Being Good Parents or Being Good Citizens: Dilemmas and Contradictions of Urban Families in Middle‐Class Enclaves and Mixed Neighbourhoods in Germany

In recent years, cities have become ever more attractive to middle‐class families. On the one hand, middle‐class families tend to withdraw into (often newly built) socially homogeneous middle‐class neighbourhoods. On the other hand, they are also known to move into inner‐city and socially mixed areas, thus triggering processes of gentrification. Academic literature has often denounced these housing choices as being either ‘separatist’ or ‘revanchist’, more broadly categorized as strategies of ‘middle‐class disaffiliation’. Although there is a grain of truth in these interpretations, the reality is certainly more complicated. In our research on middle‐class parents’ housing and neighbourhood choices as well as their patterns of neighbourhood use, carried out in each of the two types of residential area mentioned above, we have only very rarely found an explicit desire to draw boundaries that exclude those ‘beneath’ them. We rather argue that the housing choices and neighbourhood‐related activities of middle‐class family households are heavily influenced by the specific dilemmas the interviewees face as (working) urban parents. While a significant number of respondents worry about the social sustainability, justice and cohesion of urban society, they are also concerned about the future prospects of their children. Many find it difficult to reconcile these conflicting normative demands under the prevailing circumstances.     

分税制、地区竞争与地方政府债务扩张

近年来,中国地方政府债务持续扩张引起政府、社会和学界的高度关注.通过构建一个包含地区增长目标、分税制和地方政府博弈的动态随机一般均衡模型,从税制视角对地方债扩张这一现象加以解释.研究表明,在地方政府追求经济增长的背景下,当前的税收制度扩大了地方政府发生短视或者经济出现不利冲击时政府债务扩张的程度.渠道分析发现,地方政府发生短视时,顺周期的增值税放松了地方财政约束并降低了地方政府债务扩张程度,转移支付降低了地方借贷成本并提高了债务扩张程度;负向生产率冲击发生时,顺周期的税收收入加剧了财政压力并放大了地方政府债务的扩张.此外,地区竞争放大了税制产生作用的强度.由此,可以通过增加财产税等直接税的比重、规范转移支付的获取和促进地区协作等方式限制地方政府债务扩张.     

Low price equilibrium in multi-unit auctions: the GSM spectrum auction in Germany

The second–generation (GSM) spectrum auction in Germany is probably the most clear cut example of a low price outcome in a simultaneous ascending-bid multi-unit auction. The present paper gives an account of the events, describes the auction rules and market conditions, and provides a game theoretic explanation of low price equilibrium in simultaneous, ascending-bid multi-unit auctions. In particular, it is shown that in the unique equilibrium that survives iterated elimination of dominated strategies, the efficient allocation is reached at minimum bids.     

Intraday Lead-Lag Relationships Between the Futures-, Options and Stock Market

In rational, efficiently functioning and complete markets, returns on derivative and underlying securities should be perfectly contemporaneously correlated. Due to market imperfections, one of these markets may reflect information faster. The use of high-frequency data and the choice for a small unit time interval to measure these lead-lag relations comes at the cost of some or many missing observations, causing traditional estimators to either under- or overestimate covariances and correlations. We use a new estimator to estimate lead-lag relationships between the cash AEX index, options and futures. We find that futures returns lead both options and cash index returns by approximately 10 minutes. The relationship between options and the cash market is not completely unidirectional.     

Multinationals and Training: Some Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Industries

This paper sets out to analyse the effect of plant and sectoral level characteristics on the provision of training to employees using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. There is no clear evidence that foreign owned plants are more likely to provide training. By contrast, we find that they spend less than domestic plants on training, ceteris paribus. There is also no evidence that plants that receive training grants are more likely to provide training. This may be likely to reflect the targeting of training grants on plants that are otherwise unlikely to provide much training. We do, however, find that training activity in the sector, either by other foreign or domestic plants, has a positive effect on plant level training activity, at least for domestic owned plants.     

浅析当代大学生就业心理

通过大学生活的淬炼,毕业生在知识储备、综合素质和人格个性等方面都有了积极显著的发展,有着强烈的就业意愿和积极的就业动机.然而面对激烈的人才竞争,初涉人世的毕业生往往表现出不同程度的心理矛盾和心理不适.从择业认知、就业心理两个角度分析当代大学生的就业心理,并分析其成因,对改善当代大学生尤其是专科毕业生就业状况提出了几点思考.     

信息化助推白沙管理升级

<正>几年前刚刚上任的总裁卢平女士发现:每次出差回来,桌上的文件就堆得像小山;年终总结时,交上来的材料都是厚厚一叠。她于是规定:凡是给她看的东西,只能是一张纸,上面直截了当地写明“题目、问题、方案、机遇、风险、结论和审批”。后来这家企业将“一张纸制度”逐渐归纳提炼为“简约管理”四个字。     

谈如何提升邮政物流效益

物流已经成为全球一个极具潜力、带动全局的新经济增长点,邮政在拓展物流市场上有着其他物流企业无法比拟的网络优势。文章在分析邮政发展物流的优势和不足的基础上,提出了邮政物流在体制改革、技术水平、服务理念、整合创新等方面的改进措施,从而从整体上提升邮政物流效益。     

On Assisting Domestic Industries under Bertrand Competition

In a homogeneous‐good duopoly game with a home and a foreign firm, which compete on prices, it has been shown that the optimal way to assist the domestic industry is by a production subsidy. The argument here is that the subsidy is used to keep potential competitive pressure on the foreign firm. This paper analyzes under which conditions this threat of entry of a subsidized home firm is credible. It is shown that in markets where the firms move before the government, a subsidy is not credible and dominated by a tariff in terms of welfare.