Is unemployment good for the environment?

Environmental quality is a public good, potentially impacted by everybody. Individual level pro-environmental behavior affects environmental quality in the aggregate. Therefore, it is important to understand what causes individual’s pro-environmental behaviors to change. We quantify the causal effect of one determinant, unemployment, using an EU-27 population representative Eurobarometer survey. Drawing on results from the theory of the private provision of public goods, and recognizing that unemployment decreases income and the opportunity cost of time, we formulate testable predictions that unemployment will decrease the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that require monetary contributions and increase the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that mainly require time/effort. Instrumental variables regressions provide empirical evidence to support these hypotheses. Changes in the unemployment rate within a sub-national region provide the exogenous variation needed to identify the causal effect. Several supplemental questions on the survey provide evidence that environmental issues lose saliency and economic issues gain saliency when one becomes unemployed, suggesting that interested parties may wish to emphasize cost savings of pro-environmental behavior rather than environmental benefits during times of increased unemployment.     

公允价值计量属性评价

公允价值作为一种计量属性,在会计计量体系中的作用日益明显。本文通过介绍公允价值计量的一般方法及会计处理,重点分析了公允价值计量属性的优缺点。     

GMM estimation of a structural demand model for yogurt and the effects of the introduction of new brands

The demand structure for yogurt is assumed to be properly described by a one level nested logit model that is applied to aggregate market data. Given the presence of endogenous regressors, suitably lagged endogenous variables (Arellano and Bover in J Econom 68:29–51, 1995; Blundell and Bond in J Econom 87:115–143, 1998) are proposed as instrumental variables. The validity of this set of instruments is discussed and price elasticities and marginal costs are recovered from the demand estimates. Total welfare gains associated to the introduction of two new brands by the same manufacturer are finally computed. Prices and profits decreased and total welfare increased.     

Africa's education enigma? The Nigerian story

In the last two decades, the social and economic benefits of formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa have been debated. Anecdotal evidence points to low returns to education in Africa. Unfortunately, there is limited econometric evidence to support these claims at the micro level. In this study, I focus on Nigeria, a country that holds 1/5 of Africa's population. I use instruments based on the exogenous timing of the implementation and withdrawal of free primary education across regions in this country to consistently estimate the returns to education in the late 1990s. The results show the average returns to education are particularly low in the 90s, in contrast to conventional wisdom for developing countries (2.8% for every extra year of schooling between 1997 and 1999). Surprisingly, I find no significant differences between OLS and IV estimates of returns to education when necessary controls are included in the wage equation. The low returns to education results shed new light on both the changes in demand for education in Nigeria and the increased emigration rates from African countries that characterized the 90s.     

科技创新政策供需匹配模型构建及实证研究

科技创新政策供给成为促进创新活动开展的关键动因。匹配度检测与评估是科技创新政策管理的保障措施,是基于证据的科技创新政策调整依据。运用供需匹配理论,引入政策供需主体共同作用对象——科技创新政策,构建科技创新政策供需匹配架构。以2014年9月至2017年7月中共中央国务院、发改委、商务部、财务部、科技部发布的82份科技创新政策文件,以及采用问卷调查法对科研院所、高等院校、企业管理人员的调研结果为依托,实证研究中国科技创新政策供需错位问题。结果表明：在供需匹配理论模型中引入调节变量——科技创新政策,可以研究科技创新政策供需匹配状况;在供给导向性政策和环境导向性政策方面,科研院所、企业与政策供给主体的匹配度相对较低。     

Expectations in micro data: rationality revisited

An increasing number of longitudinal data sets collect expectations information regarding a variety of future individual level events and decisions, providing researchers with the opportunity to explore expectations over micro variables in detail. We present a theoretical framework and an econometric methodology to use that type of information to test the Rational Expectations (RE) hypothesis in models of individual behavior. This RE assumption at the micro level underlies a majority of the research in applied fields in economics, and it is the common foundation of most work in dynamic models of individual behavior. We present tests of three different types of expectations using two different panel data sets that represent two very different populations. In all three cases we cannot reject the RE hypothesis. Our results support a wide variety of models in economics, and other disciplines, that assume rational behavior. We would like to acknowledge outstanding research assistance from Huan Ni. The Michigan Retirement Research Center (MRRC) and the TIAA-CREF Institute made this research possible through their financial support of two related projects. Benítez-Silva also acknowledges the financial support from NIH grant AG1298502 on a related project, and also from the Fundación BBVA, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through project number SEJ2005-08783-C04-01, and wants to thank the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland and the Department of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra for their hospitality during the completion of this paper. Three anonymous referees provided excellent comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors are the authors’.     

基于和合管理理论的企业社会网评价研究

基于和合管理理论的社会网评价,主要从和合人、和合体及和合网3个方面展开。对和合人的评价主要从和合观与和合力两个方面考量;对和合体的评价主要从和合略与和合效两个方面考察;对和合网的评价主要从和合态与和合度两个方面分析。     

Productivity growth decomposition with FE-IV approach: Rethinking Thai commercial banks after the financial crisis

To cope with the Asian Financial Crisis, Thai commercial banks have gone through a reconstructing period. This study aims to decompose the Total Factor Productivity growth (TFP) for Thai commercial banking industry with an output distance function. With an unbalanced panel dataset, we used the Fixed Effect (FE) model with Instrumental Variables (IV) to estimate the TFP growth empirically. We found the technical inefficiency change and scale effects were the two major contributors to the recent growth, while the input price effect of the premises and equipment was the major preventer of the growth. Moreover, the Thai commercial banking industry produced in decreasing return to scale, and the input–output allocation was not at the profit maximization optimum under the exogenous prices.     

New evidence on the effects of job creation schemes in Germany—a matching approach with threefold heterogeneity

This paper evaluates the effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany. The very informative dataset at hand justifies the application of a matching estimator and allows to take account of threefold heterogeneity. The recently developed multiple treatment framework is used to evaluate the effects with respect to regional and individual heterogeneity as well as to differences in the programme sectors. The results show considerable differences with respect to these sources of heterogeneity, but the overall finding is very clear. At the end of our observation period, that is 2 years after the start of the programmes, participants in job creation schemes have a significantly lower success probability on the labour market in comparison to matched non-participants.     

Decomposing trust and trustworthiness

What motivates people to trust and be trustworthy? Is trust solely “calculative,” based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness only reciprocity? Employing a within-subject design, we run investment and dictator game experiments in Russia, South Africa and the United States. Additionally, we measured risk preferences and expectations of return. Expectations of return account for most of the variance in trust, but unconditional kindness also matters. Variance in trustworthiness is mainly accounted for by unconditional kindness, while reciprocity plays a comparatively small role. There exists some heterogeneity in motivation but people behave surprisingly similarly in the three countries studied.