities are public goods.c. Medical school education is a private good.d. Television signals are nonrival in consumption.e. An Internet site is nonrival in consumption (although it is excludab

33、le).2. We assume that Cheetahs utility does not enter the social welfare function; hence, her allocation of labor supply across activities does not matter.a. The public good is patrol; the private good is fruit.b. Recall that efficiency requires MRSTARZAN + MRSJANE =MRT. MRSTARZAN=MRSJANE =2. But MRT=3. Therefor