A life-cycle model of repeat migration

"This paper develops a theoretical model which analyzes the impact of the spatial distribution of a family's stock of human capital on its migration decision. This stock of human capital is composed of location-specific and non-specific human capital. The distribution of location-specific capital is a function of the residential and employment history of the family, while non-specific capital is distributed evenly over space. An empirical specification of the model is derived and estimated with a [U.S.] data set consisting of a number of cases from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics."     

Understanding the determinants of crime

In this paper, we use an overlapping generations model where individuals are allowed to engage in both legitimate market activities and criminal behavior in order to assess the role of certain factors on the property crime rate. In particular, we investigate if differences in the unemployment rate, fraction of low human capital individuals in an economy, apprehension probability, duration of a jail sentence, and income inequality could be capable of generating large differences in crime rates that are observed across countries. We find that small differences in the apprehension probability and income inequality can generate quantitatively significant differences in the crime rates across similar environments.     

Aggregate stock market behavior and investors’ low risk aversion

This paper studies whether investors’ high risk aversion can be avoided in a representative-agent model that is able to explain aggregate stock market behavior in the US financial market. We present a consumption-based asset pricing model with a representative agent who has a ‘catching up with the Joneses’ preference to show that high risk aversion can be avoided in a representative-agent model that can help explain many of the empirically observed properties of the aggregate stock market return, including the equity premium and risk-free rate puzzles, the predictability of long-horizon stock returns, and the ‘leverage effect’ in return volatility.     

A theoretical analysis of the effect of fear on the location decisions of urban — suburban residents

This paper extends Becker's analysis of crime by dealing with group behavior. It introduces two additional points for general consideration: the existence of fear costs, with fear modeled as an undepletable detrimental externality; and the positive utility a criminal, who is a member of a criminal gang or organization, can obtain from determinate prison sentences where parole, probation, and plea bargaining are possible sentences. These points have implications for the control of violent street crime in central cities as well as upon the location decision of urban residents. The possible spread of violent street crime from central cities to the suburbs can generate a subsequent suburban incentive to discriminate against minority races to prevent this spread. This linkage offers a partial explanation of segregated housing patterns in suburban cities of America.     

新型股指期权计划在人力资本定价中的应用

自20世纪50年代舒尔茨人力资本理论提出至今,主要是从人力资本的结构构成和对经济贡献的角度来研究。从期权理论出发,新型股指期权计划打破过去人力资本研究仅从物质资本理论出发的不确切性,从宏观角度借助股票价格、股票指数变化给其定价,客观准确地衡量人力资本对企业业绩的贡献,进而为企业制定合理薪酬提供决策依据。     

Is technical change embodied in the capital stock or new investment?

The question of technical change and productivity growth is one of the fundamental empirical issues of our time. Surprisingly, Solow's original question of whether technical change is embodied in investment or the entire capital stock has been largely neglected. This paper seeks to bridge the early work of Solow and others on the extent of embodiment of technical change with the more modern approach to estimating the structure of production and technical change using multifactor cost functions. We also attempted to identify the source and structural nature of embodied technical change by decomposing it. Our theoretical model is applied to a pooled cross-section of six OECD countries for the 1965–1989 period. Our preferred model is one of full factor-augmenting embodied technical change because technical change augmenting the entire capital stock tends to overstate quality change in the aggregate capital stock more than that embodied in new investment. This model specification supports the view that technical change is embodied in the stock of capital structure and is embodied in new investment of capital equipment.     

Industrial policy,social capital,human capital,and firm-level competitive advantage

Despite the popularity of governmental action devised to foster firm performance, the link between industrial policy and firm-specific human capital and social capital has received scant attention in the strategic management literature. In this paper, we build a dynamic optimization model which bridges concepts from industrial policy, social capital, human capital, and firm-level competitive advantage. We derive theoretical and policy implications from our competitiveness model, concluding that it increases in the opportunity cost of social capital reduce the production of human capital, so the optimal opportunity cost of social capital under feasible industrial policy should be set equal to zero. A government’s optimal industrial policy to help accumulate and churn human capital should reduce the opportunity cost of social capital to zero and reduce the probability of human capital leaving the community to zero. Thus, the model not only expands the potential determinants of competitive advantage in the context of governmental intervention, but also broadens the human capital theory and social capital theory in the creation of firm-specific human capital.

     

Age-specific dynamic labor demand and human capital investment

To study the optimal age-specific labor demand and human capital investment at the firm level we extend the standard dynamic labor demand model by introducing ‘age’ as a second dynamic variable and distinguish between two types of workers: ‘low skilled’ and ‘high skilled’. Applying an age-structured optimal control model we derive qualitative features of the optimal age-specific hiring and training effort. For the case of a linear revenue and production function we prove that firms do not anticipate changes in adjustment costs in their optimal decisions. This result no longer holds if a nonlinear revenue or production function is considered.     

Competition in law enforcement and capital allocation

This paper studies inter-jurisdictional competition in the fight against crime and its impact on occupational choice and the allocation of capital. In a world where capital is mobile, jurisdictions are inhabited by individuals who choose to become either workers or criminals. Because the return of the two occupations depends on capital, and because investment in capital in a jurisdiction depends on its crime rate, there is a bi-directional relationship between capital investment and crime which may lead to capital concentration. By investing in costly law enforcement, a jurisdiction makes the choice of becoming a criminal less attractive, which in turn reduces the number of criminals and makes its territory more secure. This increased security increases the attractiveness of the jurisdiction for investors and this can eventually translate into more capital being invested. We characterize the Nash equilibria—some entailing a symmetric outcome, others an asymmetric one—and study their efficiency.     

我国实施股票期权激励制度的探讨

股票期权作为人力资本参与企业收益分配的高级形式，使经理人员的个人利益与股东利益结合起来．成为有效的人力资源激励机制。而在我国．由于缺乏可靠的制度保障和统一规范，使得股票期权激励机制在实践中存在诸多障碍。本文从资本市场、现代企业机制、法律法规三个方面作了具体的分析，并提出了相关的对策。     

人力资本的离散度、追赶效应与经济增长的关系——基于人力资本分布结构的异质性

本文结合人力资本平均存量的高低及我国人力资本分布结构的规律性,实证分析了我国人力资本离散度与经济增长的关系。结论表明,具有较高人力资本平均存量地区的人力资本离散度正向于经济增长,而具有较低人力资本平均存量地区负向于经济增长。依据高等教育拉动、正态分布和低等教育拉动三种类型,文章从人力资本的追赶效应出发,归纳了内生增长理论的趋同思想,并发现具有高等教育拉动型和正态分布型人力资本分布结构的地区与前沿人力资本存量地区有增长趋同性,而具有低等教育拉动型的地区与之具有增长发散性。     

Human capital,social capital,and innovation: a multi-country study

The authors examine the effects of two forms of capital, i.e. human capital and social capital, on innovation at the country level. We use secondary data from the World Development Report on a country's overall human development to test for a relationship between human capital and innovation. We also use previous conceptualizations of social capital as comprising trust, associational activity, and norms of civic behaviour to test for relationships between these indicators of social capital and innovation using data from the World Values Survey. Unlike most previous studies that examined human and social capital within a given country, we develop and empirically test a theoretically grounded model that relates human and social capital to innovation at the societal level across 59 different countries, thus providing a more global view of the role of these two forms of capital in generating value. We find strong support for the positive relationship between human capital and innovation and partial support for the positive effect of trust and associational activity on innovation. However, contrary to our prediction, we find a negative relationship between norms of civic behaviour and one of our innovation measures.     

Delivering the ‘3-day car’—the strategic implications for automotive logistics operations

It is now becoming apparent that the current ‘stock-push’ vehicle supply in the automotive industry by fulfilling the large majority of orders from existing stock is no longer a viable proposition. Cost pressure from rising stock levels in the market and high discounts needed to sell these vehicles have forced vehicle manufacturers to rethink their order fulfilment strategy in favour of stock-less ‘build-to-order’ systems. More responsive order fulfilment at vehicle manufacturer level however will not only require flexible and responsive component supply and vehicle assembly, but will also have wide ramifications for all logistics operations in the auto supply chain. Based on findings of the 3DayCar research programme, this paper compares the implications on inbound, outbound and sea transportation logistics, leading to the development of a strategic framework for future automotive logistics operations.     

Management of a capital stock by Strotz's naive planner

The capital management problem posed by R.H. Strotz is analyzed for the case of the ‘naive’ planner who fails to anticipate changes in his own preferences. By imposing progressively stronger restrictions on the primitives of the problem – namely, the discounting function, the utility index function, and the investment technology – the planner's behavior is characterized first as the solution to an ordinary differential equation and then via explicit formulae. Inasmuch as these characterizations leave the discounting function essentially unrestricted, the theory can accommodate, in particular, decision makers who discount time according to the hyperbolic and ‘quasi-hyperbolic’ curves used in applied work and said to be supported by psychological studies. Comparative statics of the model are discussed, as are extensions of the analysis to allow for credit constraints, limited foresight, and partial commitment.     

Criminal incident prediction using a point-pattern-based density model

Law enforcement agencies need crime forecasts to support their tactical operations; namely, predicted crime locations for next week based on data from the previous week. Current practice simply assumes that spatial clusters of crimes or “hot spots” observed in the previous week will persist to the next week. This paper introduces a multivariate prediction model for hot spots that relates the features in an area to the predicted occurrence of crimes through the preference structure of criminals. We use a point-pattern-based transition density model for space–time event prediction that relies on criminal preference discovery as observed in the features chosen for past crimes. The resultant model outperforms the current practices, as demonstrated statistically by an application to breaking and entering incidents in Richmond, VA.     

Social Capital,Investment and Economic Growth: Some Evidence for Spanish Provinces

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of social capital on regional economic growth in Spain during the 1985–2005 period. The literature in this context is virtually nonexistent and, in addition, whereas most studies, regardless of their context, have used survey data in order to measure social capital, we use a measure whose construction is based on similar criteria to other measures of capital stock. Compared with more standard measures of social capital and trust, our measure is available with a high level of disaggregation, and with annual frequency for a long time period. Following a panel data approach, our findings indicate that social capital has a positive impact on GDP per capita growth in the context of Spanish provinces, implying that ‘social features’ are important for explaining the differences in wealth that one might find across Spanish provinces. We also explore the transmission mechanisms from social capital to growth, finding a highly positive relation between social capital and private physical investment.     

Do adjustment costs explain investment-cash flow insensitivity?

In this paper, I explain two “puzzles” that have been observed in firm level data. First, firms that display a high sensitivity of investment to cash flow (commonly believed to be an indicator of liquidity constraints) usually have large unutilized lines of credit which, presumably, could be used to overcome the shortage of funds. Second, firms that are perceived to be extremely liquidity constrained actually show very little sensitivity of investment to cash flow.I show how a dynamic model of firm investment with liquidity constraints and non-convex costs of adjustment of capital can explain these facts. These two features together imply that firms need to have a certain threshold level of financial resources before they can afford to increase investment. Once they cross this threshold, firms’ investment will be positively correlated with their financial resources until they reach their desired level of capital stock. However, even if investment is sensitive to cash flow, firms may borrow below their credit limit to guard against future bankruptcy or binding liquidity constraints.     

RATIONAL MODEL OF DECISION MAKING, STRATEGY, AND FIRM PERFORMANCE

The present study tests the proposition that the normative rational model of decision making influences diversification strategy which, in turn, influences the firm’s performance. Questionnaires measuring rational decision making were mailed to 441 large U.S. manufacturing firms with a response rate of 23%. Compustat was used to measure Palepu’s entropy measures of diversification: total, related, and unrelated diversification. The results show a significant positive relationship between top management’s emphasis on rational decision making and diversification as well as a significant negative relationship between diversification and firm performance. Thus, the study shows strong support for the role of diversification strategy as a mediator between rational decision making and firm performance.