Economic Valuation of Health for Environmental Policy: Comparing Alternative Approaches. Introduction and Overview

Protecting human health is a primary goal of environmental policy and economic evaluation of health can help policy-makers judge the relative worth of alternative actions. Economists use two distinct approaches in normatively evaluating health. Whereas environmental economists use benefit-cost analysis supported by monetary valuation in terms of willingness-to-pay, health economists evaluate interventions based on cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analysis (CEA), using quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) or similar indexes. This paper provides background on the controversy about the relative merits of these approaches and introduces the remaining papers in the special issue. These papers (with one exception) were presented at a conference sponsored by the Department of Economics at the University of Central Florida with support from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Although CEA might not lead to substantially different implications for environmental policy than benefit-cost analysis, and QALY may provide a benefit transfer tool to fill gaps in the morbidity valuation literature, the papers in this issue raise serious concerns about the suitability of QALY-based CEA for environmental regulatory analysis. QALY does not in general appropriately represent individual preferences for health and CEA is neither independent of income distribution nor adequate to assess efficiency.     

基于DEA方法的高校办学效益评价指标体系研究

介绍了建立DEA模型输入输出指标体系的原则,在对高校投入产出进行全面分析的基础上,对高校办学效益DEA评价指标体系进行了探讨.     

我国农村环境问题的经济分析及解决途径

本文分析了我国农村存在的环境问题,从经济学角度分析了农村环境问题产生的原因,并提出了农村环境问题的治理措施与途径:消除其公共物品性和外部性。     

我国反倾销中的反规避立法亟待完善

本文主要阐述了反倾销中的反规避行为，通过比较欧美立法，提出对我国立法具有参考性的建设性意见，强调了我国反规避立法的迫切性与必要性。     

振兴东北老工业基地资本运营效益研究

现阶段,东北老工业基地存在着高消耗、低性能、低附加值、产品生产能力过剩等问题,因而,在市场经济的大潮中,造成了竞争力减弱、经济效益下滑的局面.发达国家的实践告诉我们,传统产业高科技化能改变这种局面,但高科技需要大量投入资本,故而需要研究传统产业高科技化资本运营的模式,从而降低高风险,实现高效益.     

民工流动与乡村中年失业

对包括民工在内的各类乡村劳动力的年龄结构进行了分析。城市民工需求年轻化导致三个后果。首先导致青年民工的供不应求,从而在乡村还存在大量剩余劳动力的前提下,出现了全国性的民工荒;其次,导致乡村现有中年剩余劳动力难于在城市就业;最后,导致进入中年后的民工绝大多数无法继续在城市就业,中年民工家庭因不具备在城市定居的经济能力不得不回乡。后两个结果的不断积累产生了中国特有的一个经济现象-乡村劳动力的中年失业。     

Modelling exchange of probabilistic opinions

Summary. This paper studies how communication or exchange of opinions influences correlation of beliefs. The paper focuses on a situation in which agents communicate with each other infinitely many times without observing data. It is an extension to the ‘Expert Problem’ in Bayesian theory, where the informational flow is asymmetric. Moreover, this paper generalizes the existing literature of communication that employs the common prior assumption (CPA) by allowing for heterogeneous beliefs. Some basic convergence results are shown in contrast with the results obtained under the CPA. Furthermore, several economic implications of the basic results are provided. Received: August 27, 2001; revised version: April 16, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The results presented in this paper are taken from my Ph.D. thesis at Stanford University. I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration obtained from innumerable discussions with Mordecai Kurz about this subject. Also, I appreciate comments from Kenneth J. Arrow, Peter J. Hammond, Maurizio Motolese, Carsten K. Nielsen, Ho-Mou Wu and the anonymous referee.     

城市地理学研究新的领域思考

改革开放以来，由于国民经济的迅速发展，我国工业化、城市化的进程明显加快。从国情分析可知，我国的城市化出现了五种特有的现象，这为城市地理学的研究提供了广阔的平台。城市地理学在我国城市发展与城市化的重大问题研究上，长期以来取得了许多重要成果，理论方法上也有重大建树，成为人文科学与自然科学研究领域中最为活跃的一支生力军^①。文章从我国实际出发，提出了城市地理学研究的思维方法及其若干新的研究领域。     

房地产还原利率的构成与测算

从分析投资的风险补偿入手，提出了房地产还原利率的构成和测算公式，同时指出了构成房地产还原利率的银行利率应是复利计算方式下，相应年期的利率，然后探讨了房地产还原利率各构成部分的测算过程，并以中国房地产市场个人住房抵押贷款市场为例，给出了不同收益年限的房地产还原利率参考数据。     

Outsourcing, Imports and Labour Demand

This paper examines the effects of purchased services and imported intermediate materials on the labour demand for different skills in German manufacturing sectors. We derive and estimate a factor demand system based on the generalised Box–Cox cost function nesting both the normalised quadratic and the translog functional form. We find that the impacts of output and capital growth are more important in explaining the demand for heterogeneous labour than substitution effects between labour and non–labour inputs. Similarly, the increasing use of both imported materials and purchased services is a consequence of output growth rather than input substitution.
JEL classification : J 23; O 33