Regime changes and fiscal sustainability in Kenya

Kenya's fiscal policy landscape is characterized by primary deficit spending forcing the government to rely on debt to meet its objectives. The justification often being that as a developing economy, annual growth rates and future prospects may in the short run justify the uptake of debt to finance infrastructural development. However, given potential fiscal limits, fiscal cycles usually alternates between sustainable and unsustainable regimes and this has a bearing on long run sustainability. This study therefore sought to investigate the nature of fiscal policy regime in Kenya and the extent to which fiscal policy is sustainable in the long run taking into account periodic regime shifts. Markov switching models were used to endogenously determine fiscal policy regimes. Regime switching tests were used to test whether No-Ponzi game condition and debt stabilizing condition were met. The results established that regime switching model was suitable in explaining regime sustainable and unsustainable cycles. An investigation of fiscal policy regimes established that both sustainable and unsustainable regimes were dominant, and each lasted for an average of four years. There was evidence to imply the existence of procyclical fiscal policy in Kenya. Regime switching tests for long run sustainability suggested that the No-Ponzi game condition weakly holds in the Kenyan economy. Regime-based sensitivity analysis indicated that persistence of unsustainability regime for more than 4 years could threaten long-run fiscal sustainability.     

Monetary policy shocks and exchange rates in Asian countries

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rates in Asian countries. To do so, we use VAR models which impose sign restrictions on impulse responses to identify monetary policy shocks. We find that contractionary monetary policy shocks lead to significant exchange rate appreciation in Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea. However, in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, we find either a significant depreciation or no significant effect. These results suggest that an interest rate increase (or decrease) may not necessarily shield Asian countries from exchange rate depreciation (or appreciation) pressure following a U.S. interest rate increase (or decrease).     

Supply chain integration and operational performance: The contingency effects of production systems

The boundary conditions of supply chain integration (SCI) have been widely studied in order to find out when SCI is applicable and effective. However, prior studies have mainly focused on external contextual factors, such as supply complexity, environmental uncertainty and country-level infrastructure. This study contributes to the SCI literature by examining the contingency effects of internal production systems on the relationship between supplier integration, customer integration and operational performance. Based on organizational information processing theory, we provide evidence to show that the impact of supplier and customer integration on operational performance varies across production systems, such as one-of-a-kind production, batch production and mass production systems. The empirical results also reveal how supplier and customer integration can be matched with different configurations of production systems in order to achieve the desired quality, flexibility, delivery or cost performance.     

Restoring balance: how consumers orchestrate family care following unplanned disruptions

ABSTRACT

How do consumers orchestrate multiple and complex practices of care when faced with unplanned disruptions to their lives, such as chronic health conditions? We conduct a qualitative study of families where a child was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes. Inspired by a dance metaphor, we explain how families (1) gather materials for movement, (2) link movements into phrases, and (3) develop an orchestrated style of care as they sense and respond to the dynamic requirements of caregiving when faced with insufficient or unfeasible market solutions. Adding this new perspective to the managerial view used by prior consumer research on family care, we propose an extended perspective on care, which better accounts for how families search to restore life balance in challenging circumstances. This extended perspective illuminates new aspects of consumer engagement with paid and non-paid service providers, and opens avenues for future research in the domain of family care.     

An intelligent service matching method for mechanical equipment condition monitoring using the fibre Bragg grating sensor network

Due to the advantages of being able to function under harsh environmental conditions and serving as a distributed condition information source in a networked monitoring system, the fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensor network has attracted considerable attention for equipment online condition monitoring. To provide an overall conditional view of the mechanical equipment operation, a networked service-oriented condition monitoring framework based on FBG sensing is proposed, together with an intelligent matching method for supporting monitoring service management. In the novel framework, three classes of progressive service matching approaches, including service-chain knowledge database service matching, multi-objective constrained service matching and workflow-driven human-interactive service matching, are developed and integrated with an enhanced particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm as well as a workflow-driven mechanism. Moreover, the manufacturing domain ontology, FBG sensor network structure and monitoring object are considered to facilitate the automatic matching of condition monitoring services to overcome the limitations of traditional service processing methods. The experimental results demonstrate that FBG monitoring services can be selected intelligently, and the developed condition monitoring system can be re-built rapidly as new equipment joins the framework. The effectiveness of the service matching method is also verified by implementing a prototype system together with its performance analysis.     

基于信息系统体系下的军人健康度评估问题研究

基于信息系统体系下的现代战争要求作战人员既要有强健的体魄,还要有良好的心理素质。只有身心健康,才能培养健全的人格,强化心智活动,矫正不良心理,因此,提高信息化条件下军人身心健康水平,是军队信息化建设的一项重要任务,也是考察军队政治工作质量的重要指标。     

Optimal investment-consumption-insurance with random parameters

This paper discusses an optimal investment, consumption, and life insurance purchase problem for a wage earner in a complete market with Brownian information. Specifically, we assume that the parameters governing the market model and the wage earner, including the interest rate, appreciation rate, volatility, force of mortality, premium-insurance ratio, income and discount rate, are all random processes adapted to the Brownian motion filtration. Our modeling framework is very general, which allows these random parameters to be unbounded, non-Markovian functionals of the underlying Brownian motion. Suppose that the wage earner’s preference is described by a power utility. The wage earner’s problem is then to choose an optimal investment-consumption-insurance strategy so as to maximize the expected, discounted utilities from intertemporal consumption, legacy and terminal wealth over an uncertain lifetime horizon. We use a novel approach, which combines the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation and backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) to solve this problem. In general, we give explicit expressions for the optimal investment-consumption-insurance strategy and the value function in terms of the solutions to two BSDEs. To illustrate our results, we provide closed-form solutions to the problem with stochastic income, stochastic mortality, and stochastic appreciation rate, respectively.     

顾客导向和环境保护角度的质量经济分析

随着生产力水平的进一步提高和环境的恶化,在质量经济分析中应该引入的两种新视角:顾客导向和环境保护。这些观念可以在质量成本、质量经济效益和质量改进中得到贯彻,但为了落实这些观念必须给企业一定的压力或刺激。     

如何加强企业内部控制制度

内部控制是为实现经营管理目标、组织内部经营活动而建立的各职能部门之间对业务活动进行组织、制约、考核和调节的方法、程序和措施。在我国企业普遍缺乏健全的内部控制制度的情况下,建立健全内部控制制度,对加强会计核算、提高企业经济效益有着极其重要的意义     

中国铁路交通发展对沿线城市经济增长趋同的影响

以1997—2011年中国6次铁路提速和高铁开通为背景,在β趋同模型中加入用可达性度量的铁路交通发展因素,并用频次加权平均旅行时间衡量可达性,从全国、区域和城市3个空间层次分析了中国铁路交通发展对铁路沿线城市经济增长趋同的影响。结果显示:铁路交通发展对全国、东部地区、东北地区以及提速铁路沿线城市的经济增长的β趋同均有促进作用,对西部地区铁路沿线城市经济增长的β趋同有阻碍作用,而铁路交通发展对非提速铁路沿线城市经济增长的β趋同的影响甚微,对中部地区铁路沿线城市经济增长的β趋同的影响不确定。