转轨阶段城乡居民收入差距的演变及社会效应

我国经济体制转型期间的城乡居民收入差距呈缩小—扩大—缩小—扩大的趋势,这在一定程度上对农村居民收入的增长和对农村消费市场、人力资本投资产生负面影响,同时也对社会的稳定、经济的可持续发展以及建设和谐社会产生负面效应。     

Income risk and farm consumption behavior

Using panel data from Illinois grain farmers, a direct test of the relationship between income risk and farm consumption behavior is conducted. The estimation results indicate that income risk significantly affects farm consumption and the results are robust using alternative risk measures. This finding casts doubt on the relevance of the conventional life-cycle permanent income hypothesis, which implies that risk has no effect on consumption.     

Benefit Incidence of Public Recreation Areas—Have the Winners Taken Almost All?

This study presents a framework for investigating the benefit incidence of provision of public recreation opportunities. The proportion of individuals who use outdoor recreation services increases with income, and frequency of use differs by the users’ gender and life situation (e.g., depending on whether they are students or older citizens). The decomposition of distributive incidence shows that a bias in favor of high-income groups may be accentuated when the perceived value of these services is taken into account in monetary terms. We compare alternative strategies in terms of equity for improving recreation opportunities, e.g., reduced distance to or increased acreage of recreation sites. Our results indicate that although these strategies improve the welfare distribution among the income groups, a considerable proportion of benefits nevertheless accrue to high-income groups.      

中国最佳上市家族企业50强中医药类企业财务评价

本文选取了福布斯中国最佳上市家族企业50强中8家医药类家族企业近5年的财务数据为样本。一方面,通过分析家族企业自身优势和特点来阐述家族企业的自身发展潜力;另一方面,从比率分析和业绩指标等财务视角分析我国医药类上市家族企业的成长能力。从财务角度剖析医药类上市家族企业成功的内在驱动力,并为企业内外投资者提供借鉴。     

Book and Film Reviews

Economic theory as applied to the family should increase our understanding of the phenomena we are studying, and allow us to implement fruitful intervention in cases where we are not satisfied with what is occurring. Much if not all of the theory of the family fails to achieve these aims. Examples are given from the most recent edition of Gary Becker's Theory of the Family, where the analysis leads to conclusions that are, on their face, preposterous. This kind of theorizing leads, as does almost all neoclassical theory, to a conclusion that the institutions depicted are benign, and that government intervention would be useless at best and probably harmful. But it isn't necessarily so.     

China's health care reform: A tentative assessment

China has recently unveiled an ambitious new health-care reform plan, entailing a doubling of government health spending as well as a number of concrete reforms. While the details of the plan have not yet been completely announced, we offer a preliminary assessment of how well the reform is likely to achieve its stated goal of assuring every citizen equal access to affordable basic health care. The reform is based on three fundamental tenets: strong role of government in health, commitment to equity, and willingness to experiment with regulated market approaches. Within this framework, the reform offers a number of laudable changes to the health system, including an increase in public health financing, an expansion of primary health facilities and an increase in subsidies to achieve universal insurance coverage. However, it fails to address the root causes of the wastes and inefficiencies plaguing China's health care system, such as a fragmented delivery system and provider incentives to over-provide expensive tests and services. We conclude that China should consider changing the provider payment method from fee-for-service to a prospective payment method such as DRG or capitation with pay-for-performance, and to develop purchasing agencies that represent the interests of the population so as to enhance competition.     

Capitalism and democracy in the 21st century: a Kaleckian interpretation of a Schumpeterian problem

The paper reinterprets Schumpeter's views on the dynamic effects of taxation, as originally expressed in Crisis of the Tax State, from a Kaleckian perspective. In light of Schumpeter's rejection of Keynesian and Marshallian approaches to taxation, the paper argues that a recently developed Kaleckian approach provides an appropriate basis from which to analyse the effects on the business cycle of balanced changes in the structure of taxation. It is shown that, under certain shifting assumptions, increases in the taxation of wages or profits will stimulate investment and attenuate the amplitude of the business cycle. Ultimately, the shifting of taxes reduces to a conflict over income shares. The changing distribution of income in the United Kingdom in recent years suggests that investment is likely to remain sluggish unless there is a significant reversal of income shares. This may give rise to increasing economic and political tensions into the 21st century.     

Religious adherence and county economic growth in the US

We estimate a Barro-type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the American Religious Data Archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the United States at the county-level. Per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income, initial human capital stock, and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence, religious diversity, and regional indicator variables. We also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations, namely Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Mainline Christians, on county economic growth. Our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for US county income growth. We find mixed results for effects of various denominations.     

构建城市空巢老人社区养老模式的研究

随着现代化进程的加快，A4f]的价值观也随之发生变化，进而家庭结构也发生了转变。于是产生了所谓的“空巢家庭”。如今空巢家庭的数量逐渐增加，已不再是个别家庭所面临的问题，而是成为一种社会现象和社会I＂1题。然而空巢老人的养老问题更是成为学者们关注的重点。由于我国的特殊国情和传统观念的限制，社区养老模式成为我国老龄化发展的必然选择。     

Resolving Unfair Distribution of Income through Transforming the Mode of Economic Development

传统经济发展方式对收入分配领域中的许多不合理因素产生了强支撑，是我国收入分配差距日益扩大的深层原因。本文通过对“三个转变”的梳理，分析了传统经济发展方式的内在缺陷及其在居民劳动报酬、行业垄断、社会福利体系建设和通货膨胀等方面的负面影响。最后，就如何从转变经济发展方式入手缓解收入分配不公提出了针对性的意见和建议。