Suchergebnisse

AbstractOver the past two decades, China's R&D intensity has surged. The institutional arrangements underlying this surge remain unclear. We study the notable restructuring of the country's 5,000 research institutes, begun in 1999. This study first reviews the evolution of China's research institute sector over the period 1995–2010. Then applying OLS, fixed effects, event study and propensity score analysis to institute level data, we find the restructuring programme has accomplished some of its goals. The converted Science and Technology enterprises shifted towards a more commercial mission, the institutes converted to non‐profit research institutes have focused on a more research‐oriented mission.

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are an innovative financing mechanism for public goods. In a SIB, an investor provides capital to a service provider for a social intervention. The investor receives a return based on the outcome of the intervention relative to a predetermined benchmark. We describe the basic structure of a SIB and provide some descriptive statistics for these financial instruments. We then consider a formal model of SIBs and examine their ability to finance positive net present value projects that traditional debt finance cannot. We find that SIBs expand the set of implementable projects if governments are pessimistic (relative to the private sector) about the probability an intervention would succeed or if the government is particularly averse to paying costs associated with a project that does not generate offsetting benefits. As both these features are present in various public programs, we conclude that SIBs are a real innovation in public finance and should be considered for projects when traditional debt finance has been rejected.