How trade in ecotourism services can save nature: a policy scenario analysis

This article considers a developing country which is abundant in a non-renewable natural resource but scarce in industrial goods. The resource can be used for consumption or for exporting ecotourism services. The article examines scenarios in which technical progress, rising demand for tourism services and higher preferences for the environment reduce today's optimal depletion of the resource. Myopic behaviour and future terms-of-trade gains, however, encourage overexploitation of the resource. As a remedy, the article derives the socially optimal subsidy for the conservation of the resource and discusses North–South transfer schemes which save nature via trade in ecotourism services. Numerical examples suggest that under optimistic assumptions a subsidy rate of about 10% would suffice to preserve the natural resource in the developing country for the provision of tourism services. The resulting cost burden would represent less than 0.03% of the Northern GDP.     

International migration,economic policy and human capital accumulation: a simulation study

"This paper examines the economic policy implications of international migration and human capital accumulation within a dynamic general equilibrium model. Each country produces by means of physical and human capital of two types (skilled and unskilled labour). Along optimal growth paths in a world of diverging population growth rates immigration can only be beneficial when the free rider effect (i.e., not paying for training costs) exceeds the capital dilution effect of an increase in population growth. Under quite general conditions the optimal immigration rate is zero."     

Growth gains from trade and education

A multi-sector general equilibrium model is presented where education enhances general human capital, which is essential for increasing or maintaining the mobility of workers across industries. The paper shows that international trade, combined with education, can have a positive growth effect by allowing workers to move easily to, and specialize in, the industry with the greatest productivity in each period, which enables an economy to grow in the long run at the growth rate of the industry with the most rapid technical progress. Depending on the initial ratio of general-to-specific human capital stock, multiple equilibrium growth paths can exist including a poverty trap, and trade liberalization can allow an economy in a poverty trap to transform into one with continuous education and higher output growth.     

大学公共英语翻译教学的思考

本文由翻译问题入手，旨在深入进行关于大学公共英语翻译教学研究。阐述了中英文化差异对翻译的影响；说明翻译的标准和方法；并结合大量的实例和学生翻译练习中经常出现的种种问题总结了翻译过程中的几个基本步骤。     

The International Monetary Fund’s interventions in food and agriculture: An analysis of loans and conditions

The mandate and competence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not cover food and agriculture policies. While there is anecdotal evidence that the IMF engages in these policies regardless, the state-of-the-art lacks a systematic empirical foundation to identify the extent of its mission creep into these sectors. Based on a combination of machine and human coding, we present a comprehensive database on the IMF’s policy interventions in food and agriculture. Using new data on ‘conditionalities’—policies that governments must implement to access IMF credit—we assess to what extent the IMF has targeted these sectors for the period 1980 to 2014. Our analysis evaluates the agricultural content and ideological orientation of conditions according to whether they promote a developmental state, a night-watchman state, or neither. We find about 2% of all IMF conditions (1105 of 58,406) directly target food and agriculture issues. These are present in 43% of all IMF programs (332 of 781); and affect 100 countries (of the 131 countries that have had an IMF agreement). In addition, our analysis reveals that 59.2% of these conditions embody policy measures in line with night-watchman state policy preferences, 40.1% are model-neutral, and 0.7% developmental. Within the model-neutral category, 23.9% are conditions oriented towards building state capacity; 2.7% have a poverty reduction content; and 2.9% contain pro-environment policies. The IMF’s primary reason for targeting food and agriculture is to enforce fiscal discipline by removing subsidies, yet our analysis identifies that only 8% of these policies abolish subsidies. A more consistent explanation of the IMF’s interest in food and agriculture is its broader mission creep into development policy, and its deep-rooted pro-market ideology.     

The determinants of U.S. banks’ international activities

This paper develops a model and structural dynamic estimation of bank behavior to map the relationship between U.S. banks’ choices of foreign banking activities, and bank and foreign market traits. This estimation framework is applied to a unique bank-level dataset compiled from regulatory sources, covering U.S. banks’ foreign activities in 83 host markets over the 2003–2013 period. Bank traits are better able to explain the evolving patterns of foreign banking than host market characteristics. After controlling for these traits, the post-financial crisis period shows a structural shift away from cross-border claims towards foreign affiliate activities. Structural estimates of foreign market entry costs and regulatory attitudes towards risk are derived. Simulation exercises confirm the strong impact of banks’ and regulators’ risk stance on bank profits and portfolio composition.     

Clustering financial time series with variance ratio statistics

This study introduces a new distance measure for clustering financial time series based on variance ratio test statistics. The proposed metric attempts to assess the level of interdependence of time series from the point of view of return predictability. Simulation results show that this metric aggregates time series according to their serial dependence structure better than a metric based on the sample autocorrelations. An empirical application of this approach to international stock market returns is presented. The results suggest that this metric discriminates stock markets reasonably well according to size and the level of development. Furthermore, despite the substantial evolution of individual variance ratio statistics, the clustering pattern remains fairly stable across different time periods.     

焊工技能鉴定考评工作的实施要点

焊接是一项极为严格的现代制造技术,焊工必须经过严格考评并持证上岗。考评员必须在不断提高自身素质基础上严格执行考评制度和标准。     

Malaysia's My Second Home (MM2H) Programme: An examination of Malaysia as a destination for international retirees

Malaysia was recently ranked fourth highest as a retirement destination by one established magazine. This warrants examination of the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) Programme which targets retirees, and more recently, high net worth foreigners. Data was collected using postal questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews. By virtue of the entry requirements, the retirees were well-to-do. The application process for the MM2H visa did not pose much difficulty. Malaysia was chosen because of fond memories from earlier trips. Satisfied MM2H stayers inadvertently promoted the MM2H Programme when they narrated their positive experiences in various media. If the various country-specific and locality-specific charms that drew foreigners to Malaysia altered deleteriously, even bona fide retirees who had made Malaysia their only home would migrate elsewhere. Malaysian policy makers need to adopt cogent actions to attract more fresh retirees while retain those already in the country.     

Franchising: Directions for Future Research

There have been important contributions to the literature on franchising in recent years, but many interesting questions have received less attention than they deserve. In this paper, I briefly highlight four of these: (i) the existence of master franchising and multi-unit ownership, (ii) the differences in the intensity of franchising across sectors, (iii) international franchising, and (iv) the problems surrounding the adoption of new technologies and adaptation in franchised chains. While not exhaustive, this set of topics illustrates the variety of potential franchise-related research topics.