FINANCIAL CRIME IN AUSTRALIA

Financial crime is increasingly seen as a threat to the integrity of Australia's important financial sector. This paper examines the difficulties of evaluating the costs of financial crime and considers specific initiatives that have been undertaken in recent years to combat such activities.     

The political economy of organized crime: providing protection when the state does not

Organized crime emerges out of the power vaccuum that is created by the absence of state enforcement, and which can have many sources: geographic, social, and ethnic distance, prohibition, or simply collapse of state institutions. Mafias and gangs are hierarchically organized and can be thought of as providing primitive state functions, with economic costs that are typically much higher than those associated with modern governance. Though organized crime cannot be completely eradicated, its control is necessary, since it can easily corrupt existing institutions of governance. Some thoughts on what can be done to control organized crime are offered.     

The effect of spatiotemporal resolution on predictive policing model performance

Being able to anticipate crime such that new crime events can be dealt with effectively or prevented entirely, leads police forces worldwide to look at applying predictive policing, which provides predictions of times and places at risk for crime, such that proactive preventative measures can be taken. Ideally, predictive policing models predict crime at a high spatio-temporal level, while also providing optimal prediction performance. The main objective of this paper is therefore to evaluate the impact of varying grid resolution, temporal resolution and historical time frame on prediction performance. To investigate this, we analyse home burglary data from a large city in Belgium and predict new crime events using a range of parameter values, comparing the resulting prediction performances. Given the potential prediction performance costs associated with prediction at a high spatio-temporal resolution, consideration should be given to balance practical requirements with performance requirements.     

HOW USEFUL IS THE ECONOMIC MODEL OF CRIME IN ASSISTING THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM?

This article considers whether the economic model of crime can be applied to terrorist activity. It concludes that the model does explain both secular and religiously motivated terrorism: policy-makers wishing to reduce terrorist activity should aim at devising policies which increase costs and/or decrease benefits to change terrorist incentives. The 'war' should continue as long as the probable costs to society incurred by terrorist activity are greater than the costs of abatement.     

Future‐Oriented Gang Members?

A bstract    Two prominent theories of crime ( Wilson and Herrnstein 1985 ; Gottfredson and Hirshi 1990 ) rely heavily on the notion that criminals are impatient or "present-oriented." In brief, the theories posit that present-oriented individuals will be predisposed to crime because the "costs" of crime (e.g., prison time) lag behind crime's benefits. While the theory has intuitive appeal, it remains controversial. This study considers a data set first presented by Levitt and Venkatesh (2000 ) that details a drug-selling gang's activities. In this gang, low-ranking criminals accept low initial wages in the hope of receiving high future remunerations. As demonstrated in the note, this wage structure is exceedingly difficult to reconcile (both theoretically and empirically) with the notion of present-oriented criminals. In sum, the study suggests that present orientation is at best an incomplete and idiosyncratic explanation of the causes of crime.     

A theoretical analysis of the effect of fear on the location decisions of urban — suburban residents

This paper extends Becker's analysis of crime by dealing with group behavior. It introduces two additional points for general consideration: the existence of fear costs, with fear modeled as an undepletable detrimental externality; and the positive utility a criminal, who is a member of a criminal gang or organization, can obtain from determinate prison sentences where parole, probation, and plea bargaining are possible sentences. These points have implications for the control of violent street crime in central cities as well as upon the location decision of urban residents. The possible spread of violent street crime from central cities to the suburbs can generate a subsequent suburban incentive to discriminate against minority races to prevent this spread. This linkage offers a partial explanation of segregated housing patterns in suburban cities of America.     

Economy and Race: Interactive Determinants of Property Crime in the United States, 1958-1995

ABSTRACT Drawing upon rational choice, routine activity, and social disorganization theories, this study investigates changes in rates of property crime known (reported) to police in the United States from 1958 to 1995. Predictor variables include changes in rates of inflation; technological, cyclical, and frictional unemployment; arrest rates for property crimes disaggregated by race (ARPCDR); the interaction of ARPCDR and technological unemployment (to test effects of rising unemployment on whites versus blacks); and a measure of police provisioning. A Beach-MacKinnon Full Maximum-Likelihood FGLS AR1 Method (accompanied by residual analysis) is employed. Significant positive effects are established for (a) inflation, (b) cyclical unemployment, (c) frictional unemployment, and (d) the interaction of white arrest rates and technological unemployment. Police provisioning is not found to be significant. Policy implications are explored along with future policy considerations.     

Econom(etr)ics of crime and litigation

Economists approach the behaviour of potential criminals, litigants and law enforcement agencies in terms of rational choice: the actors choose the best alternatives in terms of costs and benefits within the choices open to them. The prime focus of economists is on the general factors in society affecting the crime and litigation level and on the interaction between the crime and litigation level and the legal system. In doing so they have to study the interaction between the micro level of individual decision making and the macro level of the law enforcement system reacting on these decisions. Data are often only available at aggregate (macro) level. Econometric studies at the macro level, especially time series, have the problem that many effects have to be estimated from a limited number of data. Various types of studies and some empirical results regarding crime, litigation and the workload of judicial services are discussed.     

母子公司人员管控与企业技术创新——基于双重成本的分析

基于决策权配置理论,以2007—2021年A股非金融上市公司及其子公司为样本,考察母子公司人员管控对企业技术创新的影响,揭示代理成本和知识转移成本的中介作用机理。研究发现,母子公司人员管控会引致双重成本发生动态变化,随着人员管控力度的增强,集团整体创新水平得到提升,但在拐点之后这一水平逐渐降低,母子公司人员管控与企业技术创新之间呈现倒U型曲线关系。机制探讨结果表明,母子公司人员管控的加强能够降低代理成本,却提高了母子公司间的知识转移成本。异质性检验结果表明,子公司规模较大、内部信息环境较好以及国有企业集团会削弱人员管控与技术创新之间的倒U型关系。研究结论为母子公司理性确立权力配置、优化人员管控,进而提升集团技术创新水平提供了借鉴。     

South Korean Labor Market Discrimination Against Women—A Comment

It is pointed out that in concentrating on the discrimination and low labor participation rates of highly educated married women, the social opportunity costs related to family stability and youth crime rates are not considered.     

浅谈计算机信息安全

现今社会网络发展日新月异,甚至我们的生活都无法离开网络,但事物都有它的两面性,网上信息不是被泄露,就是被篡改假冒,甚至借用计算机网络进行犯罪,计算机病毒更是肆意传播。信息安全是迫在眉睫要解决的问题,设置密码就是其中最有效而且便捷的方法,我们应该研究和掌握好这门技术。     

The effect of environmental regulation on environmental innovation

Environmental expenditure estimates resulting from US environmental policy are based on current technology which may overstate policy's true costs. Existing evidence shows that ex ante cost estimates are greater than realized costs due to unexpected technological progress. This research programme asks whether innovation is a response to environmental regulation or whether the true regulatory compliance costs are overestimated ex ante when technological advancement is ignored? The author conducts an empirical study of the US manufacturing industry's environmental patent activities and environmental regulation as measured by pollution abatement and control expenditure (PACE) data. She finds a statistically significant positive relationship between environmental regulation and innovation when estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS). However, the OLS coefficient of pollution abatement costs is inconsistent because of a correlation between the explanatory variable and unobservable variables. Two-staged least squares addresses the inconsistency problem, resulting in positive and significant PACE coefficients. Thus, there is evidence that innovation is a response to environmental regulation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Strategies for Technological Innovation with Learning and Adaptation Costs

This paper attacks the problem of developing strategies for a firm to deal with technological change. We show that the product market strategies of the firm—including pricing, product positioning, and rent preemption strategies—can play a role in the efficient search for technology-related information when information search is costly and there are adaptation costs due to the presence of agency. We utilize a dynamic model of spatial competition with uncertain technological innovations in which firms can learn from each other about technological developments. Private information and agency conflicts are shown to increase the effective information search costs of incumbents, who then use interfirm learning to their advantage in equilibrium. This viewpoint also allows us to see the role of mergers and acquisitions, subsidiary formation, and internal R&D labs in a new light. The more general point is that organizational structures and, in particular, the differential distribution of information within the organization impose constraints on the information-search and adaptation strategies of the firm, and the formulation of product-market and R&D strategies serves to relax these constraints.     

基于“竞合”思想的产业集群技术创新流程的分析与改进

集群内企业间合作技术创新,是提升集群创新能力和提高集群绩效的关键,能降低创新投入,减小创新风险,提高参与企业的收益。文中分析了产业集群内企业传统技术创新流程的问题及原因,提出了基于"竞合"思想对产业集群技术创新流程进行改进,从而为提高技术创新的协同效应、提高产业集群的整体绩效提供帮助。     

Maintenance management: Keeping up with production's changing trends and technologies

Current trends in manufacturing have led to reduced levels of work-in-process inventory and increased levels of automation and machine complexity. These changes have two important implications for maintenance management. First, machine breakdowns not only cause a loss of output from the down machine, but also result in lost production on downstream machines. This occurs because of the elimination of buffer stock between workstations. Second, the gap between the technological expertise of the operators and the technological sophistication of their machines has widened. This gap decreases the ability of operators to make adjustments and minor repairs to their own machines.These two factors cause an increase in maintenance costs associated with machine downtime and maintenance labor. Historically, the proportion of preventive and corrective maintenance has attempted to balance these costs. As buffer stock is reduced and more machines are coupled, the costs of downtime will increase, increasing the need for preventive maintenance and decreasing its cost compared to the cost of lost production.Increases in the use of computer-based planning systems have resulted in the development of computerized preventive maintenance systems that have proven to be successful in planning for maintenance labor and materials. Integrating planning methods with corrective maintenance tasks will help reduce breakdowns, make more efficient use of maintenance craft labor, and provide information for inventory control of maintenance, repair, and operating (MRO) materials.This article examines methods of reducing machine downtime costs, maintenance labor costs, and MRO inventory costs in today's changing production environment. Techniques for reducing these costs are explored in the areas of maintenance planning, maintenance methods improvement, and MRO inventory control.     

企业技术创新能力对资本成本影响差异性的实证研究——基于不同生命周期视角

通过研究2013—2016年深市中小板上市公司发现，企业技术创新能力越强，权益和债务资本成本也就越低，同时技术创新能力对权益资本成本的影响程度要大于对债务资本成本的影响。进一步研究发现，不同生命周期的企业技术创新能力对权益和债务资本成本的影响有明显差异，处于成熟期的企业技术创新能力对权益资本成本影响更大，处于成长期的企业技术创新能力对债务资本成本影响更大。因此企业应注重提高技术创新能力，降低资本成本。同时股东和债权人应充分识别投资企业所处生命周期阶段，从而选取合理投资方案。     

劳动力成本上升会倒逼制造业企业服务化转型吗?——异质性讨论与动机识别

本文基于2009—2019年中国A股制造业上市公司数据,测算了制造业企业服务化水平,实证分析发现:劳动力成本上升显著促进了制造业企业服务化转型。异质性讨论表明:高生产率、低融资约束和规模较大的制造业企业在应对劳动力成本上升时,服务化转型的意愿更大。动机识别检验表明:劳动力成本上升会弱化制造业企业市场势力,服务化转型对企业市场势力具有重塑效应;服务化与技术创新均是制造业企业应对劳动力成本上升的转型路径,二者间存在替代性。最后提出政策启示:促进人力资本深化,驱动劳动力数量优势向质量优势转型,是弥补劳动力成本上升短板的关键;利用新技术形态创造的新契机,是助力服务化转型迈向高级化和现代化的重要机遇;同时,应谨防制造业企业服务化转型过程中虚拟化和空心化趋势。     

The Social Provision of Punishment and Incarceration

Standard economic theory proposes that public goods (equally available to everyone) will be underprovided by private markets. Individuals can benefit without having to pay, so there is little incentive to invest or manage resources efficiently. The punishment of criminals is an example of this, since everyone in a society benefits from reduced crime whether they pay to apprehend criminals or not. On that basis, it is widely presumed that governments must provide criminal justice services, including prisons. But the evidence in favor of that view is ambiguous. Stateless societies throughout history have found ways to maintain public order without ever building a prison. Nations with adequate social safety nets and a high degree of equality are also likely to rely on alternatives to incarceration. Strong forms of public goods theory, when applied to punishments and prisons, are shown to be false, since crime control does exist without a centralized state. Furthermore, the available evidence suggests that centralized government provision and management can also suffer inefficiencies from overproduction. Only comparative institutional analysis can speak to the efficiency potentials of punishment, wherein the costs of underproduction are assessed against the likely consequences of overproduction.     

Endogenous job destruction and job matching in cities

We propose a spatial search-matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous. Workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their jobs can be hit by a technological shock which decreases their productivity. They reside in a city, and commuting to the job center involves both pecuniary and time costs. As a result, workers with high wages are willing to live closer to jobs to save on time commuting costs. We show that, in equilibrium, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the productivity space and the urban location space. Workers with high productivities and wages reside close to jobs, have low per distance commuting costs and pay high land rents. We also show that higher per distance commuting costs and higher unemployment benefits lead to more job destruction.     

Productivity,Technology and Economic Growth: What is the Relationship?

The relationship between productivity, technology and economic growth has been debated extensively in the endogenous growth, growth accounting, New Economy and policy literature. This paper briefly surveys the literature on total factor productivity (TFP) calculations – the various techniques and problems associated with it. We argue that TFP is not a measure of technological change and only under ideal conditions does it measure the supernormal profits associated with technological change. The critical driving force of economic growth is not the super normal profits that technological change generates but rather the continuous creation of opportunities for further technological development. Six illustrations of when TFP fails to correctly measure these super normal profits are provided. A version Carlaw and Lipsey's (2003b) model of endogenous general purpose technology‐ driven growth is then utilized to make some progress toward answering Prescott's (1998) call for a theory of TFP. The model is used to simulate artificial data and connect theoretical assumptions of returns to scale and resource costs to the conditions under which TFP miss‐measures the actual growth of technological knowledge.