从中美“面子观”看中国对外商务活动中的应对策略

由于历史文化背景的不同,中国和美国的＂面子观＂具有不同的文化特征,中式面子为了保全颜面而努力编织美丽谎言,美式面子为了维护形象而小心隐藏真实情感,前者对于不利面子的一切事物都讳莫如深,而后者则竭力为完美形象找出冠冕堂皇的理由。全球化的趋势不可阻挡,跨文化交流更是首当其冲,在国际商务交往活动中如何面面俱到,在一团和气中达到预期的交际目的,面子工程是必不可少的,唯有如此,才能制定出对外商务活动中的最佳应对策略。     

A social clause against discrimination in the labor market

This paper considers the possibility of employing a social clause on international trade to reduce occupational discrimination and wage discrimination in the labor market. A country subject to such a clause is given the choice of reducing discrimination or having to face the imposition of a tariff or quota on its exports. The impact of these two changes on the remunerations of different groups in society is analyzed in a model allowing for a labor surplus. The analysis shows that neither in the case of occupational discrimination nor in the case of wage discrimination is the social clause necessarily an efficient means for reducing discrimination. Very much depends on how different groups are affected, on the relative political weight of these groups, and on the share of exports in total output.     

Belief flipping in a dynamic model of statistical discrimination

The literature on statistical discrimination shows that ex-ante identical groups may be differentially treated in discriminatory equilibria. This paper constructs a dynamic model of statistical discrimination and explores what happens to the individuals who nonetheless overcome the initial discrimination. If an employer discriminates against a group of workers in her initial hiring, she may actually favor the successful members of that group when she promotes from within the firm. The worker's welfare implications (i.e. who benefits from an employer's discriminatory hiring practices) are unclear. Even though agents face discrimination initially, some may be better off because of it.     

Wage and performance discrimination: The situation facing hispanics and blacks in major league baseball

Much has been written about discrimination in professional baseball. Many hypotheses have been formulated and tested to document the existence or nonexistence of discrimination in the major leagues. Surprisingly, research has ignored a criterion put forth by Jim Bouton in his popular and controversial 1970 book, Ball Four. This paper concentrates on the Bouton criterion. This article first discusses the history and background of discriminatory attitudes toward blacks and hispanics in major league baseball. A data base is then established, and the Bouton criterion is used to investigate three types of discrimination that blacks and hispanics can face on the playing field: differential performance requirements, job assignments, and salary treatment. The results are discussed and compared with traditional claims.     

Determinants of private health insurance coverage among Mexican American men 2010–2013

Abstract

Background: Private health insurance (PHI) represents the largest source of insurance for Americans. Hispanic Americans have one of the lowest rates of PHI coverage. The largest group in the US Hispanic population are Mexican Americans; they account for about two in every three Hispanics. One in every three Mexican Americans aged 64 years and under did not have health insurance coverage. Mexican Americans have the most unfavorable health insurance coverage of any population group in the nation.

Objectives: The objective is to determine the factors associated with the gap in PHI coverage between Mexican American and non-Hispanic American men.

Methods: This study used the National Health Interview Surveys (2010–2013) as the sample. A non-linear Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition was run, estimating the explained and unexplained gap in PHI coverage between the groups. Several robustness tests of the model were also included.

Results: This study estimates that 44.4% of employed Mexican American men are covered by PHI compared to 79.5% of non-Hispanic American men. Nearly 60% of employed Mexican American men were found to be foreign born, 35% have an educational attainment less than a high school degree, and 40% are likely to have language barriers. Decomposition results show that income, low educational attainment, being foreign-born, and language barriers diminished the probability of private health insurance coverage for Mexican Americans, and that 10% of the gap is unexplained.

Conclusions: Most of the difference in the PHI rate between Mexican American men and non-Hispanic men is explained by observable differences in group characteristics: education, language, and immigration status. About 10% of the difference can be attributed to discrimination under the traditional interpretation of an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The PHI rate gap is large and persistent for Mexican American men.     

PRICE DISCRIMINATION AT THE LINKS

This paper reports on an econometric analysis of the pricing structures at 46 public access golf courses in the San Francisco area. Comparisons among several attempts to get a generic measure of price discrimination suggest that the standard deviation of the prices charged is the best measure. Using narrowly cast measures of price discrimination, the paper successfully distinguishes among several different types. Measures of price discrimination can be significant regressors, yet the overwhelming majority of existing work excludes such a variable, leading to biased estimates of the other parameters.     

The role of supervisors in the determination of wages and wage gaps

This article considers labour market discrimination by supervisors as a potential contributor to racial and gender wage gaps. Empirical analysis reveals evidence that all workers, except Hispanic males, earn significantly higher hourly wages when working for a supervisor of the same race and sex as themselves. Furthermore, the results suggest that sex has a larger impact on wages than race for workers with white supervisors, while race has a larger impact on wages than sex for workers with minority supervisors. Based on past research, we theorize that the degree of labour discrimination workers face may also be dependent upon the location and size of the firm in which they are employed. However, decomposing the samples by firm location and size suggests that these two factors cannot adequately explain the observed matched supervisor–worker wage effects, which supports the notion that these wage effects are largely driven by factors other than supervisor discrimination.     

Race,Gender and Regional Labor Market Inequalities in Brazil

This study investigates the relationship between unequal regional development and racial and gender wage inequality in Brazil. Using sample data from the 1991 Brazilian census, I estimated monthly wages for a white, brown and black women and men working in the states of S"o Paulo and Bahia. The findings suggest that while women and Afro-Brazilians in Brazil's most developed region of S"o Paulo had the advantages of higher levels of state sponsored work benefits and more equitable occupational and wage distribution, they nevertheless experienced the greatest discrimination. In contrast, the less developed state of Bahia where racial and gender gaps in education, occupation and wages were the most severe, wage discrimination was lowest.     

Sexual orientation and labour relations: new evidence from Athens,Greece

We use data from the 2008–2009 Athens Area Study (AAS) to provide the first evidence on the relationship between men's sexual orientation and wages in the Greek capital, Athens. Gay and bisexual men are found to receive significantly lower monthly wages than heterosexual male workers after accounting for demographic and occupational characteristics. The estimations reveal that educated gay and bisexual workers face lower wage differentials than less-educated gay and bisexual workers, which is consistent with the statistical theory of discrimination. However, wage gaps are significant at all educational attainment levels, suggesting that these workers face strong prejudices in the Athenian labour market. The same pattern holds also across all occupations and sectors. Furthermore, to better understand the determinants of the wage gaps, we compare gay/bisexual men with both married and unmarried heterosexual men. By making these comparisons, we are able to disentangle the penalty associated with being unmarried from other human-capital explanations for the wage gap.     

Opportunistic discrimination

Are minorities more vulnerable to opportunism? We find that individuals from a minority group face greater danger of being cheated because trade with them is less frequent and the value of a reputation for fairness toward them is correspondingly smaller. When the majority is sufficiently large it can only lose from a solidarity strategy of punishing opportunism against the minority, so a firm that cheats the minority can still continue business as usual with the majority. If there is a small chance that a firm might have an implicit or preference bias against either group, then the interaction with reputational incentives gives unbiased firms an incentive to cheat the minority but not the majority. The prediction that smaller groups are more susceptible to discrimination distinguishes the model from most other discrimination models.     

我国民营资本嵌入创新孵化的壁垒、模式与策略

通过定性研究探讨民营资本参与创新孵化产业的问题,发现应当正视民营资本进入创新孵化的社会歧视,尊重民营资本的资源配置规律,以商业化视角制定及优化其运作模式。在分析我国创新孵化传统模式弊端,总结民营资本进入壁垒的基础上,提出民营资本参与创新孵化的实物期权型、服务期股型、整体嵌入型与阶段嵌入型商业模式,并给出其考虑维度及演进规律。研究通过适当的创新孵化商业模式设计,力图达成区域经济增长、行业技术进步、民间资本获益、创新型企业发展的多赢局面。     

Russian Railways Reform and the Problem of Non‐discriminatory Access to Infrastructure

Abstract Restructuring of the Russian railways system is well under way. Among the policies just now coming into practice are two that are standard in railways restructuring in other countries: the provision of access to the infrastructure by independent train operating companies, and assurances of non‐discriminatory access terms for such companies. However, 'discrimination'– in the traditional economic sense – is a standard and often welfare‐enhancing pricing strategy for the recovery of fixed costs in a sector, like railways, with declining average costs. If competition regulators are unable to distinguish between discrimination that harms competition and discrimination designed only to recover fixed costs, policy makers in Russia and elsewhere will face a choice between large government subsidies and large welfare losses. In these circumstances, other restructuring models should be considered.     

The Haunting of the South: American Geopolitical Identity and the Burden of Southern History

The evocative figure of a South haunted by its troubled past is a staple of representations of the region, and such representations not only create a problematic identity for the region but simultaneously produce a privileged national identity through the process of internal orientalism. This article connects internal orientalism with the notion of the double Janus to explain the similarities between America's attitude toward Southern history and its assertion that Japan and Germany bear historical burdens of their own. The inward-looking face of the double Janus is informed by the discourse of internal orientalism and gives Americans an opportunity to judge an internal spatial Other (the South), particularly with regard to the region's history (as a result American geopolitical identity is cleansed from the historical burdens that are construed as Southern). This practice as a righteous judge of the Other serves the US hegemon and its outward-looking face of the double Janus in that the rhetorical practices deployed to discuss Japanese and German history have been honed through the assessment of the burdens of Southern history.     

中小企业柔性风险评估模型研究——基于某担保机构的实践经验

中小企业融资难一直是制约其发展的瓶颈。金融机构在企业风险评估过程中,存在对中小企业规模歧视的考核指标,使得中小企业资信普遍较低。柔性风险评估系统着重事前风险防范、事中风险化解和事后风险的共同面对,是一种互动的、人性化的、多次反馈的评估系统。柔性风险评估系统在银行、担保机构中的广泛应用,将会极大地改善中小企业的金融环境,促进中小企业的发展。     

当前新生代农民工面临的主要问题及对策探讨

认为当前新生代农民工面临的主要问题是:农民工的身份仍是农民;难以融入城市社会,社会歧视仍然存在;就业环境差、待遇低、工资被拖欠、克扣现象时有发生;社会保障权利不完善。解决新生代农民工问题的对策:深化户籍制度及其配套设施的改革;建立适合新生代农民工特点的社会保障制度;完善农民工权益法律保障体系;提高新生代农民工的组织化程度。     

Liquidity Shock,Credit Constraint and the Development of Private vs. State-Owned Enterprises

Based on firm level data for the period of 1998–2007, this paper attempts to explain the growth differences between private enterprises and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China, in the context of liquidity shocks, and institutional and financial environments. It is found that (1) when liquidity tightens, the private enterprises face stricter credit constraints than SOEs, which restricts the development of private enterprise; (2) when liquidity becomes abundant, private enterprises face fewer financial limitations and grow much faster than SOEs; (3) the effect of liquidity shocks on the growth rate gap between private enterprises and SOEs has weakened during the period 2002–2007. These findings reveal that the credit discrimination against private enterprises can be mitigated by improving institutional and financial environments, which weaken the effects of liquidity shocks on firm growth.     

The poverty experience of lone mothers and their children

Lone mothers, as sole caregivers and women, face unique challenges to guaranteeing the economic well-being of their children compared to lone fathers. While all lone parents face a trade-off in time spent earning wages and time spent caring for children, mothers are likely to earn wages lower than fathers, thus increasing their chances of falling into poverty. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 Current Population Survey, we estimate the size of the gender poverty gap among lone-parent families. We apply the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to assess whether this gap can be solely attributed to parent and family demographics. Much of the poverty gap, however, is attributed to unobservables, suggesting the increased likelihood of being in poverty for lone-mothered families may be, in part, due to gender-based discrimination in labour markets.     

A conduct parameter model of price discrimination

We consider a conduct parameter model where firms price discriminate based on the consumers’ willingness to pay. For any conduct, the average price is invariant to the extent of price discrimination. Moreover, when the number of prices goes to infinity, there is a linear relationship between market power, measured by conduct, and range of offered prices. Hence, when the firms face competition, some of the high valuation customers are charged below their valuations, which contrasts with perfect price discrimination results for a monopoly.     

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT: WORKER INDEPENDENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAY MEN

I build on a growing literature documenting wage differentials for gay men by showing that the wage differential gay men experience varies significantly across occupations with different levels of worker independence. The penalty is smallest in management and professional occupations, which involve a high level of worker independence. It is largest in service occupations, which include a lower level of independence. This distribution of earnings penalties is consistent with discrimination being the source of the gay wage penalty. The results support the conjecture that higher levels of independence allow gay men to more successfully manage the disclosure of sexual orientation and mediate the negative effects of discrimination. (JEL J3, J7, J15)     

THE GENDER PAY GAP UNDER DUOPSONY: JOAN ROBINSON MEETS HAROLD HOTELLING

This paper presents an alternative explanation of the gender pay gap resting on a simple Hotelling-style duopsony model of the labour market. Since there are only two employers, equally productive women and men have to commute and face travel cost to do so. We assume that some women have higher travel cost, e.g., due to more domestic responsibilities. Employers exploit that women on average are less inclined to commute and offer lower wages to all women. Since women's firm-level labour supply is for this reason less wage-elastic, this model is in line with Robinson's explanation of wage discrimination.