How government-led land consolidation efforts achieve grain production stability? An empirical analysis in Hubei Province,China

China has been conducting massive land consolidation (LC) projects since the late 1990s to ensure national food security which has been one of the common issues in the world. How the implementation of LC projects affects grain production stability is a question should be answered. Basing on an empirical analysis at the county level in Hubei Province, China, this paper separates the trend component and the fluctuation component from a time series of grain production over 1991-2016 using the H-P filtering method. Then we estimate the impacts of LC projects and climate change on the trend and fluctuation rate of grain production for the entire Hubei Province. Moreover, the effects on the production of different major crops for the central, eastern, southwestern, northwestern and northern areas are also examined, respectively. The results show that: (1) the production trends for five subareas and the whole area all have followed a trajectory of “increase-decrease-increase” from 1991 to 2016. The magnitude of fluctuation rate was large but became smaller in recent years. (2) The contribution of LC to the long-term trends of grain production for the entire samples in Hubei Province mainly benefits from the growth in the cultivated land area through LC; more LC investment and newly-added arable land area promote the sudden increase in grain production above the long-term trends, while the impacts of LC area are negative. (3) The impacts of LC on the major crop production vary across areas. LC exerts significant impacts on the production of major crops in the central and eastern Hubei, and this effect persists to the following year. Similarly, this influence also exists in the southwestern and northern area, while becomes insignificant in the following year. No significant effect of LC variables is found in the northwestern area. These findings may provide reference for the government to address LC inefficiency and food security problems, and an effective and innovative mechanism combining the agricultural production, land consolidation and meteorological factors needs to be established to ensure food security and long-term and stable agricultural production. In addition, the regional difference in natural conditions and LC orientations should also be considered.     

Double continuation regions for American and Swing options with negative discount rate in Lévy models

In this paper, we study perpetual American call and put options in an exponential Lévy model. We consider a negative effective discount rate that arises in a number of financial applications including stock loans and real options, where the strike price can potentially grow at a higher rate than the original discount factor. We show that in this case a double continuation region arises and we identify the two critical prices. We also generalize this result to multiple stopping problems of Swing type, that is, when successive exercise opportunities are separated by i.i.d. random refraction times. We conduct an extensive numerical analysis for the Black–Scholes model and the jump‐diffusion model with exponentially distributed jumps.     

社会互动与家庭金融资产配置

运用中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据,研究社会互动与家庭金融资产配置之间的关系。研究发现,适当增强社会互动会促进家庭更多地参与风险金融市场,增加投资风险资产的比例,提高金融资产的分散化程度,优化资产的配置效率。但当社会互动达到一定程度后,过度的社会互动则会抑制家庭参与风险市场,减少风险资产的投资比重,降低金融资产的分散化程度以及资产配置的有效性。因此,家庭需要建立适度而高质量的社会互动,这有助于家庭获得更多的外部资源,缓解信息不对称,降低交易成本,从而优化家庭金融资产配置。     

Nudging farmers in crop choice using price information: Evidence from Ethiopian Commodity Exchange

The lack of reference price information is often regarded as one of the most pervasive aspects of incomplete commodity markets in developing countries. Previous studies on the effects of price information emphasize the market participation and performance of rural households. This paper argues that access to reference price information influences farmers’ crop choice decisions, the most important decision in farming activity. The study exploits the variation in timing and spatial distance of the publicly run Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) price tickers as an indicator for variation in the intensity of access to reference price information among rural villages in Ethiopia. The paper finds that access to price information increases the average farm-gate prices for traded commodities and incentivizes farmers to allocate more land, fertilizer and improved seeds to commodities traded in the ECX. It also nudges farmers to produce more of the traded commodities, increasing the output share of ECX-traded commodities.     

Consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade: Implications for conservationists

This study investigates consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade, drawing implications for conservationists. The first study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 500 Facebook posts in wildlife trade lateral exchange markets to show how creative strategies, media type and persuasion tactics influence the number of likes and comments that posts receive. The second study then undertook a thematic discourse analysis to develop a rich understanding of the culture, beliefs and motivations that influence how consumers engage in the markets. Findings showed that an overwhelming majority of posts use a functional or informational strategy and that when posts use overt persuasion tactics the number of comments decrease. A conceptual model of how cultural factors may impact the success of marketing strategies is then proposed. These findings have implications for conservationists who seek to build engagement with wildlife trade consumers online.     

How career plateau beliefs and leader interpersonal unfairness harm job performance in dysfunctional organizational settings

Building on social exchange theory and attribution theory, this study unpacks the relationship between employees' perceptions of organizational politics and job performance, considering the mediating effect of career plateau beliefs and the moderating effect of leader interpersonal unfairness. The findings provide empirical support for the theoretical predictions. An important reason for which perceptions of dysfunctional organizational politics reduce job performance is that employees develop beliefs that opportunities for their career development are limited. This mediating role of career plateau beliefs is particularly salient to the extent that employees are exposed to organizational leaders who treat them with disrespect. Organizations can mitigate the risk that highly politicized decision-making processes lead to negative performance outcomes by stimulating fair interpersonal relationships.     

The effects of capacity reduction policy under the interest rate peg in China

Capacity reduction has been a recurrent theme in China's economic policy. The central government takes various administrative measures to remove excess capacity, accumulated mainly due to underpriced production factors and distorted incentives. I evaluate the de-capacity policy in a series of models and prove that its effects depend critically on its persistence and monetary policy regime. Under an interest rate peg, a transient policy that changes markup temporarily is ineffective and even expansionary, whereas a persistent policy is effective due to a negative wealth effect. A permanent de-capacity policy can lead to over-reactions in macro variables because the interest rate peg adds positive feedback to the economy. Therefore, the de-capacity policy has greater uncertainty under the interest rate peg. As a policy tool, it easily deviates from its target and brings about excessive volatility. However, long-run price stability and a gradually advanced de-capacity policy are conducive to the achievement of policy targets.     

Here comes Generation Z: Millennials as managers

As the workplace continues to change, a new generational cohort—Generation Z, sometimes referred to as iGen—is beginning to enter the workforce. At the same time, millennials are now progressing in their careers and will be challenged with managing these incoming workers. The purpose of this article is to provide a contextual overview that identifies and illuminates some of the defining work-related characteristics of these two youngest generations in the workplace to increase understanding of the potential intergenerational conflict between these cohorts and develop leadership strategies that can be utilized to increase employee morale and productivity. This article analyzes the millennial supervisor-Gen Z subordinate relationship based on generational cohort theory, leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, and the work values framework.     

The impact of (un)conventional expansionary monetary policy on income inequality – lessons from Japan

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on income inequality in Japan, using hitherto unexplored data from the Japan Household Panel Survey. Empirical evidence shows that expansionary monetary policy in Japan has contributed to diminishing the gender pay gap through an increase in working time of women relative to men, but also to increasing the education pay gap. These effects may have materialized via the aggregate demand channel and the labour productivity channel. In contrast, expansionary monetary policy has had no significant impact on the development of the age pay gap.     

The effectiveness of monetary policy and output fluctuations: An asymmetric analysis

Previous studies have investigated asymmetries in the effects of monetary policy on the real economic activity by using either vector autoregressive (VAR)-based regime-switching models with smooth transition technique or Gaussian functions to parameterise the dynamic effects of structural shocks on the economy. These kinds of VAR models assume asymmetry as a short-run relationship between the series since the long-run neutrality hypothesis of money states that monetary policy can only affect productive capacity of the economy in the short run, but not in the long run. The recent theoretical literature shows that this hypothesis is not quite right. Thus, this paper examines the extent to which monetary policy has a long-run asymmetric effect on output in a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries by using a nonlinear hidden cointegration analysis within a likelihood-based panel framework. The findings indicate that there is a long-run relationship between the real interest rate as an indicator of monetary policy and the growth rate of real output in five countries out of nine under review. This gives support for the view that output has responded asymmetrically to the real interest rate changes. The economic implication of our results is that monetary policy affects positive and negative output fluctuations differently.