香港商情——电子、贸易、汽车、饰品、珠宝、玩具、展会……

珠宝香港成为最重要的国际珍珠贸易中心近年不少国际珍珠拍卖会在香港举行,使香港成为亚洲地区最重要的国际珍珠贸易中心。现时,养珠技术日益成熟,日本、法国、印尼、菲律宾、澳洲以及中国内地等都有不同的珍珠养殖场,全球每年珍珠产量约10亿颗,内地珍珠产     

中国古代贡、赋、租、税、捐、役述考

本文针对《中国古代史》教材及相关材料中对捐、役、贡、租、赋、税混用的现实，分别考证了它们的历史演变渊源，解读其在不同的朝代和不同的语境下的含义。认为在我国古代，贡、赋、租、税、捐、役字词不尽相同，而它们的词义相近，有时甚至相同。     

常数0、1、π、e、i五兄妹

本文简要介绍了数学中重要的五个常数0、1、π、e、i在被人们认识的过程中，所经历的曲折的故事，以引起人们对这五个常数的关注。     

科学谋划 奋力拼搏——建设富裕、文明、平安、绿色、和谐、幸福老高川

府谷县老高川镇总面积2324平方公里．辖14个村、80个村民小组，有常住人口10670人，流动人口2万余人：有基层站所18个，党支部20个、党员458人。辖区有煤矿15座，年产60万吨兰炭生产综合利用园3个、生产线4条、金属镁企业3个，活性炭、型煤、洗选煤、硅铁、硅钙等煤化工企业21个。     

要真学、真懂、真信、真用

科学发展观是建设有中国特色社会主义理论体系的最新成果。学习科学发展观的实践活动．最重要的是对建设有中国特色的社会主义理论体系,做到真学、真懂、真信、真用。要以马克思主义哲学思想为武器．深刻理解建设有中国特色社会主义理论体系的科学性和历史地位。     

投资、融资、机制

当前,国际国内发展环境正在发生一系列转折性的重大变化,国际金融危机影响继续存在、长三角一体化深入、全省转型升级步伐加快、海洋经济深度开发、绍兴发展优势再造等对山城新昌形成更为激烈的要素争夺态势,加之能源和原材料涨价、建设用地紧缺、节能减排约束加强、     

浅谈声乐训练中的松、开、通、点、情

用松、开、通、点、情几个代表性的文字，说明声乐训练中的几个重要环节，即全身心自然放松，打开喉咙，竖起管状，追求面罩，整体歌唱。     

论商品房的区位、户型、品质、物业管理

影响商品房开发与营销的因素很多,主要包括区位、户型、品质、物业管理等方面是购房者、投资者最为关注的。本文通过分别探讨商品房的区位、户型、品质、物业管理,提出了商品房区位、户型、品质、物业管理选择的对策建议。     

上海、北京、广州、天津、重庆先行一步 争夺国际消费中心城市 深圳、成都、长沙、合肥跃跃欲试

2022年1月17日,安徽省十三届人大五次会议上,安徽省省长王清宪作政府工作报告称,支持合肥创建国际消费中心城市。合肥不在第一批创建国际消费中心城市的名单之中,但就像成都、深圳、武汉一样,也将此作为未来的奋斗目标。     

倾销、反倾销、反倾销法

自1979年8月欧共体对我国出口的糖精及其盐类提起反倾销诉讼以来，迄今已有28个国家和地区对我国提起反倾销诉讼案件共达378起，涉及到我国机电、化工、轻防、土畜、医药等行业4000余种商品，其中涉案金融超过一亿美元的大案就有15起。近两年，国际贸易保护主义进一步抬头，对中国的反倾销案激增，在数量上以欧、美为最，这些案件中，裁定倾销成立的占60％以上；其立案数、裁定率均居各国之首，使中国成为目前世界上遭受反倾销调查最多的国家和反倾销的最大受害国。与此同时，外国产品开始大举倾销我国，我国也是倾销的严重受害国，截止目前，我国对外提起反倾销案仅5起。中国企业面临反销售与倾销的双重冲击和考验。     

Consumption, retailing, and medicine in early-modern London

This article examines the early development of specialized retail shops in early modern London. It argues that apothecaries' shops were sites of innovative shop design and display. These practices were responses to attitudes to consumption, the problematic nature of the medical commodities which apothecaries sold, and, particularly, contemporary concerns about their reliability, trustworthiness, and honesty. The article concludes that analyses of the rise of the shop need to be revised to incorporate early developments by producer-retailers, such as apothecaries and goldsmiths, and suggests that investments in retailing were driven more by worries about commodities than enticing customers.     

Capital-market Liberalization, Globalization, and the IMF

One of the most controversial aspects of globalization is capital-marketliberalization—not so much the liberalization of rulesgoverning foreign direct investment, but those affecting short-termcapital flows, speculative hot capital that can come into andout of a country. In the 1980s and 1990s, the IMF and the USTreasury tried to push capital-market liberalization aroundthe world, encountering enormous opposition, not only from developingcountries, but from economists who were less enamoured of thedoctrines of free and unfettered markets, of market fundamentalism,that were at that time being preached by the international economicinstitutions. The economic crises of the late 1990s and earlyyears of the new millennium, which were partly, or even largely,attributable to capital-market liberalization, reinforced thosereservations. This paper takes as its point of departure a recentIMF paper, to provide insights both into how the IMF could havegone so wrong in its advocacy of capital-market liberalizationand into why capital-market liberalization has so often ledto increased economic instability, not to economic growth.     

Labor productivity, wages, nationality, and foreign ownership shares in Thai manufacturing, 1996–2000

This paper compares labor productivity and wages among nationality and ownership groups of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and local plants in Thai manufacturing for 1996, 1998, and 2000. Disaggregating foreign MNCs by nationality or foreign ownership share revealed a few significant differences in both labor productivity and wages that were not present in more aggregate specifications. In these cases, there was a weak tendency for MNCs from Europe, Japan, and the United States to have relatively high labor productivity and wages, for wholly-foreign MNCs to have relatively high labor productivity, and for majority- and wholly-foreign MNCs to pay relatively high wages. However, these results suggest that the relationships among labor productivity or wages, on the one hand, and nationality or foreign ownership shares, on the other hand, were generally weak in Thai manufacturing. These results are also consistent with those of previous studies in suggesting that the relationship between labor productivity and foreign ownership in general was also rather weak, though the relationship between wages and foreign ownership was somewhat stronger.     

Health, human capital, and African-American migration before 1910

Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of African-Americans from 1870 to 1910. I find that literacy and health shocks were strong predictors of migration and the stock of health was not. There were differential selection propensities based on slave status—former slaves were less likely to migrate given a specific health shock than free blacks. Counterfactuals suggest that as much as 35% of the difference in the mobility patterns of former slaves and free blacks is explained by differences in their human capital, and more than 20% of that difference is due to health alone. Overall, the selection effect of literacy on migration is reduced by one-tenth to one-third once health is controlled for. The low levels of human capital accumulation and rates of mobility for African-Americans after the Civil War are partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants.     

Finance, governments, and trade

We study how financial transactions may respond to exogenous variation in trade opportunities not only directly, but also through policy channels. In more open economies, governments may find it more difficult to fund and enforce public policies that substitute private financial transactions, and more appealing to deregulate financial markets. We propose a simple theoretical model of such policy-mediated relationships between trade and financial development. Empirically, we document in a country panel dataset that, before the 2007–2008 crisis, financial market volumes were robustly and negatively related to the share of government consumption in GDP in regressions that also include indicators of financial regulation and trade openness, and we seek support for a causal interpretation of this result in instrumental variable specifications.     

New,disaggregated, British railway total factor productivity growth estimates, 1875 to 19121

Total factor productivity (TFP) growth in Britain's railways in the last part of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth has been widely studied, not least because it can throw light on the question of the causes of overall slowdown in industrial growth. This article is concerned with the detailed mechanics of measuring TFP growth and with the use of results to compare growth across different companies. The article disaggregates TFP growth between different activities performed by railway companies (provision of locomotive power, operation of carriages and wagons, provision of permanent way, and working of traffic), and it also develops detailed measures of capital stock and capital costs using disaggregate data on assets employed in each activity. These improvements to existing methodology reduce, rather than increase, existing estimates of TFP growth. Consequently the results confirm the previously observed conclusion that productivity growth was slow. They show that while there were significant increases in goods train operating efficiency in the first decade of the twentieth century, the additional resources that were employed meant that these increases were slow to translate into overall TFP growth.     

Domestic service,gender, and wages in rural England,c.1700–18601

Domestic service was a vital occupational sector in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—particularly for women. This article uses a new series of wage observations from across England, focusing on rural areas. Analysis of the dataset shows that wages paid to servants in rural England slightly increased over the period considered, but at uneven rates dependent on region and precise occupation of servant. The majority of servants, particularly maids, did not experience any significant increase in the wages they were paid. This article also shows a widening wage gap between male and female servants. When differences between regions were analysed, it was shown that the wages paid to servants did not match the model of the north becoming the high wage zone of England by the mid‐nineteenth century, although rates of growth there were the highest. For servants the south generally remained an area of higher wages even in the mid‐nineteenth century. Geography was probably not the key variable in determining wage levels. The type of household in which a servant was employed was more important than where it was located. The most important variables were the servants' gender, and their occupations in the household.     

Income volatility,household leverage,and consumption in Korea

Using the micro household data in Korea, we examine the effects of income volatility changes on households’ leverage and consumption. We found that households who faced increased income volatility lowered their leverage ratio. A one standard deviation increase in income volatility was associated with 1.3 ∼ 1.5 percentage point decrease in the leverage ratio. The effects of income volatility changes on households’ leverage choices varied with households’ borrowing constraints and other socioeconomic backgrounds. We also found that when faced with enlarged income uncertainty, households’ income coefficients on consumption were lowered. The income coefficient of average households was estimated to be around 0.16, while households with increased income volatility were around 0.12. In particular, similar to the relations in leverage ratio changes, consumptions among potentially borrowing-constrained households and those with ‘net-short’ position in real estate assets were more affected by increases in income volatility. This can be understood that households smoothed their consumption during the periods of increased income volatility, and this was shown in the smaller consumption elasticity on income. This can be attributed to the fact that faced with increased income volatility, households lower the risk exposure of their financial net wealth by lowering their leverage ratio.     

Toddlers,teenagers, and terminal heights: the importance of puberty for male adult stature,Flanders, 1800–76

Does adult stature capture conditions at birth or at some other stage in the growth cycle? Anthropometrics is lauded as a method for capturing net nutritional status over all the growing years. However, it is frequently assumed that conditions at birth were most influential. Was this true for historical populations? This article examines the heights of Flemish men born between 1800 and 1876 to tease apart which moments of growth were most sensitive to disruption and reflected in final heights. It exploits two proximate crises in 1846–9 and 1853–6 as shocks that permit age effects to be revealed. These are affirmed through a study of food prices and death rates. Both approaches suggest a shift of the critical moment away from the first few years of life and towards the adolescent growth spurt as the most influential on terminal stature. Furthermore, just as height is accumulated over the growing years, conditions influencing growth need to be understood cumulatively. Economic conditions at the time of birth were not explanatory, but their collective effects from ages 11 to 18 years were strongly influential. At these ages, both health and nutrition mattered, to varying degrees. Teenagers, rather than toddlers, should be our guides to the past.     

Lotteries,Litigation, and Education Finance

In 1993, the state of Georgia instituted a lottery that earmarked new funds for instructional and capital expenditures in public schools. In that same year, Tennessee began court-ordered education finance reforms that were also designed to promote instructional and capital expenditures. Using district-level panel data, this study presents empirical evidence on how these disparate policies influenced the patterns of educational revenues by source and expenditures by function. The results suggest that both state policies increased the state aid to the poorest districts and promoted some spending on the targeted functions. However, the results also suggest that these reforms influenced spending in several other functional areas.