产品市场竞争动态与公司财务保守行为:实证研究述评

得益于产业组织理论与资本结构理论的交叉渗透,企业融资管理更加强调财务灵活性,即须基于产品市场竞争动态、公司战略、公司治理结构以及资本市场环境等因素进行综合权衡,财务保守由此作为一种能够适应企业当前情况及未来投资机会的投融资战略选择行为,而在当代资本结构研究中颇受关注。文章基于资本市场时机、行业竞争、公司治理结构及债务契约分析等四个视角对产品市场竞争与公司财务保守行为关系的经验研究予以述评。     

How Large Are Housing and Financial Wealth Effects? A New Approach

This paper presents a simple new method for measuring “wealth effects” on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the stickiness of consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption “habits”) to distinguish between immediate and eventual wealth effects. In U.S. data, we estimate that the immediate (next quarter) marginal propensity to consume from a $1 change in housing wealth is about 2 cents, with a final eventual effect around 9 cents, substantially larger than the effect of shocks to financial wealth. We argue that our method is preferable to cointegration‐based approaches, because neither theory nor evidence supports faith in the existence of a stable cointegrating vector.     

Income inequality and economic growth

Despite the extensive existing literature on income inequality and economic growth, there remains considerable disagreement on the effect of inequality on economic growth. Existing literatures find either a positive or a negative relationship. In this paper, we attempt to theoretically examine that relationship with a stochastic optimal growth model. We make the disagreement clear within a single model. We conclude (i) that both are possible – that is, higher inequality can retard growth in the early stage of economic development, and can encourage growth in a near steady state, (ii) that income redistribution by high income tax does not always reduce income inequality. Income inequality can be reduced by higher income tax in a near steady state, but it cannot be reduced in the early stage of economic development, and (iii) that two government polices – rapid economic growth and low income inequality – can be achieved by low income tax in the early stage of economic development, but both cannot be achieved simultaneously in a near steady state.     

Spatial Pattern and Spatiotemporal Evolution of China＇s National Historic Cities

基于地理信息系统空间分析技术,从微观、中观、宏观三个尺度对我国国家历史文化名城的地域分布差异和发展演变特征进行分析探讨,结果表明：在微观的市县级范围内,县级及以下名城的分布相对分散,地级及以上名城在我国东部和中部县市相对集中;在中观的省域范围内,1982年以来的一、二、三批名城在省域覆盖范围内具有较为明显的东南部、北部、中西部重心格局演变的特征;从全国范围来看,国家历史文化名城空间上总体表现为由东到西数量递减的非均衡分布特征,时空演变总体表现为由大中城市向中小城市,由中心城市、中部城市向边缘城市、地域特色城市,由直辖城市、省会城市向地级城市、县级城市、甚至城市的一个行政区扩展的特征。国家历史文化名城的批复发展在考虑各尺度区域范围内的等级差异和不均衡分布的基础上走向了科学化、细致化。     

Dynamics of judicial service supply chains

Behavioral issues, coupled with temporary capacity imbalances, dictate the characteristics that a service supply chain assumes in the long run. The paper looks at a service chain in which two factors, backlogs and incentives, influence human agent processing times and, hence, service supply chain capacity. The paper finds that servers within the supply chain change their processing speeds in order to maintain a backlog of cases that is acceptable and credible. The backlog must not be too small, so as to avoid the impression that work is scant and there is idleness; but it must not be too large, so as to avoid the impression of laziness. Simultaneously, the paper finds that there are implicit incentives in the formal hierarchy that impinge upon throughput rates at certain stages of the supply chain: agents upstream try not to overwhelm their bosses' stations downstream with excess work. Hence, this paper looks at the effects of perceived backlogs within service supply chains and also at capacity unbalances that stem from such incentives. The study explores these issues in the context of a managerial intervention in a judicial service supply chain. The study identifies the structure of a seemingly unstructured decision execution that leads to the observed outcomes. The research results in a preliminary system dynamics model that suggests several operational steps to overcome bottlenecks and incompetency.     

CAFTA-DR Effects on FDI Inflows,Growth, and Distribution of the Workforce in Costa Rica: A System Dynamics Approach

As regional trading arrangements have spread, enlarged, and deepened over the last decades, the study of the relation between trade agreements and foreign direct investment (FDI) still presents difficulties due to the multi-dimensional character of such relationships. This article attempts to shed new light on how some of the Central American Free Trade (CAFTA) policies will impact FDI inflows on the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in Costa Rica. Specifically, we look at how the growth and distribution of the workforce is affected by the treaty. The results show that the agreement provisions will have a positive effect on FDI. From these results it is possible to estimate that in the long run, the implementation of CAFTA has a higher probability of generating the intended benefits. System dynamics modeling is used in this article.     

Downward wage rigidity and business cycle asymmetries

The growth rates of wages, unemployment and output of a number of OECD countries have a strongly skewed distribution. In this paper we analyze to what extent downward wage rigidities can explain these empirical business cycle asymmetries. To this aim, we introduce asymmetric wage adjustment costs in a New-Keynesian DSGE model with search and matching frictions in the labor market. Increasing wages is less costly than cutting them. It follows that wages increase relatively fast and thus limit vacancy posting and employment creation, but they decline more slowly, leading to a strong reduction in vacancies and employment. The presence of downward wage rigidities strongly improves the fit of the model to the observed skewness of labor market variables and the relative length of expansions and contractions in the output and the employment cycles. The asymmetry also explains the differing transmission of positive and negative monetary policy shocks from wages to inflation.     

A supportive architecture for CFD-based design optimisation

Multi-disciplinary design optimisation (MDO) is one of critical methodologies to the implementation of enterprise systems (ES). MDO requiring the analysis of fluid dynamics raises a special challenge due to its extremely intensive computation. The rapid development of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) technique has caused a rise of its applications in various fields. Especially for the exterior designs of vehicles, CFD has become one of the three main design tools comparable to analytical approaches and wind tunnel experiments. CFD-based design optimisation is an effective way to achieve the desired performance under the given constraints. However, due to the complexity of CFD, integrating with CFD analysis in an intelligent optimisation algorithm is not straightforward. It is a challenge to solve a CFD-based design problem, which is usually with high dimensions, and multiple objectives and constraints. It is desirable to have an integrated architecture for CFD-based design optimisation. However, our review on existing works has found that very few researchers have studied on the assistive tools to facilitate CFD-based design optimisation. In the paper, a multi-layer architecture and a general procedure are proposed to integrate different CFD toolsets with intelligent optimisation algorithms, parallel computing technique and other techniques for efficient computation. In the proposed architecture, the integration is performed either at the code level or data level to fully utilise the capabilities of different assistive tools. Two intelligent algorithms are developed and embedded with parallel computing. These algorithms, together with the supportive architecture, lay a solid foundation for various applications of CFD-based design optimisation. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture and algorithms, the case studies on aerodynamic shape design of a hypersonic cruising vehicle are provided, and the result has shown that the proposed architecture and developed algorithms have performed successfully and efficiently in dealing with the design optimisation with over 200 design variables.     

Has the ‘franc fort’ exchange rate policy affected the inflationary dynamics? Theory and new evidence

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of the ‘franc fort’ policy implemented in France from 1983 on the inflationary dynamics by means of a square root Kalman filter approach. An interesting aspect of the analysis is the evidence that the ‘franc fort’ exchange rate policy had a significant impact on the inflationary dynamics in France through its credibility effects. These results confirm the imported credibility hypothesis according to which the French authorities accelerated the disinflation process by importing the German monetary policy credibility through the ‘hard peg’ of the franc–DM exchange rate. These findings show that inflation dynamics in France began to converge significantly to that in Germany after the implementation of the ‘franc fort’ policy, making more credible the plan for the final transition to the euro. Moreover, this analysis may also reveal much about the nature of potential success of the current initiative of the new member countries now in the process of joining the EU and looking eventually to adopt the euro.     

Roy Harrod and traditional theory

In 1926 and 1936 Sraff and Keynes attacked the methodological core of traditional economic theory by showing that the premises of partial equilibrium analysis were mutually inconsistent.

this paper aims to show that Harrod neglected Sraffa and Keynes's logical arguments, and only admitted that the tacit assumptions under discussion restricted the domain of validityof the theory to special cases: perfect competition and statics. He then proceeded to generalize the theory to imperfect competition and dynamics by applying the principles (but not the instruments) of traditional analysis. The definition of these domains thus aimede at rescuing as mush as possible from the orthodox approach.