Long-term forecasting of fuel demand at theater entry points

Managing the distribution of fuel in theater requires Army fuel planners to forecast demand at the strategic level to ensure that fuel will be in the right place, at the right time, and in the amounts needed. This work presents a simulation approach to forecasting that accounts for the structure of the supply chain network when aggregating the demand of war fighters across the theater over the forecasting horizon. The resulting empirical distribution of demand at the theater entry point enables planners to identify forecast characteristics that impact their planning process, including the amplitudes and temporal positions of peaks in demand, and the estimated lead time to the point of use. Experimentation indicates that the forecasts are sensitive to the pattern of war fighter demand, the precise structure of the in-theater supply chain network, and the constraints and uncertainty present in the network, all of which are critical planning considerations.     

晋升激励、专业搭配与公共卫生服务满意度

提供高质量的公共卫生服务不但是现代政府的重要职责，也是国家治理能力的重要体现。随着中国经济发展进入新常态，干部考核评价机制不断完善，地方政府官员开始重视公共卫生等民生服务，同时，官员间专业搭配也成为影响民生服务质量的重要因素。文章将2013年中国综合社会调查数据与81个地级以上城市官员的相关信息进行匹配，将上任时年龄小于55岁的官员定义为"强晋升激励"官员，而将上任时年龄大于等于55岁的官员定义为"弱晋升激励"官员。研究发现：第一，具有"强晋升激励"的市委书记和市长都有助于改善城市公共卫生服务满意度。第二，在经济较发达、政府财力较雄厚和东部地区城市，官员晋升激励的积极效应更为明显。第三，在本研究样本中，市委书记和市长"经管—理工"的专业搭配模式是提高城市公共卫生服务满意度的积极因素。在考虑了测量偏误、地区异质性、遗漏变量、样本代表性问题，并经过安慰剂检验后，文章的主要结论依然保持稳健。本研究不但有助于我们更深入地理解中国城市间公共卫生服务质量的差距及其决定因素，而且也启发我们从改善官员治理的角度来提高公共卫生服务质量，以及应对突发性公共卫生事件的能力，从而有效推进中国经济健康可持续发展。     

非国有大股东对国企超额雇员的影响:成本效应还是激励效应

基于竞争理论的国企改革思路强调减少政策性负担摊派,基于产权理论的改革思路侧重于引入非国有资本,以解决产权不清晰与所有者缺位问题.本文尝试融合两种理论,以国企超额雇员问题为研究对象,从非国有大股东视角探究混合所有制改革成效.研究发现:非国有大股东能够显著降低国企超额雇员,减弱超额雇员对公司价值的损害作用,且该治理作用会随非国有大股东相对力量的提高而增强;从作用机制来看,该治理作用不仅表现为劳动力成本尤其是员工薪酬的节约,还表现为内部薪酬差距和管理层薪酬业绩敏感性的提高,兼具成本效应与激励效应;该作用在地区就业压力较小、劳动密集度较低以及劳动保护水平更低的环境下更为显著.     

Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences,lessons learned and upscaling challenges

Many developing countries face a major challenge today: how to safeguard the biodiversity maintained in the fields of the rural poor - which constitute a national and global public good - whilst meeting those same people's development needs and rights? A solution to this dilemma has thus been sought in adapting the design and implementation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) concepts to the conservation of agrobiodiversity.Here we review the application of nine such Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes that have been applied to date in four Latin American countries over the period 2010–2018. These covered 130 threatened varieties across a number of major food crops, and involved over 100 farming communities and 1,100 farmers (45 % of which were women). Conservation service offers were received through a competitive tender mechanism. Average bid offers revealed high heterogeneity, varying between US$675/ha. to ten times as much.In relation to issues identified as key to PES, such as spatial targeting, differentiated payments and conditionality, the underlying design of the PACS schemes may be considered solid. PACS-related prioritisation processes allow for the a priori identification of sites with high ecosystem service densities and high threat levels. The use of competitive tenders permits accounting for cost heterogeneity in the provision of conservation services and for payments to be differentiated. Conditionality is strong.In terms of implementation, a “back of the envelope” calculation based on the results of the competitive tenders suggests that conservation costs are modest. For a priority conservation portfolio of 100 varieties (which may be from different crops) each with a target area of five hectares, costs would amount to just under US$860,000 over twenty years or US$70,000 p.a. at a 5 % discount rate. The small-scale and one-off nature of the interventions realised to date, along with threatened crop variety seed availability constraints, have however meant that environmental effectiveness has been incomplete in the short-term (area cultivated with specific threatened varieties increased, but still below the “not at risk” threshold). The establishment of systematic monitoring systems is required to determine longer-term impacts and inform more regular PACS interventions within a dynamically evolving systems context.     

Forecasting the urban skyline with extreme value theory

The world’s urban population is expected to grow fifty percent by the year 2050 and exceed six billion. The major challenges confronting cities, such as sustainability, safety, and equality, will depend on the infrastructure developed to accommodate the increase. Urban planners have long debated the consequences of vertical expansion—the concentration of residents by constructing tall buildings—over horizontal expansion—the dispersal of residents by extending urban boundaries. Yet relatively little work has predicted the vertical expansion of cities and quantified the likelihood and therefore urgency of these consequences.We regard tall buildings as random exceedances over a threshold and use extreme value theory to forecast the skyscrapers that will dominate the urban skyline in 2050 if present trends continue. We predict forty-one thousand skyscrapers will surpass 150 meters and 40 floors, an increase of eight percent a year, far outpacing the expected urban population growth of two percent a year. The typical tall skyscraper will not be noticeably taller, and the tallest will likely exceed one thousand meters but not one mile. If a mile-high skyscraper is constructed, it will hold fewer occupants than many of the mile-highs currently designed. We predict roughly three-quarters the number of floors of the Mile-High Tower, two-thirds of Next Tokyo’s Sky Mile Tower, and half the floors of Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Illinois—three prominent plans for a mile-high skyscraper. However, the relationship between floor and height will vary considerably across cities.     

VIX futures term structure and the expectations hypothesis

Tests of the expectations hypothesis reveal that the slope of the VIX futures term structure predicts the direction but not the magnitude of the evolution of the short-end of the curve, but predicts neither the direction nor the magnitude of short-term changes in the long-end of the curve. Relative value seeking spread trades, constructed to exploit such violations, deliver excess returns with annualized Sharpe ratios equal or greater than those of volatility-writing strategies deployed by VIX ETN's for a majority of the 32 spread trade combinations tested. I demonstrate that profits from beta-neutral variations of the spread trades, which are not compensation for taking on equity downside risk by design, are propagated by inflows of capital into VIX futures markets, after controlling for factors that measure changes in the availability of hedge fund capital, risk appetite, and momentum. At the heart of profits, and by extension the term structure anomalies, is a disproportionally elevated basis propagated by long VIX demand that enters the futures market through ETN channels.     

The differences in hotel selection among various types of travellers: A comparative analysis with a useful bounded rationality behavioural decision support model

This study aims to investigate the hotel selection differences among different types of travellers through online hotel reviews. Specifically, the study performs a detailed examination of the differences in hotel key factors, criterion importance and selection results among five types of travellers, namely, business, couples, families, friends and solo. Using a sample of 194,885 online reviews on TripAdvisor.com, this study identifies the hotel key factors and criterion importance by employing the term frequency-inverse document frequency algorithm and Word2Vec algorithm. Additionally, a bounded rationality behavioural decision support model with picture fuzzy information is proposed to address hotel selection problems for different traveller types. Our results suggest that different types of travellers present differences in hotel key factors, criterion importance and selection results. However, families and friends have similar hotel selection results. This study can serve as a reference for hotel managers in understanding traveller preferences and for tourism website optimisation.     

A fractional cointegration var analysis of exchange rate dynamics

In their seminal work, Baillie and Bollerslev (1994) carried out an analysis of deviations from the cointegrating relationship of seven important exchange rates. They suggested that the exchange rate series possess long memory and therefore such processes could be well described as fractionally integrated processes. Hence, the influence of shocks to the equilibrium exchange rates may only vanish at very long horizons. In this work we analyze the cointegrating structure of five exchange rates to the US dollar, namely the British pound, the Euro, the Swedish Krona, the Canadian Dollar and the Swiss Franc. The series possess long memory and we show that they can be modeled through fractional integration. In fact, standard cointegration is rejected with the more traditional Johansen CVAR methodology. By using the recently introduced Fractionally Cointegrated VAR by Johansen and Nielsen (2012) we provide a cointegrating relationship taking into account fractional integration.     

股东对创新投入的反应：股权激励异质性的信号作用

以我国2017—2019年沪深两市A股实施股权激励的上市企业为样本,基于股东视角分析股东对创新投入信息的反应,探讨这一反应在股权高度集中时的变化,并考察高管团队股权激励异质性因素向股东传递信号的机制。结果表明,创新投入与股东反应正相关;股权集中度正向调节创新投入与股东反应的关系;股权激励异质性负向调节创新投入与股东反应的关系,且该效应在民企中更加显著;经营风险是股权激励异质性负向影响股东对创新投入反应的中介变量。     

省联社管理及其对农信社效率提升的影响:理论与实证研究

合理地衡量和评价省联社对农信社效率的影响,是推动省联社改革的基础,也是当前理论和实践中面临的难题。本文在对省联社的管理服务职能详细调查的基础上,提出了通过比对省联社管理导向和农信社效率提升方向之间的差异,间接分析省联社管理对农信社效率的影响,并以2010-2017年A省75家农信社为研究对象进行了实证分析。研究结果表明,当前省联社管理的总体导向是:有效引导农信社在扩大业务规模的同时,控制总成本收入比和降低不良贷款水平,但对农信社的利润水平、风险覆盖水平、支农支小情况缺乏实质性约束;在推动农信社改制为农商行的过程中缺乏对其提高经营效率的帮助,在管理中未充分考虑各家农信社及其所处市场环境的差异等。文章建议,当前省联社改革的路径是“减少管理+增强服务”,其中减少管理的关键是解决退出职责谁接管的问题,而增强服务的关键是对省联社进行更有效的激励约束。