Inventories and the Business Cycle*

This paper examines the relationship between the inventory cy and the business cycle using both macroeconomic and survey da It is argued that over the past decade and a half, the changes inventory management have reduced the amplitude of the inventc cycle. The paper also argues that the behaviour of inventories consistent with demand shocks being an important source of business cycle fluctuations.     

制造业绿色产品开发的风险识别研究

绿色和环保是当今社会的主题,世界各国也越来越重视环境和资源问题。开发制造业绿色产品可以使生态环境和社会经济连接为一个协调发展的有机整体,从根本上解决制造业的环境问题。然而,绿色产品开发是一项高风险性的复杂系统工程,受多种风险因素的综合影响,其中企业内部的技术风险以及企业外部市场和政策风险是主要风险,且对于每一类风险而言,具体哪些风险因素起主要作用还没有明确的结论。为此,系统地识别绿色产品开发的技术风险、市场风险和政策风险,利用因子分析方法,对上述三方面的风险分别进行信息的凝练和提取,共得到9个关键风险因子,并提出了防范制造业绿色产品开发关键风险的对策建议,以期降低绿色产品开发的风险,促进循环经济和低碳经济的发展。     

The Dynamics of Markups and Inventories in Retailing Firms

This paper is concerned with the interaction between price and inventory decisions in retailing firms and its implications for the dynamics of markups and the existence of sales promotions. We consider a model where a monopolistically competitive retailer decides price and inventories, and assumes lump-sum costs when placing orders or changing nominal prices. In this model, the existence of stockout probabilities and fixed ordering costs generate a cyclical price behaviour characterized by long periods without nominal price changes and short periods with very low prices ( i.e. sales promotions). We estimate this model using a unique longitudinal dataset with information about retail and wholesale prices, inventories, orders, and sales for several brands in a supermarket chain. Based on the estimated model we perform several counterfactual experiments that show the important role that inventories and fixed ordering costs play in the dynamics of retail prices and the frequency of sales promotions in this dataset.     

Wage Bargaining, Inventories, and Union Legislation

This paper analyses a strategic bargaining game where the firm may or maynot be able to sell out of its inventory of finished goods during astrike. Firms and the union are both risk neutral and have the same discountrate. It is shown that the wage equilibrium corresponds to the axiomaticNash bargaining solution where the threatpoints are the agents' payoffsshould bargaining continue indefinitely. We use the 1980 and 1982 EmploymentActs to test this theory, interpreting that legislation change as changingthe firm's threatpoint but not its bargaining power. This allows us toidentify the value of the firm's threatpoint post-1982. Formal testssupport the theory. Also consistent with the theory, it is found that unionwages decrease with inventories after 1982, but not before, and that theunion wage gap is smaller after 1982.     

制造型质量链的失效模式分析与风险评价研究

一般在对系统进行评价时,通常是依据失效指标进行失效分析,依据风险指标进行风险评价。运用FMEA法对系统失效模式的危害等级判定是依据风险顺序数RPN的值。在此基础上,提出运用DEMATEL法对制造型质量链各失效模式的风险进行评价,以确定不同失效模式的风险指数大小,并探讨与传统RPN值之间的联系,提出基于风险的失效模式防范比基于危害度的失效模式防范更符合企业实际运营,基于此有针对性地改进失效模式及其失效的原因因素。     

Inventories and antidumping: the case of orange juice trade

The United States and Brazil are key players in the international market for orange juice, mainly frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ). The U.S. orange juice industry benefits from one of the highest levels of import protection in U.S. agriculture. Additional trade protection was recently added with a U.S. industry victory in an antidumping trade suit against Brazil. We study the impact of FCOJ imports from Brazil on U.S. prices using time series econometric models and find only a weak FCOJ domestic price response to imports from Brazil, because extremely large U.S. inventories mute the price impact of any fluctuation in imports. Our findings imply that the antidumping tariffs were unjustified based on a material injury argument.     

浅析施工企业的“两金”管控

“两金”压降是近年来施工行业中的热门话题,“两金”占比居高不下会使企业资产负债水平升高,增大企业资金周转的压力,会制约企业的健康发展,甚者会导致企业亏损,因此“两金”压降对施工企业而言是一个迫在眉睫的问题。施工企业,特别是国有性质的,大多规模庞大、资质齐全,所涉及的项目种类多、工期长,充足的流动资金是企业、项目正常运作的必要条件,合理的“两金”占比既能保证企业有充足的资金及存货支持日常的生产经营,又能促进企业持续的安全生产。本文就施工企业的“两金”问题进行了简单分析,简要说明了“两金”的含义,并从行业现状及企业内部管理方面分析了“两金”占比过高的原因,并由此就存货的压降、债权的压降及企业内部管理、外部单位的监管等方面提出了一些建议。     

基于云模型的装备制造业产业链风险评价

将云模型引入风险评价,对装备制造业风险等级进行量化。从产业链的视角,将专家调查法与熵权法相结合识别风险因素,将筛选出的具有显著影响的因素作为评价因子引入云模型,从而降低了风险评估结果的主观性。构建了产业链风险评价指标体系,提出了基于熵权-云模型法的风险评估方法,对装备制造业产业链风险进行了总体评估。通过分析评估结果,提出防范装备制造业产业链风险的对策建议。     

制造企业新产品开发构思阶段风险评估研究

制造企业的新产品开发是个复杂的系统工程,不仅耗资多、难度大,而且风险性高,在开发过程中经常会出现众多不确定因素,导致新产品开发的失败.分析制造企业新产品开发构思阶段的风险因素与特征,构建有效的风险评估指标体系,采用模糊评价法,对A企业新产品开发构思阶段进行风险评估并提出相应对策,从而降低企业新产品开发风险,提高新产品开发成功率,这对我国企业新产品开发决策具有重要的指导意义.     

Economic Risk and Political Risk in Fiscal Unions

A fiscal programme that redistributes income from rich to poor individuals indirectly redistributes tax revenues from regions hit by a favourable shock to regions hit by an unfavourable one. Centralised fiscal redistribution has therefore been advocated as a way to insure individuals against region-specific shocks. In this paper, we argue that a centralised fiscal policy, while reducing the uncertainty on the tax base, may create additional uncertainty on the tax rate. Using a simple model we show that the higher uncertainty on the policy instrument might more than offset the lower uncertainty on the tax base.     

我国商业银行流动性风险的管理与防范

我国即将加入WTO,对外开放银行业、保险业和资本市场等几个重要的金融领域。国内金融企业将直接受到外国同行的冲击,在人才、资本、市场资源等方面展开激烈的竞争。如果及早分析我国商业银行的相关风险,就能够及时在宏观金融体系和微观银行运作两方面进行发展和完善工作,提高我国银行的抗冲击能力和本土竞争优势。本文拟对我国商业银行的流动性风险进行分析,并在此基础上尝试找出既已为西方国家发展证明、又符合我国国情的防范流动性风险的措施。1 中国银行业流动性现状描述所谓流动性风险,就是指银行缺乏足够的流动性储备来随时应…     

国际金融中心的风险传递效应及其管理

随着经济金融的发展,中国需要培育自己的国际金融中心。但是,一旦成为真正的国际金融中心也意味着可能要面临更大的风险,这一点往往容易被忽视。此次全球金融危机表明,国际金融中心面临金融风险和危机冲击时,可能受到更大的影响。基于此,本文运用计量经济模型对全球金融危机前后主要国际金融中心的风险传递情况进行了实证检验,并提出我国在国际金融中心建设中,要在风险承担和风险控制之间达到更好的平衡点。     

略论风险和风险管理

文章从区分纯粹风险和投机性风险,分析了风险的代价与影响,论述了风险管理的过程以及风险管理对企业的可能贡献,最终揭示了风险管理的目标。     

Productivity Convergence in European Manufacturing

The paper empirically investigates international productivity convergence in the manufacturing sector, which was found not converging in earlier studies. The authors analyze subsectors of aggregate manufacturing in order to compare similar technologies and to avoid the mixing of converging and nonconverging subsectors in the aggregate. Some of the subsectors converge while others, as well as aggregate manufacturing, do not. There is stronger evidence of convergence in subsectors with a smaller number of different industries. The latter serves as a proxy for the variety of technologies. Overall, the results highlight the importance of comparing similar technologies when studying productivity convergence.     

Technological Change in Australian Manufacturing

In the modern era, the extent and character of technical change features prominently in discussions of productivity growth and movements in the competitiveness of manufacturing. While technical change is pervasive in modern manufacturing, it occurs unevenly. In this study, technical change is estimated by fitting dual cost functions for each of 38 sectors of Australian manufacturing over the 32 year period, 1968–69 to 1999–2000. The estimates show that technical change is heavily labour-saving in all industries, but that the overall rate of change, as measured by a rate of cost diminution, and the degree of bias towards saving labour, rather than capital or material, varies substantially across industries.     

Manufacturing and the Trade Balance

When the world shifted to the regime of flexible exchange rates after 1970, economists expected that large trade imbalances would soon disappear. Instead, such imbalances not only persisted but soared in the 1980s and 1990s, in spite of significant changes in important currencies such as the yen, the mark and the dollar. This paper reports that manufacturing importers tend to suffer trade deficits whereas exporters of manufacturing products tend to enjoy trade surpluses. The reason lies in the higher rates of productivity growth experienced by exporters of manufactures.     

Manufacturing growth and local employment multipliers in China

We study the impact of employment growth in manufacturing on job creation in the non-tradable sector for prefecture-level cities in China. Using the 2000 and 2010 Censuses of Population, we apply the shift-share approach to isolate the exogenous change of employment growth in manufacturing. For every hundred new manufacturing jobs, we find that 34 additional jobs are created in the non-tradable sector. We also show that the effect is heterogeneous along a number of dimensions. More specifically, one new job in high-technology manufacturing creates more jobs in the non-tradable sector while low-technology manufacturing employment growth has no significant multiplier effect. Among the non-tradable industries, the multiplier is the largest for wholesale, retail, and catering. Finally, the effect is also geographically heterogeneous, with the multiplier being greater for inland regions.