Catching up: The role of demand, supply and regulated price effects on the real exchange rates of four accession countries

The main aim of this paper is to examine the exchange rate behaviour of a group of four transitional, EU accession countries, with a view to making policy recommendations regarding their full accession to the European Monetary Union. We employ a dynamic OLS panel estimator to investigate the relative importance of demand and supply influences on the exchange rates of these countries. Our analysis shows that both supply‐ and demand‐side effects are important for the accession countries, although their overall effect on inflation differentials and competitiveness seems to be small. An additional focus of the paper is the examination of the role that administrated, or regulated, prices and the productivity of the distribution sector play in the real exchange rate dynamics. Using a unique database we show that administrative prices have been a powerful force behind price and real exchange developments for our group of accession countries. The distribution sector is shown to have an independent effect on the internal price ratio over and above that generated by the Balassa–Samuelson effect.     

When to accept a sequence of gambles

When is a sequence of gambles, which is initially rejected eventually accepted? The eventual acceptance is defined as a pair property between the utility function and the sequences of gambles. A sequence of gambles is accepted when the gambles follow a large deviation principle and the utility function is non-satiated and bounded from below in a certain way. The number of gambles required for acceptance is computed.     

Price Rigidity and the Selection of the Exchange Rate Regime

We evaluate and qualify Friedman's, 1953, “case for flexible exchange rates” in the presence of sticky prices in a two country model. We find that a flexible regime performs indeed better when the degree of nominal price rigidity is high while a bilateral peg does better when prices are fairly flexible. This result obtains independent of whether monetary policy is activistic or not and is mostly due to the negative relationship between employment and productivity shocks when prices are relatively sluggish (Gali, 1999). A unilateral peg tends to produce the lowest level of world welfare but it sometimes represents the best monetary arrangement for the pegger. JEL Classification Numbers: E32, E52, F33, F42     

试论评估对加快我院改革与建设的作用

开展高职高专院校人才培养工作水平评估,给我院带来了新的发展契机,对加快改革与建设起到了积极地推动作用。通过两年来迎评促建工作的开展,学院的办学指导思想更加明确,全院教职工增强了凝聚力,办学条件得到了改善,师资队伍建设得到了加强,教学改革进一步深化,专业建设迈上了新台阶,学生素质教育结出了累累硕果,学院的办学实力和整体竞争力得到了提高。     

浅谈我国超细碳酸钙生产技术现状及发展方向

文章提出“碳化工艺连续化、活化剂复合化、活化技术组合化、活化温度常温化、干燥技术组合化和系统工程化”,应成为我国超细碳酸钙生产技术未来发展的主要方向,并论述了我国目前超细碳酸钙生产技术的现状,用连续鼓泡碳化工艺来改造现有碳化工艺,并提出了超重力反应结晶法的完善办法。     

外商直接投资对产业结构升级的作用机制研究

随着知识经济时代的到来,产业结构升级成为现代经济发展中的焦点问题。外商投资起到了促进传统产业转移、新兴产业成长和产业组织结构优化等作用,并且带动了产业的调整和升级。但是,外商投资对于产业结构升级也存在一定的阻碍作用,通过研究外资对产业升级产生的影响,从而制定合理的引资政策具有十分重要的现实意义。     

活性污泥法降解苯酚模拟废水的动力学研究

研究了活性污泥法降解苯酚模拟废水的动力学规律。实验结果表明，活性污泥法对苯酚废水具有良好的降解性能，正常状态下，3h内COD去除率迭90％以上。降解过程符合一级反应动力学方程。不同污泥浓度时反应速率常数K1相差不大，提高苯酚初始浓度K1亦增大。pH值在4．8-9．1范围内，活性污泥保持良好的降解性能，pH值过大或过小时，微生物均受到抑制。在15-35℃，K-随温度的升高而增大，求得温度系数θ为1．054。     

Locally minimum variance unbiased estimator in a discontinuous density function

The exact forms of the locally minimum variance unbiased estimators and their variances are given in the case of a discontinuous density function.     

A new continuous distribution and two new families of distributions based on the exponential

Recent work on social status led to derivation of a new continuous distribution based on the exponential. The new variate, termed the ring(2)-exponential, in turn leads to derivation of two closely related new families of continuous distributions, the mirror-exponential and the ring-exponential. Both the standard exponential and the ring(2)-exponential are special cases of both the new families. In this paper, we first focus on the ring(2)-exponential, describing its derivation and examining its properties, and next introduce the two new families, describing their derivation and initiating exploration of their properties. The mirror-exponential arises naturally in the study of status; the ring-exponential arises from the mathematical structure of the ring(2)-exponential. Both have the potential for broad application in diverse contexts across science and engineering. Within sociobehavioral contexts, the new mirror-exponential may have application to the problem of approximating the form and inequality of the wage distribution.     

On estimating the mean of the selected normal population under the LINEX loss function

Following Parsian and Farsipour (1999), we consider the problem of estimating the mean of the selected normal population, from two normal populations with unknown means and common known variance, under the LINEX loss function. Some admissibility results for a subclass of equivariant estimators are derived and a sufficient condition for the inadmissibility of an arbitrary equivariant estimator is provided. As a consequence, several of the estimators proposed by Parsian and Farsipour (1999) are shown to be inadmissible and better estimators are obtained. Received January 2001/Revised May 2002