Delegation in a mixed oligopoly: the case of multiple private firms

Previous research examining mixed duopolies shows that the use of an optimal incentive contract for the public firm increases welfare and that privatization reduces welfare. We demonstrate that these results do not generalize to a mixed oligopoly with multiple private firms. We derive the optimal incentive contract for a public firm that weighs both profit and welfare and show that its use may either increase or decrease welfare depending on the number of private firms and the exact nature of costs. We also identify the conditions that determine whether or not privatizing the public firm facing an optimal incentive contract reduces welfare. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

民营银行设立路径选择与发展探讨

文章提出了民营银行应采取什么样的模式或路径发展才能发挥民营银行的优势,并阐述了民营银行的业务经营发展的思路,探讨了设立民营银行的必要性。     

Of songs and men: a model for multiple choice with herding

We propose a generic model for multiple choice situations in the presence of herding and compare it with recent empirical results from a Web-based music market experiment. The model predicts a phase transition between a weak imitation phase and a strong imitation, ‘fashion’ phase, where choices are driven by peer pressure and the ranking of individual preferences is strongly distorted at the aggregate level. The model can be calibrated to reproduce the main experimental results of Salganik et al. (Science, 311, 854–856 (2006)); we show in particular that the value of the social influence parameter can be estimated from the data. In one of the experimental situation, this value is found to be close to the critical value of the model.     

The failure of CAP reform: a public choice analysis1

This paper uses public choice theories to explain why agricultural subsidies were centralised and why this hinders reform. It shows that the Commission is not responsible for the expansion of the CAP by arguing that budget‐maximising behaviour is irrational in the circumstances and that bureau shaping explains its stance on reform. The input process and the success of agricultural groups vis‐à‐vis consumer and taxpayer groups is explained using both the pluralist and Olsonian account of interest group politics. The conclusion analyses the latest difficulties in achieving reform at Berlin and the prospects for reform.     

我国高校会计改革的思考:来自美国的经验

本文首先讨论了我国高校会计核算中存在的问题,然后总结了美国高校会计从基金报告模式转变成净资产报告模式的经验。在借鉴美国高校会计改革经验的基础上提出了我国高校会计改革的重点和主要内容。     

Rethinking the role of private capital in infrastructure PPPs: the experience of Ontario,Canada

Private capital has become a significant feature of infrastructure public–private partnerships (PPPs) on the premise that it incentivizes diligent risk management among private partners. This paper evaluates this claim by examining the PPP programme in Ontario, Canada, where the amount of long-term private capital in PPPs has been reduced. The paper shows that decreasing the amount of private capital after construction does not undermine performance, while producing cost savings for governments. This was achieved by deploying sophisticated procurement and monitoring strategies. These findings suggest that private capital is one of several tools available to achieve positive value for money in PPPs.     

北京市民办高校发展困境调研及督导思考

通过对北京市15所民办高校进行问卷调查,采用文献研究、比较研究、座谈研讨以及实地考察的方式,梳理了民办高校近年来发展面临的机遇、挑战以及主要问题,针对民办高校普遍存在的外部政策环境、经费投入、师资队伍、硬件条件、自身办学规范性和特色等问题,结合首都经济社会发展的新常态,从督导的原则、定位、内容和指标等方面提出思考,以期为下一步建立科学、合理、有效的民办高校督导体系奠定基础。     

To criticize the critics: An objective bayesian analysis of stochastic trends

In two recent articles, Sims (1988) and Sims and Uhlig (1988/1991) question the value of much of the ongoing literature on unit roots and stochastic trends. They characterize the seeds of this literature as ‘sterile ideas’, the application of nonstationary limit theory as ‘wrongheaded and unenlightening’, and the use of classical methods of inference as ‘unreasonable’ and ‘logically unsound’. They advocate in place of classical methods an explicit Bayesian approach to inference that utilizes a flat prior on the autoregressive coefficient. DeJong and Whiteman adopt a related Bayesian approach in a group of papers (1989a,b,c) that seek to re-evaluate the empirical evidence from historical economic time series. Their results appear to be conclusive in turning around the earlier, influential conclusions of Nelson and Plosser (1982) that most aggregate economic time series have stochastic trends. So far these criticisms of unit root econometrics have gone unanswered; the assertions about the impropriety of classical methods and the superiority of flat prior Bayesian methods have been unchallenged; and the empirical re-evaluation of evidence in support of stochastic trends has been left without comment. This paper breaks that silence and offers a new perspective. We challenge the methods, the assertions, and the conclusions of these articles on the Bayesian analysis of unit roots. Our approach is also Bayesian but we employ what are known in the statistical literature as objective ignorance priors in our analysis. These are developed in the paper to accommodate explicitly time series models in which no stationarity assumption is made. Ignorance priors are intended to represent a state of ignorance about the value of a parameter and in many models are very different from flat priors. We demonstrate that in time series models flat priors do not represent ignorance but are actually informative (sic) precisely because they neglect generically available information about how autoregressive coefficients influence observed time series characteristics. Contrary to their apparent intent, flat priors unwittingly bias inferences towards stationary and i.i.d. alternatives where they do represent ignorance, as in the linear regression model. This bias helps to explain the outcome of the simulation experiments in Sims and Uhlig and some of the empirical results of DeJong and Whiteman. Under both flat priors and ignorance priors this paper derives posterior distributions for the parameters in autoregressive models with a deterministic trend and an arbitrary number of lags. Marginal posterior distributions are obtained by using the Laplace approximation for multivariate integrals along the lines suggested by the author (Phillips, 1983) in some earlier work. The bias towards stationary models that arises from the use of flat priors is shown in our simulations to be substantial; and we conclude that it is unacceptably large in models with a fitted deterministic trend, for which the expected posterior probability of a stochastic trend is found to be negligible even though the true data generating mechanism has a unit root. Under ignorance priors, Bayesian inference is shown to accord more closely with the results of classical methods. An interesting outcome of our simulations and our empirical work is the bimodal Bayesian posterior, which demonstrates that Bayesian confidence sets can be disjoint, just like classical confidence intervals that are based on asymptotic theory. The paper concludes with an empirical application of our Bayesian methodology to the Nelson-Plosser series. Seven of the 14 series show evidence of stochastic trends under ignorance priors, whereas under flat priors on the coefficients all but three of the series appear trend stationary. The latter result corresponds closely with the conclusion reached by DeJong and Whiteman (1989b) (based on truncated flat priors). We argue that the DeJong-Whiteman inferences are biased towards trend stationarity through the use of flat priors on the autoregressive coefficients, and that their inferences for some of the series (especially stock prices) are fragile (i.e. not robust) not only to the prior but also to the lag length chosen in the time series specification.     

Barriers to skill acquisition in Brazil: Public and private school students performance in a public university entrance exam

This paper uses a novel data set to quantify the difference in performance of public and private school students in an entrance test exam of the major public university in Brazilian Northeast (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco – UFPE). Although there are many public universities in Brazil, from our knowledge, there is no study that uses data on entrance test scores at such universities to evaluate the determinants of students’ performance and the barriers for public school students to get in the good universities. The data set has detailed information on individual and school characteristics, and family background. We found that test scores of public school students are on average about 4.2–17% lower than those taken by private school students, depending on the set of controls. This result is robust when we address problems related to attrition, omitted variables (e.g., cognitive ability), and unobservable selectivity. We also show that once students get into the university, those from public schools perform as well as those from private schools. In addition, the proportion of public school students that gets into the university is roughly the same as the proportion of students doing the entrance exam. However, there is a strong barrier for public school students to get into high competitive majors. The fraction of students from public schools that gets into high competitive majors such as law, medicine, and electronic engineering is almost null. Our findings provide quantitative evidence to the common view that the Brazilian elitist high education system is an important channel for inequality persistence.     

Retaining the visitor,enhancing the experience: identifying attributes of choice in repeat museum visitation

• How people make choices in relation to cultural and leisure consumption has been explored from the viewpoint of motivation, lifestyle segmentation, and lifecycle. Little is known about the specific characteristics associated with choices to visit, re‐visit, or not to visit a museum. Understanding characteristics of choice, developing incentives, bundled packages, and levels of pricing is an essential element in marketing strategies for museums operating in a competitive leisure marketplace. However, determining what really matters to cultural consumers is complex and methodologies to assist in unraveling such complexities are not easily identified. This study aimed to address ways in which people respond to specific incentives as influences in choosing museum visitation. The study was conducted in two major museums in Australia to determine how useful choice modeling is in identifying features that matter to cultural consumers. The results suggest that choice modeling has much to offer in relation to understanding the benefits people are seeking from a museum experience as well as offering strategic insight into potential collaborative ventures and re‐combinations of existing museum products and services.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

商业地产:民营资本的避难所?

近来,商业地产成为众多社会游资竞相追逐的对象.大量从住宅地产,乃至能源业、制造业等行业游离出来的资金纷纷涌入商业地产开发中.资本大量融入商业地产的开发,缘于深层次的宏现经济背景,这些资本虽然在一定程度上促进了商业地产的发展,但其蕴藏的风险也要倍加警惕.……     

非公经济发展政策执行的阻滞因素分析及对策

国务院关于《鼓励支持和引导个体私营等非公有制经济发展的若干意见》(以下简称《非公经济发展意见》)的出台,犹如一股强劲的春风,吹暖了民营企业家的心。但民营经济政策从出台到落实还有很长的路要走,很多障碍要克服,《非公经济发展意见》很难在短期内解决多年来积累的问题。一项政策出台,重要的是如何在日趋复杂的环境中有效地执行。政策执行这一被长期忽视的环     

Gender fluidity across the world: a Multilevel Item Response Theory approach

The concept of gender identity refers to the intrinsic self-identification of personal femaleness and maleness. Starting from 1970s, in the framework of gender studies, a theoretical and conceptual demarcation between sex and gender has been proposed. The term “gender” starts being referred to social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female. Recent studies on gender identity suggest that the binary notion of gender identity is changing, recognizing that there are different views on how gender may be performed or experienced. The purpose of our research is to provide accounts of gender code transformation around the world and identify differences in feelings, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors associated with gender across different identity profiles. Using a web-based survey, 1,600 respondents were recruited by a snowball sampling procedure. Based on the intersections of the responses given by participants on three basic dimensions (biological sex, gender self-identification and sexual orientation) the individuals have been categorized into nine groups. To comply with the aims of this study, a two-parameter Multilevel Item Response Theory model has been employed as an appropriate statistical tool for considering both person and item effects on the response data and assessing the effect of group membership on the overall variability.     

General practitioners' choice of referral destination: A probit analysis

Following the major reforms of the UK health service in 1990, general practitioners (primary care physicians) have been able to purchase specialist care from any hospital they choose. To date, little research has been conducted with respect to the decision process by which such hospitals are chosen. Based on the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in central England and using probit analysis, the significant arguments in practitioners' decision functions are identified. Locality and clinical variables emerge as being considerably more important than price in determining referral destination.     

民营银行的市场定位和发展路径探析

文章认为,发展民营银行是中国银行业改革和市场经济发展的必然选择,民营银行的健康发展,首先必须端正民营银行的发展目的,其次要从我国金融业发展的实际出发准确地对转轨经济条件下民营银行进行市场定位,最后选择正确的发展路径。     

Premium,merger fees and the choice of investment banks: A simultaneous analysis

We analyze 635 US M&A transactions from 1985 to 2004. In contrast with prior research, we distinguish between the target and acquirer fees, and examine their independent effects on the level of the merger premium. The study provides evidence of a positive (negative) association between target (acquirer) fees and the level of the premium. It indicates that the reputation of investment banks affects the level of merger fees, but does not affect the level of the premium. The findings confirm the conflict of interests between target and acquirer firms where the investment banks’ efforts are positively related to shareholders’ interest. The study also finds that when acquirers pay higher fees than target firms, they pay lower premiums. The findings also imply that for the small proportion of mergers (13%) resulting in relatively large value gains for buying firms, an acquirer might be willing to pay large advisory fees even though this may result in a higher premium.     

国有企业代理人问题的制度选择及分析

改革国有企业,提高国有资产运营效率,实现国有资产的保值增值,关键在于改革国有资产各级委栽托代理关系,规范代理人行为,通过一系列有效的制度设计安排使各级代理人只有在实现委托人利益最大时才能实现个人利益最大.并从股份制改造及股权多元化、企业内部治理、监督激励和信息等方面探讨了实现国有企业效率化的制度安排.