The new post-industrial state

With the socioeconomic restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of a smooth transition to a post-industrial service economy has required significant revision. We outline three such revisions: the ideas of informatization, informalization, and dualism. The first two are reworkings of post-industrial theory so as to emphasize one or other undervalued trend in industrial society, and are in principle quite compatible. The third emphasizes inequalities in power and resources that are plausibly associated with developments seen as benign by the others. Each has distinct implications for democratic development. However, we argue that while elements of all three models are present in current trends, so that the future might be best seen as a compromise between them, in fact all approaches fail to grasp the real significance of socioeconomic and technological restructuring. A more fruitful approach, with distinctive policy implications, is proposed.     

The informal economy: Its role in post-industrial society

This article continues a line of argument, initiated in Futures¹, suggesting that a wide range of services which were once produced in the money economy are increasingly provided informally—on a self-service basis. The informal economy contains a diverse collection of activities that may be divided into three categories: the household, the communal, and the underground. This last in turn covers a wide range, from outright theft, to tax evasion and moonlighting. Government taxation and welfare policies, changes in lifestyles, and the self-service economy combine to make the informal economy a sector of growing importance. Governments have three options: they can ignore the informal economy, suppress it, or exploit it. The last appears preferable, but would require some initiatives from the state.     

Risk society and ecological modernisation alternative visions for post-industrial nations

Two prominent social theories have been shaping the discourse of environmental politics during recent years. Ulrich Beck's risk society theory contends that conventional definitions of social class are losing their significance in advanced nations due to the success of the welfare state in reducing economic scarcity. As societies transition toward late modernity new social cleavages based on the distribution of environmental and technological risks are gaining salience. Standing in contrast is the theory of ecological modernisation originally advanced by Joseph Huber outlining a hyper-rational strategy for correcting the ecological flaws of contemporary production and consumption practices. This paper introduces a typology that joins the two theories into a unified framework and suggests that the direction toward which a particular society progresses will be conditioned by its predisposition to scientific rationality. Due to increasing public endorsement of alternative epistemologies, most countries will likely encounter great difficulty achieving ecological modernisation.     

Modelling the pension system

This paper argues that pensions modelling should be a parsimonious process using different methodologies for different purposes. A range of methodologies exists and is being extensively used in different countries and quarters. Very simple aggregate accounting models can yield robust results as for the sustainability of pension systems, an issue that worries most analysts and governments. While more sophisticated formally derived models have the advantage of yielding results that take into account general equilibrium effects, ad hoc models have the advantage of being better able to cope with the fine structure of pensions programmes and formulae. Focusing on the Spanish pension system to illustrate the output of an ad hoc model, several applications are briefly presented: sustainability indicators up to the horizon 2050, effects of increased migratory flows and an evaluation of recent pension reform legislation. Some attention is paid to the fact that societal issues and behaviours are intertwined with pensions in a way difficult to be captured by standard modelling methodologies.     

Modelling Takeover Likelihood

This paper employs a multinomial logit model in an attempt to better understand the motives behind takeovers. The results from the multinomial logit models show that the characteristics of hostile and friendly targets differ significantly and that these differences also vary depending on the time period under investigation. The results give some support to the disciplining role of the hostile takeover. Furthermore, conclusions based on a simple binomial logit model are likely to be misleading and result in incorrect inferences regarding the characteristics of firms subject to takeover.     

Modelling the shape of the limit order book

This article develops a parsimonious way to use the shape of the limit order book to produce an estimate of the asset price. The posited model captures and describes the evolution of the distribution of limit orders on the bid and ask sides of the LOB during the trading session and provides estimates of the execution asset price over time. The performance of the model is evaluated against some existing standards from the market microstructure literature during the trading session. Empirical evidence on listed companies confirm a strong contribution of our methodology to the innovation in asset prices, according to the information share coefficients. We also document a significant improvement relative to the Hasbrouck [J. Finance, 1991, 46, 179–207] model when our model estimates are included as regressors.     

信用违约风险传染建模

在信用组合中,企业的违约是相互随机依赖的。除了来自宏观经济因素的影响,即因果传染;还有一种影响来自于企业间的直接相互关系,我们称其为信用违约传染。在目前,席卷全球的次贷风暴,就是一个信用风险传染的实例。到目前为止,人们尝试了从不同角度为违约传染建模,特别是从简约模型角度出发。本文从结构模型角度出发,为信用违约传染建模。并在此模型基础上,分析其对信用衍生品定价的影响。     

Modelling the Accounting Information Requirements of Small Businesses

Studies in various locations have indicated that practising accountants are an important source of advice and information to the small business sector. However, prior research has concentrated on establishing a relationship between the two parties and in ascertaining the extent of services provided. This paper highlights the limited acquisition or preparation of detailed accounting information by Australian small business owner/managers. Operating and environmental variables which influence the preparation or acquisition of detailed accounting information are established and logistic regression techniques used to estimate an appropriate explanatory model, from which estimates of the probability that a firm, with particular attributes which are reflected in the explanatory variables in the model, will prepare or acquire a given level of accounting information.     

透视建模中的数据特性

首先指出建立一个成功的模型，必须对支持模型的数据进行研究；其次将建模所使用的数据的特性定位在准确性、系统性、异常性、有用性、平稳性、相关性以及协整性的框架上，进而对这些特性做深入剖析。     

Modelling the economic value of credit rating systems

In this paper we develop a model of the economic value of credit rating systems. Increasing international competition and changes in the regulatory framework driven by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel II) called forth incentives for banks to improve their credit rating systems. An improvement of the statistical power of a rating system decreases the potential effects of adverse selection, and, combined with meeting several qualitative standards, decreases the amount of regulatory capital requirements. As a consequence, many banks have to make investment decisions where they have to consider the costs and the potential benefits of improving their rating systems. In our model the quality of a rating system depends on several parameters such as the accuracy of forecasting individual default probabilities and the rating class structure. We measure effects of adverse selection in a competitive one-period framework by parameterizing customer elasticity. Capital requirements are obtained by applying the current framework released by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Results of a numerical analysis indicate that improving a rating system with low accuracy to medium accuracy can increase the annual rate of return on a portfolio by 30–40 bp. This effect is even stronger for banks operating in markets with high customer elasticity and high loss rates. Compared to the estimated implementation costs banks could have a strong incentive to invest in their rating systems. The potential of reduced capital requirements on the portfolio return is rather weak compared to the effect of adverse selection.     

Population decline and the new nature: Towards experimental “refactoring” in landscape development of post-industrial regions

From an everyday perspective, a consequence of population decline and de-industrialization is the growth of natural areas: less industry and less people means more nature in the future. In the real word, the situation is more complicated. Using the development of a new lake district as a successor of brown coal industry and strip mining in the southern parts of the city of Leipzig (Germany) as a touchstone, this paper will explore some of the challenges and future opportunities for the design of ‘new nature’ in post-industrial landscapes. To discuss how fields such as ecology and engineering can fulfill their role as innovative players in times of population decline, two seemingly contrasting strategies for making decisions under conditions of depopulation in landscape development—called here scientific non-knowledge—are introduced: refactoring and public experiments.     

Modelling the demand for M3 in the Euro area

Modelling monetary transmission is central to understanding the role of monetary policy in the Euro area, and money demand is commonly seen as a link in that transmission mechanism. Since the beginning of the 1990s, many studies have suggested that the demand for Euro area broad money is stable over the long run because the estimation of an area-wide demand for money function provides an appropriate solution to a number of potential causes of misspecification of the single-country relations (such as spillover effects and currency substitution), and enjoys the positive consequences of a statistical averaging effect. On the other side, it must be stressed that previous benefits can be achieved at the risk of introducing parameter heterogeneity into the area-wide relationship. In order to shed some light on the issue, this study is first devoted to an analysis of the main econometric features of the money M3 demand at Euro area and single country levels, then it compares the two sets of results in a common framework that, differently from all previous studies, explicitly takes account of the potential nonstationarity of the variables of interest in both estimation and testing phases. The comparison shows that the area-wide money demand is more smooth and less subject to shocks than the single-country ones. Finally, a number of poolability tests run over subgroups highlight that low precision associated with the estimates of the parameters of the national models makes it impossible to exclude that their long-run specifications do in fact coincide.     

Modelling the distribution of the extreme share returns in Singapore

This study aims to model the probability distribution of the extreme daily share returns in Singapore Stock Exchange over the period 1973 to 2005. For that reason the suitability of the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV), Generalized Pareto (GP) and Generalized Logistic (GL) distributions are investigated. The empirical results indicate that the GL distribution best fitted the empirical data over the period of study. Using the too much celebrated GEV and GP distributions for risk assessment could, therefore, lead to underestimation of the extreme risk which could potentially lead to inadequate protection against catastrophic losses.     

Modelling the Stochastic Dynamics of Volatility for Equity Indices

The paper develops a class of continuous timestochastic volatility models, which generate asset price returnsthat are approximately Student t distributed. Using thecriterion of local risk minimisation in an incomplete marketsetting, option prices are computed. It is shown that impliedvolatility smile and skew patterns of the type often observed inthe markets can be obtained from this class of stochasticvolatility models.     

Modelling bicommunal conflict: 2. Structuring the model

The problems encountered in this exercise included those of drawing the system boundaries, selecting the most appropriate subsystems, deriving usable measures for complex parameters, and establishing relationships between variables. The article discusses the ways in which such problems were handled in a model of a complex social process.     

Modelling the monetary policy reaction function of the Colombian Central Bank

This paper proposes a simple ordered probit model to analyse the monetary policy reaction function of the Colombian Central Bank. There is evidence that the reaction function is asymmetric, in the sense that the Bank increases the Bank rate when the gap between observed inflation and the inflation target (lagged once) is positive, but it does not reduce the Bank rate when the gap is negative. This behaviour suggests that the Bank is more interested in fulfilling the announced inflation target rather than in reducing inflation excessively. The forecasting performance of the model, both within and beyond the estimation period, appears to be particularly good.     

平顶山市人行同城清算系统的设计

平顶山地处河南省中部,拥有平顶山矿务局、神马实业、平高电器等大批国有大中型企业,是国家重要的能源基地和河南省重要的工业城市。长期以来同城票据清算一直采用每天两场,定时、定点人工跑票的原始手工清算方式,票据传递环节多、结算周期长、资金在途时间长等问题日益突出,在一定程度上制约了社会经济的发展。     

平遥古城甲天下

位于山西的平遥古城,是一座具有2700多年历史的国内保存最为完整的四座古城之一,也是目前我国唯一一个以整座古城申报世界文化遗产获得成功的古县城。平遥旧称＂古陶＂,明朝初年,