Foreign Trade of Manufactures and Men and Women’s Employment and Earnings in Germany and Japan

Using factor content analysis, this paper provides estimates of the effects of manufacturing trade expansion on men and women's employment in Germany and Japan, with breakdowns by world, OECD, and non-OECD trade. Evidence is found that foreign trade expansion had a more negative effect on women's than men's manufacturing employment in Japan and a roughly equal effect in Germany, with the difference between the countries driven by non-OECD trade. In spite of this, demand shifted away from women's manufacturing employment in Germany after the early-1970s, for both the manufacturing sector as a whole and for manufacturing industries with high female shares of employment, while no such labor demand shifts occurred in Japan. In the face of these differences in labor demand and of very similar increases in female labor supply, male-female hourly wage differences narrowed in Germany and widened in Japan, for both manufacturing and non-agricultural employees. It is concluded that shifts in neither labor supply nor labor demand fit with observed trends of male-female wage differences in Germany and Japan.     

Risk Attitudes of Children and Adults: Choices Over Small and Large Probability Gains and Losses

In this paper we examine how risk attitudes change with age. We present participants from age 5 to 64 with choices between simple gambles and the expected value of the gambles. The gambles are over both gains and losses, and vary in the probability of the non-zero payoff. Surprisingly, we find that many participants are risk seeking when faced with high-probability prospects over gains and risk averse when faced with small-probability prospects. Over losses we find the exact opposite. Children's choices are consistent with the underweighting of low-probability events and the overweighting of high-probability ones. This tendency diminishes with age, and on average adults appear to use the objective probability when evaluating risky prospects.     

中国经济的内外均衡与财税改革

我国经常项目持续的大规模顺差,给国民经济的健康发展带来一系列的不利影响。在前人研究的基础上,通过对各种影响因素进行分类拆解,本文试图从理论和实证角度说明长期的储蓄-消费失衡是造成我国贸易顺差的一个重要原因,而其背后的根本原因是由于企业可支配收入相对于劳动者报酬不断提高带来的收入结构和储蓄结构失衡。我国当前企业未分配收入大幅增长的原因可以归结为企业利润率"虚高"和国企"不分红"问题。只有从体制上解决这个问题,才能使储蓄降低到适当的水平,通过拉动内需消除我国过大的贸易顺差,从根本上解决内外经济比例失衡问题。     

中美国家当代科技发展战略比较与分析

美国作为当今世界上唯一的科技超级大国,研究其科技发展战略对于我们中国的科技发展有其积极重要意义,中国在科技发展方面应走自己的路,应注重于自身的发展,认真处理与美国及其他科技发达国家竞争与合作,将文化繁荣与科技发展相结合,致力于中国公众物质丰富与精神充盈的双重丰收。     

肠易激综合征患者抑郁及焦虑程度与调节性T细胞的关系

目的探讨肠易激综合征患者抑郁及焦虑程度与调节性T细胞的关系。方法以72例肠易激综合征患者及36例同期体检的健康人员为研究对象,依据抑郁自评量表及焦虑自评量表的结果,将研究对象分为三组:36例伴有抑郁焦虑的肠易激综合征患者为观察组,36例不伴有抑郁焦虑的肠易激综合征患者为对照1组,36例健康体检者为对照2组;对所有研究对象的CD+4、CD+8、CD+4/CD+8等调节性T细胞进行检测并进行组间比较。结果观察组研究对象的抑郁及焦虑评分均高于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05);而对照组间的抑郁及焦虑评分差异有统计学意义(P>0.05);观察组研究对象的CD+4水平和CD+4/CD+8值均低于两组对照组,而CD+8水平高于两组对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05);对照组1组的CD+4水平和CD+4/CD+8值均低于对照2组,而CD+8水平高于对照2组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。结论肠易激综合征患者抑郁及焦虑程度与调节性T细胞具有一定的相关性,可证实精神心理状态对肠易激综合征的发病及治疗具有重要意义。     

技术变迁与城市化:理论与经验研究

本文从技术变迁的视角来研究城市化,从理论和经验两个方面分析技术变迁对城市化的作用机制,探索在技术变迁的推动下形成的城市化路径。首先从城市化的一般机理入手,不断深入研究城市跟农村技术进步以及二者之间的技术转移对城市化的作用机制。最后运用我国的经验数据做结构向量自回归模型,验证城乡技术变化与城市化之间的关系,并做脉冲响应实验。同时也为我国新农村建设战略提供理论支持。我国在城市化过程中存在着很多问题,要解决这些问题必须依靠新农村建设,提高农村的技术水平。     

Decision style and its impact on managers and management

Decision styles, defined by the primary and secondary considerations in choice making and the implementation tactics preferred by managers, are used to explain the ways in which managers with a given style take action. Examples are used to illustrate the unique approaches taken by managers with each style in their decisions concerning leadership, team building, strategic management, control, and related issues that managers grapple with to fashion a desired future. The basis for shifts in style and the potential for conflict or collaboration between individuals with particular styles is discussed.     

教育与被解雇的关系

本文根据人力资本理论提出关于教育与被解雇关系的两个命题,一是教育与被解雇成负相关,二是高中学历者的被解雇概率高于中职学历者,进而利用CHIP-2002数据进行了统计计量分析,结果表明,无论是对于全体样本还是不同性别的样本,教育与被解雇之间都是负相关关系,个人增加教育投资是降低失业风险的一种有效途径,人们不应因当前大学生就业难问题而放弃大学教育机会。     

Costs and utilization of hemophilia A and B patients with and without inhibitors

Objective:

To evaluate the health system costs among patients with hemophilia A and B with and without inhibitors over 5 years.

Methods:

This was a retrospective, observational study utilizing medical and pharmacy electronic medical records and administrative encounters/claims data tracking US patients between 2006–2011. Patients with diagnosis codes for hemophilia A and B were identified. Patients with inhibitors were characterized by utilization of bypassing agents activated prothrombin complex concentrate or factor VIIa on two or more distinct dates. Severity was classified as mild, moderate, or severe based on laboratory tests of clotting factor.

Results:

There were 160 hemophilia A patients and 54 hemophilia B patients identified. From this group, seven were designated as patients with inhibitors (five with hemophilia A and two with hemophilia B). Hemophilia A patients without inhibitors reported 65 (41.9%) as being severe, 19 (12.3%) as moderate, and 71 (45.8%) as mild. Hemophilia B patients without inhibitors reported nine (17.3%) had severe, 13 (25.0%) had moderate, and 30 (57.7%) had mild hemophilia. All patients with inhibitors had been hospitalized in the previous 5 years compared to 64 (41.3%) with hemophilia A without inhibitors and 22 (42.3%) with hemophilia B without inhibitors. The median aggregate cost per year (including factor and health resource use) was $325,780 for patients with inhibitors compared to $98,334 for hemophilia A patients without inhibitors and $23,265 for hemophilia B patients without inhibitors.

Conclusions:

The results suggest that, while the frequency of inhibitors within the hemophilia cohort was low, there was a higher frequency of hospitalizations, and the associated median aggregate costs per year were 3-fold higher than those patients without inhibitors. In contrast, hemophilia B patients experience less severe disease and account for lower aggregate yearly costs compared to either patients with hemophilia A or patients with inhibitors.     

Food and beverage television advertising exposure and youth consumption,body mass index and adiposity outcomes

This study examines the relationships between exposure to food and beverage product television advertisements and consumption and obesity outcomes among youth. Individual‐level data on fast food and soft drink consumption and body mass index (BMI) for young adolescents from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, kindergarten cohort, (1998–1999) and adiposity measures for children from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2003–2004) were combined with designated market area (DMA) Nielsen media advertising ratings data. To account for unobserved individual‐level and DMA‐level heterogeneity, various fixed‐ and random‐effects models were estimated. The results showed that exposure to soft drink and sugar‐sweetened beverage (SSB) advertisements is economically and statistically significantly associated with higher frequency of soft drink consumption among youth even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, with elasticity estimates ranging from 0.4 to 0.5. The association between fast food advertising exposure and fast food consumption disappeared once we controlled for unobservables. Exposure to cereal advertising was significantly associated with young adolescents' BMI percentile ranking, but exposures to fast food and soft drink advertisements were not. The results on adiposity outcomes revealed that children's exposure to cereal advertising was associated with both percent body fatness and percent trunk fatness; fast food advertising was significantly associated with percent trunk fatness and marginally significantly associated with percent body fatness; and exposure to SSB advertising was marginally significantly associated with percent body and trunk fatness. The study results suggest that continued monitoring of advertising is important and policy debates regarding the regulation of youth‐directed marketing are warranted.     

Protection and Liberalisation in Australia and Abroad

This article reviews changes in Australian protection policy between 1967 and 1995, particularly the political economy aspects. The story is quite complex, and until 1974 was unusual by international standards, with a sophisticated Australian tariff debate and the remarkable transparency role of the Industry Assistance Commission (IAC), and its predecessor, the Tariff Board. The role of Alf Rattigan, Chairman of the Tariff Board and later the IAC, is stressed. Liberalisation since 1988 has been drastic, so that most tariffs will be brought down to 5 per cent by the year 2000. All quotas were ended by 1993. This can be contrasted with very high protection levels in 1967 and quite high levels even in 1987. Substantial unilateral trade liberalisation normally requires exchange rate depreciation, and the floating of the Australian dollar made the tariff reductions possible. The motives for Australian trade liberalisation in the 1980s are compared with those for similar liberalisations in many developing countries.     

Institutions and concentration

In a new dataset of 1.3 million firms from over 100 countries, I establish a number of regularities in cross-country differences in economic concentration. Concentration of sales and employment is substantially higher in smaller countries and in less-developed countries; these two factors alone explain roughly half the cross-country variation in concentration. Nevertheless, a number of institutional factors offer additional explanatory power for concentration. Concentration is higher in countries with higher entry costs for new firms, in countries with weaker antitrust policy, in countries with less financial development, in countries with weaker rule of law, and in countries with more burdensome regulation. Weak institutions are associated with higher concentration especially in industries that do not have naturally high levels of concentration. In addition, the relationships between institutions and concentration are more pronounced in nontradable and investment-intensive industries, suggesting that natural barriers to competition facilitate the monopolization of sectors especially when institutions are weak.     

Globalization and taxation: Theory and evidence

We construct a theoretical model to capture the compensation and efficiency effects of globalization in a set up where the redistributive tax rate is chosen by the median voter. The model predicts that the two alternative modes of globalization- trade liberalization and financial openness- could potentially have different effects on taxation. We then provide some empirical evidence on the relationship between taxation and the alternative modes of globalization using a large cross-country panel data set. On average, globalization is associated with lower taxation but there is some evidence that in countries with high capital-labor ratio, globalization is associated with increased taxation. We make a distinction between de jure and de facto measures of globalization and find a strong negative relationship between taxation and de jure measures of globalization. The results for de facto measures of globalization are mixed.     

Judicial Branch, Checks and Balances and Political Accountability

This paper attempts to combine the political economics models on separation of powers between the legislature and the executive with public choice theories on the behavior of the judicial branch. We obtain a model of political accountability and checks and balances with up to three government branches: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. We conclude that an independent judiciary improves the political accountability of democratic systems relative to the political economics models with two government branches. An accommodating judiciary, however, changes the distribution of political rents without improving accountability.     

Corporate governance and research and development: Evidence from Japan

This paper investigates the effects of the ownership structure on the R&D intensity. Using the Japanese machine-manufacturing firm data from 1987 till 1998, we first found that the effects of R&D on stock market valuation and TFP growth were significantly positive in the latter half of the 1990s. Next, analyzing the determinants of the R&D intensity in 1998, we found that the shareholding ratios of large shareholders and the leverage ratios were positively correlated with R&D intensity, while the proportion of bank loans to total debt was negatively correlated with it. These results are consistent with the hypotheses that stress the disciplinary roles of large shareholders and debt. It is also consistent with a bank's holdup hypothesis. Finally, comparing the results of 1998 with those of 1989, we found that the positive roles of keiretsu affiliation and cross-shareholdings disappeared during the last decade.     

Sen and Commons on Markets and Freedom

Amartya Sen's enlarged conception of freedom has augmented the scope of economic analysis but it also has had the surprising effect of being more supportive of the free market than conventional welfare economics. It is argued here that a comparison of Sen's position with that of the American institutionalist, J R Commons, highlights some problems with Sen's approach and points to possible ways in which they might be addressed.     

Catch-up and fall-back through innovation and imitation

Will fast growing emerging economies sustain rapid growth rates until they “catch-up” to the technology frontier? Are there incentives for some developed countries to free-ride off of innovators and optimally “fall-back” relative to the frontier? This paper models agents growing as a result of investments in innovation and imitation. Imitation facilitates technology diffusion, with the productivity of imitation modeled by a catch-up function that increases with distance to the frontier. The resulting equilibrium is an endogenous segmentation between innovators and imitators, where imitating agents optimally choose to “catch-up” or “fall-back” to a productivity ratio below the frontier.     

Trade and industrial structure with large firms and heterogeneity

We develop a model of trade and firm heterogeneity in an oligopolistic setting. This setting generates key differences in terms of modelling setup, modelling predictions and welfare implications with respect to the existing literature on trade and firm heterogeneity. In terms of modelling setup our approach allows us to explore interaction between potentially large heterogeneous firms, in contrast to recent trade literature with heterogeneity and atomistic firms. As a result variables like market price and total sales vary endogenously as different firms enter the market. We offer a solution for the integer problem inherent in small group models, based on stochastic dominance. The model generates testable predictions deviating from the benchmark firm heterogeneity model of Melitz (2003) in terms of the effect of trade liberalisation on markups, market shares, the market price. We also derive predictions on the effect of distance and market size on the probability of zero trade flows and export prices. Our model features the possibility that welfare declines as a result of trade liberalisation. The result in Brander and Krugman (1983), the benchmark model for trade under oligopoly, that welfare unambiguously rises with free entry and might decline without free entry due to increased cross-hauling is reversed. In a setting with heterogeneous instead of homogeneous firms, welfare might decline with free entry. A negative welfare effect without free entry can be ruled out if the firm size distribution is sufficiently dispersed.     

Teenage pregnancies and births in Germany: patterns and developments

We study the development of teenage fertility in East and West Germany using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel and from the German Mikrozensus. Following the international literature we derive hypotheses on the patterns of teenage fertility and test whether they are relevant to the German case. We find that teenage fertility is associated with teenage age and education, with the income of the teenager’s family, with migration status, residence in East Germany and aggregate unemployment. Our evidence supports counter-cyclical teenage fertility.     

Fertility and economic development: theoretical considerations and cross-country evidence

The paper presents a theoretical background for the analysis of the relationship between fertility and a number of socioeconomic factors associated with the process of economic development and analyses empirically this relationship within a cross-country framework. Fertility is found to be negatively related with female education, urbanization and family planning and positively related with the levels of infant mortality and economic development, whereas no significant relationship between fertility and female labour force participation is established. Sensitivity analysis is performed and the policy implications of the empirical findings are briefly discussed.