A framework for introducing the private finance initiative in Brunei Darussalam construction industry.

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a common, and sometimes preferred, approach to funding public projects without immediate recourse to the public purse, in the construction industry in developed countries throughout the world. It is, also, increasingly gaining popularity among developing countries. Brunei Darussalam is a developing country located on the northern coast of the island of Borneo in South East Asia with an interest in exploring how it can effectively employ the PFI approach to project finance in its construction industry. Against this background, a comprehensive desk study was undertaken together with an analysis of the relevant processes of government in Brunei Darussalam and a framework developed to facilitate the smooth introduction of PFI in the country’s construction industry. The framework was built around four main dimensions: organisation, training, participation and implementation. The framework was evaluated through a survey of managerial level civil servants in Brunei Darussalam’s Ministry of Development. The framework was found to be easy to understand, comprehensive, consistent with government processes and acceptable at all relevant Ministry levels. The framework provides a useful starting point on Brunei Darussalam’s journey towards effective implementation of PFI in its construction industry

Social Welfare and Coercion in Public Finance

This paper develops an expanded framework for social planning in which the existence of coercion is explicitly acknowledged. Key issues concern the precise definition of coercion for individuals and in the aggregate, its difference from redistribution, and its incorporation into normative analysis. We explore modifications to traditional rules for optimal fiscal policy in the presence of coercion constraints and determine the degree of coercion implied by traditional social planning. The paper maps the trade-off between social welfare and aggregate coercion and explores its implications for normative policy and the comparative evaluation of institutions, including competitive democracy.coercion, redistribution, social planning, optimal fiscal policy, marginal cost of funds, public goods, collective choice

Home Production, Market Production and the Gender Wage Gap: Incentives and Expectations

The purpose of this paper is to study the joint determination of gender differentials in labor market outcomes and in the household division of labor. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that incentive problems in the labor market amplify differences in earnings due to gender differentials in home hours. In turn, earnings differentials reinforce the division of labor within the household, leading to a potentially self-fulfilling feedback mechanism. The workings of the labor market are key in our story. The main assumptions are that the utility cost of work effort is increasing in home hours, and that higher effort should correspond to higher incentive pay. Household decisions are Pareto efficient, leading to a negative correlation between relative home hours and earnings across spouses. We use the Census and the PSID to study these predictions and find that they are supported by the data.

Taxation of Corporate Capital Income: Tax Revenues vs. Tax Distortions

Since the average tax rate on corporate capital income is very high, economists often conclude that taxes have caused a substantial fall in corporate investment, a movement of capital into noncorporate uses, and a fall in personal savings. The combined efficiency costs of these distortions are believed to be very important. This paper attempts to show that when uncertainty and inflation are taken into account explicitly, taxation of corporate income leaves corporate investment incentives basically unaffected, in spite of the sizable tax revenues collected. In addition, in some plausible situations, such taxes can result in a gain in efficiency. The explanation for these surprising results is that the government, by taxing capital income, absorbs a certain fraction of both the expected return and the uncertainty in the return. While investors as a result receive a lower expected return, they also bear less risk when they invest, and these two effects are largely offsetting.

Incorporation and Taxation: Theory and Firm-level Evidence

This paper provides a theory and firm-level evidence on the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs in a model of taxes and corporate governance. The theory explains how the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs is driven by taxation (corporate and personal income taxes), corporate transparency, access to external capital and limited liability. We estimate features of this model using a large cross-section of more than 540, 000 firms in European manufacturing. We find that higher personal income tax rates favor incorporation while higher corporate tax rates reduce the probability to incorporate. These findings are robust to the inclusion of other economic and institutional determinants of external financing and choice of organizational form.incorporation, governance, taxes, discrete choice models

Stochastic Discount Factor Bounds with Conditioning Information

Hansen and Jagannathan (HJ, 1991) describe restrictions on the volatility of stochastic discount factors (SDFs) that price a given set of asset returns. This paper compares the sampling properties of different versions of HJ bounds that use conditioning information in the form of a given set of lagged instruments. HJ describe one way to use conditioning information. Their approach is to multiply the original returns by the lagged variables, and much of the asset pricing literature to date has followed this ihmultiplicativel. approach. We also study two versions of optimized HJ bounds with conditioning information. One is from Gallant, Hansen and Tauchen (1990) and the second is based on the unconditionally-efficient portfolios derived in Ferson and Siegel (2000). We document finite-sample biases in the HJ bounds, where the biased bounds reject asset-pricing models too often. We provide useful correction factors for the bias. We also evaluate the asymptotic standard errors for the HJ bounds, from Hansen, Heaton and Luttmer (1995).

Idiosyncratic Consumption Risk and the Cross-Section of Asset Returns

This paper investigates the importance of idiosyncratic consumption risk for the cross-sectional variation in average returns on stocks and bonds. If idiosyncratic consumption risk is not priced, the only pricing factor in a multiperiod economy is the rate of aggregate consumption growth. We offer evidence that the cross-sectional variance of consumption growth is also a priced factor. This demonstrates that consumers are not fully insured against idiosyncratic consumption risk, and that asset returns reflect their attempts to reduce their exposure to this risk. We find that over the sample period the resulting two-factor consumption-based asset pricing model significantly outperforms the CAPM. The model's empirical performance also compares favorably with that of the Fama-French three-factor model. Moreover, in the presence of the market factor and the size and book-to-market factors, the two consumption based factors retain explanatory power. Together with the results of Lettau and Ludvigson (2000), these findings indicate that consumption-based asset pricing is relevant for explaining the cross-section of asset returns. Cet article analyse l'importance du risque idiosyncratique de la consommation individuelle pour la variance transversale des rendements moyens des actifs et des obligations. Lorsque l'on n'attribue pas de prix au risque idiosyncratique de la consommation individuelle, le seul facteur d'évaluation dans une économie à plusieurs horizons est le taux de croissance de la consommation agrégée. Nous montrons que la variance transversale de la croissance de la consommation est également un facteur dont le prix est déterminé. Ceci démontre que les consommateurs ne sont pas complètement assurés contre le risque idiosyncratique de la consommation et que les rendements des actifs reflètent leurs efforts à réduire leur exposition à ce risque. Pour la période considérée, nous trouvons que le modèle d'évaluation d'actifs à deux facteurs basés sur la consommation donne de meilleurs résultats que le CAPM. De plus, la performance empirique du modèle se compare favorablement avec celle du modèle à trois facteurs de Fama-French. Par ailleurs, en présence du facteur de marché et des facteurs taille et ratio valeur comptable/cours, les deux facteurs basés sur la consommation conservent leur pouvoir explicatif. Combiné aux résultats de Lettau et Ludvigson (2000), ces résultats indiquent que l'évaluation d'actifs à partir de la consommation sert à expliquer l'intégralité des rendements d'actifs.cross-sectional asset pricing; consumption-based model; idiosyncratic consumption risk; incomplete markets; measurement error, évaluation d'actifs transversale, modèle basé sur la consommation, risque de consommation idiosyncratique, marchés incomplets, erreur de mesure