Redistributive taxation in democracies: Evidence on people's satisfaction

Theories of political redistribution are tested using data collected in three phases of the International Social Survey Programme. Individuals categorized as having high, middle, or low incomes were asked whether they consider the overall tax burden in their countries too high, too low or about right. Very few citizens indicated that they were satisfied with tax systems; most believed that taxes on low and middle incomes are too high, while taxes on high incomes are too low. Support for tax systems is bimodal within the income classes, with the richest 5% being the most supportive, and the median in a population being second. Ideological values have a strong impact on political support for redistribution across all income classes. The results bear witness to the multidimensional nature of preferences for redistribution, and to the delicate question of the effectiveness of democracy in implementing citizens' preferences.     

合约实施制度与国际贸易文献综述

本文围绕制度和贸易主题,从新制度经济学的视角,对非正式合约实施制度与国际贸易;正式合约实施制度与贸易流量;合约制度与比较优势三个层面的相关最新文献做了梳理,突出了合约实施问题对于一国贸易规模和内生比较优势形成的重要性。     

Advancing the evidence base for public policies impacting on dietary behaviour,physical activity and sedentary behaviour in Europe: The Policy Evaluation Network promoting a multidisciplinary approach

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of global mortality. As the social and economic costs of NCDs have escalated, action is needed to tackle important causes of many NCD’s: low physical activity levels and unhealthy dietary behaviours. As these behaviours are driven by upstream factors, successful policy interventions are required that encourage healthy dietary behaviours, improve physical activity levels and reduce sedentary behaviours of entire populations. However, to date, no systematic research on the implementation and evaluation of policy interventions related to these health behaviours has been conducted across Europe. Consequently, no information on the merit, gaps, worth or utility of cross-European policy interventions is available, and no guidance or recommendations on how to enhance this knowledge across European countries exists. As part of the Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life” (JPI HDHL), 28 research institutes from seven European countries and New Zealand have combined their expertise to form the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN). PEN’s aim is to advance tools to identify, evaluate, implement and benchmark policies designed to directly or indirectly target dietary behaviours, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour in Europe, as well as to understand how these policies increase or decrease health inequalities. Using well-defined evaluation principles and methods, PEN will examine the content, implementation and impact of policies addressing dietary behaviour, physical activity levels and sedentary behaviour across Europe. It will realise the first steps in a bespoke health policy monitoring and surveillance system for Europe, and refine our knowledge of appropriate research designs and methods for the quantification of policy impact. It will contribute to our understanding of how to achieve successful transnational policy implementation and monitoring of these policies in different cultural, demographic or socioeconomic settings. PEN will consider equity and diversity aspects to ensure that policy actions are inclusive and culturally sensitive. Finally, based on three policy cases, PEN will illustrate how best to evaluate the implementation and impact of such policies in order to yield healthy diets and activity patterns that result in healthier lives for all European citizens.     

Differences in work goals among regions of the Netherlands and Germany: functional,institutional and critical event influences

We use World Values Survey data from the Netherlands and Germany to compare the importance of within-nation region differences with nation differences in work goals. These two nations have historical relationships and internal differences that are especially useful for testing hypotheses about nation compared to within-nation region differences. We develop hypotheses about the implications of religious heritage and urbanization for work goals based on functional, institutional and critical event explanations for regional culture differences. A number of work goals (notably extrinsic goals like pay) show too little difference between either nations or within-nation regions to consider them. For those work goals that do show region differences, the largest differences, those for job security goals and goals for working with pleasant people, are associated with region differences between rather than within the two nations. Regional differences in some work goals are also related to religious heritage. Regional differences in work goals have implications for the kinds of HR programs that managers may wish to promote in different locations. For example, the results suggest that HR managers have reason to anticipate that policies promoting job security may receive especially positive responses in Germany, whereas programs promoting social relationships may be best received in the Netherlands. Similarly, organizations that operate in both the north and south of each country should be alert to a number of possible within-nation differences in local optimal HR policies, but the within-nation differences found here are small enough that they should be carefully checked in specific organizations.     

桥头堡战略背景下云南金融消费者教育调查实证研究

为了加强桥头堡战略下云南省金融市场微观基础,金融消费者教育体系亟待完善。本文通过对云南省16个地州市城镇金融消费者的问卷抽样调查发现,全省金融消费者素质整体偏低,并存在明显的个体差异;并采用因子分析法得出金融认知能力、金融消费偏好和市场环境感知能力是影响云南金融消费者素质的主要因素,据此提出了构建云南省金融消费者教育体系的系统策略。     

顾客不当行为影响员工工作投入的边界条件研究

文章基于资源保存理论，采取经验取样法探讨了顾客不当行为对员工工作投入的负面影响，并进一步识别了工作常规化和主动性人格两个边界条件对顾客不当行为负面影响的调节作用。通过对128位医护人员连续测量10个工作日的调查，获得1023份数据。研究发现，每日顾客不当行为对员工第二天早上的工作投入具有显著负向影响，且工作常规化和主动性人格对每日顾客不当行为的负面影响有显著弱化作用。此外，研究进一步揭示了工作常规化和主动性人格的三重调节效应。这些结论对服务型企业有以下启示：需要关注顾客行为对员工工作态度和行为的影响；甄选员工和培训员工要重视其主动性人格，提升工作常规化水平；员工主动性人格和工作常规化可以有效缓解顾客不当行为造成的员工工作投入低下问题。     

城乡差异视角下养老负担对家庭消费的影响——来自CSS的经验证据

利用中国社会状况综合调查（CSS）2011年的微观调查数据,采用ELES模型分析养老负担对城乡家庭消费的影响。得到如下结论：养老负担降低了城镇和农村家庭的人均消费水平;养老负担对家庭边际消费倾向的影响存在着明显的城乡差异,城镇地区有养老负担的家庭在食品和居住项目上的边际消费倾向要高于没有养老负担的家庭,而农村地区则表现出相反的特征;城镇有养老负担家庭在家庭设备、交通通信以及文教娱乐项目的消费上比农村家庭更富有弹性,城镇家庭的抗养老压力能力比农村家庭要强。     

研究生创新能力及其影响因素调查分析

创新能力的培养和提升是当前学术型研究生教育的核心任务,为制定合理科学的培养模式和培养机制,本文通过对500名学术型研究生的调查结果,在对当前研究生的创新能力和特征进行分析总结的基础上,对创新不足的成因进行了分析,大多数研究生认为导师和社会实践及其培养模式对其创新能力起到了至关重要的作用,而当前导师队伍的良莠不齐,社会实践活动及其培养模式的单调是阻碍研究生创新能力提升的主要因素。     

Asymmetric loss functions and the rationality of expected stock returns

We combine the innovative approaches of Elliott, Komunjer, and Timmermann (2005) and Patton and Timmermann (2007) with a block bootstrap to analyze whether asymmetric loss functions can rationalize the S&P 500 return expectations of individual forecasters from the Livingston Surveys. Although the rationality of these forecasts has often been rejected, earlier studies have relied on the assumption that positive and negative forecast errors of identical magnitudes are equally important to forecasters. Allowing for homogenous asymmetric loss, our evidence still strongly rejects forecast rationality. However, if we allow for variation in asymmetric loss functions across forecasters, not only do we find significant differences in preferences, but also we can often no longer reject forecast rationality. Our conclusions raise serious doubts about the homogeneous expectations assumption often made in asset pricing, portfolio construction and corporate finance models.     

Forecast combination through dimension reduction techniques

This paper considers several methods of producing a single forecast from several individual ones. We compare “standard” but hard to beat combination schemes (such as the average of forecasts at each period, or consensus forecast and OLS-based combination schemes) with more sophisticated alternatives that involve dimension reduction techniques. Specifically, we consider principal components, dynamic factor models, partial least squares and sliced inverse regression.Our source of forecasts is the Survey of Professional Forecasters, which provides forecasts for the main US macroeconomic aggregates. The forecasting results show that partial least squares, principal component regression and factor analysis have similar performances (better than the usual benchmark models), but sliced inverse regression shows an extreme behavior (performs either very well or very poorly).