Yantai ETDZ,Suitable to Investment

The Yantai Economic and Technological Development Zone (YETDZ) is one of the state-level development zones that were set up in 1984. It is designed to eventually cover 36 square kilometers. Until now, development has been completed on 20 square kilometers, involving RMB18 billion in investment in fixed assets including RMB2 billion in infrastructure development. At present the YETDZ is home to 480 projects using capital investment from 25 countries and regions. These involve US＄1.6 billion in contract investment, of which US＄1.3 billion has been realized. Of the 500 top companies across the world, 13 have invested in the YETDZ. In 2001, the YETDZ yielded RMB6 billion in GDP and RMB13 billion in     

Financial Inflows to Poland, 1990–96

Foreign exchange flows in Poland in the 1990s, especially during 1994–96, resulted from two developments. First, there was a current account surplus, as growth revived due to efficiency improvements, while macroeconomic policy limited domestic demand. Second, Poland had rejoined international capital markets and regained favorable credit ratings, triggering investment inflows. We can classify the effects of these inflows into three groups: changes in the institutional framework; changes in the stabilization path; and changes in the real economy. The crawling band introduced in May 1995, rapid development of the money market, and improvement of the central bank's capacity to intervene on that market are in the first group. As to the second, relative currency appreciation and import competition, constraining domestic price increases, contributed to the strong disinflationary push which began in 1995. Under the third heading, foreign direct investment and portfolio inflows helped to maintain rapid growth of investment and output.     

Put me in,Coach, I’m ready to play

This paper explores the connection between discrimination and entrepreneurship. To pursue this inquiry we focus on the integration of black players in Major League Baseball (MLB). MLB team owners, acting as entrepreneurs, had to weigh the benefits of integrating versus the costs of alienating consumers who had a taste for discrimination against hiring blacks. We find that the owners whose teams could profit by contending for the league pennant with the addition of black players were the ones who were willing to take the risk of integrating, although integration often stood in contrast to revealed consumer preferences. In addition to illuminating the mechanism through which integration took place, we offer a general understanding of how the costs and benefits associated with consumers’ taste for discrimination can change via entrepreneurial activities.

How to improve the ability of listening,speaking,reading and writing

一、Introduction The purpose of middle school English teaching is to improve the students' four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, with the base of necessary phonetics, large vocabulary and good grammar, But this is not the final purpose. The final purpose is to lot let students be able to use the language.     

Technological Backwardness in Agriculture: Is it Due to Lack of R&D,Human Capital,and Openness to International Trade?

This paper investigates the relationship between the agricultural technological level and R&D expenditures, human capital, and openness to international trade using cross-country information for a sample of 104 countries and various subsamples over the period 1961–91. The unobservable technological level is modeled as a dynamic process in the context of a general translog production function. The results suggest that the technological gap between developed and less developed countries in agriculture increased considerably over this period of time. Overall, the technological levels are directly related to R&D expenditures, human capital, and openness, although this relationship is not robust across different groups of countries.     

FDI Contributions to GDP in China, India and Brazil

The paper employs lineal regression models to probe into the contributions of FDI made to GDP in China, India and Brazil, finding out that in China FDI have made the greatest contribution to GDP, next is India and the last is Brazil. On this basis, it proposes that it is necessary and imperative to implement such strategies as revitalizing nation through science and technology, increasing investment in research, development and education, and improving the enterprise＇s own originality.     

Approach to Harmonious Development of Ecology, Economy and Society

The construction Of ecological environment is one of the five significant projects of China‘s Western Development, and arranges in the first place. In the past few years, the constructions of ecological environment made much great progress, but exposed many urgent problems to be solved, Examining the gain and loss closely,     

Gendered Paths to Asset Accumulation? Markets,Savings, and Credit in Developing Countries

An extensive literature shows how property inheritance is biased against women in many developing countries, yet relatively little attention has been given to gender bias in other means of acquiring physical assets, such as the market. Using individual-level data from Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India, this study analyzes modes of acquisition and financing of housing, agricultural land, other real estate, and businesses. The findings show that women acquire fewer of their assets through the market than men, and that in asset markets, both men and women are more likely to use their own savings than to use credit. The study also analyzes current loans for asset acquisition and finds that, in general, women tend to be somewhat disadvantaged in securing formal bank loans. The results suggest that financial inclusion to promote more gender equal access to accumulation of assets should focus on both savings and credit, with priority to savings.     

Alternatives to conventional crude oil: When, how quickly, and market driven?

We examine the effect of uncertainty concerning remaining supplies of conventional crude oil and its production path on: the date alternative fuels will be needed, the quantity of alternative fuels needed, and how this uncertainty affects firms' willingness to provide alternatives in a timely fashion. Despite large uncertainties about the quantity of oil that remains and its production path, the start date for replacements is likely to fall within a twenty-two year period that is narrower and earlier than previous estimates. The twenty-two year window represents considerable uncertainty about the date of the peak and this uncertainty creates an asymmetry in the strategy that maximizes the welfare of firms relative to total social welfare, which works against the market's ability to generate a smooth transition from oil to alternative fuels. The timeliness of this transition is critical—the production paths generated here suggest that 10 million barrels per day or more of alternative fuels will be needed within a decade of the peak in production of conventional crude oil.     

Returns to education: the Greek experience, 1988–1999

This article provides estimates of private rates of return to education in Greece derived from Mincerian-type earnings equations. The data come from the latest three household surveys of the country covering the 1988 to 1999 period. The empirical evidence suggests that: rates of return associated with female high school and university graduates exceed the respective rates for male graduates; rates of return pertaining to tertiary education graduates are increasing over time, whereas the corresponding rates for secondary education graduates follow an inverted U-shaped pattern and dropouts from any education degree end up with rates of return lower than the rates associated with the immediately preceding education level.     

Do better schools lead to more growth? Cognitive skills, economic outcomes, and causation

We develop a new metric for the distribution of educational achievement across countries that can further track the cognitive skill distribution within countries and over time. Cross-country growth regressions generate a close relationship between educational achievement and GDP growth that is remarkably stable across extensive sensitivity analyses of specification, time period, and country samples. In a series of now-common microeconometric approaches for addressing causality, we narrow the range of plausible interpretations of this strong cognitive skills-growth relationship. These alternative estimation approaches, including instrumental variables, difference-in-differences among immigrants on the U.S. labor market, and longitudinal analysis of changes in cognitive skills and in growth rates, leave the stylized fact of a strong impact of cognitive skills unchanged. Moreover, the results indicate that school policy can be an important instrument to spur growth. The shares of basic literates and high performers have independent relationships with growth, the latter being larger in poorer countries.     

Return to tourist destination. Is it reputation,after all?

In this paper the hypothesis that repeated purchases in the tourism markets could be considered as a consequence of asymmetrical information problems is studied. This hypothesis is analysed with the case study of the island of Tenerife using the estimation of a count data model. It was found that the length of the stay and the information obtained from previous visits and/or relatives and friends might increase the return to a destination suggesting the presence of a reputation mechanism as proposed by Shapiro (1983 Shapiro, C. 1983. Premiums for high quality products as returns to reputations. Quaterly Journal of Economics, 98: 659–79. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The determinants of the willingness to return were also estimated, confirming the main results.     

America’s neglected debt to the Dutch,an institutional perspective

America’s early constitutional development owes a good deal to the experience and policies of the Dutch republic. Many of the parallels are direct: In the late 16th century, the Dutch fought a successful war to secede from a major empire. They wrote a declaration of independence and adopted a federal model of Republican governance almost exactly two hundred years before the Americans. Somewhat later, the Dutch republic and its political institutions subsequently inspired and protected enlightenment scholars. Its leading political family and army played a crucial role in curtailing English absolutism in England and in England’s American colonies, and its federal template provided a model for early American institutions.

Communication, consensus and order. Who wants to speak first?

Parikh and Krasucki [R. Parikh, P. Krasucki, Communication, consensus and knowledge, J. Econ. Theory 52 (1990) 178-189] show that, in a group of rational agents, communication of the value of a function f leads to a consensus on the value of f, provided some conditions on the communication protocol and the function f hold. In this article, we address the issue of the influence of the protocol on the outcome of the communication process, when agents value information positively. We show that, if it is common knowledge in a group of agents that some of them disagree on two protocols, then the consensus value of f must be the same for both protocols.     

Tax Interaction Effects,Environmental Regulation,and “Rule of Thumb” Adjustments to Social Cost

Preexisting distortions in factor markets complicate the estimation of the social welfare effects of regulatory interventions. The existence of these tax interaction effects (TIEs) suggests that general equilibrium (GE) approaches should be used to evaluate regulatory policies. However, formal GE analysis is not always feasible for the numerous environmental regulations proposed by federal, state, and local agencies. The question addressed in this paper is whether an empirically based rule of thumb upward adjustment factor is appropriate to properly scale social cost estimates in environmental policy. We argue that such rule of thumb adjustments are significantly less reliable than estimates based on a detailed general equilibrium analysis because of the uncertainty about both the magnitude and sign of the social cost distortion. In addition to addressing this question, the paper gives an overview of TIEs and their relevance to environmental policy.     

Can cognitive neuroscience give rise to satellite disciplines,such as neuro-economics?

Many disciplines have recently emerged, which are all characterized by the prefix “neuro” added to the name of a traditional discipline from the fields of social sciences or humanities. Among them, there is “neuro-economics.” These disciplines are all based on the assumption of modularity. However, modularity is not the only possible way to conceive of the relations between mental functions and the brain. Furthermore, the assumption of modularity becomes useful only on condition that there are ways for determining what brain areas are active at a given moment, while a human being is performing an experimental task. In spite of the popularity neuro-imagining techniques enjoy that is not (yet?) the case. Even more problematic is the fact that, in order to make use of neuro-imagines, one must know what mental functions are required to perform the experimental task and what is the time course of those functions. For very few tasks, if any, we have the type of knowledge that would be necessary. Finally, even assuming that all conditions are met, what we would have achieved is simply to map mental functions into brain areas. However, localizing does not mean explaining and/or understanding. Even if it were possible precisely to map-specific mental functions into well-localized brain areas, which presently is not, the explanatory value of brain localization is doubtful. In order to explain why and how a given mental function occurs, knowing where in the brain it takes place is of little help. A true explanation requires being precise and explicit about the mechanisms that cause that mental function.