The U-shape of happiness in Scotland

We examine well-being in Scotland using micro data from the Scottish Health Survey and the UK Annual Population Surveys. We find evidence of a midlife nadir or zenith in Scotland in well-being at around age 50 using a variety of measures of both happiness and unhappiness. We confirm that higher consumption of fruit and vegetables is associated with higher levels of happiness in Scotland. We compare this with evidence for England from the Health Survey of England. The decline in well-being between youth and midlife is comparable in size to the loss of a spouse or of a job and around half of the fall in well-being in the COVID-19 lockdown. We also find a midlife peak in suicides in Scotland. Despite higher mortality and suicide rates in Scotland than in England, paradoxically we find that the Scots are happier than the English. Northern Ireland is the happiest of the four home countries. We also find evidence of U-shapes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the mid to late forties.     

WHY GROWTH RATES DIFFER—A SUMMARY AND APPRAISAL

This review article initially summarizes some of the highlights of the volume Why Growth Rates Differ , including the use of income shares as weights for the various factor inputs and some of the major factual conclusions drawn from the inter-country comparisons. Some of the main factors in differences in income levels and differences in growth rates are then reviewed.
In appraising the contribution of the volume, the monumental task is emphasized. This study illustrates the adaptability of the approach which Denison developed initially in The Sources of Economic Growth. The volume meets many of the questions and criticisms raised of his earlier study, and should encourage a shift of the discussion from methodology towards the substance of the empirical results.
The volume introduces some shifts in emphasis on the importance of different factors in growth. The role of demand variations and the contribution of capital is considered, but the evidence in the volume gives less emphasis on the importance of these factors than earlier work by others in both the United States and Europe. The volume gives some emphasis to shifts out of agriculture and the self-employed in the high postwar growth in many individual European countries. It considers the effects of reductions in trade barriers, and follows the view of most economists in playing this down. Advances in knowledge are also considered.
Those who are interested in questions of economic growth, past and future, and economic policy in this area will find much in this volume for study and reflection.     

重庆市城市用地供需状况研究

首先从供给数量和供给质量两方面,分析了重庆市区城市建设用地的供给状况。耕地在重庆市城市建设用地的供给来源中占有重要地位,但供给数量有限;受重庆市区自然条件的限制,城市建设用地的质量较差,表现在坡地多、平地少,冲沟多、地块小,难建地多、宜建地少,所以,重庆市城市建设用地的供给能力相当有限。其次,分析了重庆市区城市建设用地的需求状况。从城市GDP的增长、重点建设项目和城市人均用地水平的提高这三个方面分析了城市建设用地的未来需求趋势。结论是：重庆城市建设用地的供给相当有限,而需求量很大;随着未来重庆市经济社会的发展,城市用地的供需矛盾将成为城市发展中面临的一个重大问题。从合理利用和保护土地资源,为重庆的经济发展提供用地支持和保障的角度出发,文章就此问题提出了对策和建议。     

Biodiversity conservation, loss of natural capital and interest rates

It is argued that there is neither regular relationship between changes in the level of the market rate of interest and variations in the rate of biodiversity loss nor does such a regular relationship occur between alterations in the market rate of interest and changes in the rate of natural resource extraction. However, some texts suggest otherwise. Microeconomic examples are given in which a rise in the market rate of interest results in increased biodiversity loss and others in which it does not. It is also posited that the rate of biodiversity loss (as well as the rate of natural resource extraction) tends to rise with the level of aggregate investment and aggregate economic activity. It is demonstrated, using macroeconomic models, that the market rate of interest can increase or decrease with a rise in aggregate investment and also with an increase in the level of aggregate economic activity. Therefore, changes in biodiversity loss (and in the rate of natural resource extraction) are independent of variations in the market rate of interest in macroeconomic models.     

长江三角洲都市圈老人乡村休闲养老研究

近年来,长江三角洲都市圈越来越多的老人选择季节性移居乡村休闲养老,这种发展趋势是老龄化程度不断加深、城市养老资源不足和乡村休闲旅游快速发展共同作用的结果。通过对两个乡村休闲养老目的地的调查研究,结果表明：休闲养老目的地的形成可以分为在乡村旅游发展基础上的自发模式和企业投资促成的“联众模式”两种;乡村休闲养老者群体主要是低龄老人,选择乡村休闲养老目的地时主要受目的地自然环境、人文环境、休闲养老配套设施、生活基础设施、管理服务和目的地形象等因素的影响。季节性移居乡村休闲养老不仅可以缓解老龄化背景下都市圈不断增大的养老压力,而且可以解决乡村休闲旅游设施淡季的闲置问题,推动乡村环境的改善,促进当地村民的就业致富和城乡文明的交融与传播。都市圈具备条件的乡村可以把满足周边城市乡村休闲养老需求作为未来经济转型发展的一个方向。     

Fast Development With a Stable Income Distribution: Taiwan, 1979–94

This paper studies the mechanisms underlying the apparent stability of the income distribution in Taiwan. An original decomposition method based on micro-simulation techniques is proposed. Applied to the distribution of income in Taiwan since 1979, it permits isolating the respective impact of changes in: (a) the earning structure; (b) labor-force participation behavior; and (c) the socio-demographic structure of the population. The stability of the distribution in Taiwan appears as the result of various structural forces which happened to offset each other. The small drop observed in the inequality of individual earnings resulted from the combination of unequalizing changes in the wage structure and the effects of changes in female labor-force participation as well as in the educational structure of the population. However, the same offsetting forces, together with changes in the composition of households, resulted in a small increase in the inequality of the distribution of equivalized household income.     

中国建筑园林的南北差异

我国建筑和园林南北差异明显。在园林方面,南巢北穴,缘由不同;南敞北实,形式不同;南水北石,要素不同;南花北柏,植被不同;南私北皇,社会背景不同。在宗教建筑方面,南方多佛教名山和道教洞天福地,北方多佛教石窟。此外,在民居的空间布局和建筑形式方面、街坊格局方面,也有差异。建筑和园林的南北差异是我国地域文化景观的重要组成部分。     

FACTORS IN CANADA-UNITED STATES REAL INCOME DIFFERENCES

This paper is a part of a larger study of economic growth in Canada, following the methods developed by Edward Denison in his book The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the publication Why Growth Rates Differ. The new material in this paper relates to Canada and the Canadian/U.S. comparison, while the material on Northwest Europe is drawn from the Brookings study. The present paper sets out the results to date on the differences in real output per employed person between Canada and the United States for one year, 1960. At this stage in our research the results indicate that the level of real output per employed person in Canada was about 20 per cent lower than in the United States in that year. On the basis of historical output data, it would appear that this margin of difference in Canadian/U.S. product levels has persisted throughout the present century. The central part of this paper examines the significance of differences in factor inputs in Canada and the United States and their contribution to the difference in income. The level of inputs per employed person in Canada accounts for only about 2 percentage points of the income difference between Canada and the United States. These results indicate that the overwhelming part of the difference in output per employed person between the two countries reflects the differences in output in relation to total factor inputs, rather than the magnitude of other factor inputs used in combination with labour. This result is consistent with earlier studies by Denison and others which have indicated the crucial importance of output in relation to total factor inputs, both in output growth over time and intercountry comparisons of output level. The body of the paper can give only brief attention to the numerous conceptual and statistical questions that arise in such a wide-ranging study, and the authors do not pretend to have tackled, let alone resolved, all of the wide range of problems related to this study. Nor do they claim any high degree of precision for the results, especially in the light of the statistical limitations of the basic data.     

The impact of public information on bidding in highway procurement auctions

A number of papers in the theoretical auction literature show that the release of information regarding the seller's valuation of an item can cause bidders to bid more aggressively. This widely accepted result in auction theory remains largely untested in the empirical literature. Recent theoretical work has also shown that this effect can be more pronounced in auctions with larger common cost uncertainty. We examine the impact of a policy change by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation that led to the release of the state's internal estimate of the costs to complete highway construction projects. We perform a differences-in-differences analysis comparing bidding in Texas, a state that had a uniform policy of revealing the same information all throughout the period of analysis, to bidding in Oklahoma. Our results show that, in comparison to Texas auctions, the average bid in Oklahoma fell after the change in engineers’ cost estimate (ECE) policy. This decline in bids was even larger for projects where the common uncertainty in costs is greater. Moreover, the within-auction standard deviation of bids fell after the change in ECE policy with the most significant decline observed again in projects with greater common cost uncertainty.     

The Glass Ceiling Puzzle,Legal Institutions,and the Shadow Economy

ABSTRACT

Scholarly studies in economics, sociology, psychology, and management emphasize the low number of women in management as one of the main indicators of gender discrimination in the labor market. This study investigates the differences in the percentage of women in senior management across forty-five countries. The results of the regression analysis show that women are more represented in senior management in developing countries than in so-called “liberal Western democracies.” Women also participate more in senior management in countries in which prejudice and discrimination against women are greater. The study presents empirical evidence for two economic explanations for these puzzling results: the weak functioning of the legal system and the large size of the shadow economy.     

Population trends and employment in the European CMEA countries

The trends in population growth and employment in the European member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) as a whole were, in past decades, characterized by a relatively fast rate. At the same time, increases in the rate of employment exceeded in most of these countries, as a consequence of the activation of initial large reserves of the social labor force, increases in the population of reproductive age. In the 2nd 1/2 of the 1970s and in the early 1980s, the growth rate of labor resources was slower in most European CMEA countries due to demographic reasons. In view of the high rate of the economically active population, this was reflected in increased pressure for raising the productivity of labor. Some countries (Hungary, Poland) registered an absolute decrease in employment during that time.     

中国城市人口可比增长速度的空间差异(1949──1995)

本文川计算城市人口可比增长速度的方法．分三个阶段检验了我国城市人口增长速度的总体状况和空间差异.认为城市人口增长速度呈明显的马鞍形,大城市增长速度波动最大,与决策者的认识与愿望不一致。通过三个阶段快速增长城市和缓慢增长城市分布的分析、认为东中西之间和南北之间的差异都很明显。我国城市发展的重点,第一阶段在西部．第二阶段在中部、第三阶段在东部。南方城市的增长速度在第一阶段远远落后于北方。第二阶段差距有所缩小．第三阶段南方城市接近或超过了北方城市。东部快于中西部．南方快于北方的趋势仍在继续。城市人口增长速度空间差异的变化与我国宏观经济发展方针的转变相一致。     

The Relative Earnings from Self and Paid Employment: A Time-series Analysis for the UK

We investigate the determinants of variations in the reported relative earnings of self-employed and paid-employed workers in the United Kingdom, focusing in particular on the significant decline which has taken place since 1980. We find that the main factors behind this decline have been the rise in the rate of self-employment itself and a reduction in the level of capital per self-employed worker; effects which we associate with a decline in the quality of the average self-employed business. Changes in the tax rates on income and in the sectoral composition of GDP helped to reduce the scale of the decline in self-employment relative earnings to some degree.     

Interrelationship among foreign presence,domestic sales and export intensity in Chinese manufacturing industries

Using panel data on six Chinese manufacturing industries over the period 2005–2007, this article explores the interrelationship among foreign presence, domestic sales and export intensity of local firms. We find that the domestic sales and exports are complementary for local firms in China’s pharmaceutical industry, whereas in the case of the textile, transportation equipment, beverage, communication equipment and general equipment manufacturing industries, domestic sales and exports are substitutes. An increase in the average domestic sales increases foreign presence in all industries. The same applies to an increase in the average export intensity. An increase in the level of competition in China’s textile industry increases the export intensity as well as domestic sales of local textile firms. However, an increase in the level of competition in the pharmaceutical industry leads to a very large decrease in export intensity of local pharmaceutical firms. In the case of China’s transportation equipment manufacturing industry, an increase in the level of competition decreases domestic sales of local firms. Furthermore, an increase in the firm size increases domestic sales of Chinese firms in all six manufacturing industries.     

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE ANALYSIS OF THE SOURCES OF STAGFLATION AN EXAMPLE: FRANCE AND GERMANY, 1971–79

Stagflation is a combination of an increasing rate of inflation with a decreasing rate of real growth. It appears when the inflationary gap of production costs raises faster than the inflationary gap of expenditures on Gross Domestic Marketable Product. The decomposition of these two gaps into their main elements gives then the possibility of determining the sources of the inflationary increase in costs and the causes of the relative retardation of the inflationary increase in expenditures. The main cause of stagflation in 1974 for France and Germany was the huge rise in oil prices which had not been immediately followed by an equal rise in prices of their exports. The inflationary rise in wages is an almost permanent factor of stagflation in France; in Germany its responsibility is involved only before 1975. In France the insufficient increase in the inflationary gap of expenditures was mainly due to the restrictive monetary policy and to the official price regulation. In Germany the restrictive monetary policy also contributed to the slowdown in demand in 1974 and 1975. In 1977, on the contrary, the main cause of stagflation was the slackening of export demands due to the world recession and the revaluation of the DM.     

OUTPUT GROWTH AND STRUCTURAL REFORM IN LATIN AMERICA: HAVE BUSINESS CYCLES CHANGED?

This paper documents important changes in real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of six large Latin American countries. The main results can be summarized as follows. First, there is evidence of a structural break in real GDP toward stronger mean growth and a substantial reduction in volatility. Second, the timing of the breaks suggests that the important changes in economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s have been effective in permanently improving economic growth in the region. These changes in the growth processes imply recessions that are shorter in duration and milder in amplitude. The sustained increase in commodity prices observed in recent years explains an important share of growth in the region since 2003. But after accounting for the effect of commodity prices, there is even stronger evidence of a structural break in real GDP growth. (JEL E32)     

Declining output volatility in Germany: impulses,propagation, and the role of monetary policy

The decline in output volatility in Germany is analysed. A lower level of variance in an autoregressive model of output growth can be either due to a change in the structure of the economy (a change in the propagation mechanism) or a reduced error term variance (reduced impulses). In Germany the decline output volatility is due to a decline in the persistence of the growth process. This is in contrast to the US results, where a break in the variance seems to dominate the decline in persistence. A change in the conduct of monetary policy (the establishment of another monetary policy regime) could be part of an explanation for the change in propagation. Stochastic simulations with a New Keynesian DSGE model support the hypothesis.     

英国高校地理学专业课程体系的特征及意义

英国地理学专业的调和体系代表着当今的先进水平与未来发展方面,本文英国５０余所大学地理学系中选择出较具代表性的的近２０个地理学系（院）,对其地理学专业课程体系特征进行了较为说尽的分析。分析表明,英国地理学的专业课程体系基本上是统一地理学的课程体系框架、三年学制的课程体系架构和二种类型课程的层次结构,其课程体系具有强调综合、重视基础及注重方法和技术的培养与训练等显著特征。英国高校地理学专业课程体系设置     

The effect of rural labor migration on poverty alleviation: a village-level study in China

The construction of the new socialist countryside is being carried out in China nowadays. Although lots of successful experience has been gotten, different problems occur in various regions yet. To analyze the relationships among rural labor migration, poverty alleviation and characteristics of migrants is important in considering the effect of rural labor migration on the construction of the new socialist countryside. Available sampling and typical case study are adopted and 236 questionnaires are collected from[bur villages in northwest GuangxL China, Daxin Lixin, Longhe and Yongchang. We analyze the rural labor migration status, characteristics of migrants, remittance situation and income, household income and the ratio of remittance income to total household income. A bout 2/3 of the households have migrants in surveyed villages. And nearly half of the migration households have only one fam- ily member as migrants in the four villages. The migrants mainly comprise male and the younger, with the education level of junior middte school and higher More than half of the migrants are employed in Guangdong Province. But the characteristics of migrants in Yongchang are more diverse. The rural labor migration in the village is extremely active and extensive. And over 60% of the household with family members as migrants have remittance income. The rate in Yongchang is extremely high (80%). And the income of households with migrants getting remittance income significantly higher than their counterparts. More than half of their income comes from remittance as far as the former kind of household is concerned And in Yongchang, the rate is nearly 80%. The conclusion is that rural labor migration is popular and extensive in lots of villages. And the migration and remittance play an important role in rural household income, especially in some poor villages. For this kind of village, the rural labor migration may be some "compulsory course" in rural development. And the rural labor emigration is an essential way in poverty al-leviation. This is the first step in the construction of the new socialist countryside.