中国自由贸易协定揭开隐藏的成本节约的秘密

当今的全球经济中,“中国价格”正在不断影响产品的生产区域和方式。中国具有丰富的劳动力资源以及低成本的生产结构。仅仅使用在其他国家生产产品的一小部分成本,就可以在中国生产出“中国制造”的产品。全世界的消费者当然希望能够获得更低的价格。     

Towards a complete real-time electricity market design

The general design for the real-time electricity market presented in this paper optimizes and prices both real and reactive power simultaneously in an AC setting, where all assets—generation, load and transmission—are allowed to bid and are financially settled at the locational price times energy consumed or produced. The result is that transmission lines are compensated for both capacity and admittance, providing incentives for efficient operation of transmission-related assets such as FACTS devices, if price-taking behavior is assumed. Losses are incorporated into the design and become an operating cost for transmission. The market design is shown to be revenue neutral and, under some assumptions, nonconfiscatory.      

On the Statistical Significance of Event Effects on Unsystematic Volatility

We develop a method for determining the significance of the effect of a certain event (stock split, corporate restructuring, change in regulation, etc.) on unsystematic volatility of asset returns. Simulations show that the suggested tests reject the true null hypothesis of no effect on volatility at appropriate levels, whereas the rejection rates of a false null hypothesis increase with the magnitude of the effect. An application of the method to corporate spin‐offs reveals statistically significant and long‐lasting estimated increases in unsystematic volatility of parent companies' returns.     

Who's in charge of the central city? The conflict between efficiency and equity in the design of a metropolitan area

A circular metropolitan area consists of a central city surrounded by a suburb. Households sort over the two jurisdictions based on public service levels and their costs of commuting to the metropolitan center. Using numerical simulations, we show that (1) there typically exist two equilibria: one in which the poor form the voting majority in the central city and the other in which the rich form the majority in the central city; (2) there is an efficiency vs. equity trade-off as to which equilibrium is preferred; and (3) if the central city contains only poor households, equity favors expanding the central city to include rich households. The third result arises not because of a fiscal subsidy from rich to poor households induced by a property tax but rather because of a change in house price capitalization.     

亚洲货币升势不减

2008年，亚太货币兑美元汇率可能进一步走高，连较小国家的货币也将给投资者带来希望。     

Social Capital and the Terms of Trade for Farmland

Social capital is a person or group's sympathy for or sense of obligation to another person or group. This article introduces social capital into a neoclassical model of farmland exchange and shows how relationships alter the terms of trade. Empirical evidence from a survey of farmers shows that the type of relationship farmland sellers have with farmland buyers has a statistically significant and economically important effect on the minimum-sell price for farmland. Compared to the minimum-sell price when selling to a total stranger in an arm's-length transaction, farmland sellers discount prices to friendly neighbors and relatives and require a premium from unfriendly neighbors and influential people in the community.     

Research notes and communications corporate restructuring and strategic change: The effect on diversification strategy and R & D intensity

In the 1980s a number of large corporations restructured their diversified businesses through divestitures. It is hypothesized that restructuring activity focused on firms at intermediate levels of diversification (e.g., related-linked) which have a mixture of related and unrelated business units. Results confirm this hypothesis which explains that such mixed corporate strategies create organizational and control inefficiencies in managing both related and unrelated types of business units. Restructured firms were also found to move towards two types of different internal capital markets (related and unrelated). Most restructuring firms moved toward lower levels of diversification (e.g., related-constrained), although some moved toward higher levels of diversification (e.g., unrelated business). Also, this study finds restructuring firms that changed their corporate strategy by reducing diversified scope increased their R&D intensity. Firms that restructured and increased their diversified scope decreased R&D intensity. This result suggested a partial substitution between diversification and R&D activity.     

The Marketing Concept and New High-Tech Products: Is There a Fit?

This article defines the marketing concept in a traditional way, but extends its application to high-technology products. Dennis Cahill, Sharon Thach, and Robert Warshawsky present two case studies of high-technology products. Both products were ultimately market failures; however, the analysis presents one as a successful application of the marketing concept, contrasting sharply with the other.     

Stop and Go Agricultural Policies with a Land Market

This article studies the design of farm policy in the presence of asymmetric information about farmers' productivity, a government objective to insure farmers a minimum "parity" income, an endogenous land rent, and diminishing returns on alternative (nonprogram crop) land uses. In this setting, acreage set asides are never part of an optimal farm policy, although compensated acreage limits are. When there are new farmer entrants who cannot be excluded from farm programs, optimal policy takes the form of a pure voluntary acreage limitation—or "buyout"—program in which high-cost producers participate and low-cost producers do not.