Determinants of variable pay for top managers of foreign subsidiaries in Finland

There is a large body of research dealing with top management compensation from an agency theory perspective. Difficulties in monitoring top management (the agent) are exacerbated in the multinational corporation, where there are significant information asymmetries between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries. Headquarters may use variable pay for subsidiary top managers to reduce the agency problems. By studying 110 foreign-owned subsidiaries located in Finland, this paper attempts to identify determinants of variable pay to the subsidiary general manager. In line with agency theory, the results suggest that the roles played by the subsidiary influence the compensation strategy used for the subsidiary general manager. However, while agency theory predicts that the cultural distance beween the home country of the multinational corporation and the location of the foreign subsidiary would have an effect on the compensation system, no such effect was found. Instead, in accordance with the institutionalization perspective, we found a significant 'nationality effect' on the use of variable pay.     

公共产品：边界迷局及其破解

萨缪尔森对公共产品的定义使公共产品的理论走向科学化，但过分的概念科学化使其陷入自己设定的边界迷局而不能自拔。阿特金森和斯蒂格利茨、布坎南、巴泽尔及蒂布特的公共产品理论及对公共产品进行边界划分的依据依然存在缺陷，无法真正走出公共产品的边界迷局。只有从公民生存发展的需求程度、市场的满足程度和资源的支持程度这些最根本的问题来寻找公共产品边界划分的依据。才能真正解决公共产品的边界迷局。影响公共产品边界生成的变量主要有：与人民生命、财产的相关程度及危险危害程度；市场供给的难度和成本；资源稀缺程度。     

IV估计的大样本性质——基于二维参数空间的研究

存在很多个工具变量或工具变量为弱工具变量时,IV估计的大样本性质是近年来IV估计研究的新方向。本文提出了一种新的研究思路,从参数空间的角度重新剖析了IV估计在大样本下的各种收敛情况。借鉴Rothenberg(1984)的研究方法,我们将IV估计的结果表示为参数δ(工具变量个数的阶数)和λ(工具变量解释强度的阶数)的函数;根据IV估计量收敛情况的不同,我们对参数δ和λ的可行性区域进行对应的划分,将IV估计的研究划分为6种情形,涵盖了传统理论、Bekker(1994)、Staiger和Stock(1997)以及Chao和Swanson(2003b)的研究结论。     

Investment in site-specific crop management under uncertainty: implications for nitrogen pollution control and environmental policy

This paper applies an option‐pricing model to analyze the impact of uncertainty about output prices and expectations of declining fixed costs on the optimal timing of investment in site‐specific crop management (SSCM). It also analyzes the extent to which the level of spatial variability in soil conditions can mitigate the value of waiting to invest in SSCM and influence the optimal timing of adoption and create a preference for custom hiring rather than owner purchase of equipment. Numerical simulations show that while the net present value (NPV) rule predicts that immediate adoption is profitable under most of the soil conditions considered here, recognition of the option value of investment indicates that it is preferable to delay investment in SSCM for at least 3 years unless average soil quality is high and the variability in soil quality and fertility is high. The use of the option value approach reveals that the value of waiting to invest in SSCM raises the cost‐share subsidy rates required to induce immediate adoption above the levels indicated by the NPV rule.     

Method and analysis in Piero Sraffa's 1925 critique of Marshallian economics

This paper provides an analysis of the logical structure and analytical content of Piero Sraffa's 1925 Italian paper, ‘Sulle relazioni fra costo e quantità prodotta’. It shows that Sraffa's criticism of the supply side of Marshall's theory of value in a competitive partial equilibrium model involves analytical and methodological issues. Endorsing an agressive methodology Sraffa logically reconstructs Marshall's model on variable returns to determine its empirical domain. He demonstrates that the latter encompasses only the empirically irrelevant cases of specific factor industries and specific external economies industries and that it cannot be generalized to non-specific factor industries and to non-specific external economies industries.     

阐释“中国之谜”——一个基于扩展的总需求总供给模型

本文在附加预期的菲利普斯曲线基础上，通过引入可变的技术进步变量，修正了新古典的总供给曲线，指出除预期的通货膨胀率、产出缺口外，技术进步也是影响总供给曲线的重要变量；同时将总需求曲线扩展到开放经济条件下，从而推导出了“通货膨胀率-产出增长率”系统下的总需求总供给模型。作为对扩展后模型的检验，本文利用该模型阐释了我国宏观经济运行中的“高增长与低通胀并存”现象。     

对我国各地区对外开放度适宜性的实证分析

本文采用两阶段最小二乘估计的方法，根据开放度与市场规模在对经济增长影响上的替代性理论，对我国各地区对外开放度的适宜性进行了实证分析，通过计算得出结论，上海、北京和广东等地区的贸易开放度已经偏高了，这些地区对外贸易的增长速度不应继续高于经济增长的速度，应维持或减小开放度；而其他地区的开放度离临界开放度尚远，可以继续通过提高对外开放度的方式促进经济增长。     

The productivity of public capital: Evidence from Japan’s 1994 electoral reform

This paper estimates the causal effect of public capital stock on Production, using Japanese prefectural data. We first articulate the difficulty of consistently estimating the regional-level production function with public capital that results from the endogeneity of the public capital stock amount. The public capital amount could be endogenous because of the central government’s political decision-making process of public capital allocation or the local government’s budgetary constraints.Japan’s electoral reform in 1994 offers an exogenous variation in the public capital investment across regions, and we exploit this event to estimate the causal effect of public capital on production. The reform drastically changed the distribution of political representation in the Lower House across regions, and it accordingly changed the allocation of public capital across regions as well. We cannot reject the null hypothesis that public capital is not productive based on the estimates from this natural experimental identification strategy.     

Differences in the response heterogeneity of educational attainment and achievement to the same instrumental variable

The typical econometric application of instrumental variable (IV) estimates imposes a constant-treatment-effect model for all individuals. Using regression discontinuity design, we find while older school starters tend to have lower educational attainment, they are more likely to achieve qualifications at different educational levels for the UK. This finding joins the discussion on instruments for educational outcomes by offering some evidence that school starting age can affect treated individuals diversely. We highlight that identifying the treatment effect with methods similar to IV estimates should be concerned in the context of heterogeneous treatments; that is, the instrument in question has an effect on treatment for particular subpopulations only, and those subpopulations may not be the same for different treatments.