青海湖流域生态系统服务功能与价值评估

在中国生态系统服务价值基准单价的基础上,通过生物量等因子的订正,构建了青海湖流域的生态服务功能单价表,并在此基础上对青海湖流域的生态服务价值进行了评价。结果显示:青海湖流域2007年的生态系统服务功能总价值为340.88×108元。生态服务价值从大到小为:水体>草地>湿地>灌丛>农田>荒漠,其中,废物处理功能贡献最大,原材料生产功能贡献最小。研究对青海湖流域生态环境安全和区域可持续发展具有重要的理论指导和现实意义。     

资源型城市金融锁定与反锁定研究——以铜陵市为例

文章以资源型城市铜陵市为例,运用实证分析方法,对铜陵市十余个行业资金配置效率进行排序,并通过与EVA(经济增加值)回报率排序进行比较分析,来探讨资源型城市的金融锁定与反锁定安排。认为在资源型城市中,金融服务较为集中于以资源为主导的行业,产业结构制约了金融资源配置的优化,欠佳的信贷结构又反过来加深了产业结构的锁定。其次银行业金融机构要想在资源型经济中获得可持续发展,就不能固守单一追求效率原则。一方面通过信贷结构的调整,推动产业的转型和优化升级,延伸产业链,提升产品附加值;另一方面通过实施金融资源重置,谋划新兴工业化经济发展战略,打破传统的过度依赖于少数几个产业的瓶颈。     

中国农村居民消费区域差异实证分析

在理论界对农村消费区域研究的基础上,文章对中国农村居民收入和消费水平基本面进行分析,建立指标体系,设计出9个指标对农村居民消费区域进行分类,目的是为了研究并说明不同消费区域之间农村居民消费的实际差异程度,所使用的计量分析方法是主成分分析法。对分类结果进行深入分析,为寻找到区域间差异产生的原因提供分析研究的平台,为研究农村区域竞争力省际比较提供了定量支持,对中央和地方政府政策制定与实施效果评估提供参考。     

中国非正规经济(下)

三、非正规经济与社会流动 李明欢(厦门大学社会学系):劳动力市场跨国化和跨国的非正规经济 我要谈的题目是关于劳动力市场跨国化和跨国的非正规经济.从字面上看,这似乎是一个和本次会议主题有一定距离的话题,因为我讲的是跨国的非正规经济,而我们这次会议的主题是中国的非正规经济.那么,两者是否有联系呢?我想到一件事,大概是2001年吧,我到加拿大UBC,即位于温哥华的不列颠哥伦比亚大学参加一个学术研讨会.会上,一位加拿大教授在谈到跨国技术移民问题时,非常激动地挥着拳头大声说道:是千百万中国农民养育了比尔·盖茨!当时正是比尔·盖茨的微软事业如日中天之时,此言一出,全场一片唏嘘声,我作为在场唯一来自中国大陆的学者,感到强烈的震撼.     

Testing for Regime Changes in Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis

This paper examines whether the efficiency market hypothesis for the Greek sovereign debt holds. As in Blanco et al. (2005) we test the theoretical equivalence of credit default swap (CDS) and spreads that dictates a CI relationship between the two. The main innovation of the present analysis is the use of a threshold vector error-correction (TVECM) model, thus allowing thresholds within the sample covering the period 1990 to 2010. Moreover, by employing this methodology we are able to evaluate the degree and dynamics of transaction costs resulting from various events due to external market imperfections but also domestic factors. The main hypothesis we test is to what extent spreads and CDS are indeed integrated that may result in an efficient and integrated segniorage capital market. Our findings support the gradual integration hypothesis. We find that spreads and CDS are cointegrated, though threshold effects are also revealed in terms of events that have impacted on markets.     

Fiscal Autonomy and Total Government Expenditure: An Austrian Case-study

The ongoing debate on the efficiency of a federal system versus a centralized system has lead to a diverse and unclear empirical picture of the effects of fiscal decentralization on public sector growth. For analyzing these effects it is crucial to consider the sub-national decision power on taxing and spending. In the current paper, we test for the effects of fiscal autonomy on total government expenditure using time series from 1955 to 2007 for Austria. Determinants of government expenditure are economic growth, fiscal illusion of policy makers, and the unemployment rate. We additionally account for different degrees of sub-national fiscal autonomy. Our econometric results suggest that the often-hypothesized dampening effects of fiscal autonomy cannot be corroborated for the Austrian system.     

Under what conditions may social contracts arise? Evidence from the Hanseatic League

Social contractarians commonly take social contracts to be solely hypothetical and refrain from elaborating on the factors that influence the feasibility of the formation of social contracts. In contrast, this paper aims at providing a discussion of the conditions affecting the feasibility of social contracts. I argue that the more aligned the preferences of group members for public goods are, the more the individuals share similar social norms, and the smaller the group is the more feasible a genuine social contract becomes. I provide evidence in support of my contention from the medieval Hanseatic League. At the Hanseatic Kontor in Novgorod, one of the four major trading posts of the Hanseatic League in cities outside of Germany, German merchants agreed to live under the rule of a constitution that gave rise to a political authority for the Kontor society.     

Federalism and decentralization—a critical survey of frequently used indicators

The economic effects of federalism are unclear: some papers find that federalism has strong positive effects on a number of economically relevant variables, others find negative effects. The results often crucially hinge on the proxies for federalism used. In this paper, we critically survey the existing indicators for both federalism and fiscal decentralization. We argue that federalism is a constitutional institution, whereas decentralization is the outcome of a policy choice, and that the two ought to be systematically distinguished because decentralization can also occur in nonfederally structured states. We further argue that institutional details are very important with regard to federalism and that dummy variables usually capture only very specific aspects of these institutional details. We use factor analysis to test whether the latent variables behind the observed indicators support these assumptions. More than two important factors are derived, implying that a more fine-grained differentiation beyond simply “‘federalism” and “decentralization” might be in order. The correlations of the most important proxies for various aspects of federalism and decentralization with a number of quasi-exogenous variables, as well as with institutional variables, are usually rather modest.