A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE DEMAND FOR ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO

This paper adopts a systems approach to estimate budget share equations for four categories of alcoholic drinks and for tobacco, using quarterly expenditure data for the period 1964 to 1983. The emphasis is on the importance of the tolerance effects of addiction and on the smoker's participation decision in correctly specifying the model of demand. The model makes explicit recognition of a separate participation decision and the estimates suggest that there is something to be gained by introducing variables to indicate changes in the distribution of income and the demographic structure of the population.     

THE CHARACTERIZATION OF GOODS AND SERVICES: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

The definitions of goods and services have been debated among economists for more than two centuries. This article seeks to consider the definitions currently used from a critical perspective and to offer a new general definition of services that is compatible with the existence of several demand rationales.     

AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CURRENT TREATMENT OF INTEREST AS TRANSFER IN THE UNITED NATIONS AND CANADIAN SYSTEMS OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

The United Nations (SNA) and the Canadian (CSNA) Systems of National Accounts treat interest as a factor return to capital. The difficulties arising from the use of this concept cast doubt upon the basic premise. For example if the usual method of measuring value added by the summation of primary inputs is applied to industries mainly engaged in the lending of money, the results show negative production. This has led to the necessity of imputing bank interest in order to avoid negative income originating in the banking industry. Arguments are being put forward to extend this practice to certain other financial non-bank areas as well to offset the negative product emerging with increasing frequency as a result of higher levels of interest transactions.
The proposed alternative is based on the contention that interest paid and received for the borrowing and lending of money should be treated in the same manner as the purchase and sale of other services. For the production accounts, for example, this would mean that interest paid by business would be treated as an intermediate expense of the paying industry and as revenue of the receiving industry. The adoption of this approach would therefore eliminate the need for the imputation of banking services and clear up the ambiguities encountered in treating interest on the public and consumer debt, issues which are also not unrelated to the present treatment of interest.     

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO EXPLAINING BARGAINING BEHAVIOUR IN SIMPLE SEQUENTIAL GAMES

Abstract.  For simple sequential games, the payoff structure has certain bargaining power implication. Intuitively, certain actions may have the effect of the carrot and the stick as sanctioning means. Fair outcomes can be alternatively viewed as the consequence of their presence. Experimental data on various games are used to test the hypothesis of carrot and stick behaviour. We show that our stick and carrot heuristic neatly captures puzzling phenomena in a wide class of simple sequential games. The results support the view that punishing subjects are not worse off than myopic pay-off maximizers as long as subjects are involved in a repeated strangers scheme.     

INTRA-HOUSEHOLD ALLOCATIONS IN RURAL ETHIOPIA: A DEMAND SYSTEMS APPROACH

This article examines the effects of price, income and demographic changes on intra-household allocations by integrating the outlay equivalent method into the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS). Tests for separability in preferences and "demographic separability" are conducted. Longitudinal data to control for household heterogeneity are used. Results indicate that Ethiopian rural households respond to price, income and demographic changes in a more complicated manner than usually presumed; price, income and demographic changes do not have similar effects on all household members. Income changes affect men and boys more than women and girls, but variations in prices affect women and boys more than men and girls. Even though outlay equivalent ratios on average indicate discrimination against girls, girls are more protected from fluctuations in income and prices compared to boys. The results highlight limitations of previous studies that ignore direct income and price effects.     

DYNAMIC WELFARE COST OF STAGNATION: AN ALTERNATIVE MEASURE TO THE LUCAS–OBSTFELD MODEL

The present paper proposes an alternative measure to the Lucas–Obstfeld model to analyze the welfare costs of stagnation, and provides a practical illustration of both the Lucas–Obstfeld model and the alternative model. Compared with the Lucas–Obstfeld model, the alternative model can evaluate: (i) whether policy was implemented in a timely fashion; (ii) whether the policy cost was expensive compared with the cost of stagnation; and (iii) whether the policy implemented was effective or whether an additional policy is required.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE STUDENT PERFORMANCE: A FRESH APPROACH TO AN OLD DEBATE

There is a general consensus that student performance at all levels has been deteriorating. Despite numerous attempts by researchers to link school expenditures with student performance, a clear relationship does not exist. Since a number of difficulties plague earlier studies, this paper attempts to remedy these problems by offering a better data design and a sounder methodology. This study uses the J 992 Massachusetts Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test scores from 4^th, 8^th, and 12^th grade students to measure student performance. Since each student's grade falls into one of five possible categories, the application of an ordered logit model incorporates the natural ordering of the MEAP scores. The results indicate that family background and the stability of a community are the main factors affecting student performance. The data suggest that higher levels of spending have no consistent or systematic relation with student performance. (JEL 12, C25)     

AN ECONOMETRIC ESTIMATION OF THE DEMAND FOR TOURISM: THE CASE OF SWITZERLAND

Abstract.  An understanding of the nature of demand is critical for the formulation of a tourism development program. It is also important for developed countries where tourism is an important source of export. Thus, the aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it attempts to estimate an equation of the demand for tourism in order to analyse the different variables that influence the number of nights spent in a given destination. Second, by breaking up the total number of nights according to country of origin, it studies the reaction of tourists to given economic variables according to their origin.     

外商直接投资对上海经济发展影响的分析

伴随中国的改革开放,中国已逐步融人世界经济体系,而上海成为中国全球化程度最深的城市之一。文章首先探讨了上海外资的增长变化、产业分布和对上海经济增长的影响,其次从劳动分工的角度分析了外商在上海工业中的投资特点,最后探讨了外商投资的集聚地-上海高科技园区的发展模式。     

AN AXIOMATIC APPROACH TO NATIONAL ACCOUNTING: AN OUTLINE

Reprinted from The Review of Income and Wealth 12: 179–189 (1966) This article deals in an axiomatic manner with problems of definition, classification, and measurement in the national accounts. It argues that the elementary units which must be classified in national accounting are economic objects (real and financial), rather than transactions. The article defines briefly a set of postulates, and shows that the structure of a simple system of national accounting can be derived from them. There are twenty postulates–certain of them establishing basic categories such as sector, time, economic object, value (price); others establishing relations between categories (for example the notion of ownership); and others describing operations in which economic objects can be involved, such as production, final consumption, change of ownership, and change of debtor and creditor (in the case of financial objects). It is shown that the system of postulates makes it possible to consider a large number of accounting concepts (flows or stocks) as classes (baskets) of real objects (e.g., exports, real capital) or financial objects (e.g., payments, total debt of a sector). These concepts can be defined without reference to prices, although prices are necessary to measure them. Other concepts cannot be defined in this way in this system of postulates, for example value added, foreign balance, saving, net worth. However, it is possible to define magnitudes of the latter type and measure them in terms of value: for example, value added can be defined as the difference between the value of receipts and the value of outlays of a sector. In this way it is possible to establish algebraic relations among the national accounting concepts. (This article is a summary of certain parts of the doctoral thesis of the author, published in Norwegian in 1955.)     

AN AXIOMATIC APPROACH TO NATIONAL ACCOUNTING: AN OUTLINE

This article deals in an axiomatic manner with problems of definition, classification, and measurement in the national accounts. It argues that the elementary units which must be classified in national accounting are economic objects (real and financial), rather than transactions. The article defines briefly a set of postulates, and shows that the structure of a simple system of national accounting can be derived from them. There are twenty postulates—certain of them establishing basic categories such as sector, time, economic object, value (price); others establishing relations between categories (for example the notion of ownership); and others describing operations in which economic objects can be involved, such as production, final consumption, change of ownership, and change of debtor and creditor (in the case of financial objects). It is shown that the system of postulates makes it possible to consider a large number of accounting concepts (flows or stocks) as classes (baskets) of real objects (e.g., exports, real capital) or financial objects (e.g., payments, total debt of a sector). These concepts can be defined without reference to prices, although prices are necessary to measure them. Other concepts cannot be defined in this way in this system of postulates, for example value added, foreign balance, saving, net worth. However, it is possible to define magnitudes of the latter type and measure them in terms of value: for example, value added can be defined as the difference between the value of receipts and the value of outlays of a sector. In this way it is possible to establish algebraic relations among the national accounting concepts. (This article is a summary of certain parts of the doctoral thesis of the author, published in Norwegian in 1955.)