Search for rules for search

This paper presents the findings of some preliminary ‘laboratory’ investigations into ‘actual’ search behavior. Specifically we looked at situations in which searchers' initial information about the distributions was negligible. It seemed likely that simple ‘rules of thumb’ would be used in such situations. Our findings confirmed this view: we identified five such rules which between them ‘accounted’ for a high proportion of observed behaviour. Moreover, these rules although not ‘optimal’) appear to be reasonably good and may be fairly robust; jointly, they may constitute a better explanation (and predictor) of actual search behaviour than do the currently popular supposedly optimal rules.     

为农民离土又离乡叫好!

前不久,我到澳大利亚考察.澳洲是个牧业大国,号称"骑在羊背上的国家".奇怪的是,澳洲遍地"风吹草低现牛羊",却见不到羊制品加工企业.一打听,方知全澳洲的羊制品生产加工,都集中在离堪培拉大约20公里的罗米拉加工基地;好大的澳洲,就这一个大型加工基地,乍听有点不可思议.可澳洲人说,这样才能保证资源加工的最高效益和附加值.     

项目投资资金来源选择的策略

项目投资需要资金的支持,科学地选择项目的资金来源,不但可以满足项目对资金的需求,而且可以取得预期的经济效益目标。在选择项目资金来源对坚持充分满足要求、成本最低和风险最小的原则,保证投入足额的资本金,落实外部资金来源,并尽可能争取在资本市场上市。     

农村土地征收补偿原则比较及借鉴

近几年我国土地征收问题成为社会焦点问题,中国社会科学院“社会形势分析与预测”课题组认为征地问题引起的社会矛盾在我国居于第一位.征地问题的存在,归根到底是我国土地征收补偿制度不完善导致的.我国土地征收补偿标准低、补偿范围窄、补偿方式不够灵活,都迫切需要改革.土地征收补偿原则是征地制度的基础,明确土地征收补偿原则,是完善土地征收补偿制度的前提,意义重大.     

A test for the policy ineffectiveness theory for Austria

Zusammenfassung In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Politikineffizienzthese für die Geldpolitik in Österreich getestet. Dabei wird der Testmethodologie von Barro gefolgt. Die bisher vorliegende Studie von Driscoll et al. hat die Hypothese abgelehnt, da sich die Annahme der rationalen Erwartungen über den Geldangebotsprozeß als statistisch nicht erfüllt herausgestellt hatte. Dies überrascht insofern, als gerade der Geldangebotsprozeß eher dürftig diskutiert wurde. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird daher der Geldangebotsprozeß eingehend analysiert und aufgezeigt, wie sensitiv die Ergebnisse hinsichtlich geringfügiger Veränderungen der Geldmengengleichungen sind.Im Gegensatz zu Driscoll et al. kommt die vorliegende Arbeit zu dem Schluß, daß die Politikineffizienzthese nicht verworfen werden kann. Auf Grund der observational equivalence sind sowohl keynesianische Modelle als auch die Politikineffizienzthese mit diesen Ergebnissen vereinbar. Das Resultat reicht daher nicht aus, keynesianische Politik als unsinnig zurückzuweisen.Als interessanter Aspekt der empirischen Analyse zeigt sich, daß die strikte Lucas-Angebotsfunktion die Berücksichtigung laufender Information ausschließt, für Österreich keine Geltung hat. Die Residuen der Geldmengengleichung besitzen nämlich nur dann Erklärungswert, wenn die laufende Zinssatzdifferenz zwischen Österreich und der BRD in die Geldmengengleichung eingeht.Weiters ergibt sich auf Grund eines CUSUM-Tests, daß es keineswegs unproblematisch ist, zur Bestimmung der Parameterwerte der Geldmengengleichung die gesamte Stützperiode heranzuziehen, anstatt jeweils nur die Datenmatrix bis zum Zeitpunktt-1 heranzuziehen.     

Restructuring for shareholder value and its implications for labour

This paper provides an accounting analysis of the implicationsfor labour of restructuring for shareholder value. It presentsargument and evidence from the UK which suggests that activity-specificlimits on cost recovery constrain returns on capital. Theseconstraints encourage restructuring which aims to improve returnson capital through the reduction of labour costs. If labourloses directly, longer-term outcomes are more complex, as someworkers who retain jobs may gain, and much depends on the macrocontext. Overall, in the context of present-day capitalism,serial restructuring is likely to be a negative process forlabour that generates transitory benefits for capital.     

Accounting for retiree medical liabilities--considerations for selecting financial assumptions

The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed statement on employer's accounting for postretirement benefits other than pensions closely parallels the Board's pension accounting rules. Mr. Amoroso explains the calculations and financial assumptions involved.     

An alternative approach for testing for linear association for two independent stationary AR(1) processes

Spurious correlations occur when two independent time series are found to be correlated according to the typical statistical procedure for testing the null hypothesis of zero correlation in the population. Using a Monte Carlo analysis, this study examines the spurious correlation phenomenon for two independent stationary AR(1) processes and it finds that if an alternative testing procedure is applied, spurious behaviour is eliminated using the variance of the sample correlation coefficient of these two series, suggested by Bartlett (1935).     

Education for all. A welfare-improving course for Africa?

In this paper, we argue that the case for universal compulsory education for sub-Saharan Africa might have been overstated. We capture the African situation through a heterogeneous-agent model, in which high costs of education relative to income and the skill premium cause the economy to stagnate in a low steady state with minimal educational attainment. We calibrate the model to available data from the sub-Saharan African countries to study education policies. We find that a tax and in-kind subsidy scheme that effectively redistributes resources from households with lower ability children to those with higher ability children outperforms enrollment-maximizing policies such as the abolition of child labor and compulsory education.     

Tests for cointegration allowing for an unknown number of breaks

This paper introduces cointegration tests allowing for an unknown number of breaks. The introduced tests assume that the unspecified number of breaks is smaller than or equal to the maximum number of breaks set a priori. Monte Carlo simulations provide two main results. First, the proposed tests perform as well as the tests of Gregory and Hansen (1996a) and Hatemi-J (2008), which assume one or two breaks a priori, when the cointegration relationship has one or two breaks. Second, the proposed tests perform better than the tests of Gregory and Hansen (1996a) and Hatemi-J (2008) when the cointegration relationship has more than three breaks or persistent Markov switching shifts. We also provide empirical applications for the money demand of the U.S. The empirical results show that the proposed tests reject the null hypothesis of no cointegration as compared to other tests.     

A method for constructing message systems for smooth performance functions

This paper examines the information content associated with any smooth, explicitly determined allocation function or performance function. The information content is characterized by the type of admitted privacy preserving message networks which implement the performance function (in the sense introduced by L. Hurwicz) and which belong to a specified class. A method is developed which provides the necessary and sufficient conditions which are satisfied by any admissible message network. This can be viewed as providing an alternative approach and extending the theory developed by L. Hurwicz, S. Reiter and D. Saari. Examples are provided to illustrate how these conditions can be used to obtain impossibility theorems and to construct message networks.     

Demand for carbonated soft drinks: implications for obesity policy

This article examines consumer choices of Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSDs) and their implications for obesity policy. Demand in relation to product and consumer heterogeneity is estimated via a random coefficients logit model (Berry et al., 1995) applied to quarterly scanner data for 26 brands in 20 US cities, involving 40?000 consumers. Counterfactual experiments show that caloric taxes could be effective in decreasing caloric CSD consumption though having little impact on obesity incidence.     

Proposal for a Global Fund for Women through Innovative Finance

Despite the spread of budget initiatives for gender equality following the Beijing Declaration of 1995, resources allocated for eliminating gender inequalities remain inadequate. This paper proposes to create a Global Fund for Women through Innovative Finance (GFWIF) with the ability to raise funds through innovative sources of finance on a scale more appropriate to the estimated requirements of making reasonable progress toward gender equality (US$31–107 billion per year in constant 2014 dollars). It builds on previous calls by feminist economists for the establishment of such funds through global forms of taxation. Since donors’ commitments only meet the lower bound, the GFWIF could scale up funding for gender equality interventions commensurate with country needs. Global resource mobilization through innovative mechanisms, including allocations of new Special Drawing Rights, currency transaction taxes, and carbon taxes, have the potential to provide the necessary financing at a much faster pace than is currently possible.     

Asymmetric information and contract design for payments for environmental services

In contractual relationships involving payments for environmental services, conservation buyers know less than landowners know about the costs of contractual compliance. Landowners in such circumstances use their private information as a source of market power to extract informational rents from conservation agents. Reducing informational rents is an important task for buyers of environmental services who wish to maximize the services obtained from their limited budgets. Reducing informational rents also mitigates concerns about the “additionality” of PES contracts because low-cost landowners are least likely to provide different levels of services in the absence of a contract. Paying low-cost landowners less thus makes resources available for contracts with higher opportunity cost landowners, who are more likely to provide substantially different levels of services in the absence of a contract. To reduce informational rents to landowners, conservation agents can take three approaches: (1) acquire information on observable landowner attributes that are correlated with compliance costs; (2) offer landowners a menu of screening contracts; and (3) allocate contracts through procurement auctions. Each approach differs in terms of its institutional, informational and technical complexity, as well as in its ability to reduce informational rents without distorting the level of environmental services provided. No single approach dominates in all environments. Current theory and empirical work provides practitioners with insights into the relative merits of each approach. However, more theoretical work and experimentation in the laboratory and the field are necessary before definitive conclusions about the superiority of one or more of these approaches can be drawn.