排污权交易与生态城市建设

生态城市是我国城市发展的主流趋势,而有效控制环境污染则是生态城市建设过程中的重要任务。实施排污权交易将促进生态城市环境目标的顺利实现,使环境污染得到有效控制,并充分调动企业环保行为的自觉性,推动产业结构优化,利于新兴支柱产业的兴起,使区域经济与环境协调发展。     

CHINA'S GDP LEVEL AND GROWTH PERFORMANCE: ALTERNATIVE ESTIMATES AND THE IMPLICATIONS

This study critically evaluates alternative estimates of China's GDP level and growth, as well a s its PPP GDP conversions, and, based on this evaluation, it draws important implications for the understanding of China's economic performance in both historical and international perspectives. It finds that although almost all empirical results have supported the downward-bias hypothesis for China's GDP level and the upward-bias hypothesis for China's GDP growth, they vary greatly, and that PPP estimates for China are also diversified. These estimates, if accepted, may substantially alter the existing views on the Chinese economy, particularly, its size, TFP level and catch-up performance. The discussion focuses on the theories, methodologies and data used in these studies, and particularly, the possible biases in their results thereby. It argues, however, that despite differences in estimates, they could still provide sensible boundaries for researchers to gauge the real values and hence assess China's real living standard and growth performance.     

DISPLAYING UNCERTAIN INFORMATION ABOUT PROBABILITY: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

Different from previous experiments that used three representations of uncertain information for probabilities: best estimate, interval and sets of probabilities, we use visual display to represent different levels of uncertainty through varying amount of probabilistic information provided to subjects. Results confirm that the individuals’ willingness to pay is higher when a larger amount of information is available. Further, individuals are found uncertainty averse for high probability of gain and uncertainty seekers for low probability of gain. Similarities in results across different representations of uncertainty indicate that the representation tested here is a viable method for communicating uncertainty to decision makers.     

LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY RISK EXPOSURE: MARKET EVIDENCE AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Life insurance company (LIC) risk exposure increased during the 1980s while capital ratios declined. State guarantee funds that exist to handle policyholder's losses in the event of LIC failure can create incentives for excessive risk taking, just as the federal deposit insurance system did for savings and loan associations. This paper examines the relationship between stock market risk and LIC risk exposure. A sample of 44 LICs revealed that stock market risk is positively related to financial leverage as well as to differences in asset mix. This finding confirms that market data can help identify LICs with greater risk exposure .     

DEFINED CONTRIBUTION PLANS, DEFINED BENEFIT PLANS, AND THE ACCUMULATION OF RETIREMENT WEALTH

The private pension structure in the United States, once dominated by defined benefit (DB) plans, is currently divided between defined contribution (DC) and DB plans. Wealth accumulation in DC plans depends on a participant's contribution behavior and on financial market returns, while accumulation in DB plans is sensitive to a participant's labor market experience and to plan parameters. This paper simulates the distribution of retirement wealth under representative DB and DC plans. It uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore how asset returns, earnings histories, and retirement plan characteristics contribute to the variation in retirement wealth outcomes. We simulate DC plan accumulation by randomly assigning individuals a share of wages that they and their employer contribute to the plan. We consider several possible asset allocation strategies, with asset returns drawn from the historical return distribution. Our DB plan simulations draw earnings histories from the HRS, and randomly assign each individual a pension plan drawn from a sample of large private and public defined benefit plans. The simulations yield distributions of both DC and DB wealth at retirement. Average retirement wealth accruals under current DC plans exceed average accruals under private sector DB plans, although DC plans are also more likely to generate very low retirement wealth outcomes. The comparison of current DC plans with more generous public sector DB plans is less definitive, because public sector DB plans are more generous on average than their private sector DB counterparts.     

ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF THE AVERAGE DURATION OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Four alternative measures of the average duration of unemployment are examined with the intention of illustrating: (1) the biases inherent in the average incomplete duration of unemployment, a statistic that is often the only one reported by many statistical agencies; and (2) the robustness of the average complete duration of unemployment to a host of assumptions underlying its derivation by non-parametric methods. Canadian data are employed, but the results offer a guide to the construction of the average complete duration of unemployment that may have broader applications.     

DISTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC RESOURCES: IMPLICATIONS OF INCLUDING HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION

The value of household production is estimated to 40–50 percent of GNP in most western countries, and because the distribution of this income-in-kind is different from ordinary income distribution, the concept of economic well-being may include household production. The monetary value of household production is evaluated by a market alternative principle and an opportunity-cost principle. In the last case a reservation wage is estimated, and integrated in a modified opportunity principle, which means that household work of non-working women is evaluated by the reservation wage, and household work of working women and men by their wage-rate. The conclusions are among others, that the inclusion of household production reduces the inequality, and that the women's contributions—money income and household production—functions as income equalizers.     

THE ECONOMICS OF ALTERNATIVE FUEL USE: SUBSTITUTING METHANOL FOR GASOLINE

Alternative fuel advocates recommend substituting methanol for gasoline since methanol cars potentially pollute less. However, because the substitution is costly and the reduction of ozone precursor emissions is relatively small, using methanol raises questions about cost effectiveness.
This study demonstrates that the air quality benefits would be very expensive: The cost effectiveness usually would exceed tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per ton of reduced volatile organic compound emissions. Only if all the cost and emissions assumptions lined up favorably would methanol substitution be desirable. Even then, it would be attractive only if the energy-adjusted price difference between gasoline and methanol were just a few cents a gallon.     

ON THE EQUIVALENCE OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF THE ELASTICITY OF SUBSTITUTION

This paper provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the equivalence of three alternative measures of the elasticity of factor substitution: the Allen-Uzawa partial elasticity, the shadow elasticity and the general two-factor two-price elasticity.     

DETERMINANTS OF BANK ACQUISITION PREMIUMS: ISSUES AND EVIDENCE

The recent interstate bank merger phenomenon has received little attention in the literature. Specifically, existing studies fail to explain sufficiently the variation of premiums paid and fail to investigate adequately the bank merger wave in terms of its interstate banking context.
This study employs models with substantial overall explanatory levels. The interstate banking context proves to be very significant. First, the study considers and finds significant the effective date of a state's interstate statute in relation to a deal's announcement date. This contrasts sharply with other studies. Second, the study uses and also finds significant a binary variable distinguishing intrastate deals from interstate deals. The premiums paid for interstate market entry, on average, exceeded those paid for intrastate transactions. Third, including regional binary variables reveals a pattern of variation in pricing throughout the country. The Southeast, the study's base of comparison, exhibited the highest premium level.
Other significant determinants of premiums paid include profitability as measured by returns on equity, growth proxied by state deposit growth and future expected population growth, and charge-offs to total loans as an indicator of loan quality.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF LATENESS: EVIDENCE FROM BRITISH WORKERS

Using a sample of male and female workers from the 1992 Employment in Britain survey, we estimate a generalised grouped zero‐inflated Poisson regression model of employees' self‐reported lateness. Lateness is higher for males, private sector workers and in service industries. Reflecting theoretical predictions from both psychology and economics, we model lateness as a function of incentives, the monitoring of, and sanctions for, lateness within the workplace, job satisfaction and attitudes to work. Various aspects of workplace incentive and disciplinary policies turn out to affect lateness; however, controlling for these, an important role for job satisfaction remains.     

IMPLICATIONS OF LIBERALISED EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKETS

This paper reviews the alternative labour market scenarios open to European policymakers in the current movement towards enhanced economic and political integration. To clarify the various issues, the paper dichotomises the policy alternatives into two camps: "euro-liberalists" and "euro-regulators." The paper concludes that the latter offers the best path towards convergence, with the proviso that the subject of regulation is a Pan-European system of labour market objectives rather than institutions.     

IMPLICATIONS OF AGRICULTURAL ACCESSION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION: THE CASE OF SLOVENIA

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

COSTLY EVIDENCE AND SYSTEMS OF FACT-FINDING

This paper compares the relative merits of adversarial and inquisitorial systems of civil procedure in the presence of evidence suppression. Each party has the incentive to suppress evidence that may damage her case, and to reveal any evidence that strengthens her case. I model the decision of a litigant to suppress evidence. The court conditions its action (transfers between the parties) upon the evidence which is revealed. Enforcement costs, which are the cost of suppression and the cost of requesting evidence, are a loss to the relationship and form the basis for my evaluation of the relative merits of each system. I find that neither system always outperforms the other. The strength of the inquisitorial system is that it allows for randomization over evidence requests, which leads to lower expected enforcement cost. Litigants cannot commit to randomize as they are motivated by the expected award in litigation. The strength of the adversarial system is that it sometimes allows litigants to utilize their information about the level of suppression.