Development of the Insurance Industry in Europe in Economic and Financial Crisis

This paper analyzes the evolution of the insurance sector in Europe, focuses on the European Union （EU） member states, and considers the impact of economic and financial crisis on that sector. The European private insurance market is a developed market having an investment portfolio of 7,740 billion euros in 2011, an amount corresponding to 55% of the gross domestic product （GDP） of the 32 European markets members of Insurance Europe. Therefore, the importance of this sector as a long-term investor and major employer is obvious for the stability and growth of European economy. However, the insurance sector has been considerably affected since 2009 due to the global economic and financial crisis, which has had negative effects not only on the evolution of the value of insurance premiums underwritten, but also on the return on investment of the insurance companies.     

Voting between tax regimes to fund a public good

We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between an income tax and a commodity tax to fund a public good. We implement conditions such that a rational and self-interested subject would prefer the commodity-tax regime. We find that voters overwhelmingly support the income-tax regime. We discuss and evaluate empirically alternative behavioral accounts to explain voting behavior. We find that inequality aversion and efficiency concerns matter for voting. We find no evidence for opportunism or for cognitive ability to affect voting.     

Organized crime and business subsidies: Where does the money go?

Business support policies are widespread in advanced countries, to foster employment and productivity. This paper analyses the role of organized crime in the allocation of public subsidies to businesses. We assemble an innovative data set on the Italian mafia at municipality level and test whether mafia-ridden municipalities receive a disproportionally higher amount of funds. We exploit exogenous variation at municipality level to instrument mafia activity and show that the presence of organized crime positively affects the probability of obtaining funding and the amount of public funds. Organized crime is also found to lead to episodes of corruption in the public administration sector. A series of robustness checks confirms the above findings.     

Household production, full consumption and the costs of children

Recent work criticises both the logic and relevance of the theoretical basis of the approach to estimating the costs of raising children adopted in much of the economics literature. This tends to be restricted purely to models in which the household members consume market goods with given household income. The “costs of children” are perceived essentially as market consumption costs. This ignores the fact that an important, possibly preponderant element of child costs takes the form of parental time, which must be diverted from alternative uses such as market work, other household production activities, and leisure, to care for children. The studies also ignore the question of the differential incidence of child costs on adult members of the household. In this paper, we first of all argue that a satisfactory theoretical approach to modelling child costs must simultaneously incorporate an “individualistic” formulation of the household and a formal treatment of household production. We then provide such a model. Using data from a time use survey we estimate specialised versions of the model for families with two children and use the results to derive the intra-family distribution of resources and implied child-rearing costs.     

公众参与原则与我国城市规划立法的完善

公众参与城市规划是城市居民能够直接而积极地参与城市规划、成为规划制定和规划实施过程中一个重要的组成部分.它对于减少规划失误、促进规划的顺利实施及监督规划部门依法行政具有独特的法律价值.公众参与城市规划的原因在于解决规划失灵问题,是恢复个人利益与公共利益平衡的重要杠杆.借鉴各国公众参与制度,我国的公众参与机制应从城市规划信息公开、赋予社会公众参与城市规划的主体地位、确立公众参与城市规划的程序、明确公众参与城市规划的方式以及强化公众参与城市规划的司法保障等方面进行建构.     

财政支出、城市化与居民消费——对扩大内需的再思考

关注政府财政支出对居民消费的直接影响,引入城市化作为中介变量与调节变量,分析财政支出通过城市化影响居民消费的中介效应与调节效应,以及政府财政支出、城市化与居民消费之间的动态效应。结果表明,无论是采用分步骤回归方法还是加入交互项,都显示政府财政支出有直接负向“挤出”居民消费的效果,而城市化在其中发挥正向的中介效应与调节效应。政府财政支出虽然在当期“挤出”居民消费,但在滞后一期与滞后五期的动态效应中能够“挤入”居民消费;而城市化无论在当期、滞后一期还是滞后三期的动态效应中都能“挤入”居民消费。因此,未来应通过城市化的合理推进削弱政府财政支出对居民消费的短期“挤出”效应,并在长期通过合理扩大政府财政支出发展城市化,从而有效提高居民消费水平。     

Does politics make a difference?

Abstract

The concern of this article is the nature of the politics of public expenditure and whether changes in government between the Conservative Governments of Mrs Thatcher and the Blair Governments did reflect differences in policy priorities? The Thatcher Government in 1979 had announced that public expenditure was at the heart of Britain's economic problems. The Blair Governments did not seek to change the expenditure plans outlined by the outgoing Chancellor Kenneth Clarke. This study seeks to show that the analysis of data using long term trends for the post war period that the during the years of the Thatcher Government they government did manage to hold expenditure below its long term grwoth trends which in turn meant reductions in health and education spending while there were additional spending in law and order and defence. By contrast the Blair Government has managed to reverse this trend so that during the years of the Balir Government expenditure on socal provision has been expanding above the trend.     

海口市公众参与生态文明建设的实践与思考

公众参与生态文明建设是城市可持续发展的必然要求.城市生态文明重在建立"人与自然和谐"的道德价值体系,在价值观念上强化人与自然的和平共处意识,在生活方式上强调既满足自身需要又不损害自然生态的文明消费,在管量行为上注意引导公众参与城市生态环境决策管理.     

Collective Household Models: Principles and Main Results

In the traditional approach to consumer behaviour it is assumed that households behave as if they were single decision‐making units. This approach has methodological, empirical and welfare economic deficiencies. A valuable alternative to the traditional model is the collective approach to household behaviour. The collective approach explicitly takes account of the fact that multi‐person households consist of several members which may have different preferences. Among these household members, an intrahousehold bargaining process is assumed to take place. In addition to providing an introduction to the collective approach, this survey intends to show how different collective household models, each with their own aims and assumptions, are connected.     

公众参与架构下的新农村规划决策--以北京市房山区石楼镇夏村村庄规划为例

村庄规划是社会主义新农村建设的重要组成部分,如何科学地编制村庄规划、促进村庄整治的顺利进行成为规划工作者面对的一道难题.本文以北京房山区石楼镇夏村为案例进行剖析,探讨公众参与架构下村庄规划的新思路,把公众参与从体现规划知情权和监督实施的手段变成规划决策的依据,使得村庄规划有针对性地解决农民的实际问题,利于规划的顺利实施.     

PRODUCTIVE GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Abstract.  We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. We show that an understanding of the core results and the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study of their respective Euler equations. We argue that the existing literature incorporates many relevant aspects; however, policy recommendations tend to hinge on several knife-edge assumptions. Therefore, future research ought to focus more on idea-based endogenous growth models to check the robustness of policy recommendations. Moreover, the inclusion of hitherto unexplored types of government expenditure, e.g. on the 'rule of law', would be desirable.     

Measuring residential energy efficiency improvements with DEA

This paper measures energy efficiency improvements of US single-family homes between 1997 and 2001 using a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, an indicator of energy efficiency is derived by means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), and the analogy between the DEA estimator and traditional measures of energy efficiency is demonstrated. The second stage employs a bootstrapped truncated regression technique to decompose the variation in the obtained efficiency estimates into a climatic component and factors attributed to efficiency improvements. Results indicate a small but significant improvement of energy efficiency over the studied time interval, mainly accounted for by fuel oil and natural gas users.     

MAJORITY RULE AND ELECTION MODELS

Abstract. This paper surveys the theoretical work that has been done on majority rule and economic models of elections. Section I provides an overview of the topic. Section 2 reviews the most important results that have been obtained about majority rule as an abstract collective choice rule. Section 3 identifies some alternative inferences that can be made from those results. Section 4 covers some models that include additional features that are present in political institutions where majority rule is used. Section 5 concentrates on some alternative election models and equilibrium concepts. Section 6 focuses on election models with abstentions and/or candidate uncertainty about voter behaviour. Section 7 compares and contrasts models where candidates are certain about what the voters'choices will be (contingent upon about the choices made by the candidates) and models where they are uncertain about those choices. Section 8 closes the survey by identifying some emerging areas of research.     

城市发展质量评价的公众参与研究

城市发展质量评价是现代城市治理的有效手段之一。公众参与城市发展质量评价不仅是民主政治的集中体现,也有助于提高评价的质量和信度。本文在分析城市发展质量与公众之间辩证关系的基础上,讨论了公众在城市发展质量评价中的主体作用,分析了评价过程各阶段的公众参与形式,并初步研究了公众参与的主要问题及对策。     

How does public participation affect perceptions of public–private partnerships? A citizens’ view on push,pull, and network approaches in PPPs

ABSTRACT

In this study, we analysed US-based public opinion data to determine the influence of particular modes of participation on citizen perceptions of public–private partnerships (PPP). Our summary finding is that information dissemination can improve community support of PPPs, but interactive engagement is more important, and likely required, for assuring citizens that projects reflect their interests – an issue vital to the long-term sustainability of PPPs. Counter to expectations, respondents indicated a preference for meetings with private partner representatives over those with their public sector counterparts; implying the value of citizen-direct relationships in holding third-party providers to account.     

How do trade openness,public expenditure and institutional performance affect unemployment in OIC countries? Evidence from the DCCE approach

This study explores the relationship between trade openness, public expenditure, institutional performance, and unemployment in member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference). The conventional panel data techniques overlook cross-sectional dependence and yield-biased results. A new methodology called dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE) is employed to deal with the issue of cross-sectional dependence. The long-run results demonstrate that trade openness is inversely and significantly associated with overall unemployment and youth unemployment in lower-income as well as all the OIC economies and positively correlated in the higher-income OIC group. Public expenditure has an inverse and significant correlation with unemployment in OIC countries overall and higher-income OIC countries. Moreover, institutional performance and foreign direct investment are negatively related to unemployment in all OIC economies. The research shows the need for the continuation of open trade policies, strong institutions, and higher public expenditure in the OIC countries in order to decrease overall unemployment—in particular, youth unemployment.