恐怖袭击、反恐行动与贸易效率:袭击目标异质性的视角

文章运用消除内生性的异质性随机前沿引力模型,实证分析了2005~2015年"中巴经济走廊"周边国家异质性恐怖袭击目标与贸易效率的因果关系,进一步检验了反恐行动在这一因果关系中的调节效应,借助局部散点回归拟合图和箱型估计量调节效应图对反恐行动调节效应的非线性问题做了适当的拓展性探究。研究表明:第一,从恐怖袭击目标异质性来看,全样本中贸易效率对上一年度"私人及财产"目标袭击的敏感度较强,而中国样本中贸易效率对上一年度"商业目标"袭击的敏感度较强;第二,反恐行动在全样本的"恐怖袭击-贸易效率"因果关系链条中发挥了显著调节效应,"私人及财产"目标袭击对贸易效率的条件边际效应低于"商业目标"袭击,这可能与地区内对前者投入的反恐资金与资源更多有关;第三,局部散点回归拟合图和箱型估计量调节效应图显示,恐怖袭击对贸易效率的条件边际效应具有非线性,应当谨慎解释模型中存在的交互效应。     

Are Homegrown Islamic Terrorists Different? Some UK Evidence

We compare the characteristics of 77 homegrown Islamic terrorists in the UK to a representative sample of 1363 UK Muslims. UK Muslims are more likely to participate in terrorist acts if they are better educated and young. Other predictors of UK Muslims being involved in terrorism are employment status, UK citizenship, and ethnic origin.     

An Empirical Study of Suicide Terrorism: A Global Analysis

This paper provides the first venue‐based empirical investigation of the number and lethality of suicide terrorist attacks on a global scale. For 1998–2010, we assemble a data set of 2448 suicide terrorist incidents, drawn from the three main terrorist event databases, i.e., International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE), the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), and RAND. Our data set distinguishes between domestic and transnational suicide terrorist missions. For the quantity of suicide terrorism, we apply zero‐inflated negative binomial panel (country‐year) estimation for country‐specific variables and negative binomial panel estimation for attack‐specific variables. We also present linear regression panel estimations for the impact of suicide terrorism in terms of casualties per attack. Economic, political, and military variables, at times, differentially influenced the two kinds of suicide terrorism. A host of policy conclusions are drawn from the empirical findings.     

Determinants of the Demise of Terrorist Organizations

This article investigates the determinants of terrorist groups' failure by applying survival analysis in a discrete‐time specification. Our sample consists of a diverse set of 586 terrorist groups, in which just over 63% end operations (demise) during 1970–2007. We use RAND event data and Jones and Libicki terrorist group data. Findings show that the survival of terrorist groups is bolstered by diversifying attacks, having multiple home bases, locating in the Middle East, locating in a democratic country, and limiting reliance on transnational terrorist attacks. Moreover, larger groups have better survival prospects. Religious fundamentalist terrorist groups face better survival prospects than other terrorist groups. Terrorist groups located in a country with larger tropical territory are less likely to end operations; however, groups based in a landlocked country are more likely to fail.     

Terror per Capita

Studies on the correlates of terrorism usually analyze total numbers of attacks or victims per country. However, what we may ultimately care about in terms of policy recommendations is the likelihood of any individual being subject to the respective phenomenon. Thus, we propose and explore a simple alternative measure of terrorism: terror per capita. Studying terror per capita across 162 countries from 1970–2015, the associated correlates differ substantially in terms of sign, levels of statistical significance, and magnitude from those when analyzing total terror. We illustrate two cases in point, serving as proof of concept. First, democracy, often associated with more total terror, emerges as a marginally negative predictor of terror per capita. Second, a larger share of Muslims in society is associated with a positive and statistically significant link to total terror, but emerges as a negative predictor of terror per capita. We find similar changes in sign and statistical relevance for GDP per capita and language fractionalization as correlates of terrorism. Depending on the policy question, studying terror per capita can greatly enhance our understanding of terrorism drivers, especially when analyzing data across countries with vastly differing population sizes.     

Does Terrorism Affect the Stock‐Bond Covariance? Evidence from European Countries

Using daily stock and bond returns data from four European countries—France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain—that have been the victims of significant terrorist activity, this study addresses the issue of whether transnational and/or domestic terrorist attacks have affected in any significant manner the time‐varying stock–bond covariance, their returns, and their variances. Stock and bond markets can be influenced and determined not only by the usual array of macroeconomic factors but also by security shocks, such as a terrorist incident, that have the potential to affect investors' sentiment and portfolio allocation decisions. The issue at hand is addressed using a VAR(p)‐GARCH(1,1)‐in‐mean model, and the results reported herein indicate that terrorist attacks trigger a flight‐to‐safety effect primarily in France and Germany and to a smaller degree in Great Britain and Spain.     

Exploiting the Chaos: Terrorist Target Choice Following Natural Disasters

This article explores the differences between transnational and domestic terrorism, further differentiating by private versus government targets, to estimate the effect of exogenous catastrophic shocks on a country's level of domestic and transnational terrorism. The empirical analysis uses detailed data on terrorism, natural disasters, and other relevant controls for 176 countries from 1970–2007 to illuminate several key disparities in a postdisaster target choice of terrorists. The results indicate that natural disasters incite both transnational and domestic terrorism; however, evidence is found for dissimilar motivations between the two. While both types of terrorism increase after disasters, transnational attacks against the government increase immediately following the disaster, suggesting an impetus to exploit weakened “hard” targets during the chaos. Conversely, domestic terrorism against the government takes longer to manifest, suggesting a period of time for which the public recovers and assesses the government's response.     

Does health insurance decrease health expenditure risk in developing countries? The case of China

This article studies the impact of health insurance on individual out‐of‐pocket health expenditures in China. Using China Health and Nutrition Survey data between 1991 and 2006, we apply two‐part and sample selection models to address issues caused by censored data and selection on unobservables. We find that, although the probability of accessing health care increases with the availability of health insurance, the level of out‐of‐pocket health expenditure decreases. Our results from a selection model with instrumental variables suggest that having health insurance reduces the expected out‐of‐pocket health expenditure of an individual by 29.42% unconditionally. Meanwhile, conditional on being subjected to positive health expenditure, health insurance helps reduce out‐of‐pocket spending by 44.38%. This beneficial effect of health insurance weakens over time, which may be attributable to increases in the coinsurance rates of health insurances in China.     

Third-Degree Price Discrimination: Apology Not Necessary

Applied work in price discrimination often treats demand curves among multiple market segments as algebraically additive. Yet the welfare effects of multi-market (third degree) price discrimination depend on how the demand segments are added. Treating demands as geometrically additive yields the well known result that discrimination absent an increase in production diminishes Marshallian surplus. But if demands are treated as algebraically additive then discrimination increases welfare over uniform pricing. Quantity is identical in the three cases, so the effect is not due to market opening. Nor is the effect due to scale economies since marginal cost is assumed constant. Profit is always greater under discrimination, so the effect is due to distributional changes in consumer surplus. The model is restricted to linear demands and constant marginal cost but can be generalized for future work and policy analysis.     

A COMPARISON OF SOUTH AFRICAN HEDGE FUND RISK MEASURES

Although hedge funds have enjoyed unrivalled dominance after years of stellar returns, a combination of low interest rates, sustained economic growth and diminished arbitrage opportunities now threaten them. Distinguishing between funds – an onerous task with notoriously opaque investment strategies – has become paramount in the search for optimal returns. Simple risk and return performance measures cannot cope with the demands of an increasingly complex financial milieu. Interest has thus focused on more effective discriminatory performance measures. The innovative Omega ratio is calculated for South African hedge funds and compared with both Sharpe and Sortino ratios. Omega emerges as the superior measure.     

Capitalization of Flood Insurance and Risk Perceptions in Housing Prices: An Empirical Agent‐Based Model Approach

Federally regulated or insured lenders in the United States are mandated to require flood insurance on properties that are located in areas at high risk of flooding. Despite the existence of this mandatory flood insurance requirement, take‐up rates for flood insurance have been low, and the federal government's exposure to uninsured property losses from flooding remains substantial. Meanwhile, the value of capital at risk varies significantly with flood events and changing risk perceptions, which necessitates mechanisms that stabilize these dynamics. In this article we discuss how a scenario of complete insurance uptake, under various risk attitudes, affects the value of properties in the 100‐year and 500‐year flood zones. Our results indicate that an increase in flood insurance uptake may provide such a mechanism by lowering the value of capital at risk in the flood zone consistently, independent of homeowners' risk attitudes. We apply an empirical adaptive agent‐based model to examine the capitalization of insurance costs, risk premiums, and their interaction in housing prices. Our approach combines widely‐used empirical hedonic analysis with the computational economic framework. We highlight the usefulness of our method in capturing the marginal implicit price of homeowners' preferences that may change over time and separately assess the effect of various factors and policies on property values, illustrating the agent‐based modeling as a valuable complement to traditional hedonic analysis.     

Post 9-11 U.S. Muslim Labor Market Outcomes

Using a difference-in-differences framework and micro data from the Current Population Survey-Merged Outgoing Rotation Group Files (1999 to 2004), this paper estimates the impact that the 9-11 terrorists attacks had on the U.S. labor market outcomes of individuals with nativity profiles similar to the terrorists. We find that shortly after the attacks, the employment-population ratios and hours worked of very young (ages 16 to 25) Muslim men fell. By 2004, most losses had begun to dissipate. The employment-population ratios and hours worked of older Muslim men experienced little deterioration. We find no effect of the U.K.’s July 2005 London bombings on the labor market outcomes of U.S. Muslims.     

我国财政支出对民间需求影响的动态分析(1978～2007)

本文把包括居民消费需求与民间投资需求在内的民间需求作为一个整体,利用时变参数(TVP)模型考查改革开放三十年来我国财政支出对其的影响关系.结果显示,改革开放三十年来,我国财政支出对民间需求一直存在着引致(挤入)效应,但其引致弹性系数却经历了一个倒V型的轨迹变化.在财政的分类支出中,用于基本建设方面的支出和用于改善民生的支出对民间需求均有引致效应,且后者的引致效率要远高于前者;政府部门经费支出对民间需求的影响则经历了挤出→挤入→挤出的变化过程.     

Crime,Terror and Corruption and Their Effect on Private Investment in Israel

There are a number of mechanisms through which illegal activity can affect economic activity. Until now, most empirical research that has attempted to quantify the negative effects of illegal activity on economic performance has used international cross-section comparisons. The present study is apparently the first attempt in the literature to examine directly the effects of crime and corruption (and one of few to examine the effects of terror) on private investment by examining the behavior of investors over time in a specific country within a structured model of investment. Israel was chosen as the subject of the study. According to international indexes, Israel’s status as a civil society has degraded over the past decade and according to the corruption index of Transparency International, it is now ranked 33rd in the world. The results of the research can serve as the basis for comparison in similar studies of other Western countries. The study’s conclusions support the hypothesis that crime and major (but not sporadic), significant or ongoing, terror events play an important part in determining the investment behavior of firms in Israel, both in the short and the intermediate/long run.     

Managers' Discretionary Adjustments: The Influence of Uncontrollable Events and Compensation Interdependence

Discretionary bonus adjustments allow managers to restore the alignment of employee effort and compensation when bonus amounts are based on noisy objective performance measures. The implications of discretionary adjustments for employees' future efforts and fairness perceptions present important trade‐offs for managers to consider. Adjustments may be used to motivate different types of effort in future periods, but may also create perceptions of unfairness among employees who are not affected by negative events. This study examines the joint influence of the likelihood of future negative uncontrollable events and compensation interdependence (i.e., the extent to which one employee's compensation influences others' compensation) on managers' willingness to make adjustments for the effect of a negative uncontrollable event on a single employee. In our experiment, we manipulate the likelihood of future uncontrollable events and whether bonuses are determined individually or are drawn from a shared bonus pool. Results show that managers are less willing to adjust when the likelihood of future events is high to avoid setting a precedent, thereby motivating employees to adapt to changing conditions. We also find that managers are less willing to adjust, regardless of event likelihood, when compensation interdependence is high, to avoid demotivating unaffected employees. Finally, we find that participants' general attitudes toward compensation significantly influence their adjustment decisions beyond the effects of our independent variables. Our results highlight the unique nature of discretionary adjustments, help explain findings from previous research, and demonstrate important considerations managers must make when using the flexibility provided to them in pay‐for‐performance contracts.     

Effects of a Management–Labor Context and Team Play on Ultimatum Game Outcomes

Laboratory experiments are usually done on individuals, but many business decisions involve groups. Therefore, we ran ultimatum games using individuals and two‐person teams. We primed business roles with the labels “labor” and “management,” or we used the generic labels of “proposer” and “responder.” With business labels, individuals offered lower shares at higher stakes with no significant differences in acceptance rates. For teams, business labels had no significant effect on shares offered, with significantly lower acceptance rates at higher stakes. Teams offered less than individuals, along with higher acceptance rates with generic labels, compared to no significant differences with business labels.     

2015年后国际发展议程谈判评析

发展问题是联合国大会的核心议题之一。随着落实联合国千年发展目标最后期限的临近,如何制定2015年后国际发展议程越来越受到世界各方的关注。从目前来看,千年发展目标的实施进展喜中有忧,这对2015年后国际发展议程谈判中各方产生很大的影响。虽然2015年后国际发展议程谈判尚处于预备性谈判阶段,但发达国家、发展中国家和市民社会等主要参与方的立场已逐渐成型,未来谈判的一些基本态势已经显现。     

Divergence indicators and the volatility smoothness in semi-fixed exchange rate regimes

Divergence Indicators and the Volatility Smoothness in Semi-Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes. —Fixed or semi-fixed exchange rate regimes have volatility paths that are in general less smooth than their free floating counterpart. Moreover, there tends to be a correlation between the lack of smoothness and the weakness of the currency. In this article, the effects of divergence from central parity on the smoothness of the volatility are discussed within the framework of a TGARCH model. It is shown that, for various EMS rates, the divergence indicator has a statistically significant effect on the smoothness of the volatility path.     

The impact of shocks to exchange rates and oil prices on U.S. sales of American and Japanese automakers

Since 1973, floating exchange rates and significant oil-price changes have coincided with dramatic market-share gains (losses) by Japanese (American) automakers in the U.S. market. This paper analyzes and empirically estimates the extent to which exchange rate and oil price changes have contributed to this market shift. We first develop a dynamic Cournot model of long-run profit-maximizing firms that operate in a macroeconomy characterized by shocks to income, exchanges rates, oil prices, and firm-specific demands and supplies. Using the solutions for quantities sold from this model, we then construct a structural vector autoregression (VAR) to estimate and identify a reduced-form VAR. The empirical results indicate that a strong yen increases quantities sold by American automakers and decreases quantities sold by Japanese automakers; this exchange-rate effect accounts for approximately four percent of the variance of changes in monthly-sales quantity for automakers. Oil-price increases reduce the quantity of automobiles sold by American automakers, but, contrary to the common belief, have little effect on Japanese automakers; this oil-price effect accounts for 6.5 percent of the variance of changes in monthly-sales quantities for American automakers. Over the two decades we analyze, however, the real value of the dollar has almost steadily declined against the yen, and the real price of oil has ended up unchanged, so these variables cannot explain the decline (rise) of American (Japanese) automakers. Clearly, automobile sales are exposed to exchange rate, oil price, and income risk; between 10 and 20 percent of the changes in monthly-sales quantities can be explained by the macroeconomic variables that we analyze. However, we conclude that firm-specific policies probably account for the bulk of gains and losses actually experienced by the automakers.     

Equipping immigrants: migration flows and capital movements in small open economies

This paper explores the extent to which migration-related capital flows can explain the variation in investment rates and current and capital account imbalances in OECD countries. We begin with a general equilibrium model of a small open economy in which migration is exogenous. Migrants must be equipped with capital, and the resulting demands for capital will generate cross-border flows of capital. Next, we move to an empirical exercise in which we allow both capital and labor flows to be endogenous. We test this model using data from a panel of OECD countries. We conclude that migration flows do in fact generate substantial matching capital flows. We calculate that increased migration may have accounted for as much as one-fifth of the increase in the US current account deficit since 1960.