Test scores,educational opportunities,and individual choice

A model combining student preferences for college with university admissions decisions is estimated to provide information on the role of test scores in the determination of post-secondary educational opportunities in the U.S. In contrast to implications of much of the recent criticism of tests and their use, we find that scholastic aptitude test scores are more strongly related to student application and choice of college ‘quality’ than to college admissions decisions. In addition, although there is a substantial correlation between test scores and high school performance, we find that both post-secondary school preferences and ultimate opportunities are related as much to performance in high school as to test scores themselves. Although SAT scores certainly exclude some persons from schools, our findings indicate that they do not represent an overriding constraint on the college opportunities of high school graduates.     

Access to transportation,residential segregation,and economic opportunity

The Housing Choice Voucher Program assists low-income families to afford decent housing and provide them with better economic opportunities. There is growing evidence that public transportation plays an important role in shaping the residential location choices of low-income households. However, transportation has not been a major focus of the research related to housing voucher programs. We develop a general equilibrium model of a city with multiple districts, decentralized employment, multiple commuting modes, and locally financed education. We compare housing vouchers with transportation vouchers with respect to poverty deconcentration, educational quality in each district, unskilled employment in the suburbs, and welfare.     

The relationship between research funding and academic consulting: An empirical investigation in the Spanish context

This paper investigates the relationship between sources of funding for research activity and the engagement of scientists in a specific type of knowledge transfer, that is, academic consulting. We rely on a sample of 2603 individual scientists from five Spanish universities, who have been awarded public funding or have been principal investigators in activities contracted by external agents, over the period 1999–2004. We find that externally contracted research is positively related to the amount of monetary income from consulting contracts, but that international competitive funding has a negative effect. Our results show that this negative effect is positively moderated by the size of contract funding: the effect of international competitive funding becomes positive for moderate and high levels of contract funding. By investigating the relationship between academic consulting and different types of research funding, our paper sheds light on the conditions that favor academic consulting.     

Trust in triads: effects of exit, control, and learning

This paper provides theoretical background for some effects of social networks on trust. We study the implications of a model with rational actors in two settings with three actors. In the first setting, there are two trustees who are involved in transactions with one truster implying that the truster has an exit option. In the second setting, two trusters play with one trustee, which gives the trusters options for voice, i.e., complaining and informing each other about the trustee's behavior. We compare these models with a baseline model in which there is only one truster and one trustee. It turns out that the opportunities for placing and honoring trust do not change for the exit model compared to the baseline model. The opportunities for trust in the voice model differ from the baseline model only if both trusters inform each other at a rate that is high enough. Only if the possibilities for receiving information and transmitting information are large enough for both trusters, trust will increase due to the information exchange possibilities in the voice model.     

(How) Do research and administrative duties affect university professors’ teaching?

We analyse the interaction between university professors’ teaching quality and their research and administrative activities. Our sample is a high-quality individual panel data set from a medium-size public Spanish university that allows us to avoid several types of biases frequently encountered in the literature. Although researchers teach roughly 20% more than nonresearchers, their teaching quality is also 20% higher. Instructors with no research are 5 times more likely than the rest to be among the worst teachers. Over much of the relevant range, we find a nonlinear and positive relationship between research output and teaching quantity on teaching quality. Our conclusions may be useful for decision-makers in universities and governments.     

GLOBALIZATION,GENDER, AND GROWTH

We consider the effect of globalization on fertility, human capital, and growth. We view globalization as creating market opportunities for employment in less developed countries. We construct a specific model of household decision making, drawing on empirical observations in the development economics literature, and show that if the market opportunities produced by globalization are for women, then globalization reduces fertility and increases human capital formation. If the opportunities are for men, then fertility increases and human capital formation falls. We then show that globalization that produces job opportunities for women increases growth and produces a long run steady state with higher per capita consumption than would prevail either without globalization, or with globalization that creates jobs only for men.     

Quality competition,welfare, and regulation

In this paper, we study the supply of quality in imperfectly competitive markets, and explore the role of regulation in markets where firms may use both quality and price to compete for customers. In a model where firms first choose qualities and then prices, we find that quality decisions have strategic effects: firms react to quality disadvantages by price reductions. Because of this strategic effect, firms do not have the correct incentive to set socially efficient quality levels. Price and quality competition results in a socially suboptimal quality level. Efficiency can be restored by lump-sum transfers and price regulatory policies. Simple price regulation may result in lower price and higher quality.We thank Nicholas Economides, Randall Ellis, Thomas McGuire, Michael Riordan, and Monika Schnitzer for discussing various issues in this research with us. We are also grateful to a referee for helpful comments and suggestions. The first author acknowledges support from the Management Science Group, Department of Veterans Affairs at Bedford, Massachusetts. The ideas here do not represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.     

21世纪的中国与老龄化:研究与实践的挑战

在21世纪,中国的不断崛起与人口的快速老龄化问题均备受世人瞩目。通过对原始案例的分析和有关文献的回顾,反思中国老龄化问题的研究意义,提出诸如烟草的使用、研究的空白和社会干预的缺失等重要议题,以展示研究者、从业人员以及决策者所面临的潜在挑战与机遇。从社会医学、行为健康、心理卫生、压力、社会支持网络、社区教育、社会福利以及公共政策等交叉学科视角,对这些问题及其解决措施进行了分析和探讨,为专家提出可能有用的建议,并指导有研究兴趣的学生从事相关领域的研究。     

高校多元教学评价及差距分析模型研究

高校教学是一个包括“教”、“学”及其互动过程的完整工作系统。目前高教研究和高校教学管理的重点是“教”的质量及教学互动质量,时“学”的质量关注甚少。在研究高校教学质量影响因素的基础上,构建了高校多元教学评价指标体系,提出教学质量改进差距分析模型,案例分析表明该模型在高校教学管理实践中具有较强的实际应用价值。     

Price Limits, Information Acquisition, and Bid–ask Spreads: Theory and Evidence

A number of futures markets use price limits which, in effect, preclude trade from occurring at prices outside certain exogenous bounds. Noting that such markets are characterized by heterogeneously informed traders, whereas previous work on price limits assumes symmetrically informed traders, we examine the effects of price limits in a setting where market participants are asymmetrically informed. We find that imposing price limits generally lowers the quality of information acquired in equilibrium, but lowers bid–ask spreads as well. Thus, depending on the relative weights placed by society on liquidity versus price efficiency, there may exist a set of price limits that are most efficient in achieving a trade-off between liquidity and informational efficiency. We perform empirical tests of some implications of the model using cross-sectional data on price limits. We find that price limits are strongly negatively related to both price volatility and trading volume. Though other explanations for our empirical findings cannot be ruled out, these results are not inconsistent with the model's implication that price limits should be tighter for contracts which offer greater profit potential for informed traders.     

印度技术转移的演进过程、成功经验及其启示

印度在科技领域特别是高端科技领域成就显著,与其长期坚持的促进科技与经济融合发展的技术转移政策密不可分。印度技术转移演进过程可分为萌芽、本土化、自由化及转型发展等4个时期。印度政府高度重视技术转移工作,并发挥了主导作用:加强了技术转移工作顶层设计,完善了技术转移法律法规体系,强化了技术转移知识产权管理,形成了全方位的资金投入格局,构建了多层次科技成果转化载体。印度技术转移模式主要有:技术许可模式、创立新公司模式、合作研究模式及咨询顾问模式。我国技术转移在实践过程中存在一些问题,应借鉴印度技术转移发展过程中的成功经验,强化政府技术转移宏观引导,加速技术转移机构能力建设,完善知识产权管理,推动多种技术转移模式协同发展。     

Liquidity, Quality, Production Cost, and Welfare in a Search Model of Money

This paper examines a search model of money with divisible commodities of high and low quality, while keeping the assumptions of indivisible money and unit-inventory constraint. With no direct barter and a higher fixed cost of producing high relative to low quality, an increase in the money stock encourages the production of high-quality output by trading off the larger trading opportunities against the significance of higher fixed cost. As long as the fixed-cost differential between high and low quality is sufficiently small relative to the utility gain from high-quality consumption, the quality improvement outweighs the negative effect of higher money stocks on aggregate production, and hence implies higher welfare.     

Over-the-counter loans,adverse selection,and stigma in the interbank market

We study a model of interbank credit where physical and informational frictions limit the opportunities for intertemporal trade among banks and outside investors. Banks obtain loans in an over-the-counter market (involving search, bilateral matching, and negotiations over the terms of the loan) and hold assets of heterogeneous quality that in turn determine their ability to repay those loans. When asset quality is not observable by outside investors, information about the actions taken by a bank in the loan market may influence prices in the asset market. In particular, under some conditions, borrowing from the central bank can be regarded as a negative signal about the quality of the borrower?s assets and banks may be willing to borrow in the market at rates higher than the one offered by the central bank.     

基于新企业成长的商业模式与创业机会匹配 ——多案例纵向研究

新企业生存和成长与创业机会类型及开发方式密切相关，但对于如何进行创业机会开发以促进企业成长的研究甚少。通过对4家企业跨案例分析，探索商业模式设计与创业机会识别方式匹配如何影响新企业成长，研究发现：创业机会识别、商业模式设计能够通过发挥新企业优势、克服劣势提升创业绩效；商业模式设计与创业机会匹配对创业绩效有显著影响，不同匹配方式对绩效的影响不同；新颖型商业模式与发现型创业机会或创造型创业机会匹配均能产生较好的创业绩效；效率型商业模式与创造型创业机会匹配能产生较好的创业绩效，但其与发现型创业机会匹配对创业绩效的影响不确定。     

关系质量对企业知识创造绩效的作用机理：一个被调节的中介模型

基于嵌入性视角，分别引入知识转移、合作模式作为中介变量和调节变量，深入探究关系质量影响企业知识创造绩效的内在机理。利用277份来自全国多地的制造业及高新技术企业调查问卷，采用多元回归方法进行实证研究。结果表明：经济型和社会型关系质量均正向影响企业知识创造绩效；社会型关系质量通过元素知识和架构知识转移正向影响企业知识创造绩效。在契约治理模式下，经济型关系质量更倾向于通过元素知识转移正向影响企业知识创造绩效；在股权治理模式下，社会型关系质量更倾向于通过架构知识转移正向影响企业知识创造绩效。     

基于认知视角的创业机会发展过程研究

理性创业时代背景下，如何把握创业机会已成为创业者普遍关心的问题。选取34位创业者作为研究样本，运用文本挖掘和多案例匹配分析方法对创业机会发展过程进行分析、编码，探究创业行为背后的认知机制。研究发现，在机会发现或创造阶段，创业者通过反事实思维推动的创业警觉和创业拼凑两种途径形成创意，并经过新旧认知体系的排斥与趋同形成心智模型，以揭示创业机会发现或创造的认知机制；在机会评估阶段，创业者通过对风险—收益感觉与知觉的多轮反复交互，形成第一人称机会信念和第三人称机会评估，由此揭示创业机会评估的认知机制；在机会开发阶段，创业者形成机会开发内外两种机制，外在机制围绕“探索导向—商业模式创新—新企业成长”展开，内在机制围绕换位思考、效果推理等认知因素推动企业创新、资源获取展开。结论对丰富创业认知理论和管理实践具有重要意义。     

INFRASTRUCTURE,PUBLIC EDUCATION AND GROWTH WITH CONGESTION COSTS

This paper studies the implications of education quality for the optimal allocation of public expenditure in a simple endogenous growth model with mandatory schooling and infrastructure spillovers. Education quality is inversely related to the degree of congestion in schools, which is itself measured in two ways: the proportions of teachers and students in the population, and the ratio of government spending on education to teaching capacity. The balanced‐growth path is derived and the transitional dynamics associated with an increase in the degree of congestion are analysed. The growth‐maximizing share of government spending on education is shown to depend negatively on the congestion parameter. Policy implications for the ‘quantity versus quality’ debate in schooling are also discussed.     

Measuring Efficiency in Higher Education: An Empirical Study Using a Bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess technical efficiency in a big public university. Particular attention has been paid to two main activities, teaching and research, and on two large groups, the Science and Technology (ST) sector and the Humanity and Social Science (HSS) sector. The findings, based to data from 2005 to 2009, suggest that the ST sector is more efficient in terms of quality of research than the HSS sector, that instead achieves higher efficiency in teaching activities. The efficiency estimates strongly depend on the output specification, given that the use of several quality proxies, such as three research and two student questionnaire-based teaching alternative indices, reduce performance and its differentials for both research and teaching activities. A bootstrap technique is also used to provide confidence intervals for efficiency scores and to obtain bias-corrected estimates. The Malmquist index is calculated to measure changes in productivity.     

Import prices,income, and inequality

We compare three theoretical explanations for the positive empirical relationship between importer income per capita and traded goods prices. A first explanation is that consumers with higher incomes demand higher quality goods with higher prices. A second explanation is that wealthier people exhibit an increased willingness to pay for necessary goods as more goods enter the consumption set in a hierarchic demand system, and can thus be charged higher markups. A third explanation is that consumers with higher incomes are more finicky regarding their preferred variety in an ideal variety framework and can thus be charged higher markups. We discriminate between these three theories by focusing on the effect of income inequality on trade prices. Based on a large dataset with bilateral HS6 level data on 1260 final goods categories from more than 100 countries between 2000 and 2004, we find a highly significant negative effect of income inequality on unit values. This contradicts both the demand for quality and finickyness theories, while providing support for the increased willingness to pay theory linked to hierarchic demand. These findings on income inequality do not falsify the quality expansion model and the ideal variety model per se. However, the results do argue for place of importance of hierarchic demand.     

中小企业开展ISO9000认证低效的原因及对策

中国不少企业尤其是中小企业在通过ISO9000认证以后,存在着效率低下、改观不大的问题,部分领导的观念错误与低参与度、对质量认证过程的忽视、认证咨询机构选择的失误以及通过认证后的管理松懈等是导致低效的主要原因,因此重视认证过程,慎重选择咨询机构,改进质量体系。