Factors influencing ‘missing girls’ in South Korea

Despite the massive attention drawn to ‘missing girls,’ there has been no study that specifically focuses on the association between childlessness and the daughter deficit. Using a bivariate probit selection model, this article analysed the data for 6475 married women aged 15–49 years collected from the 2003 Korea National Fertility and Family Health Survey. The results showed that a couple's decision to have a child exerted a significant influence on its daughter deficit. This study also found that the effect of a woman's education on daughter deficit did not correspond to that of her husband's level of education. Additionally, a prediction was made that if a one child family norm were prevailing in South Korea, the probability of a couple's having a daughter deficit would increase by as much as 63.9%.     

Do Federal Reserve Bank presidents’ interest rate votes in the FOMC follow an electoral cycle?

We find that Federal Reserve Bank presidents’ regional bias in their dissenting interest rate votes in the Federal Open Market Committee follows an electoral cycle. Presidents put more weight on their district’s economic environment during the year prior to their (re-)election relative to nonelection years.     

Do Potential Skilled Emigrants Care about Political Stability at Home?

In this paper, we consider the role of political stability in the source country as a potential reason for skilled emigration. We control for all prospective source country characteristics, and yet skilled emigration is seen to be driven by a relatively better situation of political stability in the home country. Our research clearly shows that government stability, socioeconomic conditions, investment profiles, democratic accountability, internal conflict, and ethnic tensions in source nations have significant impacts on the rate of skilled emigration for a sample of developed and developing countries. The results retain robustness even for a subset of only developing nations.     

Austrian exporters: unique or alike? New insights and missing puzzle pieces

In this paper we provide detailed evidence on the performance of exporters compared to non-exporters in Austrian manufacturing industries based on firm-level data. The centrepiece of the study is the issue of the export premium, i.e. the size and productivity advantages of exporting firms compared to their purely domestic peers. We present evidence for the existence of sales, labour productivity and wage premia. These results are largely in line with the results found for other European countries. Furthermore we document the existence of large differences in these premia across industries and provide explanations for this finding. Our results are robust with regards to including additional firm control variables such as employment and R&D-related variables though the magnitudes of the export premia become much smaller. We also propose a new interpretation of the export premium estimation with firm fixed effects which we interpret as a result on export switchers. Finally, we employ a probit model to document the importance of sunk export costs for the decision to export.     

Forecasting growth during the Great Recession: is financial volatility the missing ingredient?

The Great Recession endured by the main industrialized countries during the period 2008–2009, in the wake of the financial and banking crisis, has pointed out the major role of the financial sector on macroeconomic fluctuations. In this respect, many researchers have started to reconsider the linkages between financial and macroeconomic areas. In this paper, we evaluate the leading role of the daily volatility of two major financial variables, namely commodity and stock prices, in their ability to anticipate the output growth. For this purpose, we propose an extended MIDAS model that allows the forecasting of the quarterly output growth rate using exogenous variables sampled at various higher frequencies. Empirical results on three industrialized countries (US, France, and UK) show that mixing daily financial volatilities and monthly industrial production is useful at the time of predicting gross domestic product growth over the Great Recession period.     

北方干旱“硬伤’’

“十年九早”,干旱似乎已是我国北方大地冬春季节的常态。切实地走在田间库边,记者才深切的感受到去冬今春的干旱度。眼前的景象早已不是往昔的“北国风光,千里冰封,万里雪飘”,而是皲裂的土地,干涸的水渠,枯黄的麦苗……持续的干旱,将可能终止我国连续七年丰收的好景,更会给北方这片我国冬粮的主产区带来大面积的歉收。     

未来商业空间“黑洞化’’

基于生活方式而出现的商业空间，颠覆了传统工业时代商业空间的存在形态，在未来的商业世界里，商业空间是以一个个的漩涡状的商业黑洞状态存在着[编者按]     

零售业多元化需要“机会主义’’

零售业态所处的生命周期不仅影响、刺激零售商的多元化冲劲，同时直接关系到零售商业态多元化的机会[编者按]     

Large shareholders’ shareholding and earnings’ longitudinal persistence

This paper is the first to adopt longitudinal data analysis methods, such as the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis model, hierarchical linear model and Cox proportional hazards regression model, to investigate the relationship between large shareholders’ shareholding and earnings persistence. We find that large shareholders’ shareholding has a negative effect on corporate longitudinal persistence. The large shareholders’ shareholding will increase the risk of earnings decline and strengthen the declining trend of earnings. The effects of large shareholders’ shareholding on earnings’ longitudinal persistence for SOEs are different from those for non-SOEs, the effects in the pre-crisis period are also different from those in the post-crisis period. These findings contribute to the literature by adopting longitudinal data analysis methods and present new empirical evidence on the economic consequences of large shareholders’ shareholding.     

Editors’ note

Portuguese Economic Journal -     

Practitioners’ forum

This article reviews a number of models of the process of technological innovation and identtities the important elements involved. Although no universal model is applicable to all processes of technological innovation, given the importance of technology in the long-tern strategy of research-intensive trns , a knowledge of the elements involved in the process is essential to today's managers. Models of the process of innovation must be developed contingent upon thejirn's needs. The critical factors, which must be conszdered when developing such a model, are identified.     

‘利用’与‘引进’关系谈

对利用外资,引进技术存在着两种认识:一种是把利用外资,引进技术当成一回事。第二种是没有把二者较好地结合起来。弄清楚利用外资对引进技术的作用,对做好利用外资工作和技术引进工作都有利。     

Editors’ note

Portuguese Economic Journal -     

Editors’ note

Portuguese Economic Journal -     

Rawls’ Paradox

Rawls’ theory of justice is paradoxical, for it requires a society to aim directly to maximize the basic goods received by the least advantaged even if directly aiming is self-defeating. Rawls’ reasons for rejecting capitalist systems commit him to holding that a society must not merely maximize the goods received by the least advantaged, but must do so via specific institutions. By Rawls’ own premises, in the long run directly aiming to satisfy the difference principle is contrary to the interests of the poor, though it is meant to aid them.