Poverty status and expenditure patterns: comparison between elderly and non-elderly households

The purpose of this study was to find out if significant differences exist in patterns of expenditures between elderly and non-elderly consumers, taking poverty status into account. Cluster analysis was used to identify expenditure patterns. Four different expenditure patterns were found. Elderly middle-income and affluent households were more likely to belong to service-using cluster than non-elderly poor households. Nonelderly households were more likely to belong to shelter-dominated cluster than elderly households. Poor households were more likely to belong to homebound cluster, while non-poor households were more likely to belong to car-centred cluster.     

分权与增长：中国的故事

过去十多年来，为了解释中国的经济转型与增长并更好地理解转型国家的增长差异，由Charles Tiebout发展起来的早期的分权理论被经济学家发扬光大了。新一代的财政分权或财政联邦主义的理论集结了经济学和政治学的元素，不再局限于公共财政的话题，而是将视野转向了地方官员在维护市场、促进竞争与推动经济增长中的激励和行为。本文以中国的中央一地方关系的体制演进，尤其是1978年之后的财政分权的重要经验为依托，回顾和讨论了这个第二代财政分权理论的发展脉络与经验研究的成果，从一个角度讲述了转型与增长的中国故事。     

The Evolution of Security Designs

We consider a competitive and perfect financial market in which agents have heterogeneous cash flow valuations. Instead of assuming that agents are endowed with rational expectations, we model their behavior as the product of adaptive learning. Our results demonstrate that adaptive learning affects security design profoundly, with securities mispriced even in the long run and optimal designs trading off underpricing against intrinsic value maximization. The evolutionary dominant security design calls for issuing securities that engender large losses with a small but positive probability, but that otherwise produce stable payoffs, almost the exact opposite of the pure state claims that are optimal in the rational expectations framework.     

How to Discount Cashflows with Time-Varying Expected Returns

While many studies document that the market risk premium is predictable and that betas are not constant, the dividend discount model ignores time‐varying risk premiums and betas. We develop a model to consistently value cashflows with changing risk‐free rates, predictable risk premiums, and conditional betas in the context of a conditional CAPM. Practical valuation is accomplished with an analytic term structure of discount rates, with different discount rates applied to expected cashflows at different horizons. Using constant discount rates can produce large misvaluations, which, in portfolio data, are mostly driven at short horizons by market risk premiums and at long horizons by time variation in risk‐free rates and factor loadings.     

Tax Rate Harmonization,Renegotiation, and Asymmetric Tax Competition for Profits with Repeated Interaction

This paper analyzes a model of corporate tax competition with repeated interaction and with strategic use of profit shifting within multinationals. We show that international tax coordination is more likely to prevail if the degree of asymmetry in terms of productivity differences between countries is smaller, or if concealment costs of profit shifting are larger when the tax authorities adopt grim‐trigger strategies. Allowing for renegotiation in the tax harmonization process requires more patient tax authorities to implement tax harmonization as a weakly renegotiation‐proof equilibrium. In this case, we find somewhat paradoxical situations where higher costs of profit shifting make tax harmonization less sustainable.     

你要好好睡

对于习惯以工作忙为借口而牺牲睡眠时间的职场人，尤其是第二天还要开车上班的你，熬夜不仅会给身体带来潜在的危险，还有可能正在悄悄侵蚀你的心理和精神健康，增加你患上抑郁症的可能。     

Consumer Self‐Confidence in Searching for Information

Consumer behavior is often driven by the extent to which consumers feel confident regarding their decisions, which frequently hinge, especially in high‐stakes situations, on their information search. This article examines a multidimensional self‐confidence concept to explore how consumer self‐confidence influences information search. Findings of a mail survey document that high‐confidence consumers engage in more intensive search activities and that demographic patterns shape consumer self‐confidence scores. The findings empirically support a multidimensional measurement of self‐confidence to predict search behavior and suggest avenues to enhance the self‐confidence needed to produce positive marketplace experiences.     

Are All Ratings Created Equal? The Impact of Issuer Size on the Pricing of Mortgage‐Backed Securities

Initial yields on both AAA‐rated and non‐AAA rated mortgage‐backed security (MBS) tranches sold by large issuers are higher than yields on similar tranches sold by small issuers during the market boom years of 2004 to 2006. Moreover, the prices of MBS sold by large issuers drop more than those sold by small issuers, and the differences are concentrated among tranches issued during 2004 to 2006. These results suggest that investors price the risk that large issuers received more inflated ratings than small issuers, especially during boom periods.     

FEN(FAR EAST NETWORK)大友良英+颜峻+袁志伟+柳汉古

前言音景SOUNDSCAPE 2008年8月,在新加坡艺术家蒋才雄(Cheo Chaihiang)写给中国艺术家蒋志的书信中,他并不偶然的提到他的另位朋友Lee Tong Soon,一名京剧专家的一篇论文《音乐,社会和亚洲音景》(Music,Society and The Asian Soundscape)中的观点"音乐如何     

大学生创新训练项目实施与社会支持体系的构建

大学生创新训练项目的开展对激发大学生自主学习热情,发现、发挥、发展大学生的优势潜能和个性特点方面有着不可替代的作用.民族地区大学生创新训练项目的实施存在社会支持力不足的问题.本文认为大学生创新训练项目需要构建完整的社会支持体系,整合各类社会资源,以此提高项目实施效率和效果,增强大学生的创新意识和创新能力,推动人才培养模式改革,培养行业需要的创新型人才.