Quantitative Analysis of Foreign Trade and Environmental Efficiency in China

This article analyzes the relationships among trade, the economy, and environmental quality in China. First, in the context of these relationships, the Super-SBM model is used to calculate the environmental efficiencies of thirty Chinese provinces and cities to obtain the degrees of regional disparity. Second, China’s provincial panel data from 2003 and 2012 are used to establish an influential factor indicator system of environmental efficiency. A section-weighted fixed effect model then provides insights about influential factors such as spatial heterogeneity. Third, the article establishes a variable coefficient model to identify the relationships among the objects of the study and divides the Chinese regions into four types. The suggestions include enhancing environmental and business regulations to ensure equilibrium between trade, the environment, and local economies.     

产业转移中的企业自我选择效应分析——基于区域产业结构理论的演变

对区域产业结构演变的三个层面进行理论分析,将研究视角从传统理论的模式化、新经济地理理论的抽象化转向异质性企业选择的微观化,进而探索影响区域产业转移的微观动力机制,即企业的自我选择效应、集聚效应与扩散效应同时成为影响区域产业结构演变的三种内在力量。结果表明:从企业微观层面看,集聚效应在一定时期内还得继续存在;政府应加大基础设施建设方面的投入,并在产业链整合、市场化等方面给予一定的政策支持以实现产业结构的跨区域整合。     

大型研发企业的研发投入分析——基于全球前2000家企业研发投入数据

利用2006年全球研发投入居前2000位的企业数据,考察了这些企业研发投入的一些基本特征,如产业分布、国家分布,以及研发的集中度,并探讨了企业研发投入与企业规模之间的关系。研究结论是：研发具有产业异质性;研发在一些国家集中;企业研发的总量水平、研发比率、研发增长率与企业规模具有非线性关系．中型企业具有较高的研发投入量,而小型企业与大型企业具有较高有研发投入比,以及研发增长率。     

非劳动收入对家庭时间配置的影响——一个基于工作异质性的比较研究

本文在区分工作异质性的基础上,分析了非劳动收入对家庭时间配置的影响,认为非劳动收入的提高将减少家务时间的配置,增加市场工作刚性家庭的闲暇时间,但对市场工作非刚性家庭闲暇时间配置的影响却是不确定的。市场工作的异质性决定了一个家庭的社会和经济地位,利用CHNS2006年的数据所作的实证结果表明,非劳动收入水平的提高一致地减少了所有家庭的家务时间,同时导致在政府及国有集体企业、三资企业工作的家庭闲暇时间减少,但引起在家庭联产承包农业、私营个体企业工作的家庭闲暇时间配置的增加。     

Personalist Economics: Moral Convictions,Economic Realities,And Social Action

We examine the relationship between the administrative enforcement of environmental regulation, ethnic heterogeneity, and other community characteristics in New Jersey and New York. We find that the percentage of non-white population in a community is positively related with administrative penalties imposed on violators. However, penalties are lower in more ethnically diverse communities. This result may be due to the fact that these communities are less likely to coordinate to create solidarity across ethnic groups and demand stronger enforcement.     

Leaving EMU: a real options perspective

The real option implicit in a country's decision of whether to leave an existing monetary union when there is uncertainty over the future benefits of this move is examined. The theoretical model used is calibrated for the current Euro-12 area by proxying policymakers’ inflation preferences with unemployment rates and debt-to-GDP ratios. A robust group of countries is observed that would choose to remain within EMU consisting of Belgium, Finland, Greece and Italy; France and Spain loosely also belong to this core. Only Luxembourg would robustly want to leave EMU; Ireland and The Netherlands, however, complement that core closely.     

Heterogeneity effects from market interventions

The aim of this paper is to test whether the European Commission activities generate a heterogeneity effect on the merging parties. A sample of 74 firms involved in 45 contested merger and acquisition operations during the years 1990 to 1999 is used. The methodology is based on the GARCH framework. The main result is that, globally, the DGC interventions seem not to reduce significantly the heterogeneity among investors, except for the operations where it takes strong decisions like prohibition. In these last cases, the signal coming from the DGC encompasses valuable information and is well understood by market participants.     

Choice modelling with search and sort data from an interactive choice experiment

We present a highly structured, online, interactive choice environment containing a large number of alternatives, a search tool that eliminates alternatives that fail specified criteria, and a sort tool. A conceptual framework is developed that links tool usage and preference heterogeneity, and tested in the context of long-haul flight choice. Individuals who sort on price are more price sensitive; individuals who search on certain attributes have a greater marginal (dis)utility for that attribute; and individuals who perform certain non-price searches have a lesser price disutility. The method shows promise as a means for providing a richer picture of preference heterogeneity.     

Tradable travel credits for congestion management with heterogeneous users

This paper carries on the recent work of Yang and Wang (2011) on tradable credit schemes by considering heterogeneous users with different value of time (VOT). Given a tradable credit scheme, the user equilibrium (UE) and market equilibrium (ME) conditions with heterogeneous users are formulated into a variational inequalities (VI) problem. Sufficient conditions for uniqueness of the aggregate UE link flows and then the ME credit price are established. Appropriate tradable credit schemes are developed to decentralize system optimal and Pareto-improving network flow patterns. Extension is made to the elastic demand case.     

An alternate approach to modeling the slack season provision of guided tours to tourists

We discuss an approach to modeling the slack season provision of guided tours to tourists that accounts for the twin phenomena of stochastic demand and tourist heterogeneity but is different from the way in which this problem has been modeled in the extant tourism literature. Our discussion uses the theory of discrete-time Markov chains and it models the slack season from a tourist demand perspective. Specifically, we first study a case in which the wait plus tour or the excursion time of an arriving tourist is exponentially distributed with a fixed mean. Next, we focus on a scenario in which the excursion time is exponentially distributed with one of two possible fixed means and these two means arise with specific probabilities.