民营企业信用缺失的原因和对策

当前,大力发展民营经济已成为一种共识,但我国民营企业的信用状况却不容乐观,信用缺失不但已经成为民营企业发展的瓶颈,而且影响到整个市场经济的运行效率和秩序。民营企业的信用缺失既有外部环境的问题,也有内部管理的问题。为了更好地促进民营企业的信用建设,迫切需要从社会     

关于管理的断想

当今企业的竞争不是几个人才的竞争 ,而是企业整体人员素质的竞争。企业合理的人才结构包括 :一致的品格结构 ;梯形的年龄结构 ;叠加的知识结构 ;互补的能力结构 ;协调的气质结构。     

农业产业化博弈中的政府:引导抑或误导

农业产业结构的调整,以及相应的农业产业化,主要靠政府“引导”或“主导”,还是靠农民自发进行,是经济转轨时期的重要问题。不少学者认为,为帮助农民,政府必须加以“引导”甚至“主导”(实际上这种思路在基层的政策实践中也非常流行)。但实践证明,政府“引导”往往不仅难以发     

会计委派制并非解决会计信息失真问题的有效良策

任何新生事物都离不开利弊分析 ,电子商务也不例外 ,正是从这个逻辑出发 ,本文提出了一种电子商务分析模型 ,它是很多经验的总结 ,运用它可便于从整体上把握电子商务的利弊。并且很多现实中的问题和看法可由本模型来解释。     

企业竞争力的要素和原因研究

本文从前提、基础、核心和保障四个方面阐述了企业竞争力的构成要素,认为企业竞争力涵盖敏锐洞悉环境的能力,有效设计制度的能力,快速、持续学习的能力,优化企业形象的能力,并由这四者融合为一体,表现为厚积薄发。     

网络银行的动因分析

网络银行受到多方面需求的拉动,诸如出于降低经营成本、实施差异化营销、应付多元化竞争的需要,使网络银行应运而生。在我国加入WTO后,网络银行会成为外资银行进入中国金融市场的突破口。对我们来说,加速发展网络银行,意义重大。     

DSS在企业中的开发与应用构想

本文运用系统工程原理与方法 ,通过分析企业现实系统 ,阐述了建立 DSS的必要性 ,针对我国的实际情况 ,提出了企业 DSS设计的目标 ,构造出一个具有实用价值的企业 DSS结构框架     

入世后我国纺织品出口的制约因素分析

近几年来 ,社会上的一些单位和个人冒用、盗用高校名义从事商业活动 ,使高校名称权受到侵害。无形资产蒙受损失。而现阶段高校名称权保护的法律规范过于零散、粗疏 ,可操作性不强。为此 ,必须加强对高校名称权的立法保护 ,加大对高校名称权保护的执法力度 ,在高校内部建立健全     

运用投资拉动 促进产业结构升级

本文揭示了我国当前地方税规模并非过小而且不宜扩大 ;同时进一步分析了造成当前地方收入入不敷出的原因 ,论证了当前不宜将地方税收立法权下放 ,并提出了政府精简机构、规范开支的对策。     

积极财政政策的转型思路及其依据

积极财政政策的实施过程,就是正面效应为主向负面效应为主的转变过程。转型思路可化解财政风险,提升经济效益,有利于我国经济向自主性增长模式转变。降低增长预期对积极财政政策的转型具有决定性意义。     

Changes in industry structure and technological convergence: implications for competition policy and regulation in telecommunications

The two leading US long-distance carriers—AT&T and MCI—have recently been acquired by two of the four major incumbent local exchange carriers—SBC and Verizon—and shortly thereafter, the new AT&T (SBC and the old AT&T) acquired BellSouth. Contemporaneously, alternatives to traditional voice communications provided by cable television and internet- based providers indicate a shifting of competition from a single voice market to the “triple play” of voice, video, and high-speed data. These developments imply a fundamentally different model of competition and industry structure than the one of “dominant firms” supplying essential inputs to new entrants for traditional voice service that was envisioned in the 1996 US Telecommunications Act, as implemented by Federal Communications Commission. In response to these developments, state governments, the FCC, and Canadian authorities have enacted legislative or regulatory changes that limit retail price regulation to services such as the basic residential telephone line. Approaches for assessing market power and other competitive issues that account for the specific characteristics of the emerging (converging) industry are also discussed. The paper concludes by describing the implications of the emerging nature of telecommunications competition for future ex ante and/or ex post regulation, market power assessment, continued regulation, and antitrust analyses.

Credit Access,the Costs of Credit and Credit Market Discrimination

Since the early 1990s, credit expanded relative to income, especially after 2001. It is hypothesized that traditionally uneven credit access and gaps in the costs of credit by demographic characteristics shrank during this period. Relying on data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance, this study looks at financial constraints, the costs of credit and a number of contributions to the costs of credit, including sources and types of loans. The results indicate that taste-based discrimination and structural discrimination may have persisted and possibly increased over time. Gaps in credit access and costs of credit have widened by race, remained high by income, but shrank by ethnicity. Part of the overall differences in credit access was a varying reliance on professional information when making decisions on debt.

Can the HOSS framework help shed light on the simultaneous growth of inequality and informalization in developing countries?

Using simple, modified versions of the factor proportions framework, and focusing on structural features within developing economies, this paper attempts to reconcile puzzling developments observed in many post-reform, post-liberalization countries whereby increasing income inequality has emerged side-by-side with informalization of the economy. Measures undertaken to enhance public sector efficiency and attract investment in an import-intensive export sector may increase rental–wage and skilled–unskilled wage gaps, contra the predictions of the simple Heckscher–Ohlin–Stolper–Samuelson (HOSS) framework regarding skill- and capital-scarce countries. The common thread generating our interesting results is the presence of sectors that are even more labor-intensive than those producing traded goods.

Trade Costs,Trade Balances and Current Accounts: An Application of Gravity to Multilateral Trade

In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (NBER Macroeconomics Annual 7777:339–390, 2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein–Horioka puzzle. Our approach has a number of novel features. First, we focus on the interrelationship between trade costs, the trade account and the Feldstein–Horioka puzzle. Second, we use the gravity model to estimate the effect of trade costs on bilateral trade and, third, we show how bilateral trade can be used to draw inferences about desired trade balances and desired intertemporal trade. Our econometric results provide strong support for the Obstfeld and Rogoff hypothesis and we are also able to reconcile our results with the so-called home bias puzzle.

A generalized multi-country endogenous growth model

The transitional dynamics of open-economy endogenous growth models are largely unexplored. The present paper fills this gap in the literature. By applying the familiar Travis–Dixit–Norman (Dixit and Norman, Theory of International Trade, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1980) approach to a general class of growth models, it provides original results on the transitional dynamics of the multi-country open-economy versions of several prominent special cases, including the models of Romer (J Polit Econ, 94:1002–1037, 1986; J Polit Econ 98:S71–S102, 1990), Lucas (J Monet Econ, 22:3–42, 1988), Grossman and Helpman (Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991a, Chaps. 3 and 4; Rev Econ Stud 58:43–61, 1991b), Jones (J Polit Econ, 103:759–784, 1995a), and Segerstrom (Am Econ Rev, 88:1290–1310, 1998). This approach also shows that, in the class of models considered, the question of whether or not international economic integration accelerates growth in the long run is equivalent to the question of whether or not scale effects prevail.      

Assessing the Competitiveness of International Financial Services in Particular Locations: A Survey of Methods and Perspectives

The International Financial Services (IFS) industry is restructuring internally and by location. This paper outlines the economic forces and analytical methods that may be applied to examine the economic drivers of these processes as ever more cities, particularly in East Asia, are vying to attract IFS providers and their clients. The ICT revolution has made those IFS that can be commoditized footloose in search of cost efficiency. High value-added financial services, however, will continue to be developed and coordinated in a few major IFS centers that have invested in, or capitalized on, regional or global advantages for themselves and their clients. The resulting pattern of functional fragmentation and geographic dispersal may facilitate analyses of the competitiveness of different lines of the financial services business in a particular location by methods such as Data Envelopment and Stochastic Frontier Analysis. These forms of comparative efficiency analysis have recently been questioned and their results reinterpreted.

The takeover and selection effects of foreign-owned establishments: an analysis using linked employer–employee data

We provide the first estimates of the effect of foreign ownership on wages in Germany, controlling for the observed and unobserved characteristics of workers and plants. We also test whether the wage gains from joining a foreign-owned firm are subsequently lost when leaving that firm, and we examine whether wage gains vary across the sample. We find large selection effects in terms of worker and plant components of wages. Once the selection effect is taken into account, the takeover effect is small and in some cases insignificantly different from zero.

Are Environmental Social Movements Socially Exclusive? An Historical Study from Thailand

Environmental social movements in developing countries are often portrayed as democratizing but may contain important social divisions. This paper presents a new methodology to analyze the social composition and underlying political messages of movements. Nearly 5 000 newspaper reports during 1968–2000 in Thailand are analyzed to indicate the participation of middle and lower classes, and their association with “green” (conservationist) and “red-green” (livelihoods-oriented) environmental values. Results show middle-class “green” activism has dominated forests activism, but lower-class “red-green” activism has grown for forests and pollution. Newspapers, however, portray all environmentalism as “democratization,” suggesting that the possible exclusiveness of some environmental norms is unacknowledged.     

The Negligence Rule in the Presence of Judicial Corruption and Social Norms

This paper investigates the phenomenon of judicial corruption and incorporates it into Polinsky, A. M. (1980). Strict liability vs. negligence in a market setting. American Economic Review, 70, 363–367 framework so as to analyze the efficiency of the negligence rule. By shedding light on the role of social norms in regard to the phenomenon of judicial corruption, this analysis provides implications for policy. First, more prevalent corruption at the status quo tends to intensify the extent of the corruption itself and, as a result, the effectiveness of the government’s corruption enforcement is greatly lessened. This implies that an excessively lenient policy of corruption may result in an uncontrollable consequence; once corruption becomes rampant, it is costly to bring it down. Of great importance, in the presence of such a corruption effect, the social optimum cannot be achieved based on the negligence rule and the equivalence between the strict liability and negligence rule fails. Secondly, the attitude of the society toward a corrupt judge plays a crucial role in governing the effectiveness of an efficient wage arrangement. If the society can fully accept a corrupt judge, corruption will never be controlled even with the incentive wage scheme.

On the bilateral trade effects of free trade agreements between the EU-15 and the CEEC-4 countries

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC-4, i.e. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania) and model their effects on trade flows by treating the agreement variable as endogenous. Our theoretical framework is the gravity model, and the econometric method used to isolate and eliminate the potential endogeneity bias of the agreement variable is the fixed effect vector decomposition (FEVD) technique. Our estimation results indicate a positive and significant impact of FTAs on trade flows. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the sample of a group of control countries (specifically Belarus, the Russian Federation and the Ukraine) that did not sign an FTA. Besides, we show that trade growth after the FTA agreement with the EU was signed exceeded trade growth of the control group of countries, which did not become members.