Effects of Rural Medical Financial Assistance in China

This paper presents research results from the evaluation of the Medical Financial Assistance (MFA) program,supported by the World Bank,to extremely poor rural residents. It is found that MFA can help to improve the ability of the poor to make use of medical services,and especially their ability to receive services from township clinics. The present study also shows that adoption of the MFA mechanism helps to reduce the impact of disease on the economies of poor families,and prevents the poor afflicted with serious illnesses from being marginalized. However,as the beneficiaries often suffer from serious,complicated and lasting illnesses,the financial assistance is often insignificant in relation to medical expenses. Furthermore,the MFA plays no significant role in restoring a patient's income-earning ability.     

Provision of Residential Solid Waste Management Service in Rural China

Drawing on a dataset covering a large number of randomly sampled villages across China, the present paper examines the issue of residential solid waste management service provision in rural China, Using a logistic model we evaluate the impacts of different factors on service provision at the village level with regard to residential solid waste disposal. These factors include the environmental pressures caused by residential solid waste generation, the financial capacity of the Villagers＇ Committee, village elections and the individual characteristics of village heads. We find that living density, village per capita income, the ratio of irrigated land, and the per capita profit submitted by village enterprises to the Villagers＇ Committee all have positive impacts on service provision. Moreover, village heads who are popularly elected by villagers are more likely to provide services that satisfy voters＇ demands.     

Neighborhood Effects and Regional Poverty Traps in Rural China

The present paper investigates how neighborhood effects are connected to chronic poverty. We examine a large sample of groups of households and find that neighborhood effects are significant in a majority of groups, especially in the poorest groups. People living in poor communities tend to suffer from poverty over time. It is of theoretical and empirical importance to explore how neighborhood effects are interrelated with chronic poverty and the channels through which this occurs. Unlike other econometric analyses, we establish a multilevel econometric model to show that： （i） it is difficult for an individual living in a neighborhood with a high proportion of agricultural labor, low education levels, and poor transport and telecommunication infrastructure to escape from poverty traps; （ii） neighborhood effects dominate in poor communities; and （iii） although poverty is affected by group-level factors, individual factors still play a dominant role in regards to escaping poverty when income surpasses a threshold level Therefore, policy priority should be given to providing social protection and public services, especially in poor rural areas.     

Migration Experience of Village Leaders and Local Economic Development： Evidence from Rural China

This paper examines the impact of migration experience of village leaders on local economic development,based on the village-level data of the 2005 China General Social Survey.Our results show that the human capital of village leaders accumulated during the migration period has had a positive effect on per capita net income and per capita non-agricultural income in rural China.The migration experience of village leaders also plays a positive role in entrepreneurial activities in rural regions.From a policy perspective,these findings call attention to the importance of harnessing potential benefits of return migration to local economic development in rural China.     

Reforming the Financial Health Care System： The Case of the Republic of Albania

The Albanian health care system is currently in a period of deep transformation as well as the country is reflecting the future reforms after the turbulent development of the most recent years. The admission of Albania among future members of the European Union requires also an innovation in the health care system in order to build a model more compliant with the European performance and standards. These innovations are required also in the managerial approach to the health care and in its financing system. The aim of this paper is to analyze the actual financing model of the Albanian health care sector while highlighting the possible future managerial development. First of all, this article presents a history review of the Albanian health-care system, analyzing the current governance model. The goal of this approach is to describe the starting point of the reform paths for the future policy makers. Afterwards the research underlines the transition from a financing model based on historical public expenditure to a system based on the performance as one of the main innovation in the managerial approach to the health care. The introduction of management thinking will then allow developing a cost-based financing model, an accounting system in the teaching hospital and, finally, a financing system able to pay for services provided by private health care entities. The article then offers also a contribution to policy makers in order to define the ＂paths＂ of the Albanian health care system in the next years.     

Impact of a Senior High School Tuition Relief Program on Poor Junior High School Students in Rural China

A significant gap remains between rural and urban students in the rate of admission to senior high school. One reason for this gap might be the high levels of tuition and fees for senior high school By reducing students＇ expectations of attending high school, high levels of tuition and fees could be reducing student aeademic performance in junior high schools. In this paper we evaluate the impacts of a senior high tuition relief program on the test scores of poor rural seventh grade students in China. We surveyed three counties in Shaanxi Province and exploited the fact that, while the counties are adjacent to one another and share similar characteristics, only one of the three implemented a tuition relief program. Using several alternative estimation strategies, including difference-in-differences, propensity score matching and difference-in-differences matching, we find that the tuition program has a statistically significant and positive impact on the mathematics scores of seventh grade students. More importantly, this program is shown to have a statistically significant and positive effect on the poorest students in the treatment group compared to their wealthier peers.     

Decomposing Income Inequality and Policy Implications in Rural China

Using village data from samples covering 6 provinces,36 counties and 216 townships,the income inequalities within and between townships in rural China are assessed. The Theil index and the mean logarithmic deviation methods enable us to test income inequality at the township level,and to decompose it into intra-regional and inter-regional at county and provincial levels. In the present paper,we also decompose income inequalities between and within the nationally designated poor counties (NDPC). The results show that approximately two-thirds of the income inequality in rural China would be eliminated if measures and policies were targeted at the county level. This study also confirms the rationale that China's poverty alleviation strategy of focusing on poor counties based on the inequalities between NDPC and non-NDPC accounts for the most inter-province inequality.     

Marketing and Territorial Factors： An Integrated Study of the Accommodation Choice in the Island of La Palma

The literature has highlighted the relevance of segmenting the tourism market as a start point for developing the right tourism policy recommendations. The present study examines the rural tourism market on the island of La Palma （Canary Islands） and its relationship with territorial factors. Specifically, it attempts to establish the role played in tourists＇ accommodation location choice by territorial and related factors （for instance, the area of the island, proximity to the beach, hours of sunshine, etc.） compared to other factors. A sample of 316 tourists who holidayed in rural tourism accommodation in La Palma during the period from July to September in 2007 was selected for this purpose. The methodology consisted of a preliminary analysis of the associations between the variables and their modalities, followed by a multiple correspondence analysis （MCA）. The results of the study allow to conclude that the weight of territorial variables in the choice of destination and accommodation location can vary substantially depending on the market segment considered.     

Does Education Still Pay Off in Rural China： Revisit the Impact of Education on Off-farm Employment and Wages

The present study considers how education affects off-farm job participation and wages. We use a nationally representative dataset from a survey conducted in 5 provinces, 101 villages and 808 households by the authors in early 2005. The empirical results show that educational attainment, skill training and years of experience of rural residents have positive, statistically significant effects on off-farm employment. The average return to a year of education is 7percent, which is higher than those observed in previous studies. We also find the return to an additional year of schooling to be higher for post-junior high schooling than for junior high and below schooling： 11.8 versus 3.2 percent. We conclude that not only does education still pays off in rural China, but also the rate of return to education is increasing over time.     

Volatifity spillovers on precious metals markets and the G-7： The effects of the Asian crisis

This paper investigates the nature of volatility spillovers between stock returns and precious metals returns for the G-7 countries over the 1995-2006 period. We divide our sample into a number of sub periods, prior to, during and after the Asian crisis, with the objective to provide a wide analysis of the behaviour of these two markets taking into account the effects of the Asian crisis; We use EGARCH modelling, which takes into account whether bad news has the same impact on volatility as good news. The results show that there is no evidence of volatility persistence from stock returns to precious metals returns, but overall the results are significant in the other way around. In terms of volatility spillovers effects, the main findings are that there is evidence of volatility spill over running in a bidirectional way in almost all the cases. And finally, the results from asymmetric spillovers effects show that negative news has a stronger impact in these financial markets than positive news.     

Do Poor Rural Households Produce Less Grain than Non-poor Rural Households

China＇s poor rural households produce substantially less grain compared with non-poor rural households. The present paper applies a decomposition approach and uses China＇s rural household survey data to investigate the causes of this grain output gap The paper first compares the grain output gap between poor and non-poor rural households, and then decomposes the gap into differences in yield and area sown, The results indicate that the gap in grain output mainly results from differences in the amount of inputs used in production. Differences in the number of labor days and the level of intermediate inputs account for 13.6 and 47.S percent of the gap, respectively. Poor rural households are also less efficient in their use of intermediate inputs, which contributes to 13.2percent of the gap. However, the efficiency of poor households＂ labor days reduces the gap by 7.2 percent, while agricultural physical capital, househoM head education and agricultural training have no substantial impact on the household grain output gap.     

Retesting the Separability of China＇s Rural Households

This article retests the separability of China’s rural households in light of growing doubt about the sustainability of high economic growth in China.If a household’s production decisions are "separable "from the household’s consumption decisions,generally this suggests there is no surplus labor.Many scholars aver that China’s surplus rural labor has spurred rapid economic growth,but concerns have arisen as to whether China still has surplus labor available.We investigate this issue using rural household panel data from 1993 to 2009.The regression results confirm that households in rural China have progressed from being non-separable to separable.The estimation results for both the entire country and regions reject the separability hypothesis before 2004 but fail to reject the hypothesis after 2004(with the exception of the central region).These results suggest that China ’s surplus labor supply is dwindling,especially in the eastern and the western regions.The sustainability of China’s high economic growth is questionable in the absence of a large reservoir of surplus rural labor.     

The Comprehensive Development of Professional Education under the Guidance of Life-long Education

Life-long Education has become an idea of global influence. Governments all over the world are paying increasing attention to the building of ＂learning organizations＂. The thesis maintains that polytechnics, playing a vital role in the construction of local life-long educational systems, must adopt the innovative educational philosophy and orient themselves towards their target market in order to serve the ever growing and changing demand. By developing individuals＇ life-long employability, vocational colleges are well in the position to serve as the leader of the ＂leaming communities＂ and the source of the infectious passion for leaming （radiating infectious passion for learning）.     

China＇s Import-exchange Rate Linkage： Evidence from the China-bound Exports of Japan and Korea

This paper examines how the China-bound exports of Japan and Korea are related to exchange rates, motivated by the fact that processing trade makes up a large proportion of China＇s trade, and that Japan and Korea are the leading source countries for processing imports. Because processing imports are inputs for exports, the link between such imports and China＇s exchange rates are ambiguous. We estimate export functions that include China＇s RMB real effective exchauge rates （REER） along with bilateral real exchange rates （B RER） using Johausen ＇s cointegration method aud find that the RMB REER significantly affects Japanese and Korean exports to China, even more so than BRER in most cases examined. These two exchange rates appear in the export equations with opposite signs. Subsequently, we use the estimated model to illustrate the importance of accounting for a concurrent change in B RER when analyzing the effects of a hypothetical RMB revaluation on China＇s trade balances despite the apparently weak imports-B RER linkage.     

Impacts of Food and Energy Price Hikes and Proposed Coping Strategies

Based on sample survey data for the years 2006 and 2007, we find that inflation of food and energy prices in China is moving at a slower pace than in the international market; however, the livelihood of low income groups has been significantly impacted. Urban sample households in low income groups have been shifting from consumption of high value food to lower value substitutes; and all of the rural sample households are reducing their total consumption expenditure in real terms. The Engel＇ s coefficient of the rural household enlarged while their proportion of spending on clothing and energy declined. Farmers＇ households are moving toward more imbalanced diets, and the nutritional status of the poor is apparently deteriorating. The emergency-response measures that the government should implement include stopping subsidies to biofuel producers, who use foodstuffs as inputs, and providing food aid to the poor. The mid-term strategies should include anti-monopoly tactics, improving the market environment for the right competition, and eliminating price distortion. Midterm and long-term socioeconomic policy reform must be undertaken to adjust the social structure, to correct the mechanism of factor price formation, and to transform the pattern of economic growth.     

Organization Transformation： A Case Study of China Railway Express

China Railway Express （CRE）, which completes most of its transport by rail, makes great success in the past 10 years. In this paper, we make comparison between the traditional transport organization in Chinese state-owned railway and the parcel express transport by CRE, and introduce the organization transformation of CRE. We argue that to provide speedy and seamless transport product for the consumers and to continually increase central control power of the whole transport process are playing a more and more important role in strengthening the transport enterprise＇s competitiveness under new economy.     

An Interview with Vice Mayor Wang Tianyi of Jinan on Attracting Outside Investment

American economist Charles M. Tiebout (1924-1968) argued in 1956 that as state and local governments compete through general tax and spending programs to attract people and businesses, these government entities are led to produce the desired level of public goods.Tiebout notes that people can vote with their feet and choose to live in the community that provides them with the public services for which they are willing to pay. As a result, people in effect reveal their true preferences, and st…     

International payment finality requires a supranational central-bank money： Reforming the international monetary architecture in the spirit of Keynes

Payment finality is a key issue domestically as well as across a country＇s borders. In the current international monetary architecture, the existing protocols for a delivery-versus-payment operation with central-bank money do not and cannot provide for international payment finality through the links that national central banks have established between themselves on a multilateral basis. This problem concerns each country considered as a whole, but not its residents. In this connection, moving from a positive to a normative analysis, this paper points out the lack of an international settlement institution, as well as the ways and means to provide such an institution, as the result of a structural change of the current international monetary architecture. The lack of an international means of final payment implies that, to date, countries use national currencies as objects of trade, which are thereby subjected to supply and demand on the foreign-exchange market, where exchange rates may, and do, vary daily according to a currency＇s excess demand （either positive or negative） with respect to another currency. This paper argues that exchange rates＇ erratic volatility is the result of the current international monetary disorder, which denatures national currencies when they are traded on foreign-exchange markets.     

Collusion and Culture Construction in the Translation of Modest Social Address Terms a case study of ＂Xiao Ren＂ in ShuiHu Zhuan

Bassnett believed that collusion exerts influence between the author, translator as well as target reader, thus providing us with a new perspective for translation studies. Enlightened by Susan Bassnett＇s notion of ＂collusion＂ , the writer makes a contemplative study about the social address terms in Chinese classic novel Shui Hu Zhuan. The research studies the translation of modest social address terms in Outlaws of the Marsh and All Men are Brothers from the perspective of collusion and culture construction. Through the study of the source text and target text, the thesis makes analysis as well as comparison of the two English versions, in order to investigate the possible criteria for the translators to evaluate their choices of words in translating the Chinese specific terms. During the research, the writer discovers that collusion plays an im nortant role in the nroeess of translation. with a notential result of culture construction in the target readers＇ mind.