房价结构调整与经济结构转型

目前,我国住宅房地产价格明显偏离正常值。对房价结构的分析表明,房价结构中33.86%的资金流向了政府。经过房价结构这一隐秘机制的运行,本来属于居民消费领域的购房资金被转变为政府投资资本,导致经济结构中投资与消费之间的比例失衡。这与我国加快经济结构调整,增加消费在促进经济增长中的比重相悖。为应对上述情况,加快优化房价结构是促进经济结构转型的有力举措。     

Health insurance and consumption: Evidence from China’s New Cooperative Medical Scheme

We exploit a quasi-natural experiment arising from the introduction of a health insurance program in rural China to examine how the insurance coverage affects household consumption. Results show that, on average, the health insurance coverage increases nonmedical-related consumption by more than 5%. This insurance effect is observed even in households with no out-of-pocket medical spending. In addition, the insurance effect is stronger in households with worse self-reported health status. These results are consistent with the precautionary savings argument. The insurance effect also varies by household experience with the program. In particular, the effect is significant only in villages where some households have actually obtained reimbursement from the insurance program. The program within these villages stimulates less consumption among new participants than among households that have participated in the program for more than a year.     

Naturally designed for masculinity vs. femininity? Prenatal testosterone predicts male consumers' choices of gender-imaged products

In this paper, we find that a proxy of prenatal testosterone exposure (i.e., digit ratio) is a significant predictor of preferences for products that differ in perceived masculinity vs. femininity. A more masculine (feminine) digit ratio predicts choice of products that have an increasingly masculine (feminine) image. This relationship is statistically significant for male consumers, but not for females.     

民族自治地区三公经费公开问题研究

针对民族自治地区这一特殊行政区域,指出“三公经费”公开目前存在公开意识不足、公开内容简单、真实性偏低、公开渠道受限及反馈性不足等问题。提出了应从思想意识上深入开展群众性教育、规范三公经费公开内容,严格要求随表附上说明、严格监督、建设多渠道公开平台并建立交流反馈机制等完善思路。     

劳动力流动与中国农村居民消费结构——基于LAIDS模型的实证研究

使用1992~2011年的时间序列数据,采用线性几乎理想需求系统模型(LAIDS),重点检验了劳动力流动对农村居民消费结构的影响。研究发现,劳动力流动会使衣着、文教娱乐及服务、医疗消费有所增加,会减少食品、居住消费,对家用几乎没有影响。为此,应增加工资性收入,完善劳动力流动政策和供给结构。     

经济发展方式转变下扩大我国消费对策研究

本文首先分析了改革开放以来我国消费率的变动趋势,然后对制约我国消费增长的因素进行剖析,最后提出要从供给和需求两方面来扩大我国消费,更重要的是转变经济增长方式和进行结构调整,着力培育促进消费持续增长的长期机制.     

人民银行金融消费权益保护监督检查机制研究

作为国家的中央银行,人民银行承担着维护金融稳定的职责,加强金融消费权益保护是维护金融稳定的重要环节.2012年成立金融消费权益保护局以来,人民银行已初步完成了金融消费权益保护工作的组织构架、法律制度框架和投诉处理机制建设.随着金融消费权益保护工作的深入推进,必须建立金融消费权益保护工作评估体系和监督检查机制.本文结合我国当前监管现状,借鉴国外先进经验,提出构建人民银行金融消费权益保护监督检查机制的建议,以供参考.     

Buying a Home with a Resale Value: Location,Location, Location*

We develop a dynamic multiregion model, where a household's choice of housing location depends on its current wealth and its current type, and involves both consumption and investment considerations. The relative strength of the consumption motive and the investment motive determines the equilibrium pattern of residential sorting. A strong investment (consumption) motive implies sorting according to household type (wealth). The model predicts that large house‐price fluctuations are associated with a low degree of sorting by type. This prediction is consistent with evidence from US metropolitan areas when income, education, and age are used as proxies for household type.     

Checkmating the Consumer: Passive Consumption and the Economic Devaluation of Culture

Early neoclassical economics embodied a gendered symbolic system that devalued consumption and enabled economists to ignore a basic contradiction underlying their treatment of consumption. According to consumer-sovereignty dogma, the consumer determined which firms would survive by actively pursuing maximum individual utility. While this consumer retained the culturally masculine attributes of initiative and agency, consumption itself was devalued because, from a systemic point of view, it is not important which firms survive. At the macro level, consumption was marginalized through Say's law, which holds that excessive acquisition of commodities for consumption is potentially dangerous, because saving and investment drive the economy. The rise of mass consumption and Keynesian macroeconomics threw into question the cultural gendering of consumption – which had acquired feminine attributes like passivity and frivolity – and rendered the neoclassical devaluing of it increasingly untenable. The postwar, neoclassical synthesis and subsequent developments have reinstated the pre-Keynesian gendering of consumption and devaluation of culture.     

An experimental study of decisions in dynamic optimization problems

Summary. We study decisions of subjects who are given an incentive to solve dynamic optimization problems with the structure of a single-agent, one-sector, closed economy macroeconomic model. The decision task involves a sequence of choices of consumption and investment levels. Treatment variables consist of the initial endowment of capital stock, the production technology available to the economy, and the method of creating the structure of an infinite-horizon model. The study includes and contrasts data from both American and Japanese participants. We find that whether over- or underinvestment relative to the optimum occurs depends on the production technology, but not on the initial endowment of capital stock, nor the subject pool used, nor the method of implementing the infinite horizon. Sudden episodes of maximal consumption called binges, which are always suboptimal, are widely observed. Received: December 7, 1998; revised version: March 12, 1999