Assessing external validity

In designing any causal study, steps must be taken to address both internal and external threats to its validity. Researchers tend to focus primarily on dealing with threats to internal validity. However, once they have conducted an internally valid analysis, that analysis yields an established set of findings for the specific case in question. As for the future usefulness of that result, however, what matters is its degree of external validity. In this paper we provide a formal, general exploration of the question of external validity and propose a simple and generally applicable method for evaluating the external validity of randomized controlled trials. Although our method applies only to RCTs, the issue of external validity is general and not restricted to RCTs, as shown in our formal analysis.     

On Human Capital Characters of the Party and Government Leaders

In the era of knowledge-based economy, human capital has become the primary resource in our society. The party and government leaders are key human capital in economic development. However, what is the value of the party and government leaders in economic development? Are they as important as or even more important than the entrepreneurs? Very few studies have covered these points. This paper aims at providing answers to the above questions by analyzing the human capital of the party and government leaders. This paper mainly illustrates nine features of the human capital in the party and government: the high level, the measurement by public effect, “entrepreneurs” in managing public resources, the key of human capital, the logical precondition of other human capital, the scarcity, the irreversibility, the asymmetry, and the diversification. It concludes that party and government leaders are a special human capital, which differs from both the ordinary human capital and the entrepreneurs in the private sectors. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the selection of the party and government leaders and the rewards corresponding to their contributions to public benefits.     

贫困地区农业产业化的SWOT分析及持续发展对策探讨——以山西省为例

SWOT分析是常用的战略分析方法,为了探讨贫困地区农业产业化的持续发展,笔者以山西省贫困地区为例,对农业产业化面临的内部优势、劣势、外部机会和威胁进行SWOT分析,认为就山西省贫困地区而言,进取性战略是其最佳选择.     

组织有效性视野下的高校学生党建工作研究

当前,各大高校都在积极努力的探索高校学生党建的创新路径及有效模式。通过对现代管理理论中社会系统学派组织有效性理论的研究发现,高校学生党建工作的有效开展需要实现高校学生党组织的“外部有效性”与“内部有效性”的“内外统一”,进而将组织有效性理论运用于高校学生党建的研究并有利于解决当前高校学生党建工作存在的主要问题。     

Politics of Trade in the USA and in the Obama Administration: Implications for Asian Regionalism

Over the next four years, the Obama administration will face a series of strategic choices in forging policies to respond to a growing momentum for advances in Asian regional structures. Though faced with domestic political challenges; not least from within his own Democratic party – President Obama and his advisers will need to set a course for the reassertion of US leadership in constructing a trans-Pacific vision, through new US-based free trade agreements, signing on to existing agreements such as the P-4 (Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, the Philippines), or consolidating existing free trade agreements among Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations. In pursuing this vision, the US should take advantage of the fact that the next three APEC leaders meetings are in Singapore (2009), Japan (2010), and the USA (2011); a sequence ripe for synergistic teamwork.     

The competitive enforcement of property rights in medieval Japan: The role of temples and monasteries

Medieval Japanese governments only haphazardly enforced claims to scarce resources. Necessarily, this presented landholders with a void. To obtain the enforcement they needed, many turned to institutions affiliated with the fractious Buddhist faith instead. Temples and monasteries enjoyed an exemption from tax on their lands and controlled an array of financial and human resources with which they could adjudicate and enforce claims to scarce resources. To obtain access to that exemption and those resources, landholders “commended” their rights in land to them, and paid them a share of the harvest. In exchange, the temples and monasteries exempted them from tax, adjudicated disputes internal to the estate and protected their estates against external threats. Effectively, the temples and monasteries competed in a market for basic governmental services.By helping to secure basic claims to property, the temples and monasteries helped to promote investment and growth; by competing against the government itself, they helped to forestall the crippling effect of a predatory monopolistic state.     

Form of Ownership and Financial Constraints:Panel Data Evidence From Flow of Funds and Investment Equations

This paper analyzes the effects of the form of ownership on the substitutability between internal and external sources of finance in Italy. In particular, we test whether financial constraints are more severe for independent firms compared to members of large national business groups and subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations. The results obtained from flow of funds and investment equations estimated for a panel of Italian companies imply that independent firms face more severe financial constraints. In fact, not only members of national groups and subsidiaries of multinational corporations find it easier to substitute cash flow with external finance when the former falls but they do not display excess sensitivity to cash flow and debt in their investment decisions.     

Pieces of the shortage puzzle: aging and shift work

Addressing issues important to the aging nurse and night-shift worker is imperative for retention success. It is important for nurse leaders to create an environment that will keep older nurses and night-shift workers working. The good news is that health care leaders are talking. Research is being done and will hopefully continue. Now it is time for health care leaders to welcome nurses, educators, and policymakers into their circle of discussion to preserve quality health care and retain our nurses at the bedside.     

战略管理分析框架的拓展研究--基于SWOT框架的新视角

自SWOT分析框架创立以来,定位学派是对SWOT分析框架中企业外部机会和威胁的进一步延伸,而资源学派则是对企业内部优势和劣势的进一步拓展,但是这两个学派的观点没有进行很好地融合。战略的构造是内外环境匹配下的产物。     

Obesity of politicians and corruption in post-Soviet countries

We collected 299 frontal face images of 2017 cabinet ministers from 15 post-Soviet states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan). For each image, the minister's body-mass index is estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The median estimated body-mass index of cabinet ministers is highly correlated with conventional measures of corruption (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, Index of Public Integrity). This result suggests that physical characteristics of politicians such as their body-mass index can be used as proxy variables for political corruption when the latter are not available, for instance at a very local level.     

Political Leaders' Socioeconomic Background and Public Budget Deficits: Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between political leaders' socioeconomic backgrounds and public budget deficits utilizing panel data on 21 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. Building on sociological, as well as economic research, we argue that the socioeconomic status of political decision‐makers, i.e., presidents or prime ministers, is an important determinant of fiscal budget decisions. Our theory‐consistent findings show that the tenures of lower‐class leaders – i.e., leaders of low socioeconomic status – are associated with a deficit‐to‐GDP ratio which is 1.6 percentage points higher than that during tenures of upper‐class leaders.     

忧患意识是直面新形势的精神法宝

中国传统文化具有丰富的忧患意识文化沉淀,现时代忧患意识更具有丰富内涵。在民族复兴征程中,我们不仅面临＂四大考验＂,还要面对＂四大危险＂。强烈的忧患意识有利于保持旺盛的精神动力、增强科学发展能力、密切联系群众以及加强党的自身建设,是经受考验、化解危险的精神法宝。     

协调内外需关系的若干理论思考

内需反映一国的内生增长能力,外需反映一国利用国外市场和国外资源实现增长的能力,内外需关系可以用内外需比指标大致衡量。一般而言,内外需呈现相互替代、相互促进的关系。影响内外需关系的因素包括国内市场规模、经济发展阶段、贸易政策与制度等因素,而内外需关系又将影响到产业结构及产业关联、内外经济循环、贸易条件及国民福利等方面。在协调内外需关系方面,政府应扮演重要角色,确定合理的目标及方向。     

The inflationary effects of stochastic resource revenues in resource-rich economies with less well-developed financial markets

This article develops a simple Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to illustrate how economies that face restrictions in their ability to alter both government spending and taxation in the short run and cannot borrow easily (perhaps because of incomplete internal capital markets) can find external fluctuations in resource revenues producing unexpected variations in their internal money supply and ultimately in their inflation rate. The main channels for these effects run through the government budget and through the country's balance of payments position. The model is calibrated to illustrate the case of Iran.     

Export price adjustments under financial constraints

Exploiting data on the product‐destination‐level transactions of a large panel of Italian firms, we provide evidence that financial constraints affect price variation across exporters. Constrained exporters charge higher prices than do unconstrained firms that export to the same product‐destination market. This pattern is the result of a two‐fold effect. Distressed firms pass on their higher production costs through prices. However, they also charge higher mark‐ups. We explain this evidence referring to models in which rival firms produce different brands of the same product for customers with significant switching costs and producers face capital market imperfections when they need external financing. Our empirical investigations corroborate this explanation: price gaps are higher when switching costs or other forms of demand rigidity are expected to be more relevant.     

Incentive effects of fiscal rules on the finance minister's behavior: Evidence from revenue projections in Swiss Cantons

Predicting available tax revenue accurately is a key step of fiscal policy. It has recently been shown that revenue projection errors have a direct impact on fiscal deficits. In this paper, we explore the relationship between the ideology of the finance minister and tax revenue projection errors, and assess how the stringency of fiscal rules alters this relationship. We use a panel dataset of 26 Swiss cantons over the period 1980–2007 as well as a new dataset of 99 finance ministers at the cantonal level. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that the allocation of the departments – including the department of finance – to the elected politicians is a random process from the point of view of the voters. We identify a rather counter-intuitive positive effect of the ideology of the finance minister on tax revenue projection errors in the sense that a more left-wing finance minister produces relatively more conservative forecasts. We also find that fiscal rules reduce the effect of ideology on tax revenue projection errors. These results suggest that left-wing finance ministers need to curb deficits relatively more in order to signal the same level of competence to the voters than right-wing finance ministers. They also suggest that fiscal rules render the signal less informative to the voters and thereby reduce the incentive for left-wing finance ministers to be more conservative in their projections.     

Ambulatory care nursing: growth as a professional specialty

Ambulatory care nursing has emerged as a distinct professional nursing specialty. Many characteristics differentiate ambulatory care nursing from other specialty practices, including the settings, the characteristics of the patient encounters and the focus upon groups, communities, and populations, as well as individual patients and their families. A conceptual framework for ambulatory care nursing was developed in 1998 and recently revised, through consensus of leaders in the specialty. The key elements of the Ambulatory Care Nursing Conceptual Framework are the patient, the environment (both internal and external), and the nurse, practicing in three major roles.     

The process of dynamic capability emergence in technology start-ups – an exploratory longitudinal study in China

This study examines what exactly dynamic capabilities look like in technology start-ups and how they emerge and evolve in the emerging market of China. Employing a case-based research method, our findings reveal that the evolutionary path of these start-ups is different than that of well-established firms. Specifically, for a start-up, (1) capabilities of sensing opportunities are shaped by the entrepreneur's existent knowledge and past experience, as well as swiftly adapted in response to external feedback over time; (2) unique competences and fast-acting capabilities at seizing opportunities rely heavily on the mobilisation and orchestration of external complementary resources; (3) a start-up is more nimble in reconfiguring internal resources and external contacts to embrace opportunities to change directions and address threats during the exploration phase and (4) capabilities of sensing, together with capabilities of seizing and transforming or/(re)configuring, form a cycle for the development of dynamic capabilities in a start-up. These results contribute to the research of dynamic capability by empirically grounding the conceptual discussion of dynamic capabilities in technology start-ups and advancing our understanding of the emergence of dynamic capabilities from scratch.     

Why Finance Ministers Favor Carbon Taxes,Even If They Do Not Take Climate Change into Account

Fiscal considerations may shift governmental priorities away from environmental concerns: finance ministers face strong demand for public expenditures such as infrastructure investments but they are constrained by international tax competition. We develop a multi-region model of tax competition and resource extraction to assess the fiscal incentive of imposing a tax on carbon rather than on capital. We explicitly model international capital and resource markets, as well as intertemporal capital accumulation and resource extraction. While fossil resources give rise to scarcity rents, capital does not. With carbon taxes, the rents can be captured and invested in infrastructure, which leads to higher welfare than under capital taxation. This result holds even without modeling environmental damages. It is robust under a variation of the behavioral assumptions of resource importers to coordinate their actions, and a resource exporter’s ability to counteract carbon policies. Further, no green paradox occurs—instead, the carbon tax constitutes a viable green policy, since it postpones extraction and reduces cumulative emissions.     

Obesity of politicians and corruption in Ukraine in 2000–2020– Reply

We collected 469 frontal face images of Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were in office in 2000–2020. For each image, the minister's body mass index was estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The time series of median estimated body mass index of cabinet ministers co-moves over time with two existing measures of corruption – World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and the discrepancy between the quantity of luxury wristwatches exported from Switzerland to Ukraine (reported by Swiss statistics) and the corresponding quantity imported by Ukraine from Switzerland (reported by Ukrainian statistics).