美国为什么出不了“任志强”

前不久,关于房地产商究竟应该为谁盖房的讨论在国内大众网站的博客中热炒暴炒。任志强先生“我是一个商人,我不应该考虑穷人”、“只为富人盖房子”的几句话几乎引发了全国人对房地产大腕的关注。讨论的声音通过互联网也传到了美国。中国的房地产商如当红演艺明星般饱受追捧,每每在媒体上露面必定语出惊人、言惊四座。相较于美国房地产商所处的环境,中国“大佬”们“言论环境”确实太轻松了。在今日美国,一个房地产开发商如果想从政府手中购得土地,在项目规划上不但要平衡和考虑社会各方的利益,在言论上更需谨慎。     

旱涝保收的券商

尽管股市跌幅很大,但并没有影响券商的高收入。这一现象应该引起管理层的注意     

Out-migration and economic cycles

Out-migration concerns foreigners who decide to leave a country where they used to live. Taking advantage of the OECD bilateral IMS database, we analyze the short-run determinants of out-migration using a panel of Schengen countries between 1995 and 2011. We find that out-migration is counter-cyclical: foreign nationals tend to leave host countries with high unemployment, while they are likelier to stay in good times (i.e. low unemployment). Typically, a 10 % increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 5 % increase in out-migration. Thus, short-term economic fluctuations have the same qualitative effect as restrictive migration policies in economic downturns. However, we find mixed evidence for the role of economic cycles in the potential destination countries of those flows. Movers appear to be sensitive to unemployment changes in their country of origin, but they do not seem to be sensitive to business cycles in potential destinations.     

沃尔玛何以兴凯马特何以衰--兼论大型连锁超市的经营之道

在2001年度美国《财富》杂志评选出的全球500强企业中,美国的零售业巨头沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)超过了美国的通用汽车集团,首次登上了世界五百强企业之首。与此同时更加振奋人心的是沃尔玛的创始人山姆·沃尔顿(Sam Walton)超过比尔·盖茨成为了世界首富。 可是,令人感到巧合的是,美国的另一家成立于1899年,在美     

探秘宁高宁并购豪举

中粮集团的2009年注定充满争议——40亿打造粮油综合基地、收购五角道场、间接控股蒙牛……中粮的一系列动作是试水多元化发展战略之举吗？     

李宁，为什么？

提到“李宁”二字，人们立马想，到李宁体育用品公司，还有运动员李宁。前者作为中国本土体育用品领域的领导者，后者作为由运动员华丽转身的杰出企业家，不可避免地成为镁光灯聚集的焦点。     

Business cycles and long-run growth

In this survey, we discuss the effect of macroeconomic fluctuationson long-run growth from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.We emphasize the 'opportunity cost' approach, which states thatfirms will intertemporally substitute productivity-enhancingactivities for regular production activity during recessions.We provide aggregate evidence in favour of the opportunity-costapproach.     

International and intranational business cycles

This paper surveys and analyses the international real businesscycle literature. We re-explore two international business cycleanomalies emphasized by Backus, Kehoe, and Kydland (1995) aswell as establishing the pattern of productivity growth betweenindustries and countries. We then compare these findings forthe international business cycle to those obtained for databetween regions within a country - the so-called 'intranationalbusiness cycle'. Importantly, the intranational business cycleis a natural environment for thinking about the interactionsbetween economies when there are no trade frictions and whenthere are not multiple currencies. We summarize our findingswith a comparison between the stylized facts for internationaland intranational business cycles and draw some policy conclusions.     

The assessment: business cycles

This overview paper places in context eight papers coveringa wide spectrum of views on modern business cycle modelling.Inter alia, these address some gaps in the real business cycle(RBC) literature (e.g. the extremely limited treatment of creditand asset markets) and various other anomalies (e.g. the failureto explain volatility and persistence of employment and unemployment,and the non-cyclicality of real wages). The paper then focusesfurther on two issues central to RBC models. Such models aredriven by large and persistent technology shocks. However, empiricalevidence from UK manufacturing shows that correcting for cyclicalutilization results in shocks which are small and non-persistent.The second issue is one of empirical methodology. Though theRBC approach was intended as a response to the Lucas critique,by largely assuming away government policy feedback rules, thesemodels are far from policy-relevant. The alternative vectorautoregression (VAR) approach implicitly incorporates theserules, but ignores shifts in rules. A constructive responseto the Lucas critique needs to incorporate policy rule shiftsand private-sector reactions directly, which looks hard to achieveoutside the context of structural econometric modelling.     

"老外"喜欢重庆什么

直辖以来,重庆已成为外商投资的热土,其国际知名度日益提高。截止2004年底,已有5个国家在渝设立领事馆,4家境外新闻媒体设立办事机构,并与世界上170多个国家和地区建立了经济贸易关系;据不完全统计,2004年,外商在重庆的投资已达30多亿美元,新登记外商投资企业726户,比上年增加81%。     

名楼的由来

所谓名楼，即有名之楼，它是城市发展的必然，迎合了城市经济发展的要求，也是区域经济发达的显著标志。建筑是城市的记忆，它承载的不仅是建筑艺术，而是不同时期的社会文化、历史文化、民族文化、地域文化和政治文化等，统称为文化因素。     

联盟为何走向瓦解

在联盟政治研究领域,联盟瓦解这一问题并未得到应有的重视和充分的讨论。尽管国家之间为了应对共同威胁而结成联盟,但是威胁的消失并不意味着联盟的解体。因此,联盟形成与瓦解的机制并不相同,维持联盟的条件消失或改变可能不会直接导致联盟瓦解。作者试图检验联盟瓦解的三项机制:威胁的上升和盟国间的冲突会导致联盟更容易瓦解;体系的不稳定以及联盟背景的剧烈变化会导致联盟的瓦解;当成员国面临的外部压力越大、国内观众成本越高时,联盟越不可能瓦解。这些机制表明,背景条件和维持条件的改变会引发联盟价值的改变,联盟内部成员会在比较联盟价值和抛弃成本的基础上决定是否抛弃联盟。通过改进已有研究中的变量并引入新变量,借助新的联盟数据库,作者应用事件史的分析方法对上述假设进行了实证检验。对联盟瓦解现象的大样本分析表明,抛弃联盟是国家的一项战略选择,机会主义的表象背后反映了国家的理性考量,认识到这一点有助于我们加深对联盟理论以及对周边国家联盟政策的理解。     

“拼车”何来非法

在很多国家，对于“拼车”的车辆都给予了很多鼓励和优惠政策。但在国内，却对“拼车”现象百般限制，甚至出重拳打击，并被视为“非法拼车”     

合约为什么存在

根据科斯、张五常等人对企业性质的论述,作者认为既然企业是合约的一种安排,在企业的性质中关于企业为什么存在的讨论已经毫无意义,因此需要把探讨的注意力转移到合约为什么存在这一问题上来.文章基于马斯洛的需求层次理论,探讨合约为什么存在以及合约安排的各种形式.     

Endogenous fertility cycles and childcare services

We construct a two-sector overlapping generation model with endogenous fertility, where one sector produces goods and the other produces childcare services. The elasticity of fertility-related expenditures on services is crucial for determining labor participation and whether fertility converges to a steady state with monotone or oscillation. If capital intensity in the goods sector is greater than the products of elasticity and capital intensity in the service sector, then capital per capita and fertility converge to a steady state monotonically. Conversely, they converge to a steady state with oscillations, otherwise. We find an inverse J-shaped relationship between fertility and elasticity.     

失败没有借口

在美国西点军校里，遇到军官问话，只能有四种回答：“是，长官!”“不是，长官!”“我不明白，长官!”和“没有任何借口，长官!”军校学员要养成不找借口的习惯。在军队里，失败不容有借口。如果情有可原，可将情况说明，但这种说明即便被接受了也不能作为借口。这是西点军校《军规》中关于借口的解释。