Conditions Ensuring the Decomposition of Asset Demand for All Risk-Averse Investors

Abstract

The paper explores how the demand for a risky asset can be decomposed into an investment effect and a hedging effect by all risk-averse investors. This question has been shown to be complex when considered outside of the mean-variance framework. Dependence among returns on the risky assets is restricted to quadrant dependence and it is found that the demand for one risky asset can be decomposed into an investment component based on the risk premium offered by the asset and a hedging component used against the fluctuations in the return on the other risky asset. The paper also discusses how the class of quadrant-dependent distributions is related to that of two-fund separating distributions. This contribution opens up the search for broader distributional hypotheses suitable to asset demand models. Examples are discussed.     

Teaching Inflation Targeting: An Analysis for Intermediate Macro

Over the last decade, many central banks have adopted policies known as inflation targeting. If intermediate-level macroeconomics students are to be prepared to think about current policy issues, it is important to provide them with an introduction to the macroeconomic implications of inflation targeting. Unfortunately, the standard aggregate demand-aggregate supply frameworks commonly used to teach intermediate macroeconomics are not well suited for this task because they are expressed in terms of output and the price level and because they fail to make explicit the policy objectives of the central bank. The author provides a simple graphical device involving the output gap and the inflation rate that overcomes these problems and that can be used to teach intermediate macroeconomics students about inflation targeting.     

我国农业土地规模经营的现状、前景与政策建议

改革开放后，家庭承包责任制的逐步实施使广大农民获得了生产经营的自主权，解决了农民温饱问题、改善了农民生活。但随着经济的发展，我国的小农生产已经严重制约了我国农业生产的进一步发展。为提高我国农产品在国际上的竞争力，必须改变我国农地小规模分散经营的格局。在稳定土地产权关系的前提下，促进土地使用权流转，发展适度规模经营。本文在综合国内外已有研究的基础上，结合我国各典型区域的土地规模经营现状，总结了我国目前在推进土地规模经营的进程中普遍存在的问题，提出了我国各典型区域土地规模经营的发展前景，从而给出政策建议。     

China's macroeconomic stability – an empirical study based on survey data

A complete financial stability analysis should include investigation on macroeconomic stability since macroeconomic development and potential imbalance can increase the financial instability and trigger a financial crisis. Survey data of rating on China's macroeconomic stability is analyzed by estimating an ordered logit model with random effect. Among the candidate macroeconomic indicators, we found that inflation is the key variable that determines China's macroeconomic stability, followed by the change in budget balance and GDP growth gap.     

The language of social entrepreneurs

This paper questions the application of the entrepreneurship discourse to social entrepreneurship in the UK and looks at how people ‘doing’ social enterprise appropriate or re-write the discourse to articulate their own realities. Drawing on phenomenological enquiry and discourse analysis, the study analyses the micro discourses of social entrepreneurs, as opposed to the meta rhetorics of (social) entrepreneurship. Analysis using both corpus linguistics software and Critical Discourse Analysis showed a preoccupation among interviewees with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. Echoes of the enterprise discourse are evident but couched in linguistic devices that suggest a modified social construction of entrepreneurship, in which interviewees draw their legitimacy from a local or social morality. These findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of enterprise is used to promote efficiency, business discipline and financial independence. The paper raises critical awareness of the tension in meanings appropriated to the enterprise discourse by social enterprise policy and practice and illustrates the value of discourse analysis for entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship research.     

隆德县发展特色产业高效节水灌溉的主要做法及成效

地处宁夏南部山区六盘山西麓的隆德县,自20世纪90年代以来,县委、政府以科学发展观为统领,抢抓国务院《关于进一步促进宁夏经济社会发展的若干意见》的历史性机遇和中央扩大内需、拉动经济增长的政策机遇,大力发展特色产业高效节水灌溉。本文从分析特色产业发展现状入手,提出高效节水灌溉的各种对策及建议。     

Entry dynamics of self-employment in South Korea

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether the entry into self-employment was an inevitable move due to economic recession (push hypothesis) or a voluntary move due to entrepreneurship (pull hypothesis) in Korea. It also examines how this decision is affected by changes in socio-economic conditions. The empirical analysis in this study exploited the matched sample for the adjacent months in the Economically Active Population Survey (EAPS) conducted by Korea National Statistical Office in 2000–2004. The empirical results showed that the push aspect of self-employment was strong in Korea over the whole sampled periods. The entry into self-employment in South Korea is largely attributable to economic sluggishness and an increase in unemployment rather than a voluntary transition resulting from entrepreneurship. Policy environment (such as providing information and financial support for new start-ups after the Asian financial crisis), which is a country-specific factor magnified the pushed effects. For the pushed (unprepared) self-employed people, not only is there a need to expand the coverage of vocational training programmes, but also it is vital that social safety nets are strengthened and supplemented.     

Seasonal Trading and Lifestyle Motivation

ABSTRACT

This article explores relationships between tourism sea-sonality and the lifestyle motivations of small tourism businesses, fundamentally a supply-side perspective of seasonality. Seasonal trading decisions are subject to a number of influences, not all of which are in the operator's control. Drawing from exploratory research undertaken in Scotland, the article argues that for some operators, especially located in rural and peripheral destination areas, lifestyle enterprise can confer a range of benefits, some of which are afforded by operating the business on a seasonal basis. Moreover, seasonal trading was seen to assume a number of distinct roles, reflecting various characteristics of lifestyle operators. Accordingly, public policies that seek to promote seasonal extension based on the premise of local economic development or destination objectives are not necessarily destined to work. This is particularly pertinent if such policies do not recognise the wider supply-side dynamics of seasonal trading and fail to engage with the lifestyle aspirations of the operators themselves.     

Monetary policy for emerging market economies: beyond inflation targeting

Monetary policymakers normally seek to achieve multiple objectives: for prices as well as real economic activity, sometimes for the composition of real activity as well as the aggregate, and often for aspects of the economy's international balance. The fact that monetary policy has only one basic instrument to use therefore creates both complexity and tensions among these objectives. Although inflation targeting represents a way of imposing a logical consistency on monetary policy, in the presence of multiple policy objectives inflation targeting undermines policy transparency and therefore makes accountability more difficult too. Because of the limitation of monetary policy's having only one instrument, but multiple objectives, fiscal policy and prudential supervision and regulation of financial institutions are also important for enabling emerging market economies to achieve their macroeconomic aims.