Declining Discount Rates: The Long and the Short of it

The last few years have witnessed important advances in our understanding of time preference and social discounting. In particular, several rationales for the use of time-varying social discount rates have emerged. These rationales range from the ad hoc to the formal, with some founded solely in economic theory while others reflect principles of intergenerational equity. While these advances are to be applauded, the practitioner is left with a confusing array of rationales and the sense that almost any discount rate can be justified. This paper draws together these different strands and provides a critical review of past and present contributions to this literature. In addition to this we highlight some of the problems with employing DDRs in the decision-making process, the most pressing of which may be time inconsistency. We clarify their practical implications, and potential pitfalls, of the more credible rationales and argue that some approaches popular in environmental economics literature are ill-conceived. Finally, we illustrate the impact of different approaches by examining global warming and nuclear power investment. This includes an application and extension of Newell and Pizer [‘Discounting the benefits of climate change mitigation : how much do uncertain rates increase valuations?’ Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 46 (2003) 52] to UK interest rate data.     

煤炭价格指数的理论设计与应用研究

论证了在当前煤炭价格风险凸现的情况下,推出煤炭价格指数是运用煤炭期货、期权及互换等金融衍生工具的重要前提,并借鉴国外煤炭价格指数应用与研究的经验,提出我国煤炭价格指数的基本体系及编制的基本原则和基本方法.     

Theory and practice of monetary policy

Summary. We consider an optimally managed renewable resource with stochastic non-concave growth function. We characterize the conditions under which the optimal policy leads to global extinction, global conservation and the existence of a safe standard of conservation. Our conditions are specified in terms of the economic and ecological primitives of the model: the biological growth function, the welfare function, the distribution of shocks and the discount rate. Our results indicate that, unlike deterministic models, extinction and conservation in stochastic models are not determined by a simple comparison of the growth rate and the discount rate; the welfare function plays an important role.Received: 20 October 2004, Revised: 28 February 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: D90, O11, O41, Q32.Santanu Roy: Correspondence toResearch on this paper was completed when the second author visited Cornell University in July, 2003. We thank the Center for Analytic Economics and the Department of Economics at Cornell University for making this research visit possible. The current version has gained considerably from the comments made by an anonymous referee.     

我国民间审计发展的制约因素刍议

建立和维护社会经济秩序是民间审计的基本职能,我国的民间审计自20世纪80年代恢复以来,经过20年的发展已经初具规模.但与发达国家相比,仍处于初始阶段.为推动民间审计事业的快速健康发展,从我国民间审计的发展现状出发,分析我国民间审计发展的制约因素.     

高校教育成本核算影响因素探析

高校教育成本核算既是满足高等教育不同投资主体对投资回报的客观需要,也是合理建立高等教育成本分担机制的必然选择,但因各种因素的制约,我国目前高校教育成本核算工作尚未有效的开展。本文在阐述教育成本相关理论及框架结构的基础上,从高校自身认识、宏观制度和微观技术性等方面,对影响高校教育成本核算的因素进行了分析,并提出了高校教育成本核算的措施。     

基于提前期和价格折扣的延迟交货和库存策略研究

研究了基于提前期和价格折扣的延迟交货和库存策略,其中的价格折扣是基于提前期的价格折扣,即当出现缺货而不能在既定的提前期内交货时,企业就会提供一个价格折扣,这时会有一部分顾客愿意等待,直到订单被满足,即延迟交货。其中,愿意等待延迟交货的比例跟提前期成反比关系,提前期的各部分都可以通过增加成本来实现压缩。     

含价格折扣、允许缺货的两级供应链库存模型

研究一个供应商、多个销售商组成的两级供应链库存系统,针对具有价格弹性的市场需求、含有价格折扣、允许供应商和销售商产生缺货以及满足供应商和销售商Pareto有效性的情况,建立了使供应链系统整体盈利最大的存贮模型。并结合算例分析了价格弹性因子对系统盈利水平的影响。     

中国商业银行市场集中度影响因素及趋势研究

中国商业银行市场集中度影响因素中，期初集中度、外资银行进入、并购、市场需求成长率与效率变量对集中度的影响为负，而产品差异度与集中度不相关。对趋势的分析表明中国商业银行市场集中度将会经历一个由下降到上升的过程，但是其持续的时间将取决于中国经济金融市场化的深度与速度。     

外来农村妇女职业流动及其影响因素分析-以泉州市流动人口为例

职业流动对社会及进城务工的外来农村妇女至关重要。利用2005年7月在泉州市的调查数据,对外来农村妇女职业流动状况及影响因素进行了分析和探讨,为促进外来农村妇女顺利实现职业流动与向上流动提供了依据和对策。     

技术效率、资本深化与地区差异——基于随机前沿模型的中国地区收敛分析

本文提出了基于随机前沿生产函数的地区增长差异分析框架,将各地区劳均产出差距分解为劳均资本差异、经济规模差异和全要素生产率差异三个部分。利用改革时期的省级数据,本文发现尽管要素投入仍然是中国经济增长的主要源泉,但全要素生产率是造成地区差异的重要原因,在地区劳均产出差异中的贡献份额不断提高,将成为今后中国地区增长差异的主要决定力量。而且,1990年以来中国地区全要素生产率呈现出绝对发散趋势,严重的技术扩散壁垒加剧了体制转轨过程中的“马太效应”,短期内地区差距不会随经济发展而缩小,政府需要通过适当的政策对地区发展进行调节,尤其要促进地区间技术扩散,使各地区更好地分享技术创新和体制创新的成果。