HOW USEFUL IS THE ECONOMIC MODEL OF CRIME IN ASSISTING THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM?

This article considers whether the economic model of crime can be applied to terrorist activity. It concludes that the model does explain both secular and religiously motivated terrorism: policy-makers wishing to reduce terrorist activity should aim at devising policies which increase costs and/or decrease benefits to change terrorist incentives. The 'war' should continue as long as the probable costs to society incurred by terrorist activity are greater than the costs of abatement.     

核恐怖事件及其后果的处置研究

本文从核恐怖事件的特征和潜在影响出发,分析了核恐怖事件的危机处置与后果处置间的区别与联系,给出了处置方法。重点对危机处置与后果处置的内容与方法进行了探讨。     

Modeling the supplementing of human diets

This paper looks at the economic benefits of nutritional supplement use. Food plans, with and without nutritional supplements, are developed by maximizing a quadratic food utility function subject to nutrient and budget constraints. The quadratic programming solutions, which include both the marginal utilities and marginal costs of nutrients, are then presented. The results demonstrate the economic optimality of partial supplementation.     

Analyzing Transportation Reconstruction Network Strategies: A Full Cost Approach

Policymakers interested in evaluating the costs and benefits of earthquake retrofit and reconstruction strategies require a way to measure the benefits (costs avoided) of competing proposals. This requires an integrated, operational model of losses due to earthquake impacts on transportation and industrial capacity, and how these losses affect the metropolitan economy. Our approach to this problem advances the information provided by transportation and activity system analysis techniques in ways that help capture the most important economic implications of earthquakes. These full cost results have four dimensions: structure damage, business interruption, network performance, and infrastructure damage. Preliminary results for all four measures are summarized for a hypothetical magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Elysian Park blind thrust fault in Los Angeles.     

Assessing the economic costs of high school noncompletion

Disparities in educational attainment exist across states. There are costs, both to the individual and society, associated with low levels of educational attainment. This research estimates the costs of high school noncompletion in terms of income loss for each state. The results suggest that: 1) there are substantial economic costs associated with high school noncompletion ($727 billion in lost income nationally); 2) costs vary widely across states; and 3) in general, states with relatively low levels of per capita expenditures on education incur the greatest losses in income from high school noncompletion.     

Early warning systems for currency crises: The Turkish case

Different severe financial crises episodes occurred in the Turkish economy in the last two decades. These crises led to severe economic and social consequences for Turkey in terms of increasing interest rates, large reserves losses, considerable currency depreciations, high output losses and high unemployment rates. This paper aims to illustrate the essential determinants of these crises by developing a multivariate logit model which estimates the predictive ability of sixteen economic and financial indicators in a sample that covers the period from January 1990 to December 2008. The empirical findings show that the Turkish crises are mainly due to excessive fiscal deficits, high money supply growths, sharp rises in short-term external debt, growing riskiness of the banking system (in particular currency and liquidity mismatches), and external adverse shocks.     

Re-opening after the lockdown: Long-run aggregate and distributional consequences of COVID-19

Covid-19 has dealt a devastating blow to productivity and economic growth. We employ a general equilibrium framework with heterogeneous agents to identify the tradeoffs involved in restoring the economy to its pre-Covid-19 state. Several tradeoffs, both over time, and between key economic variables, are identified, with the feasible speed of successful re-opening being constrained by the transmission of the infection. In particular, while more rapid opening up of the economy will reduce short-run aggregate output losses, it will cause larger long-run output losses, which potentially may be quite substantial if the opening is overly rapid and the virus is not eradicated. More rapid opening of the economy mitigates the increases in both long-run wealth and income inequality, thus highlighting a direct conflict between the adverse effects on aggregate output and its distributional consequences.     

从风险后果角度探讨供应链风险传导机理

供应链系统存在多种风险因素,这些风险因素具有传导性,并且在传导中给节点企业带来经济损失,对节点企业和供应链系统造成危害。作者从风险后果的角度出发,讨论了当风险来临时,风险因素对节点企业和整个供应链的影响,并结合供应链系统统计的相关数据,得出风险要素之间的传导概率,提出了风险因素的传导损失计算模型,利用此模型和风险因素带来的损失,可计算出传导损失,并将此损失与节点企业和供应链可承受的损失做比较,得出风险控制的相关结论。     

Water losses and hydrographical regions influence on the cost structure of the Portuguese water industry

Despite the growing research about water utilities, some questions still remain to be solved on the supply side, which are frequently absent from empirical studies based on the estimation of cost functions. This paper aims to fill to some extent this gap in the literature by focusing the consequences of water losses reduction and the management of water resources based on their availability at an integrated river basin level. Major findings derived from the estimation of a multiproduct cost function suggest advantages from reducing water losses, given that an adjusted measure of economies of scope, adapting the fact that water lost cannot be sold, reveals that there are small diseconomies of scope. In addition, generally the variables related to the hydrographical regions used have significant effects on water costs. Since the outcomes also reveal the existence of economies of scale, more concentration in the Portuguese water industry at the retail level would be beneficial.     

Evaluating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on unemployment,income distribution and poverty in Turkey

In the recent World Economic Outlook, the IMF indicates that world output shrank by 3.5% in 2020. Despite all pessimistic expectations, the Turkish economy was one of the few countries to have a positive, albeit low, economic growth rate in 2020. This was, however, achieved at the expense of high social and economic costs. The present research examines the distributional costs of this economic growth during the pandemic and suggests economic measures required to control them. The empirical examination is based on generating unavailable income and living conditions for 2020 by using the results available in TurkStat’s 2017 Income and Living Conditions Survey. The actual changes in sectoral output and employment, which are available as of March 2021, are used to generate changes in the income levels of households in TurkStat’s 2017 survey. The research empirically shows that adequate fiscal support with a large scope for households and businesses is necessary to compensate for economic losses caused by the pandemic. The short-run working allowance policy appears to have been very important to improve income distribution, which might have deteriorated due to the pandemic. Direct cash support to households is considered another essential policy measure that is required to mitigate the severity of increased poverty.     

A Multiregional Impact Assessment Model for disaster analysis

This paper presents a recursive dynamic multiregional supply-use model, combining linear programming and input–output (I–O) modeling to assess the economy-wide consequences of a natural disaster on a pan-European scale. It is a supply-use model which considers production technologies and allows for supply side constraints. The model has been illustrated for three floods in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Results show that most of the neighboring regions gain from the flood due to increased demand for reconstruction and production capacity constraints in the affected region. Regions located further away or neighboring regions without a direct export link to the affected region mostly suffered small losses. These losses are due to the costs of increased inefficiencies in the production process that have to be paid for by all (indirectly) consuming regions. In the end, the floods cause regionally differentiated welfare effects.     

建设工程项目风险管理与保险

在我国的许多项目中,由于没有风险意识而造成的损失是巨大的,同样,风险和盈利是同时存在的,通常风险大的工程项目才有较高的盈利,降低风险的目的就是减少不必要的成本开支,以实现目标利润,创造良好的经济效益。这样,风险管理就成为项目管理的重点之一。     

Multiobjective programming with related bargaining games An application to utility coal conversions

A method is developed using n-person game theory together with multiple objective programming and is applied to aid-regional decisions on utility coal conversions. Converting oil fired electric utilities to coal is seen as being of great strategic importance. There are, however, many impediments to utility coal conversions including costs and environmental restrictions. The method developed is used to find workable solutions to this problem which are evaluated based upon measures of economic efficiency, environmental degradation and distributive equity. Using these methods, policy makers, planners and administrators can determine solutions that will aid in the resolution of regional conflicts.     

THE ECONOMICS OF COUNTERTERRORISM: A SURVEY

We provide a review of theoretical and empirical contributions on the economic analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism. We argue that simple rational‐choice models of terrorist behavior – in the form of cost‐benefit models – already provide a well‐founded theoretical framework for the study of terrorism and counterterrorism. We also hint at their limitations which relate to the failure of accounting for the dynamics between terrorism and counterterrorism that may produce unintended second‐order effects as well as for the costs associated with counterterrorism and its international dimension. We reevaluate previously proposed counterterrorism strategies accordingly. Finally, in the light of our findings, we discuss interesting areas of future research.     

THE ILLUSORY TAX BASE: WHY TAXES ON CAPITAL ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

Taxes on capital are economically and socially counterproductive. The economy and society would benefit from their abolition. The obstacle to their abolition is not financial or economic but a failure of political will. This article looks at taxes on capital from an economic perspective: how do they differ from other taxes, what costs do they impose on the economy, and what are the consequences of their abolition? And, even if they are a failure economically, can they be justified socially or politically?     

Making the ‘Invisible’ Visible: Redevelopment‐induced Displacement of Migrants in Shenzhen,China

Gentrification in China is intertwined with urban redevelopment, which causes the large‐scale displacement of rural–urban migrants from ‘villages in the city’ (ViCs). Because of the informality of ViCs, migrant renters have very insecure tenancy and during redevelopment they are treated as a negligible (‘invisible’) social group. As they are very difficult to locate after displacement, they are also literally invisible to researchers. To make the invisible visible, this study traced a sample of displaced migrants from Huangbeiling village in Shenzhen. The focus was on the displacement process and on identifying the consequences for the displaced. We found various forms of displacement during the redevelopment process. Nearby ViCs were prioritized by displaced migrants to minimize as much utility loss as possible. However, they generally suffer from decreased proximity, increased living costs, and the loss of social networks and job opportunities. Remarkably, some choose to return to the gentrifying village, enduring displacement in situ caused by increasing rents, drastic physical neighbourhood changes and declining liveability, in exchange for retaining their original social and economic networks. Large‐scale urban redevelopment is causing the rapid shrinkage of informal housing. Recognizing and addressing the housing needs of this impoverished social group is a matter of urgency.     

The intensity of incentives in firms and markets: Moral hazard with envious agents

While most market transactions are subject to strong incentives, transactions within firms are often not explicitly incentivized. This paper offers an explanation for this observation based on the assumption that agents are envious and suffer utility losses if others receive higher wages. We analyze the impact of envy on optimal incentive contracts in a general moral hazard model and isolate the countervailing effects of envy on the costs of providing incentives. We show that envy creates a tendency towards flat-wage contracts if agents are risk-averse and there is no limited liability. Empirical evidence suggests that social comparisons are more pronounced among employees within firms than among individuals that interact in markets. Flat-wage contracts are then more likely to be optimal in firms.     

Federal investment impact: An empirical benefit-cost evaluation

This paper attempts to evaluate the impacts of a Corps of Engineers multimillion dollar channelization project authorized in 1948 upon a regional economy in an economic depressed area in the western part of Tennessee.Using a cost/benefit approach, this paper analyzes some major benefits and costs of the project such as flood control, land utilization, regional economic development and recreational losses. On a reach-by-reach basis this paper illustrates how tangible benefits and costs are measured empirically with available hydrological, historical, economic and other statistics. Alternatives such as reservoir building and channel clean-out are considered together with the proposed channelization work. Problems on intangibles and externalities are also delineated.The most interesting findings of this study are not those pertaining to the successes and failures of the benefit-cost approach. Rather, they are the insights into which differences between social and private considerations, joint and separated projects, authorized and not proposed alternatives, current and future choices, etc., can be enlightened. The importance of this empirical study hinges upon its results highlighting the conflicts between efficiency in resource allocation and the equality in income distribution.     

Long‐term economic consequences of corporate environmental responsibility: Evidence from heavily polluting listed companies in China

In this study, we aim to investigate the long‐term economic consequences of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) by companies from the perspective of earnings persistence and investors' response. Based on firm‐level data of 1,010 heavily polluting listed companies in China, the empirical results are as follows. First, the CER of China's heavily polluting listed companies has significantly improved their earnings persistence, that is, earnings quality. Second, the positive long‐term economic effect of CER has been achieved through two paths: improving companies' operational efficiency and reducing their credit costs. Third, CER increases investors' response to heavily polluting companies' accounting earnings. Moreover, state‐owned listed companies achieve more significant positive long‐term economic effects from CER than others. The results suggest that heavily polluting companies should correctly identify the long‐term value of CER rather than pay excessive attention to the impact of CER on their current costs and benefits.     

农村配电网无功优化策略及应用分析

针对农村电网损耗大、末端电压偏低的问题,根据国内外无功补偿技术发展的经验,重点对农村10kV配电网无功补偿问题进行分析,提出旨在降低网损,提高农村配电网运行效率的无功补偿实用方案,包括基本原理、补偿容量的确定、经济性计算等内容,该方案对农村配电网的经济运行具有一定的参考价值。