中国省级区域国际旅游竞争力决定因素分析

基于理论分析提出了影响我国省级区域旅游目的地国际旅游竞争力的8个决定因素,即旅游资源、旅游资本、旅游业劳动力、政府作用、企业能力、旅游产业结构、基础设施和区位条件。以我国31个省(区)为样本,利用基于面板数据的多元线性回归分析方法,从实证角度定量研究了上述8个决定因素对省级区域国际旅游竞争力影响的显著性及其相对重要性。回归结果显示:我国各省(区)国际旅游竞争力来源的98.5%能够由8个决定因素解释;除旅游产业结构外,其他决定因素对各省级区域国际旅游竞争力的影响均在0.01的水平上显著。     

突发事件影响下的区域旅游竞争力——以山东省为例

突发事件对区域旅游发展往往会产生较大的影响,但与之相关的研究成果却不多。文章运用主成分分析法,以山东省17市为研究区域,对2003年非典疫情影响下的区域旅游竞争力进行了探讨,总结出影响区域旅游竞争力的因素。并对每个市的区域旅游竞争态势进行了评价分析,指出了各自的优势和劣势。     

"泛珠三角"旅游环境竞争力评价——基于主成分分析与聚类分析法

旅游环境竞争力的研究是旅游竞争力研究的关键部分.本文利用主成分分析与聚类分析方法来实证评价"泛珠三角"区域内9个省份的旅游环境竞争力.并根据实证分析的结果给出了提高旅游环境竞争力的相关对策.     

煤炭行业上市公司资本结构及其影响因素的实证研究

通过借鉴国内外有关专家学者对公司资本结构影响因素的研究成果，利用主成分分析方法，将反映煤炭行业上市公司资本结构影响因素的总资产、总资产增加率等13个指标归纳为四个主成分，并以这四个主成分为解释变量，以资本结构度量指标为被解释变量进行多元线性回归分析，以测度这四个主成分对煤炭行业上市公司资本结构的影响方向和影响程度。     

旅游业人力资本对我国区域旅游经济增长的影响研究

旅游业人力资本是影响区域旅游经济增长的重要因素。文章利用协整检验、格兰杰因果关系检验和面板数据回归分析方法,就全国层面及东部、中部和西部三大区域的旅游人力资本对旅游经济增长的影响进行实证研究。格兰杰因果检验表明,全国层面和西部地区的高等旅游人力资本、中等旅游人力资本与国内和国际旅游经济增长存在显著的格兰杰因果关系,旅游业从业人员与国内旅游经济增长存在显著的格兰杰因果关系,但与国际旅游经济增长的格兰杰因果关系不显著;东部和中部地区的高等旅游人力资本、中等旅游人力资本与旅游业从业人员均与国内和国际旅游经济增长存在显著的格兰杰因果关系。面板数据回归分析表明：在全国层面,高等旅游人力资本对国内旅游经济增长具有显著正向影响;在区域层面,高等旅游人力资本对西部地区的国内旅游经济增长和中部地区的国际旅游经济增长具有显著正向影响,中等旅游人力资本对中部地区的国内和国际旅游业具有显著正向影响,旅游业从业人员对东部和西部地区的国内旅游经济增长具有显著正向影响。基于研究结论,文章提出了制定我国旅游业人力资本政策时在坚持因地制宜、有所侧重原则下不同区域应采取的相关对策。     

城市旅游环境竞争力影响因素实证分析

为了把握城市旅游环境竞争力各影响因素之间的逻辑层次关系以及影响因素的重要程度,以河南省19个地级市为研究对象进行实证,运用SPSS17.0因子法对各影响因素进行定量评价。结果表明,城市旅游环境竞争力可以归纳为5个公共因子,30个评价指标变量,按其对城市旅游环境竞争力影响程度的大小依次是:旅游景观环境竞争力、旅游设施环境竞争力、自然环境竞争力、社会环境竞争力、旅游信息环境竞争力。     

基于WTTC数据库的旅游竞争力测度与分析

利用2004年世界旅行与旅游委员会竞争力指示器所提供的207个国家,包括价格、开放性、技术、基础设施、人文旅游、社会、环境和人力资源8项指标的数据,计算各个国家的综合竞争力指数,进一步分析国际旅游竞争力的基本格局,并对我国在国际旅游竞争格局中的地位、主要优势与劣势进行深入剖析。运用SPSS统计软件中的主成分分析方法,首先对旅游竞争力进行了定量化的研究,研究揭示社会、人力资源和技术指标对旅游竞争力具有最高的贡献率,同时设施和环境指标的贡献率最低,并通过计算得出各国综合旅游竞争力的排名;然后运用聚类与判别分析方法,将数据完整的全球54个国家分成四类,结果显示第一、二类全部是发展中国家,第三、四类包括了所有的发达国家,经过判别分析有98.1%的国家分类是正确的;通过比较研究发现我国旅游发展中的竞争优势体现在价格竞争力,而人文旅游和设施则是目前最主要的劣势。最后对研究中尚存在的不足和今后的改进方向进行了探讨。     

我国30个省市对外开放竞争力评价——基于主成分分析

本文基于竞争力基础理论,以我国30个省市区为研究对象,构建了对外开放竞争力评价指标体系,同时运用主成分分析法(Principal Component Analysis,PCA),通过SPSS17.0软件对各影响因素进行分析,识别出影响各省市对外开放竞争力因素中的主成分,针对30个省市的对外开放竞争力进行排名,并对计算结果进行了分析和总结.结果显示:2010年我国有8个省市对外开放竞争力综合得分为正值即高于全国平均水平,有22省市的对外开放竞争力综合得分为负值即低于全国平均水平;东部沿海9省市具有较强的区域规模竞争力,其对外开放水平远高于其余21个省市;我国对外开放的步伐逐步向中西部城市迈进,中西部对外开放的发展需求逐步增大,外商企业也逐步将投资转向中西部城市.     

旅游竞争优势战略：旅游业发展的新战略观

当前我国旅游业发展战略迫切需要从资源优势战略转变为竞争优势战略。本文应用波特的产业国际竞争力国家钻石模型分析了区域旅游竞争力的影响因素,进而提出了旅游业发展的竞争优势战略及其对于区域旅游开发和旅游市场营销的具体指导意义。     

基于因子分析的陕西省人口迁移影响因素研究

人口迁移的显著性和活跃性日益明显,并已成为重要的社会经济现象。文章利用因子分析方法对影响陕西省人口迁移的因素进行定量研究,确定地区经济与教育因素和城市基础设施与环境因素是影响陕西省人口迁移的主要原因。并在此基础上,利用主成分回归法探寻两个影响因子与人口迁移指标的关系,发现经济教育因素是人口迁移的内在动力,基础设施环境因素是次要因素,并对如何促进人口合理有序迁移流动提出了相关的政策建议。     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Forecasting the price of gold

This article seeks to evaluate the appropriateness of a variety of existing forecasting techniques (17 methods) at providing accurate and statistically significant forecasts for gold price. We report the results from the nine most competitive techniques. Special consideration is given to the ability of these techniques to provide forecasts which outperforms the random walk (RW) as we noticed that certain multivariate models (which included prices of silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, besides gold) were also unable to outperform the RW in this case. Interestingly, the results show that none of the forecasting techniques are able to outperform the RW at horizons of 1 and 9 steps ahead, and on average, the exponential smoothing model is seen providing the best forecasts in terms of the lowest root mean squared error over the 24-month forecasting horizons. Moreover, we find that the univariate models used in this article are able to outperform the Bayesian autoregression and Bayesian vector autoregressive models, with exponential smoothing reporting statistically significant results in comparison with the former models, and classical autoregressive and the vector autoregressive models in most cases.     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

Planned adaptation in risk regulation: An initial survey of US environmental, health, and safety regulation

In principle, we want regulatory programs to be based on current realities, as reflected for example in the best knowledge of relevant experts. That would imply that old rules now on the books should be consistent with today's knowledge base, not just what was known when a rule or standard was originally set. This paper reports on a survey of US programs, examining how often existing rules are actually updated in light of better knowledge, and identifies five programs that attempt to make policy routinely adaptive. These programs exhibit what we term Planned Adaptation: they both revise rules when relevant new knowledge appears, and take steps to produce such improved knowledge. While Planned Adaptation is rare, it is used in several nationally prominent programs, including air pollution, airplane safety, and drug safety. Planned Adaptation is a policy tool that deserves more attention.     

The greenhouse effect: Damages,costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — CO₂ in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the most favorable (although not necessarily likely) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded.The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO₂ eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO₂ emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO₂ saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings.We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.During the academic year 1989–90 Dr. Ayres was at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.During the summer of 1989 Mr. Walter was a member of the Young Scientists' Summer Program at IIASA.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY: TRACING THE FLOW OF BASIC RESEARCH THROUGH MANUFACTURING AND TRADE

This paper describes flows of basic research through the US economy during the late 20th century. In addition, the paper studies the effect of the flows on scientific papers in industries and fields. This article differs from others in its use of measures of science rather than technology. Together, its results present a picture of the structure of basic research flows in a modern, science-intensive economy. Basic research flows are large within petrochemicals and drugs, and within software and communications. Flows of chemistry, physics, and engineering are common throughout all industries – biology and medicine are almost confined to petrochemicals and drugs; and computer science is nearly as restricted to software and communications. In general, basic research flows are more concentrated within scientific fields than within industries. Our findings concerning the production of scientific papers indicate that the effect of a 1% change in academic R&D spillovers significantly exceeds that of industrial spillovers. In addition, within-field effects exceed effects between-fields, while within- and between-industry effects are roughly equal. It follows that scientific fields limit basic research flows more than industries do, perhaps because large firms implicitly span a range of industries.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.