Explaining economic growth in the Soviet Union, 1950–86

Production function estimates are provided for Soviet industrial production and gross national product for the period 1950–86. A variety of alternative specifications is tested, including Cobb-Douglas, constant elasticity of substitution and variable elasticity of substitution production functions, and an error correction mechanism is used to investigate the long-run properties of the estimated equation. The structural stability of the estimates is also examined. Constant-returns-to-scale Cobb-Douglas production functions suggest that the rate of total factor productivity growth in the Soviet economy has declined steadily over time, becoming negative sometime in the period between 1970 and 1980. However the extensive statistical tests can doubt on the validity of any production function estimated on Soviet data.     

The economics of retail firms

This paper identifies retail firms as an economic institution which delivers explicit products or services to consumer together with a variety of distribution services that determine the levels of distribution costs experienced by consumers in their purchase activities. The demand for the retailer's product is derived from a household production model in which the levels of distribution services provided by the retailer play the role of fixed inputs in the household's production functions. The supply of the retailer's product is derived from a joint cost function which is non-decreasing in the levels of distribution services provided. Profit-maximizing behavior in monopolistically competive markets shows that retail firms have special economic incentives to become complex organizations by integrating backwards, offering multiple explicit products and operating in more than one market. In addition, monopolistically competitive retail firms in long-run equilibrium will exhibit excess capacity, price dispersion and product choice in distribution services.     

Household borrowing and metropolitan housing price dynamics – Empirical evidence from Helsinki

This article argues that, especially in the absence of sufficient direct data on credit constraints, it is reasonable to add a household debt variable in an empirical model studying housing price dynamics. This is because household borrowing is likely to reveal information regarding the credit constraints faced by households. Moreover, debt may also give information on expected income growth and interest rate movements. The aim of this study is to examine empirically if household borrowing data, indeed, is of importance in a dynamic housing price model. In line with the prior expectations, it is found that housing appreciation in the Helsinki Metropolitan area is Granger caused by the household debt-to-GDP ratio both in the short and in the long run. Causality from the housing market to credit, in turn, seems to run only through a cointegrating long-run relation. While the estimated long-run relation between housing prices, income and debt-to-GDP ratio appears to have remained stable through the sample period (1975Q1-2006Q2), the short-run dynamics changed somewhat due to the financial liberalization in the late 1980s. The stability of the long-run relation implies that the loan data are able to cater, at least to a notable extent, for the effect of the changes in Finnish households’ liquidity constraints on housing demand. In line with previous literature, it is also found that housing price adjustment is sluggish and includes notable backward-looking features.     

The Substitution Theorem in Urban Consumer Theory

This paper presents two nonparametric approaches to urban household location theory. For each model two sets of own price substitution theorems are presented, one for goods whose prices vary spatially and one for goods whose prices do not vary spatially in the market area. The usual substitution theorem derived in nonspatial demand theory is seen to hold for goods whose prices do not vary spatially. Goods whose prices vary spatially, however, reveal a significant departure from standard demand theory in that the substitution theorem is shown to hold unambiguously only for "parallel" shifts in spatial price surfaces. Further, the results are robust, extending to consumers in nonmonocentric urban areas, regardless of consumer tastes for travel distance or labor/leisure choice complications.     

流通领域技术进步、分工发展与消费多样化福利

基于新兴古典经济学模型的两类比较静态分析，使用2008—2020年的省级面板数据，实证考察了流通领域技术进步对消费品种类扩增的影响及其机制。回归结果表明，流通领域技术进步能够促进消费品种类扩增；机制检验表明，流通领域技术进步可以通过降低交易成本促进区域市场融合，直接影响消费品种类，也可以通过社会分工水平间接影响消费品种类，产品管理效率提升会对该过程产生积极影响；异质性分析表明，相较于中东部地区，我国西部地区流通领域技术进步对消费品种类扩增作用更强。     

Savings and retail price reform in a queue-rationed economy

The paper addresses the effect on consumer saving behavior of queue rationing and of price reform in a Soviet-type economy in a lifecycle framework with overlapping generations. It is shown that consumers save less for retirement in a queue-rationed exchange economy with black markets than they would in a free-market system with the same endowments. The expectation of price reform is thus likely to cause an increase in consumer savings. In addition, an analysis is given of the effect of the increase in controlled prices on the black market prices and on the prices of unrationed goods.     

解析价值工程在亲子产品开发设计中的应用

随着市场经济的进一步发展,消费品市场呈现商品种类极大丰富,产品目标市场细致化,消费者需求多元化,企业竞争白热化的局面。如何提高自身产品的竞争力,扩大市场占有率,满足消费者对商品提出的更高要求,是企业迫切要解决的问题。本文从价值工程角度寻求解决问题的方法,以亲子产品为例论述价值工程在产品开发设计中的具体应用。     

Assessing the potential demand for electric cars

An ordered logit specification for use on ranked individual data is used to analyze survey data on potential consumer demand for electric cars. In many situations in economics and marketing we would like to be able to forecast consumer demands for goods which have not yet appeared in actual markets. By defining goods as a bundle of underlying attributes, we can use discrete choice models to estimate consumer evaluations. Then new good demand is forecast by use of the estimated coefficients to compare consumer evaluation of the new good to existing choices. When ranked individual data are available, we can estimate separate coefficients for each individual rather than assuming identical coefficients as is usual with logit models. Our results indicate considerable dispersion in individual coefficients. This finding can have important implications for new product analysis.     

Agent-based modeling simulation under local network externality

In general, consumer utility of network goods is affected by the entire network size. The socio-cultural-economic affinities of consumers influence the network externality processes. In this work, we treat a consumer decision as a consumer decision dynamic process. We then formulate a dynamic structural representation of a consumer network structure, structure of utility function and decision rule under the influence of local network externality concept. This formulation generates a mathematical model for a consumer decision dynamic process. The byproduct of the dynamic model leads to an agent-based simulation model. The simulation model is used to investigate different types of consumer decision dynamic market equilibriums. Moreover, prototype illustrations are given to exhibit the association between network attributes and its market equilibriums.     

基于消费行为的中国奢侈品市场研究

中国已成为世界第二大奢侈品消费国。本文首先介绍了奢侈品的发展概况，接着从中国目前奢侈品消费市场的调研出发。分析了中国奢侈品市场的消费行为特点，最后对中国奢侈品市场的未来进行了展望。     

Amtliche Statistiken als Grundlage der unternehmerischen Arbeitsmarktforschung – Eine Bestandsaufnahme

Against the background of demographic change and the probable increasing shortage of skilled workers, in this paper it is analysed, if official statistics can be used to anticipate developments on firm relevant labour markets. Because of the low disaggregation and their poor availability, official statistics has been seen as inapplicable for the entrepreneurial labour market research in earlier works. A content analysis of the official statistics provided in the internet reveals in contrast that partially up-to-date and highly detailed data, which has a high potential for firm specific anticipation of labour market developments, is currently available.     

Estimating consumer preferences using market data—an application to us automobile demand

This paper explores the possibility of using market data to identify consumer preferences. A utility function composed of ‘homogeneous’ characteristics and goods-specific effects is used as a basic link between the goods space and the characteristics space. The functional form for the hedonic price equation, the data requirements and issues of measurement errors for estimating demand and supply of characteristics are discussed. We illustrate the methodology by considering the US automobile demand using 1969–86 data compiled from Consumer Reports and Ward's Automotive Yearbook.     

Household search and health insurance coverage

Health insurance in the United States is typically acquired through an employer-sponsored program. Often employees offered employer-provided health insurance have the option to extend coverage to their spouse and dependents. We investigate the implications of the “publicness” of health insurance coverage for the labor market careers of spouses. The theoretical innovations in the paper are to extend the standard partial–partial equilibrium labor market search model to a multiple searcher setting with the inclusion of multi-attribute job offers, with some of the attributes treated as public goods within the household. The model is estimated using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) using a Method of Simulated Moments (MSM) estimator. We demonstrate how previous estimates of the marginal willingness to pay (MWP) for health insurance based on cross-sectional linear regression estimators may be seriously biased due to the presence of dynamic selection effects and misspecification of the decision-making unit.     

Market selection with an endogenous state

This paper explores market selection in general equilibrium when the state of the economy is endogenous. Analysis of consumer survival in this case requires solution of the model’s dynamics, for which evolutionary game theory can be useful; for instance, if the state and beliefs are Markovian and utility logarithmic, then the dynamics of consumption shares are described by the replicator dynamics. This is illustrated in a simple exchange economy, and in a standard monetary economy with multiple long-run equilibria where a plausible form of inflation targeting serves to destabilize a liquidity trap in favor of the target equilibrium.     

Do the black market and the official exchange rates converge in the long run?

Establishing cointegration and long-run convergence between the official and the black market exchange rates is a way of testing foreign exchange market efficiency. Earlier research employed the Engle-Granger or Johansen method to test for cointegration between the two rates. Since either method requires each rate to be non-stationary, exchange rates that did not possess this property had to be excluded from analysis. However, with the introduction of the bounds testing approach to cointegration, no exchange rate needs to be excluded since this relatively new technique does not require pre-unit root testing. This paper employs monthly data from 27 developing countries and the bounds testing approach to cointegration by Pesaran et al. (2001) to show that in 22 out of 27 countries, not only are the two rates cointegrated but in all countries the black market exchange rate causes the official rate to adjust and converge toward the black market rate in the long run.     

基于项目的组织与复杂产品系统——企业能力理论视角的分析

国际学术界关于"复杂产品系统"和"基于项目的组织"的研究,对我国大型企业进行产业升级和实施"走出去"战略具有重要意义.我国企业在大规模生产的消费品领域具有很强的竞争力,在国际市场上占据了很大份额,但国际高端资本品(即复杂产品系统)在市场上的竞争力则与西方先进国家存在巨大差距.本文从企业能力理论视角分析复杂产品系统和基于项目的企业的特征,说明基于项目的组织的经济性主要来自重复经济,而要实现重复经济,就要建立起能够利用重复经济的组织架构,进行相应的能力建设.     

A temporal-spatial theory of consumer behavior

A theory of household consumption of goods, time and locomotion is proposed in which time allocation theory and urban economic theory are shown to be special cases. The contributions of this temporal-spatial theory in terms of enriching consumer behavior theory and of providing a robust basis for analyzing transportation economics are outlined.     

Household production, full consumption and the costs of children

Recent work criticises both the logic and relevance of the theoretical basis of the approach to estimating the costs of raising children adopted in much of the economics literature. This tends to be restricted purely to models in which the household members consume market goods with given household income. The “costs of children” are perceived essentially as market consumption costs. This ignores the fact that an important, possibly preponderant element of child costs takes the form of parental time, which must be diverted from alternative uses such as market work, other household production activities, and leisure, to care for children. The studies also ignore the question of the differential incidence of child costs on adult members of the household. In this paper, we first of all argue that a satisfactory theoretical approach to modelling child costs must simultaneously incorporate an “individualistic” formulation of the household and a formal treatment of household production. We then provide such a model. Using data from a time use survey we estimate specialised versions of the model for families with two children and use the results to derive the intra-family distribution of resources and implied child-rearing costs.     

Estimation of International Demand Behaviour for Use with Input-Output Based Data

The making of projections often requires an economy-wide perspective, and the estimation of consumer demands at the international level. In this paper, an implicit, directly additive demand system (AIDADS) is estimated using cross- country data on consumer expenditures from two different sources: the International Comparison Programme (ICP), and the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). The two data sets are found to produce results that are quite consistent despite their differing origins, and the fact that the former is based on consumer goods that embody wholesale/retail margins, while margin demands are treated separately in GTAP. Given the similarity of the results, the estimation based on GTAP data is favoured for economy-wide projection purposes because it can be readily matched to input-output based production and trade data. An additional benefit of the GTAP-based estimates is that they provide direct evidence concerning how aggregate margin expenditures vary with per capita income.     

房屋拆迁会刺激家庭的金融市场参与吗？——一个心理账户的分析视角

在心理账户的作用下,拆迁补偿款的发放使得家庭更加倾向于参与金融市场投资,因此房屋拆迁将会显著提高家庭的金融市场参与度。对此,基于中国家庭金融调查（CHIP2013）和中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS2018）数据,运用工具变量法,实证检验了房屋拆迁对家庭金融市场参与的影响,结果表明,房屋拆迁会在一定程度上促进家庭的金融市场参与,且这一效果在消费支出少和金融资产余额多的家庭中更加显著。同时,中介效应检验结果发现,在房屋拆迁促进家庭金融市场参与的过程中,家庭可支配收入发挥了部分中介作用。这意味着,在房屋拆迁补偿中,不仅拆迁户应该警惕过度参与金融市场的非理性行为,而且政府和金融机构也应该组织和提供不同形式的金融教育,提高拆迁户的金融素养,从而预防拆迁返贫的悲剧。