The impact of software piracy on inclusive human development: evidence from Africa

The study examines the effect of software piracy on inclusive human development in 11 African countries for which software piracy data is available for the period 2000–2010. The empirical evidence is based on instrumental variable panel Fixed Effects (FE) and Tobit models in order to control for the unobserved heterogeneity and limited range in the dependent variable. The modeling exercise is based on the inequality adjusted human development (IHDI) and its constituents. The following main findings are established. First, from the FE regressions, software piracy consistently improves the IHDI and its constituents. Within this framework, the positive relationship between inclusive human development and software piracy is driven by all its constituents. Second, for Tobit regressions, the positive relationship between software piracy and inclusive human development is confirmed exclusively in IHDI and literacy specifications. Within the latter framework, the positive relationship between software piracy and inclusive human is driven fundamentally by the literacy rate. Policy implications are discussed.     

Commercial piracy and intellectual property policy

I discuss the competition between a copyright owner and several commercial pirates who sell copies of the same information good to consumers. I view the increased risk of a punishment that offering a pirate copy to a consumer causes as an advertising cost whose value is chosen by the government. The structure of the market for pirate copies is affected also by fixed costs that are caused by punishments or DRM systems. I present a systematic analysis of the effects of these policy variables and the quality of pirate copies on the market for the considered information good.     

Economic stress and cigarette smoking: Evidence from the United States

This paper uses pooled data on U.S. states for the post-MSA period to estimate the demand for cigarettes, with the main contribution lying in considering the effects of economic stress/uncertainty. Different measures of economic stress – standard deviations and averages of unemployment and property prices – are considered. Greater economic stress is found to lower cigarette smoking across various specifications. Other findings largely support the literature on cigarette demand — price effects are negative, border price effects are positive and the effect of income is negative.     

Convergence Across the United States: Evidence from Panel ESTAR Unit Root Test

Many empirical studies try to test whether there is income convergence across metropolitan areas in the continental United States. Drennan et al. (Journal of Economic Geography 4(5), 2004) claim that income among metropolitan economies is diverging for the period 1969–2001, after applying univariate unit root tests to the time series data. This paper brings new information to this area of study by using the nonlinear panel unit root test of the Exponential Smooth Auto-Regressive Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ESTAR-ADF) unit root test on the time series data for the period 1929–2005. Our results find evidence of stationarity for time series and thereby support beta and sigma convergence among states in a nonlinear setup. However, when the non-linear test encompasses cross section dependence as advocated by Cerrato et al. (2008), the evidence is attenuated.     

Collectivism in the labor market: Evidence from second generation immigrants in the United States

This study investigates the role of collectivism on labor market outcomes in an individualist country. We explore collectivism as an intergenerationally transmitted cultural value and analyze its explanatory power for the economic outcome of 21,000 male homogamous second generation immigrants in the US. Our collectivism proxy is derived from the country of ancestry’s historical disease environment because collectivistic values have been particularly advantageous in countries with a greater prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Employing this new collectivism proxy that identifies collectivism more precisely than previously used cultural proxies, we find that higher scores of collectivism are associated with higher labor force participation and income earned in the US. The results on income are channeled through the number of hours worked and self-selection into jobs that require collectivistic traits. By analyzing the labor market performance of second generation immigrants, we are the first to show an occupational selection along cultural skills implying that second generation immigrants sort into occupations that demand skills on which they have a “cultural comparative advantage”.     

关于经典产权经济研究的综合评述与判断

文章基于经典产权制度的7大模型,对经典产权制度进行了全面的梳理与评述,无论是逐利动机模型、"公地悲剧"模型、交易成本模型、产权界定模型、微观产权模型、比较分析模型还是法经济分析模型,各有优劣,且它们之间并非结论一致。该现状反映了理论的中性与理论的非完美性。文章通过比较分析法,得出的结论是任何产权制度理论在阐释中国问题时都有局限性,故而建议变通使用经典产权制度理论。之所以对经典产权经济的相关研究进行综合评述,目的是为研究中国少数民族产权制度做好铺垫,尤其是现在产权经济研究的走向问题,当它似乎变得不再那么红极一时,它的理论适应性是否可以在中国少数民族推广,是否能够为中国少数民族产权经济发展指引方向。     

论职业安全的内部性与外部性及其规制

随着经济社会的发展以及人们对自身的生命权和健康权要求的不断提高,职业安全问题日益受到广泛的重视。作为世界工厂的我国,在职业安全与健康方面也面临着严峻的挑战。现实中,由于生产中雇主和雇工之间关于安全问题的信息不对称性、不确定性带来职业安全的内部性;由于职业安全产权缺乏明确的界定,又会产生职业安全的外部性。而无论是内部性还是外部性,都会导致职业安全问题的市场失灵,这为政府进行相应的社会性规制提供了前提与条件。基于此,本文从内部性和外部性两个方面对职业安全进行了研究,深刻探析了职业安全的负内部性和负外部性的产生及其在现实中的表现,最后提出构建工伤保险、强行信息披露和明确雇工的安全工作权利三个政策建议,以期对我国职业安全规制的进一步改革提供有益的启示。     

Does Distributional Skewness Lead to Redistribution? Evidence from the United States

This paper presents time-series, cross-section, and historical evidence from the United States to test whether distributional skewness leads to the adoption of redistributive policies. On all accounts the theory performs poorly: we fail to find evidence either of a long-run stable relationship or of short-run causation between distributional skewness and redistribution in the time-series data; the cross-section data uncover no correlation between skewness and welfare spending or support of the Democratic Party; and analysis of the historical evidence shows that key changes in redistributive institutions in the United States were not preceded by increases in distributional skewness.     

Why do firms adopt CEO stock options? Evidence from the United States

This paper examines the determinants of stock option introduction as a part of CEO compensation in listed US firms during the 1994–2004 period. The results are consistent with agency costs and recruiting considerations, suggesting that firms do not adjust CEO compensation in order to address the ‘investment horizon’ problem. The findings also suggest that CEO stock option adoption is not necessarily influenced by the same factors that have been found in the literature to affect the level of CEO stock option compensation and the adoption of broad-based stock option incentives. Overall, the findings provide evidence for several theoretical predictions, thus adding to our understanding of managerial incentives.     

Energy prices, energy conservation, and economic growth: Evidence from the postwar United States

The effects of energy prices and energy conservation on economic growth have been examined empirically for the postwar U.S. economy. A vector autoregressive model includes real GDP, real capital, labor, real energy prices, and the Divisia energy index. A key feature of our finding is that some damaging effects of energy conservation on the macroeconomy are statistically insignificant in the short run, and the insignificant short-run effects are quickly enervated over time. Alternative measures of energy use also suggest that energy conservation has no significant impact on real output growth. The findings are generally consistent with the neoclassical position that real economic growth of the United States is neutral with respect to changes in energy use. One exception is the case that energy prices are omitted from the model.     

Changing the way the elderly live: Evidence from the home health care market in the United States

I examine how decreases in government coverage of home health care visits to the elderly in the United States have affected their living arrangements. Specifically, I exploit geographic variation in the Medicare Home Health Care reimbursement rate that arose as a result of legislation passed in 1997 and I identify its impact on the living arrangements of older Medicare beneficiaries. I find that less generous reimbursement policies lead to a greater fraction of elderly giving up independent living. Baseline-model estimates suggest that a decline in reimbursement of one visit per user leads to a 0.98% increase in the fraction of elderly Medicare beneficiaries living in shared living arrangements, that is, living with somebody else, rather than alone or with only the spouse. This estimate implies that a decline in reimbursement of 5.1 visits per Medicare beneficiary increases the fraction of elderly that live in shared living arrangements by 1.12 percentage points. Such an increase is consistent with the time-series increase in the fraction of elderly that live in shared living arrangements between 1997 and 2000.     

Explaining the American Boom: The Roles of 'Globalisation' and United States Global Power

The article is about implementing obligations under Article 27.3(b) of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). However, concerned with the fragmentation of international law in a globalised world, the article uses Kenya as a case study to interrogate the apparent choice and latitude in Article 27.3(b). At the TRIPS Council, Kenya has sought to locate Article 27.3(b) within a wider frame by adroitly norm-borrowing, and it canvassed for integrating norms and principles from other multilateral agreements into TRIPS. Yet, when introducing plant breeders' rights into domestic law, Kenya fails to either explore the apparent latitude or deliver on its rhetoric in Geneva. I explain this decoupling between Geneva rhetoric (ritual) and domestic law (behaviour) as another symptom of what Steinberg [(2002), ‘In the Shadow of Law or Power? Consensus-Based Bargaining and Outcomes in the GATT/WTO’, International Organization, 56 (2), pp. 339–74)] characterises as ‘organised hypocrisy’ of the World Trade Organisation. In demonstrating that fragmentation in global legal architecture may not automatically emerge in domestic law, the article draws out the significance of attending to a domestic political economy of law-making.     

The emergence of property rights enforcement in early trade: A behavioral model without reputational effects

The present article focuses on the conditions that allow governments to increase property rights protection because they expect enough income from such action. We develop a behavioral explanation, according to which the answer lies in the growth in the importance, size and wealth of merchant guilds in the medieval era in Western Europe as well as a somewhat surprising effect of volatile price structures. We add to prior research by showing that even uncoordinated embargo pressures among multiple guilds could get medieval rulers to offer high levels of property rights protection.     

Impact of Immigrant Peers on Native Students’ Achievement: Evidence from Australia,Canada and the United States

This article examines how exposure to immigrant students affects the achievement of native students in Australia, Canada and the United States. Variation in the share of immigrant students across different grade levels within schools is exploited to identify the impact of immigrant peers. The study finds that the effects on native students’ achievements of exposure to immigrant peers differ between the three countries. While exposure has a positive impact on Australian natives, it has a negative impact on Canadian natives. Exposure has no effect on US natives. How immigrant students affect their peers is found to depend on institutional arrangements within the education system.     

美国的前沿科学进展

本文研究了美国近年来在基础科学领域取得的主要进展、国家科学政策动向以及前沿领域的研究重点,认为在生命科学、物质科学、能源科学、信息科学以及诸多交叉学科领域正孕育着革命性突破,美国政府为确保国家在科学领域的世界级领导地位,加大了联邦政府的资金投入。本文研究将为我国准确把握世界科学技术发展态势、整体部署前沿科学研究提供参考。     

科技型中小企业知识产权融资模式选择研究

随着知识产权运用的深化,知识产权融资已成为科技型中小企业融资的新途径。文章基于资源基础论,对知识产权融资能力进行了分析,将其分解为知识产权财务能力和知识产权战略能力。现有知识产权融资模式偏重政府自上而下的推动,忽视了中小企业对知识产权融资的承接能力,由此导致企业对知识产权融资的认可度不高。科技型中小企业知识产权融资模式需要从企业能力出发,以知识产权财务能力和战略能力为抓手,建立知识产权融资模式的选择模型,厘清企业知识产权融资的需求和特点,针对企业情况合理配置各类知识产权融资方式。科技型中小企业知识产权融资模式只有建立在企业自身能力基础之上,才能推动企业积极投入,进而吸引相关主体参与并推广知识产权融资活动。     

Impact of income tax on happiness: evidence from the United States

The present work considers the level of demonstrated happiness and unhappiness within groups, the latter measured by the conditional probability of suicide within groups facing an income tax rate and those without. Using US data for the year 2004, our results show that individuals have lower rates of suicide or are ‘happy’ when they do not pay income taxes than those who pay.     

Delegating Power to Bureaucracies: Evidence from the States

Empirical analysis has lagged behind theoretical advancementin the study of legislative delegation of power to bureaucracies.This article analyzes why state legislatures delegated advisoryand policy-forming powers to bureaucracies for the Aid to Familieswith Dependent Children (AFDC) program from 1935 through 1996.The analysis supports various theories of bureaucratic discretion,while painting a complex political picture of delegation decisions.Legislators rely on bureaucrats to resolve uncertainty, especiallywhen internal legislative information is scarce. Contrary torecent wisdom, however, delegation is not found to be associatedwith the general condition of unified government. Rather, delegationoccurs under both divided and unified government, but the procedureschosen and appointment powers granted vary under these two conditions.     

Pollution Abatement and Productivity Growth: Evidence from Germany,Japan, the Netherlands,and the United States

The passage of environmental legislation was accompanied by concerns about its potential detrimental effect on productivity. We assume inputs can be assigned to either abatement activities or good output production. This allows us to specify regulated and unregulated production frontiers to determine the association between pollution abatement and productivity growth. We then employ our “assigned input” model to determine the association between productivity and abatement activities for manufacturing industries in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.     

Labor Market Dynamics and the Business Cycle: Structural Evidence for the United States*

We use a 12‐dimensional VAR to examine the aggregate effects of two structural technology shocks and two policy shocks. For each shock, we examine the dynamic effects on the labor market, the importance of the shock for labor market volatility, and the comovement between labor market variables and other key aggregate variables in response to the shock. We document that labor market indicators display “hump‐shaped” responses to the identified shocks. Technology shocks and monetary policy shocks are important for labor market volatility but the ranking of their importance is sensitive to the VAR specification. The conditional correlations at business cycle frequencies are similar in response to the four shocks, apart from the correlations between hours worked, labor productivity and real wages. To account for the unconditional correlations between these variables, a mixture of shocks is required.