CRYING OVER SPILT MILK

"Generally a dairy farmer gets plenty of advice… All of this advice is well meant:some of it is good, particularly that falling within the field of the advisors' operations; but there is sometimes trespass into other fields, and wrong advice, given in good faith, involves the farmer in expense and wasted effort."
1960 Report of the Dairy Industry Committee of Enquiry.     

私有化更有效率吗

本文对始自里根和撒切尔夫人主政时期的私有化浪潮提出了批评和质疑。本文认为,以解决政府失灵问题的私有化浪潮,可能导致更为严重的市场失灵问题。虽然在总体上私有企业比国有企业有更强的盈利能力,但这并不意味着私有企业比国有企业更有效率。即使能够证明私有企业比国有企业更有效率,也不能说私有化是可取的。     

MORE COSTLY OR MORE PRODUCTIVE? MEASURING CHANGES IN COMPETITIVENESS IN MANUFACTURING ACROSS REGIONS IN CHINA

Using a newly constructed industry-by-region dataset based on China's two censuses, this paper examines the trend of average labor compensation (ALC), labor productivity (ALP) and unit labor cost (ULC) in 28 manufacturing industries across 29 provinces in China for 1995 and 2004. Findings show that at the aggregate level, ALP growth was generally faster than that of ALC and hence resulted in a significant decline in ULC for all regions in China. Furthermore, less developed regions exhibited stronger productivity growth relative to labor cost increase than more developed regions, thus leading to a convergence in ULC levels across provinces and regions over this period. Comparing individual industries, we observe a substantial variation in growth rates and convergence trends across regions. Logit regression analysis confirms that labor-intensive industries are more likely to converge in ALP, ALC and ULC, whereas capital/skill-intensive industries tended to diverge. This finding is further confirmed by estimating a convergence regression, which suggests that misallocation of resources due to market imperfections or institutional barriers is likely to be the main factor behind the divergence of ULC.     

经济学者更利己吗

近年来,国外学者利用大量的道德实验和调查问卷等实证方法来研究经济学者与非经济学者之间的行为差别,其中多数结果都证明:经济学者普遍比非经济学者表现得更利己,也更缺乏亲社会行为。对经济学者更利己的原因解释分为性别差异假说、自我选择假说和教育灌输假说等。在对其中经典的研究予以梳理和比较之后,本文重点分析了此次金融危机中经济学者的行为。结果发现:经济学课程的学习对学生们有着长期效应,这些学生工作后一定程度上成为金融危机的直接微观推手,而那些经济学教授们也明显表现出忙于寻找借口、推卸责任的道德风险行为。     

WHO SHOULD BE GIVEN MORE FOREIGN AID?

Abstract. This paper presents a simple model to investigate the effectiveness of foreign aid. It shows that foreign aid is most effective if it is given to a market economy with relatively high transaction efficiency. If transaction efficiency in a market economy is low due to, for instance, bad institutions or policies, then foreign aid will either be largely dissipated as transaction costs or can even lead to retrogression of market activities. In either case, it will be more effective to give foreign aid to poor primitive economies with no developed markets.     

MORE ON THE MEASUREMENT OF TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY

"As compared with Hicksian, Harrodian measures of the concept of total factor productivity which rigorously take into account the reproducibility of commodity capital inputs and the technological interdependence of modern production economies are advocated. A number of recent measures of total factor productivity are shown to be variants of the Harrodian approach, and certain problems of aggregation associated with the Hicksian measures are shown to be resolved by the Harrodian measures. An examination of the concepts of technical progress and vertically integrated sectors advanced by Professor Luigi L. Pasinetti and their relation to the Harrodian measures of total factor productivity is made."     

DOES MORE TRANSPARENCY GO ALONG WITH BETTER GOVERNANCE?

This paper explores the link between information flows and governance. It develops a new indicator, the transparency index, which measures the frequency with which governments update economic data that they make available to the public. The paper also uses the existence of a Freedom of Information Act and the length of time for which it has been in existence as an indicator reflecting the overall legislative environment for transparency. Measures of the type developed in this paper have hitherto not been used in the cross-country literature on governance and growth. Cross-country regression estimation shows that countries with better information flows as measured by these indices also govern better.     

ARE FOREIGN FIRMS MORE TECHNOLOGICALLY INTENSIVE? UK ESTABLISHMENT EVIDENCE FROM THE ARD

This paper employs establishment level data from the annual respondents database to consider technological differences between establishments operating in the UK. We adopt very precise measures of technology, arguably much more detailed than have hitherto been employed to address the key question of whether use of technology differs by nationality. After numerous controls we find that typically North American establishments have a higher probability of being more technologically intensive than their UK counterparts. This result also stands up in panel analysis.     

天下岭南一家亲2008“鼠”我最红

2008年1月12日下午,珠江啤酒集团的生产车间、研发实验室甚至会议室里,随处可见三五成群的参观者。这些参观者或穿着大红唐装,或西装革履;每个人脸上都洋溢着笑容,每个人见面都会亲热地打着招呼;他们就是珠江啤酒公司总经理方贵权先生的同学们— 一群来自中山大学岭南（大学）学院EMBA的同学。     

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IN WHOLESALE INTERNATIONAL ROAMING: TOWARDS A MORE EFFICIENT MARKET?*

Despite a general trend of lower charges for mobile calls, in Europe, prices for international roaming calls have remained at levels that are surprisingly high. The apparent reluctance of mobile network operators to lower roaming tariff is generating many antitrust concerns. This paper presents in a two‐country two‐firm framework the functioning of the current system governing wholesale international roaming agreements based on interoperator tariffs. The focus is on the role of traffic management; thanks to the emergence of traffic direction techniques, mobile network operators are allowed to select the roaming partner. We show that, unless these techniques do not allow for perfect control on traffic flows, traffic management does not improve the market's efficiency. In line with the regulatory mechanism recently adopted by the European Commission, we show that a simple price cap mechanism may restore partial efficiency in the wholesale market. We also show that although cross‐border cooperation at the wholesale level is Pareto efficient, it will not emerge as an equilibrium of a two‐sided matching game.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF PRICE IN ONLINE AUCTIONS: MORE EVIDENCE FROM QUANTILE REGRESSION

This study explores how seller reputations affect auction prices and concludes that earlier findings may be biased due to the misspecification of seller reputation. This paper contributes to the literature by offering significant empirical evidence using Taiwanese internet auction data. Our study reveals that the influence of seller reputations on auction prices is significant, irrespective of the assumptions of linear or non‐linear relationships with price. However, failure to consider the non‐linear setting of seller reputation leads us to underestimate the impact of reputation when the seller's reputation score is low, but overestimates it when the seller's reputation becomes high. Using quantile regression, this study finds evidence of considerable differences in their impact on auction prices that are dependent on the distribution of price levels.     

TALKING LESS AND MOVING THE MARKET MORE: EVIDENCE FROM THE ECB AND THE FED

This paper examines and compares the communication strategies of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, and their effectiveness. First, we find that the surprise components of both monetary policy actions and statements have important but differing effects on asset prices, with unexpected communication having a much greater impact on longer‐term interest rates. Second, both the ECB and the Fed have proven to be equally successful in moving their domestic asset prices using either monetary policy or news shocks. However, the response of the American yield curve to the surprise component of Fed's statements is larger than the reaction of the European term structure to ECB's announcements. This result is intimately related to the amplitude of the policy rate cycle that is much larger in the US than in the euro area combined with the bounded support of the news shock. Third, we analyze the cross‐effects and show that the Fed has been more able to move the European interest rates of all maturities than the ECB to move American rates. This finding is tied to the predominance of dollar fixed income assets rather than to an attempt of the ECB to mimic the Fed.