中国经济过热的趋势与风险分析

中国的经济一段时期以来表现非常强劲,国内消费正以每年9％的速度蓬勃稳步行进,受政府引导的基础设施投资的推动,固定资产投资比例很高,外国直接投资仍有相当规模,而非典的影响很小。面对对中国一片看好的积极观点,本文作者以中国国家统计局公布的数据,从中国的总体贸易情况及其银行贷款情况进行剖析,结合中国改革开放经济发展的历史,分析了中国目前正面临周期性的经济过热风险。中国经济的主要趋势有:中国的贸易顺差与前几年相比在迅速缩小,顺差主要是对美国,而对亚洲其他国家,中国皆为贸易逆差;在贸易顺差急剧下降的同时,外汇储备却暴涨,显示了中国资本项目的监管和控制系统存在着漏洞;此外,银行贷款剧增、无效投资呈上升迹象等等。面对这些问题,作者认为,中央管理当局很可能将开始控制银行借贷,从而导致经济适度放缓,同时指出,银行系统以及监管体系的改革已迫在眉睫。     

Generational accounting as a tool for modelling social expenditure in Europe

Exerting an increasing pressure for reform, the demographic ageing process currently under way in Europe will be a main determinant of the development of social expenditure. This article gives an introduction to the method of generational accounting, an instrument designed to capture the effects of demographic change on future public budgets. The method is illustrated by generational accounts for France and a cross-country comparison of implicit public liabilities in Europe. Weighing the method’s advantages and shortcomings against each other, the article discusses the role that generational accounting can and should play in modelling the future of social expenditure in Europe.     

Maternal Depression and the Production of Infant Health

Depression is most prevalent among women of childbearing age and among low-income women, and the medical literature shows it to have adverse effects on infant health. Yet maternal depression has been overlooked in economic studies of infant health production. This research incorporates maternal depressive symptoms into a standard infant health production model and estimates both structural and reduced-form birth weight equations using samples of non-Hispanic white and black women from the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey. A byproduct of this research is an empirical investigation into factors associated with maternal depressive symptoms. All results show that depressive symptoms have a negative effect on birth weight and that they may operate through several channels such as smoking and prenatal care.     

How Should An Accumulative Toxic Substance be Banned?

The harmful effects on human health or ecosystems of many toxic substances depend on their cumulative concentration in the carrying medium (water, soil, or air), not just on the annual deposition rates of the substances. Accumulative toxic substances pose challenges to regulatory policy that are not faced when controlling pollutants whose damaging effects are though to depend primarily on annual emission flows. An increasingly common response is to phase out offending uses or production of the substance. In this paper we take as given the goal of phasing out an accumulative pollutant and examine different ways this could be done using a simple, partial-equilibrium dynamic model. We focus on phaseout measures in which the cumulative production and release of the offending substance over the transition period is fixed. Once this cumulative volume is reached, users must convert to a known but higher-cost substitute that is assumed to be benign. The key to the analysis is the observation that the quota on cumulative production makes production of the toxic substance during the transition analogous to extraction of an exhaustible resource with a higher-cost, nonexhaustible ‘backstop’ technology. Using this framework, we first describe the cost-effective outcome when the ‘sunset’ date is chosen to maximize product market surplus subject to the cumulative production constraint. This outcome is compared to one in which the regulator fixes the sunset date, and one in which the regulator limits annual production as well as cumulative production out of concern for acute exposure effects. Finally, we discuss the kinds of market-based policy instruments that would be appropriate for supporting a cost-effective outcome.     

Corporate social monitoring in South Africa: A decade of achievement,an uncertain future

Corporate social monitoring has reached its most systematic form and has had the most practical impact with regard to companies doing business in South Africa. The Sullivan Principles have guided the monitoring system for U.S. companies, of which about 166 remain in South Africa and about 140 have withdrawn. However, corporate social monitoring in South Africa is currently subject to certain tensions. The Rev. Sullivan has called for the withdrawal of U.S. companies, and has himself withdrawn from the monitoring effort.This paper discusses the economic climate for U.S. business in South Africa both historically and currently, the conflicting pressures experienced by U.S. companies remaining there, and the effectiveness of strategies aimed to create pressure for companies to withdraw, including divestment resolutions, purchasing restrictions, and sanctions.Current attempts to retain a form of corporate social monitoring are described. The potential politicization of the system is discussed, with particular attention paid to the formation of a new structure which could come to provide the moral leadership formerly provided by the Rev. Sullivan. However, corporate social monitoring could become confused with an anti-sanctions lobbying effort on the part of corporations, and would lose credibility if this were to occur.Karen Paul is an Associate Professor of Management at Rochester Institute of Technology. The research for her article was completed while she was 1987–88 Peace Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and was also supported by a Fulbright Senior Research Grant.     

Procedural Fairness, Return to Work, and the Decision to Dispute in Workers' Compensation

This study investigates how injured workers evaluate the fairness of the workers' compensation claims process and how that evaluation affects the decision to formally dispute their claim. Survey and administrative data are used to test a model where individuals are hypothesized to base their overall impression of the fairness of the process based on dimensions of procedural justice criteria. They are then hypothesized to decide whether to formally dispute the claim based on a combination of procedural fairness concerns and whether or not they returned to work with the same employer. The implications of the results for structuring the workers' compensation claims process are then discussed.     

Corporate giving in the USA: a model for meeting Russia's expanding social needs?

In the USA, corporations make substantial contributions to public‐serving organisations with no expectation of financial gain. This paper explores the factors that have encouraged corporate giving in the USA and compares them to circumstances in the emerging capitalist economy of Russia. The outlook for the emergence of a corporate giving model in Russia similar to that of the USA is poor, but improving. To make it work, organisational recipients of corporate generosity need to trust their benefactors, and corporations need to believe that their contributions of surplus profits make good business sense. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Small sample behaviour of some nonparametric multi-sample location tests in the presence of dispersion differences

This paper describes the small and moderate sample behaviour of three studentized non-parametric statistics by Sen and a modified Wilcoxon statistic by Potthoff for testing the equality of location parameters in the presence of dispersion differences. Based on the agreement between the asymptotic and small sample distributions of the statistics as well as a comparison of their power under heteroscedasticity, the studentized Wilcoxon and the studentized Brown and Mood tests arc preferred in the two-sample and c-sample situations, respectively.