Risk externalities in a payments oligopoly

I discuss the role to be played by central banks in payment systems by way of an oligopoly model of a payments market where firms exert negative risk externalities upon each other. A central bank participating actively in this market is modelled as benign in two ways: exerting less externalities than other banks and maximizing welfare rather than profit. Because other banks react strategically to the central bank’s presence due to its low externalities, there is a risk that it backfires, with these other banks’ taking more risky positions than if the central bank were not there. The proper role of the central bank may actually be to stay out.     

Notes on partnerships in the services sector

Although in most developed countries the service sector is almost as large as the industry sector, little attention has been paid to its industrial organization. These notes are concerned with only one problem: why partnership, as a form of economic organization, is more popular in some industries within the services sector, while it occurs less frequently in other. Without refuting other possible explanations, we shall argue that partnerships are more frequent in consulting service industries than in other service industries and this form of organization comes to save consumers' time as well as other consulting fees in exactly the same way as the clustering phenomena emerge in the industry sector to save consumers' search time.     

Shadow prices and subsides in Botswana

The Government of Botswana recently has initiated a Financial Assistance Plan (FAP) to encourage goods production by second-best incentives designed to offset distortions in various prices given constraints which preclude first-best solutions. This innovative plan was adopted after careful consideration of other efforts to remedy distortions in other developing economies, and hopes to improve upon those efforts and thereby perhaps be a model for other countries. This paper analyzes FAP within the framework of the incentives created for a profit-maximizing firm. The results suggest that it is very difficult to devise indirect second-best policies if there is considerable substitution in production possible.     

A regional analysis of food consumption in China

Two “laws” are used to describe the budget shares of staple food, other food, and non-food in 28 regions in China: Working's model, which describes the budget share of (total) food as a declining linear function of the logarithm of total consumption expenditure, and a second model that describes the ratio of the budget shares of staple and other food as a double-log function of total consumption expenditure. Staple food appears to be an inferior good in the richest regions but not in the other regions.     

Generation dynamics in computer-integrated manufacturing systems

The application of generation dynamics, a methodology for technological forecasting, is widespread in computer-integrated manufacturing systems (CIMS). Experts' opinions about the past and future generations of technology are summarized for computer hardware, computer software, industrial robots, computer vision, computer-aided process planning, and the entire automated factory. The concept of generation dynamics has also been applied to products to be produced by CIMS and to the industrial environment of CIMS. Although experts in the same area do not completely agree with one another, their acceptance of experts' opinions on generation dynamics in other areas to be integrated by CIMS helps the forecasts to be mutually reinforcing and self-fulfilling. On the other hand, such relatively unquestioned acceptance, if and when experts' opinions in other areas become outdated, leads to assumption drag in forecasting.     

Financial market spillovers in transition economies

This paper examines financial market comovements across European transition economies and compares their experience to that of other regions. Correlations in monthly indices of exchange market pressures can partly be explained by direct trade linkages, but not by measures of other fundamentals. Higher-frequency data during three crisis periods reveals the presence of structural breaks in the relationship between exchange-, but not stock markets. While the reaction of markets during the Asian and Czech crises is muted, the pattern of high-frequency spillovers during the Russian crisis looks very similar to that observed in other regions during turbulent times. With greater financial market integration, the financial markets of the more advanced transition economies can be expected to behave more and more like their Asian and Latin American counterparts.     

Are individuals with entrepreneurial characteristics more likely to engage in destruction? An experimental investigation among potential 21st century entrepreneurs in Tunisia

We test experimentally whether individuals high in some entrepreneurial characteristics are more likely to engage in destructive behavior than other individuals. In the joy-of-destruction game, participants can either preserve or costly burn the endowment of each other. In some treatments they can hide from other participants whether they are responsible for destruction. We found that participants high in some entrepreneurial characteristics are significantly more likely to adopt destructive behaviours.     

Dissemination of spillovers in cost-reducing alliances

Firms raise cost-reducing alliances before competing with each other, but cannot fully appropriate the shared knowledge. When spillovers disseminate through the network of alliances, link formation enables firms to capture more spillovers, but by doing so they become intermediary in the spreading of spillovers to other firms. This leads to the emergence of asymmetric networks.     

Geographical variations in expenditure of learning disability services in England

This article investigates the determinants of local authority Learning Disability (LD) expenditure in England. It adopts a reduced form of demand and supply model, extended to account for possible interdependence between municipalities. Risk factors such as ‘people aged under 14’, ‘mortality rate’ and ‘lone parents’ seem to play an important role in explaining geographical variation of spending. Further, labour municipalities on average allocate lower resources on LD than do other political parties. Finally, results corroborate recent findings in economics that authorities interact with each other when allocating public resources.     

Partial exposure in large games

In this work we introduce the notion of partial exposure, in which the players of a simultaneous-move Bayesian game are exposed to the realized types and chosen actions of a subset of the other players. We show that in any large simultaneous-move game, each player has very little regret even after being partially exposed to other players. If players are given the opportunity to be exposed to others at the expense of a small decrease in utility, players will decline this opportunity, and the original Nash equilibria of the game will survive.     

大学生班级内部结对帮扶方法研究与探讨

目前,大学生存在着很多问题,应特别留意观察大学生班级中的特殊人群,借助班级同学平时相处时间比较多,对彼此了解比较多的优势,秉持以人为本、和谐发展、共同进步的原则,结合班级实际,应用结对帮扶方法来及时帮助同学和管理班级。实践结果表明效果良好,希望此帮扶方法对高校的班级发展起到积极促进作用。     

对我国会计准则制定模式的再思考

本文通过研究国外会计准则制定模式的最新发展以及对我国国情的具体分析 ,认为我国会计准则的制定应立足国情 ,并充分吸收国外先进经验。在制定基础上 ,应尽快制定财务会计概念框架 ,以为原则基础的更广泛应用提供指引 ;在制定机构上 ,财政部仍是目前情况下的最佳选择 ;在会计准则制定程序方面则应加以改进 ,使准则制定过程更加公开化、民主化     

重庆城市经济空间影响力研究

应用分析中常用的引力模型对重庆市的城市经济影响力进行分析。依据重庆与其周边的成都、西安、武汉、长沙、贵阳、昆明等6省会城市对区域中各区县引力大小的对比,将重庆市对其周围区域经济影响力划分为四类不同强度的区域,即：重庆市引力大于其他城市引力总和的区域为强影响区,大于其他城市引力最大值的区域为次强影响区,大于其他城市引力平均值的区域为中度影响区,小于其他城市引力平均值的区域为弱影响区。结果表明：重庆市的强经济影响区已经扩张到四川与贵州境内,重庆与成都、贵阳的影响力均已透过断裂点渗透到对方区域并合力形成城市影响力高值带;与昆明、西安、长沙、武汉的引力断裂点在四省边界地区的县市境内,这些地区一般距离省会城市200－300km以上。引力强度等级区域的划分对于划定重庆市主体功能区具有较明晰的借鉴意义。     

Is Grameen Lending Efficient? Repayment Incentives and Insurance in Village Economies

Many believe that a key innovation by the Grameen Bank is to encourage borrowers to help each other in hard times. To analyse this, we study a mechanism design problem where borrowers share information about each other, but their limited side contracting ability prevents them from writing complete insurance contracts. We derive a lending mechanism which efficiently induces mutual insurance. It is necessary for borrowers to submit reports about each other to achieve efficiency. Such cross-reporting increases the bargaining power of unsuccessful borrowers, and is robust to collusion against the bank.     

公司团队治理研究——基于两个企业案例的探讨

公司团队治理作为一种被中小企业所广泛采用的治理类型,拥有诸多其他治理类型所不具有的特征。这些特征来源于团队治理企业特定的企业产权关系类型,而这种产权关系类型的建立受到股权分布、企业规模、企业文化等因素的影响。企业在应用团队治理类型的实践过程中,要注意结合自身实际,扬长避短,切实发挥公司治理的基石作用。     

Long-term regional convergence in Mexico: A new look

This paper explores the convergence hypothesis of Mexican states with the national level and with one another from 1940 to 2015. Interpreting convergence as catching-up, we also capture other types of regular evolution, namely, invariance of the income gap over time, permanent absence of the gap, and steadily increasing gap (deterministic divergence). As a tool of econometric analysis, we use a novel model that describes convergence by asymptotically decaying trends and covers other types of evolution as particular cases. The results obtained suggest one or other type of regularity to be peculiar to roughly ca. 40% of income gaps both with the national level and between states. However, convergence is observed only in 6% to 15% of cases. Regarding convergence at the national level, an additional analysis by three 50-year subperiod shows that in many cases the type of evolution changes for the same state from one subperiod to another. Analyzing convergence between states, we find that convergence between neighboring states is more frequent than between other states; however, the effect of the neighborhood is not too strong.     

Trade Liberalization in Agriculture in Developed Nations and Incidence of Child Labour in a Developing Economy

This paper is an attempt to analyse the consequence of trade liberalization in agriculture in the developed countries on the incidence of child labour in a developing economy in terms of a three‐sector general equilibrium model with informal sectors. Adult labour and child labour are substitutes for each other in the two informal sectors of the economy and are used together apart from capital in producing two exportable commodities. The interesting result that appears from the analysis is that agricultural trade liberalization in the developed countries may be effective in bringing down the incidence of child labour in the system. The paper substantiates the desirability of trade liberalization in agriculture in the developed nations from the perspective of the developing economies for reasons other than welfare improvement.     

中国股票市场规模效应TAR检验，

自本兹提出股票市场规模效应之后,许多研究者对于规模效应是否存在进行了不同方法的检验。目前研究的基本结论是,规模效应可能存与,但在时间序列上却呈现出明显的不确定,即在有的月份、年份表现得很明显,而在有的月份、年份则不明显。那么,规模效应还与其他因素有关吗?本文使用门槛自回归(Threshold Auto regres-sion,TAR)方法检验中国股票市场的规模效应,探讨规模效应在不同行业之间的分布情况,以期窥测规模效应与行业之间的关系。研究结果显示,股票市场的规模效应与行业存在显著的关系。     

Rehabilitating gum arabic systems in Sudan: Economic and environmental implications

The economic and environmental benefits of gum arabic production in the Sudano-Sahelian zone appear attractive. However, the farm-level economics of gum arabic production is complex, and much more needs to be understood about the economic-environmental interactions determining farmers' gum cropping. The following paper explores these issues in Sudan through a crop profitability analysis of gum and other crops combined with financial and economic analyses of six representative gum arabic production systems. Although the returns from gum compare favourably with other crops in Sudan, essential investments by farmers in cultivating gum will depend on its real producer price being maintained and other incentives determining the relative profitability of gum.     

博弈论在中国的传播及目前存在的问题

博弈论已在西方经济学中占据了核心地位,对其它社会科学也产生了非常深远的影响,但我国的博弈论研究却非常落后。笔者通过对博弈论在中国传播情况的历史考究,阐明了博弈论在中国的发展史,说明了博弈论研究水平落后的历史原因。同时指出了目前博弈论研究中存在的三个亟待解决的问题,并给出了相应的建议。