Goverment and the Colonial Economies: An Alternative View

Government is one of the crucial institutions that shape the development of economies and in a recent issue of this journal H. M. Boot contributed a useful survey of its effects on Australia during the colonial period. Boot emphasized the beneficial effects of government in terms of creating stability and secure property rights, but also argued that important decisions about capital works came to be influenced more by political expediency than by sound economic criteria. This flawed decision-making process created a significant field of unproductive investments which 'crowded out' private-sector activity and weakened the economy. The purpose of this article is to examine this argument closely and critically. It will argue that there is no evidence to support the contention that politicians saw public works simply as an opportunity to buy votes and that an awareness of the costs of unproductive investment forced Parliament to use market-based criteria to assess proposed spending. The article will suggest an alternative explanation of the failure of the private sector to generate sufficient investment to increase the rate of economic growth, and of the extent to which public investment crowded out the private sector.     

Home Schooling: An Alternative School Choice

There is a fairly large, evolving literature on school choice. This literature addresses the factors that influence the choice between schools in the public and private sectors. Overlooked by this literature, however, is the growing segment of school enrollment in home schools. This article empirically examines the decision to educate children at home. The empirical results suggest that the decision to home school depends on the expected quality of schooling the home unit can produce relative to that available from alternatives. More specifically, our results indicate that women's educational attainment helps explain home school enrollment, that greater heterogeneity of income within a public school district increases home enrollment, and that stricter regulations decrease home school enrollment.     

外部基准:另一种替代国价格

随着中国成为全球和美国反补贴调查的主要目标国,反补贴中的价格比较及其度量基准,尤其是与反倾销替代国价格类似的外部基准问题已日益引起关注。本文认为,外部基准本质上是另一种替代国价格,两者的共同之处在于适用前提、方法原理和贸易保护效果相似,而且,对于非市场经济国家而言,即使替代国价格与反补贴同时适用的重复救济问题得到解决,但鉴于外部基准是反补贴一般规则、所针对的贸易扭曲行为主体是政府、所涉市场为要素市场,其频繁适用的最终效果或许将甚于替代国价格。     

Inflation in South Africa: An Assessment of Alternative Inflation Models

We consider the relative empirical performance of a range of inflation models for South Africa. Model coverage is of Phillips curve, New Keynesian Phillips curve, monetarist and structural models of inflation. Our core findings are that the single most robust covariate of inflation is unit labour cost. We further decompose unit labour cost into changes in the nominal wage and real labour productivity. The principal association is a strong positive relationship between inflation and nominal wages, while improvements in real labour productivity report only a relatively weak negative association with inflation. Supply‐side shocks also consistently report an association with inflation. As to demand‐side shocks, the output gap does not return a robust statistical association with inflation. Instead, it is growth in the money supply and government expenditure which return robust and theoretically consistent associations with inflationary pressure.     

An Alternative for Time Series Models

Two methods for construction of new stochastic processes with discrete time are presented. One of the methods employs as the defining tool “triangular （more specifically ＇pseudoaffine＇） transformations” which are extended from the Euclidean R^n to infinite dimension space. They transform any well-known discrete time stochastic process into the constructed one. The other more flexible method is the “method of parameter dependence”, extended to infinite dimension. Properties of the obtained stochastic processes （by either method） indicate the possibility to apply them for financial analysis, as an alternative for the classical time series models. The advantage of the presented models over the existing ones first of all relies on expected better accuracy. This follows from the fact that the typically held assumption on Markovianity in the existing models can easily be relaxed. The defined processes may incorporate a quite long memory including, among others, the k-Markovian cases for k _〉 2. Regardless the non-Markovianity of the models they still are tractable in an analytical or numerical way. The stochastic processes defined in this paper provide more flexible and more general tools than the existing time series models for modeling financial problems. Among others, they make it possible to incorporate the influence of environmental （explanatory） random variables on the underlying stochastic models＇ behavior. These additional features turn out to be describable by the method of parameter dependence. Some suggestions for an associated preliminary statistical analysis are included.     

换一个视角看深圳特区的城中村

从全息理论讲，深圳特区的城中村是全国落后地区在深圳的投影，城中村的存在具有长期性。从国际经验看，国际大都市也有大量的贫民区，城中村并不是深圳特区的耻辱。深圳特区的城中村在降低城市营商成本、增加城市活力、解决城市交通压力方面，发挥了不可替代的作用。城中村的存在对于深圳的发展至关重要，城中村的治理，根本上取决于城市理想。     

Outside Blockholders' Monitoring of Management and Debt Financing: An Alternative Perspective

Liao ( 2015 ) argues that the monitoring by large outside shareholders (blockholders) exacerbates the conflict between debt and equity and in turn affects the choice and structure of debt financing. The study contends that private debt is more immune to the increase in debt‐equity conflict. Consistent with this argument, companies with outside blockholders are inclined to issue private debt over public debt. Further, private debt exhibits less price protection but relies on more protective covenants than does public debt. The findings are interesting and intuitive. I evaluate the economic arguments in the paper and discuss some of the challenges that the study faces. My conclusion is that the interpretation of the results is more complex than the one the study presents. I offer a broader framework that can be used to shed light on why the governance structure combines equity blockholders and private debt issuance. I also discuss several questions to be addressed by future research.