Roma employment in Hungary after the post‐communist transition1

We analyse the magnitude and the causes of the low formal employment rate of the Roma in Hungary between 1993 and 2007. The employment rate of the Roma dropped dramatically around 1990. The ethnic employment gap has been around 40 percentage points for both men and women and has remained remarkably stable. Differences in education are the most important factor behind the gap, the number of children is important for female employment and geographic differences play little role once education is controlled for. Conditional on employment, the gap in log earnings is 0.3, and half of it is explained by educational differences.     

探析我国城乡居民收入差距现状、成因及解决路径

随着改革开放的不断推进,我国的城乡收入差距问题已经成为一个不可忽视的问题。探析城乡之间收入差距现状及成因,以及解决城乡居民差距的途径,旨在确保社会经济健康发展,从而实现全面建设小康社会的奋斗目标。     

云南城乡收入差距及制度原因分析

云南省社会经济发展自改革开放后非常迅速,但是由于云南边疆多民族地区的现实情况,两级发展矛盾突出,城市和农村之间的差距也在日益拉大。城乡二元结构十分突出,城乡之间二元分割严重,城乡差别持续扩大,已经造成云南城乡关系的紧张和失衡。就此,通过对云南城乡收入差距的分析,从制度层面剖析云南城乡收入失衡的原因。     

Markets and the non‐monotonic relation between productivity and establishment size

Abstract A model of monopolistic competition is presented in which the relation between the productivity and input size of producers is non‐monotonic and bell‐shaped. The model predicts that markets matter and the average size of the producers is directly scaled by the size of the market. An indirect effect increases the cutoff productivity, making the bell narrower in larger markets or when the transportation cost falls. Empirical evidence from the concrete industry and a few other 4‐digit industries supports the model’s predictions. The bell‐shaped relation has especially important implications on how size distributions are formed across localized versus globalized market industries.     

高职工科专业学生技术伦理素质及其养成问题探讨

把握学生技术伦理素质状况是高职工科专业有效实施技术伦理教育的前提。实证研究显示,当前高职工科学生在技术伦理的认知水平、对待技术伦理问题的态度以及面对技术伦理困境的行为选择能力方面尚存在诸多欠缺。工科专业需要调整专业技术教育的价值取向、加强师资队伍建设,开展多种形式的技术伦理教育,提高学生的技术伦理素质。     

Luther and the Girls: Religious Denomination and the Female Education Gap in Nineteenth‐century Prussia*

Martin Luther urged each town to have a girls' school so that girls would learn to read the Gospel, thereby evoking a surge of building girls' schools in Protestant areas. Using county‐ and town‐level data from the first Prussian census of 1816, we show that a larger share of Protestants decreased the gender gap in basic education. This result holds when using only the exogenous variation in Protestantism due to a county's or town's distance to Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Reformation. Similar results are found for the gender gap in literacy among the adult population in 1871.     

Poverty among minorities in the United States: explaining the racial poverty gap for Blacks and Latinos

The two largest minorities in the United States, African Americans and people of Hispanic origin, show official poverty rates at least twice as high as those of non-Hispanic Whites. These similarly high poverty rates between the two minorities are, however, the result of different combinations of factors related to the specific characteristics of these two groups. In this article, we analyse the role of demographic and labour-related variables in the current differential of poverty rates among racial and ethnic groups in the United States and its recent evolution. Our results show, first, that these differentials are largely explained by differing family characteristics of the ethnic groups. Furthermore, we show that while labour market activity of family members and a preponderance of single mothers play a more significant role in the higher poverty rates of Blacks, a larger number of dependent children is closely associated with higher poverty among Latinos, who also suffer from a larger educational attainment gap and higher immigration rates.     

Heterogeneity in the Relationship between Happiness and Age: Evidence from the German Socio‐Economic Panel

This paper studies the evolution of life satisfaction over the life course in Germany. It clarifies the causal interpretation of the econometric model by discussing the choice of control variables and the underidentification between age, cohort and time effects. The empirical part analyzes the distribution of life satisfaction over the life course at the aggregated, subgroup and individual level. To the findings: On average, life satisfaction is mildly decreasing up to age 55 followed by a hump shape with a maximum at 70. The analysis at the lower levels suggests that people differ in their life satisfaction trends, whereas the hump shape after age 55 is robust. No important differences between men and women are found. In contrast, education groups differ in their trends: highly educated people become happier over the life cycle, where life satisfaction decreases for less‐educated people.     

中国贸易方式转型与制造业就业结构关联性研究

2005年后 ,我国城镇制造业就业结构出现了非对称变化 ,东部省区制造业就业比重显著下降 ,中西部省区下降速度较慢甚至有所上升.产业结构、外商投资、贸易规模和商品结构等传统研究视角无法完美解释这一现象.基于2006 -2013年28个省级地区制造业整体及各子行业面板数据 ,在控制了相关变量及内生性问题后 ,文章研究发现 :代表低端劳动密集型的加工贸易比重与当地制造业就业占比呈显著正相关,纺织、服装等传统劳动密集型制造业及计算机、通信、电子设备制造和电器仪表制造等高劳动-资本比的制造业是加工贸易方式影响制造业就业结构的主要渠道;此外 ,近年全国尤其是东部省区加工贸易比重的下降带动了当地制造业熟练劳动力比重的上升.这为解释我国制造业就业结构变化提供了一个新的视角 ,也说明处于不同贸易方式转型阶段的地区应重视贸易方式转型对就业结构的影响,并采取差异性的就业政策.     

Changes in the relationship between short‐term interest rate,inflation and growth: evidence from the UK, 1820–2014

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between interest rates, inflation and economic growth using a long dataset for the UK. The approach adopted enables us to identify structural breaks in the dynamic system (vector autoregression (VAR)). We find interest rates respond much more strongly to growth and inflation over recent decades, and forecast error variance decomposition analysis indicates there is increasing interconnectedness between the variables in recent years. Economic policymakers need to carefully monitor the linkages between these variables and be prepared to adjust their monetary policy tools when faced with structural changes.     

The anatomy of fragile states in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Understanding the interrelationship between fragility and indicators of wellbeing

According to most classifications, Sub‐Saharan Africa is the region of the world with the highest presence of fragile states. In this paper we examine the relationship between fragility and poverty, suggesting that countries may become trapped in a vicious circle of fragility and low levels of wellbeing. We consider fragility as a continuum and begin by reviewing available measures. These show the high presence of fragility in Sub‐Saharan Africa and allow the more fragile countries to be identified. There is seen to be a strong association between fragility, poor growth performance, and lower wellbeing in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Building on the strong evidence for the two‐way relationship between economic growth and poverty, we present an analysis of how the vicious circle linking poorer welfare outcomes and fragility may be able to be broken. We argue that building successful institutions is key here, and this can be enabled by specific policy interventions that are both poverty reducing and productive.