International Procurement as a Signal of Export Quality

In 1996, the British Government was accused of a protectionist 'buy British' campaign when it awarded a contract for army ambulances to Land Rover. We present a model where the procurement decision of the government affects the perception of consumers in the rest of the world about the quality of the domestic firm's product relative to that of a foreign rival's product. The model compares the outcome when the government's only concern is value for money with the outcome when the government takes account of the effect of its decision on export sales of the domestic firm.     

博物馆：城市记忆、标志及通向未来文化的桥梁——以江苏南通市为例

博物馆,对于城市功能而言,涵盖面不可能很广很大,但在城市发展中、特别是文化的承上启下和继承创新中的地位、功能和作用的确不可或缺。它扮演的是过往与历史见证者的角色,但也是未来文化、特别是先进文化创造、发展的必要基础和条件。博物馆担负着独特的文化使命。已经达到一定规模的城市不可能没有博物馆,博物馆在城市历史演进和不断扩大过程中的角色无可替代。一、城市文化传统及其历史记忆留存在各级各类博物馆每一个城市都有属于自己的历史,每一个城市都有区别于其他城市的历史传统和独特记忆。城市的传统和记忆既留存在人们的脑海当中…     

论新古典经济学诞生的标志

在新古典经济学的诞生之前,效用传统和边际传统一直是潜藏着的经济学发展的两条线索。马歇尔的最大贡献,就是他在《经济学原理》中创造出了供需均衡分析。这种分析能够包括上述的两条线索,它也以此成为了新古典经济学诞生的标志。     

娘子关下的叹息

萌生去娘子关的念头缘于它的名字。古人称太太为娘子，对女人尊称也呼娘子。我一向认为此称呼温文尔雅，听着舒服。然而，是什么样子的关隘要以娘子命名呢？我决定去看个究竟。     

论城市现代化评价指标体系之构建

城市现代化是一个发展的概念。但如何方能称之为现代化？固而设置评价城市现代化的指标体系与综合评价的方法，就成为必须研究的课题。     

Quality adjusted life years as expected utilities

Abstract. This article is intended to systematicaly show all the conditions that the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) must satisfy so that it can be interpreted as a von Newman-Morgenstern utility. Such conditions cover two cases. When health states are chronic, we shall be referring to the conditions inferred by Pliskin, Shepard and Weinstein (1980). Likewise, we will devote our attention to commenting on the characterization of Bleichrodt (1996), pointing out that its condition 0 is a bit artificial. In turn, for temporary health states, we will remark that the characterization of Bleichrodt (1995) appears to be incomplete. We shall provide a complete derivation of QALYs. In this way, QALYs can be derived from an individual's preference relation that satisfies the von Newman-Morgenstern axioms by imposing additive independence, absence of contradictory trade-offs and partial symmetry. Moreover, the two last conditions conditions can be replaced by a single condition that we call general symmetry.     

城市集中度的测定指标和影响因素——我国经济发展对城市集中度影响的回归分析

一定的城市化水平下,城市资源的配置可能会过于分散,也可能会过于集中,两者都会导致效率损失和经济增长缓慢.因此,对城市资源配置的研究,即对城市集中度的研究,就显得很有必要.论文介绍了城市集中度的各种测定指标及影响因素,并利用STATA软件,就我国改革开放以来经济发展对城市集中度的影响进行了回归分析.     

我国高新区二次创业"四位一体"评价指标体系研究

我国高新区发展进入“二次创业”阶段,为打破“一次创业”发展的路径依赖,政府的管理与导向作用非常重要。本文在对高新区阶段发展规律与我国发展现状全面理解与判断的基础上,根据高新区“四位一体”的定位,设计了衡量高新区“二次创业”能力的“四位一体”评价指标体系。     

重庆市“土地、人口、产业”城镇化质量的时空分异及耦合协调性

综合运用熵权法和系统耦合协调度模型,在挖掘城镇化质量内涵的基础上,建立"土地、人口、产业"城镇化质量耦合协调度指标体系,并以重庆市为例,对研究区2002—2012年"土地、人口、产业"城镇化质量、耦合度、协调指数、耦合协调度及空间格局差异进行测算、分析,以期为重庆市未来城镇化发展决策提供科学依据和参考。研究结果表明:1从时间序列上看,重庆市城镇化质量总体呈上升趋势,但由于受区位条件、国家和地方政策,产业结构调整等因素影响,呈现出不同阶段性特征;2从空间格局上看,重庆市县域城镇化质量协调指数和耦合协调度空间非均衡性较为显著,呈现出以都市功能核心区、都市功能拓展区和城市发展新区为中心,渝东南生态保护发展区和渝东北生态涵养发展区为外围的"中心—外围"空间差异特征;3城镇土地资源利用效益偏低和产业结构不合理是制约现阶段重庆市城镇化质量提升的两个关键性因素。     

Sign and phase asymmetry: News, economic activity and the stock market

In this paper, we present a general model of the joint data generating process underlying economic activity and stock market returns allowing for complex nonlinear feedbacks and interdependencies between the conditional means and conditional volatilities of the variables. We propose statistics that capture the long and short run responses of the system to the arrival of news, conditioning on the sign and time of arrival of the news. The model is applied to US data. We find that there are significant differences between the short and long run responses of economic activity and stock returns to the arrival of news. Moreover, for certain classifications of news, the respective responses of economic activity and stock returns vary according to the nature of the news and the phase of the business cycle at which the news arrives.     

Persuasion as a contest

We examine how the probability of persuading an audience depends on resources expended by contending parties as well as on other factors. We use a Bayesian approach whereby the audience makes inferences solely based on the evidence produced by the contestants. We find conditions that yield the well-known additive contest success function, including the logit function. We also find conditions that produce a generalized ??difference?? functional form. In all cases, there are three main determinants of audience choice: (i) the truth and other objective parameters of the environment; (ii) the biases of the audience, and (iii) the resources expended by the interested parties.     

Reswitching as a cusp catastrophe

This paper examines a model with an infinite and differentiable technology for which the presence of reswitching generates discontinuous behaviour along the optimal dynamic path. The form of this dynamic discontinuity will be shown to be a cusp catastrophe of three dimensions. The bifurcation set of catastrophe points will be delineated. Also the cusp point will be identified which is the bifurcation set of the bifurcation set.     

The firm as a subeconomy

This article explores the economic role of the firm in a marketeconomy. The analysis begins with a discussion and critiqueof the property rights approach to the theory of the firm asexposited in the recent work by Hart and Moore ('Property Rightsand the Nature of the Firm'). It is argued that the Hart-Mooremodel, taken literally, can only explain why individuals ownassets, but not why firms own assets. In particular, the logicof the model suggests that each asset should be free standingin order to provide maximal flexibility for the design of individualincentives. These implications run counter to fact. One of thekey features of the modern firm is that it owns essentiallyall the productive assets that it employs. Employees rarelyown any assets; they only contribute human capital. Why is theownership of assets clustered in firms? This article outlinesan answer based on the notion that control over physical assetsgives control over contracting rights to those assets. Metaphorically,the firm is viewed as a miniature economy, an 'island' economy,in which asset ownership conveys the CEO the power to definethe 'rules of the game', that is, the ability to restructurethe incentives of those that accept to do business on (or with)the island. The desire to regulate trade in this fashion stemsfrom contractual externalities characteristic of imperfect informationenvironments. The inability to regulate all trade through asingle firm stems from the value of exit rights as an incentiveinstrument and a tool to discipline the abuse of power.     

The Manager as a Person

Abstract Professor John Roemer has defended a future market socialist order. His model would encompass an egalitarian coupon market for the ownership of firm shares, a private sector for firms below a certain size, a system of public bank loans for the raising of capital, and an industrial policy of differential interest rates for various economic sectors. This paper argues that such a model would generate perverse incentives for firms, shareholders, public officials, and private entrepreneurs. It also argues that Roemer's contention that such a model would produce a more environmentally sensitive polity is problematic.     

Divorce as a risky prospect

In 1910, the divorce rate per 1000 members of the US population stood at 0.9. ^{1 1}Histroical divorce rates can be found in the Statistical Abstract for the US (1981). . This rate showed a slow upward trend for the next 50 years, and by 1960 had more than doubled to 2.2. It took only 20 years for the rate to more than double again so that by 1980, the rate was 5.3. For the last 20 years, the marriage rate, by contrast, has experienced mild fluctuations between 10.0 and 11.0 per 1000 in the population with no discernible trend. If the same pattern for both rates holds until the year 2000, the annual number of divorces will exceed the annual number of marriages.

Although sociologists have researched divorce extensively, only a few economic studies exist. This is unfortunate since divorce is likely to have considerable impact on economic vaiables such as hours of work, labour force participation, human capital accumulation, work performance and earnings. ^{2 2}For a recent study of hours at work and labour supply, see Green and Quester (1982); for studies on earnings and work performance, see Santos (1975) or Hoffman and Holmes (1976). King (1982) argues that couples anticipating divorce will individually invest more heavily in human capital since the costs of any current investment are at least partially absorbed by the spouse. Without denying the influences of peer groups, social norms and role models, it seems reasonable to suggest that pecuniary considerations may also help to explain divorce.

A search through the economics literature uncovered only two studies of the determinants as opposed to the implications of divorce: one by Orcutt, Caldwell and Wertheimer (1976) and another by Becker, Landes and Michael (BLM) (1977). The study by BLM is by far the most widely cited of the two. The authors of both studies argue that the current state of marriage is the primary determinant of divorce. BLM, for example, assert that ‘the probability of divorce is smaller the greater the expected gain from marriage, and the smaller the variance of the distribution of unanticipated gains from marriage’. BLM, in other words, view marriage as a risky investment with a distribution of returns. The alternative is divorce which, by implication in BLM, involves a certain return.

The first contribution of this study is to draw the implications for an alternative view in which the investment in marraige is certain, but the investment in divorce is risky.

The second contribution lies in presenting formal expected utility-maximizing models of an individual and/or a couple contemplating divorce which can be tested empirically. The thrid contribution is the method developed to test the predictions of the models.

The paper of follows a simple format. Section I presents the models. Section II provides an explanation of the data used in the empirical tests. Methodology and results are presented in sections III and IV. Caveats are observed in section V. The final section closed with a summary of the arguments and evidence.