Aging and Retirement: Evidence Across Countries

How do demographic factors influence retirement? Using a large cross-country data set, I show that in countries with a larger share of elderly in their population the length of retirement is longer. This result holds true if I control for wealth effects, and when the effective labor force participation rate of the elderly is used instead of the official retirement age. Retirement policies and the social security size are strictly related: a new variable, representing the aggregate relevance of retirement policies, turns out to be significant in explaining the size of social security. Finally, the total amount of social security transfers is positively related with the increase of the elderly population, while in per capita terms this relation is not significant.     

企业职工延长退休年龄影响因素实证研究—以W市为例

企业职工作为重要的社会组成元素以及政策的接受者，延迟退休政策的制定、实施毫无疑问需要广泛征求他们的意见。本研究以W市作为调查基地，在文献研究、社会调查与深度访谈三者相结合并借助SPSS分析工具充分论证的基础上得出了相关研究结论：一是W市企业职工延迟退休影响因子排序，强到弱排序依次为：健康、收入、工作满意度、周工作时长、工作性质、抚养子女负担、配偶状况、年龄、单位福利、单位性质、性别、受教育程度、公司职位、赡养老人负担、婚姻状况。二是影响因素与延迟退休的相互关系：(1)个人因素中，男性职工比女性职工更能够接受延迟退休。年龄与延迟退休成负相关的关系。已婚或未婚企业职工都不愿意接受延迟退休。不愿意延迟退休者中受教育程度与最大延迟退休年龄正相关。(2)单位因素中，企业性质为国有、集体或控股企业与外资企业比私营、民营企业的职工更愿意接受延迟退休。单位福利种类多并不能直接刺激到企业职工的延迟退休意愿，但在强制延迟退休时，享受福利种类越多与企业职工能够接受最大延迟退休年龄之间成正相关关系。公司职位与延迟退休之间没有严格的相关关系。(3)负担因素中，具有抚养子女负担和赡养老人负担与延迟退休成负相关。(4)经济因素中，低收入和高收入的个人以及家庭相对对于中层收入而言更不愿延迟退休。健康因素与延迟退休成负相关。(5)工作因中，周工作时长与工作满意度和延迟退休决策分别成负相关和正相关。体力劳动者比脑力劳动者不愿意延迟退休。最后，对W市研究延迟退休年龄有针对性的提出相关政策建议。     

探究数字化时代对师范生信息素养的要求

本文从数字化时代发展的角度出发,指出数字化学习不仅是数字时代学习的重要方式,更是课程整合的核心,同时提高教师的信息素养是数字化学习的关键。随着信息社会的发展和中小学信息技术课的开展,对师范生的信息素养提出了更高的要求。目前师范生就业形式,信息素养状况怎样,存在哪些问题,怎样去解决这些问题提高自身的竞争力?这都是我们师范院校的学生所思考的问题。针对上述问题,本文提出了自己的观点和看法。     

Could the Faustmann model have an interior minimum solution?

The growth of an even-aged stand usually follows a S-shaped pattern, implying that the growth function is convex when stand age is low and concave when stand age is high. Given such a growth function, the Faustmann model could in theory have multiple optima and hence an interior local minimum solution. To ensure that the rotation age at which the first derivative of the land expectation value equals zero is a maximum, it is often assumed that the growth function is concave in stand age. Yet there is no convincing argument for excluding the possibility of conducting the final harvest before the growth function changes to concave. We argue that under normal circumstances the Faustmann model does not have any interior minimum. It is neither necessary nor proper to assume that the growth function is concave in the vicinity of the optimal rotation age. When the interest rate is high, the optimal rotation may lie in the interval on which the growth function is convex, i.e. before volume or value growth culminates.     

A field experiment investigating age discrimination in four European labour markets

In a field experiment investigating age discrimination, pairs of men, aged 27 and 47, inquired about employment as waiters in towns across England, France, Germany and Spain. Statistically significant discrimination against the older waiter was found in all four countries, but it was considerably higher in France and Spain than in England and Germany.     

Patterns of growth in Chinese cities: Implications of the land lease

A special feature of China’s housing market is land use rights in the form of land leasehold contracts granted by the government. We consider an equilibrium model in which a representative developer may choose to redevelop existing centrally located housing or to develop new housing at the periphery of the city. We show that as the city grows, the land leasehold system results in the city center being developed less intensely and more land being used on the outskirts of the city when compared to a fee simple environment. Thus, cities in China are likely to be relatively more spread out, with city centers relatively older than would be the case with “fee simple” ownership. Our model suggests that excess residential land use is about 6 percent. In addition, compared with the ownership case, housing supply will grow more quickly in the near future, but more slowly later on during the transition of the Chinese economy. Parallel to the supply growth pattern, equilibrium price grows relative slowly in the near future, but more quickly later on. While we focus on residential uses, we believe our model can be applied to other land uses.     

Beta and firm age

We document a robust pattern of beta declining over the age of a firm. We find that changes in systematic risk via firm characteristics and life-cycle stages are insufficient to explain this pattern. Moreover, standard proxies for the quantity and quality of information also explain this pattern only partially. To fully explain this pattern we rely on the increasingly important role of familiarity in financial decision making: familiarity is a determinant of beta and firm age is a proxy for the degree of familiarity that investors feel toward individual stocks. To illustrate the implication of our findings, we document that when we control for firm age there is support for the CAPM and its use as an input for the cost of equity capital calculation.     

REGIONAL ANTI‐CORRUPTION EFFORT,POLITICAL CONNECTIONS AND FIRM INNOVATION EFFORT: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

This paper examines how firm characteristics and local anti‐corruption effort moderate the influence of political connections on enterprises’ private R&D investment using data from 2,587 Chinese A‐share listed enterprises. Our results show that the local anti‐corruption institutional environment significantly moderates the strong relationship between political connections and enterprises’ private R&D investment. Firm characteristics (i.e., firm size and firm age) also show a moderating effect on the relationship between political connection and enterprises’ private R&D investment; larger and older enterprises are more likely to have innovative resources and business cooperation partners, and thus are able to reduce their degree of reliance on political connections and government funding. The results of our study suggest the importance of having a transparent and fair institutional environment for enterprise innovation activities.     

Relative age effects in political selection

We exploit a regression discontinuity design to provide causal evidence of the relative age effect (RAE) on a long-run adult age outcome: Political selection. We find strong evidence of the RAE in politics in Finland. However, the effect is heterogeneous: We find that male candidates born early in the calendar year have a significantly higher probability of getting elected to the parliament but no similar RAE applies to female candidates nor to municipal elections. Moreover, this effect only takes place in the most competitive parliamentary districts and is present only for some parties. We also find that in all the groups where the RAE does not exist, early-born candidates are under-represented suggesting attrition of talent in the candidate placement. Overall, our results show that seemingly artificial cutoffs imposed by the government have persistent consequences even on the selection to the highest positions of power within a society.