Redistributive preferences in Europe and Central Asia, 2006–2016*

This paper analyses support for reducing inequality and for redistribution to specific groups in Europe and Central Asia. Using the Life in Transition Surveys, it examines differences in redistributive preferences across countries and time, as well as determinants of individual preferences, testing for motivations such as self‐interest, past and expected future social mobility, beliefs about fairness, as well as ideology and risk preferences. The extent to which different groups are perceived as deserving of government support is found to vary considerably, with the disabled, the elderly and families with children being the most favoured groups. The motives for redistribution towards different groups are also not uniform – self‐interest appears to be a basis for assistance to the elderly and families with children, whereas values and beliefs are associated with support for the working poor and the unemployed.     

企业的整合风险管理要素分析

整合风险管理作为现代风险管理的最前沿理论之一,为企业应对日益复杂的总体风险,提供了较为系统的解决方法。文章在简要阐述与整合风险管理相关的最新风险管理理论的基础上,探讨了整合风险管理的含义和特点,并据此分析整合风险管理的要素和具体要求,为企业风险管理提供新的思路和框架。     

区域工业旅游产品营销策略——以郴州市工业旅游为例

以郴州市为例,论证了区域工业旅游产品营销应具备的三个条件:主体条件、客体条件、媒介条件;分析了当前我国区域工业旅游产品营销特点;在此基础上提出了战略对策:充分发挥政府在工业旅游产品营销中的主导作用、明确工业旅游产品营销市场的战略定位、实施产品组合营销策略、以“装”引人,推出特色产品、营造令人愉悦的旅游氛围,加大宣传推销力度、确定合理价格水平、重视工业旅游经济效益增长点———工业旅游商品的营销。     

市场化的创新测度方法——兼对2000～2005年中国市场化区域发展特征探析

文章结合我国经济体制改革的发展现状和重点任务,将"市场化"的内涵拓展为通过一系列经济、社会以及法律制度的渐进变革实现的经济资源配置及个人经济权利的自由化,并据此尝试构建了一套既能对中国市场化进行全面、客观和持续性研究,又与国内外同类代表性研究可比的市场化综合测度方法。并利用这一指数综合考察了2000~2005年中国市场化发展的区域特征和发展趋势,为国内外官方及学术界全面了解中国加入WTO,特别是国家"十一五"以来中国经济自由化程度的现状提供了及时、客观的实证依据。     

在线购买不信任研究现状与思考

在线购买不信任已成为电子商务信任研究的子焦点之一。我们依据近年国外有关文献的调研发现,目前有关学术界对在线购买不信任的概念及其前因后项仍缺乏深入的理论和实证研究,尤其缺乏一个统一的结构合理的在线购买不信任及其与信任以及控制关系的理论框架,成为当前深化和推进有关研究必须克服的一个障碍,这使得目前人们对不信任、信任和控制以及相关概念难以进行正确的界定,使得大量的实证研究得不到有效的整合,使得不信任、信任和控制之间关系命题难以在各种管理实践领域尤其在电子商务领域得到充分和有效的运用。对中国来说,学术界对不信任以及其与信任以及控制内在逻辑关系的研究,也严重滞后于中国在线运营商和政府进行决策和开展有关工作的需要。     

高新技术促进工业化与城市化协调发展:以陕西为例的研究

党的十六大提出走新型工业化之路后,高新技术产业成为被社会各界所关注的经济增长的新动力。高新技术对于促进工业化与城市化协调发展的作用确实不容忽视:它通过自身的结构改造效应、科技扩散效应、产业带动效应促进工业化的进程,而工业化又带动城市化的进程;同时,城市化又为工业化提供良好的经济依托,促进工业化的持续发展,从而两者形成良好的互动机制以带动区域的经济增长,提高整个区域的综合实力。本文通过对陕西省高新技术产业的研究,发现陕西省具有发展高新技术产业的显性比较优势,而且它对促进陕西省乃至中国工业化与城市化的协调发展具有充分的可行性,其作为陕西省的一个经济增长极带动整个区域经济发展的作用不容小窥。     

Foreign direct investment,heterogeneous workers and employment security: Evidence from Germany

We analyze how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects employment security using administrative microdata for German employees. Measuring FDI intensity at the industry level enables us to take into account the sum of direct effects at multinationals as well as indirect effects of FDI throughout the affected industry. We find that both inward and outward FDI significantly reduce employment security. This is particularly the case for inward FDI coming from the western part of the European Union as well as for outward FDI going to Central and Eastern Europe. The effects are sizeable for older and low‐skilled workers.     

Weight-based pricing in the collection of household waste: the Oostzaan case

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of weight-based pricing in the collection of household waste. Using a comprehensive panel data set on all households in a Dutch municipality we estimate short-run as well as long-run price effects for the amounts of both compostable and non-recyclable household waste. We find significant and sizeable price effects, with the elasticity for compostable waste being four times as large as the elasticity for non-recyclable waste. Long-run elasticities are about 30% larger than short-run elasticities.     

Reducing Start‐up Costs for New Firms: The Double Dividend on the Labor Market*

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high‐skilled workers. If there are labor market frictions, this additional option can be seen as reducing the chances of ending up in a low‐wage job and hence as increasing the incentives for education. In a matching model, we show that reducing the start‐up costs for new firms results in higher take‐up rates of education. It also gives rise—through a thick‐market externality—to higher rates of job creation for high‐skilled labor as well as average match productivity. We provide empirical evidence to support our argument.     

Retirement and health services utilization in a low-income country*

We estimate the causal effects of retirement on health services utilization in Vietnam. Using authorized retirement ages as instruments for exogenous changes in retirement, we find positive and strong effects of retirement on outpatient health services in the public health sector. Retirement increases the probability of an outpatient visit by 51 percentage points for males and 36 percentage points for females, and the frequency of outpatient visits by 1.4 times for males and 2 times for females. However, we find no effect on the use of public inpatient services as well as private health services.     

北方港口绿化之浅析

随着北方港口经济效益的提高和基本建设飞速发展,港口内的绿化面积也随之扩大。为了科学的提高港口的绿化效应,尽可能的充分利用绿化功能提高港口的生态环境,更好的为北方港口工作的人们身体健康服务,对此仅对港口绿化植被的栽种及管理提出一些建议,仅供参考。     

Does Ease of Communication Increase Trade? Commonality of Language and Bilateral Trade

Gravity model explanations of trade volumes frequently include dummy variables to account for the commonality of language among trading partners. In this paper we use a data set for the number of people in a country who speak English as a first language or English as a second language (Crystal, 1997) as an indicator of the ease with which trade with the United States occurs. Controlling for commodity fixed effects we use SITC three digit industry data centred on 1995 United States bilateral trade with 33 countries to determine the effect of the degree of language commonality on bilateral trade. Both English as a first language and English as a second language are found to be less important for exports than for imports. This is true for all three digit industries as well as when the specific industry groups identified in Rauch (1999) are considered.     

产业结构与城市化、区域经济的协调发展

在经济增长与区域经济发展中,产业结构调整与城市化始终是一个中心话题。事实上,产业结构的调整与城市化的发展并不是两道毫无关系的平行轨迹。在产业结构调整过程中,城市化推进对第一产业的优化作用,对第二产业的提升作用及对第三产业的带动作用十分明显,而产业结构的合理调整同样需要以城市为载体,以城市化为依托,并对城市化的发展起着积极促进作用     

Public investment and budgetary consolidation in Portugal

In this paper we find that public investment in durable goods has a positive effect on long-term economic performance in Portugal. We also find that these positive effects are not strong enough for public investment to pay for itself in the form of future tax revenues. Therefore, cuts in public investment in durable goods, although costly in terms of long-term economic performance seem to be an effective way of alleviating pressure on the public budget. It is important to note, however, that this general result contrasts sharply with the evidence found in this paper for public investment in equipment, a small component of public investment in durable goods, as well as with evidence elsewhere for public investment in transportation infrastructures. For these, the effects on output are strong enough for public investment to pay for itself. Therefore, cuts in these two types of public investment, would have negative long-term economic effects as well as negative long-term budgetary effects. Clearly, not all public investment is created equal. We would like to thank the editor as well as two anonymous referees for unusually useful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.     

Road-mapping,disruptive technology,and semiconductor innovation: the case of gallium arsenide development in the UK

The semiconductor industry is known for its use of ‘road-maps’ to guide innovation strategies, especially as regards the application of Moore's Law to silicon. However, the history of gallium arsenide highlights a limitation of such an approach. Road-mapping works best for technologies in which technical progress is incremental, and for which applications are predictable. However, gallium arsenide's development did not follow a predictable path. Often touted as the semiconductor of the future because of its potential for high speed computing, gallium arsenide remained a niche technology for many years until a number of consumer applications were developed. If, as occurred with gallium arsenide, the key commercial applications (such as mobile phones, satellite TV, and CD and DVD players) could not be predicted, then a road-map could provide little guidance for investment.     

我国货币政策中介目标研究——一个文献综述

近年来,一些西方发达国家相继放弃了货币供应量目标,转向了利率、通货膨胀等目标,进而在我国也引发了货币供应量能否继续充当货币政策中介目标的争论.本文认为,尽管大多数实证研究均已表明货币供应量作为中介目标的有效性正不断降低,然而从我国当前的经济金融发展情况来看,选择利率或通货膨胀目标还缺乏可行性.因此,我国面临的现实选择只能是继续以货币供应量为目标,同时稳步推进金融体系、金融制度的改革,为中介目标的转变奠定基础.     

Estimating Central Banks’ preferences from a time-varying empirical reaction function

We estimate monetary policy reaction functions for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, using a Markov-switching model that allows for shifts in the coefficients of the central bank's reaction function as well as for independent shifts in the residual variance. The results indicate that central bank policy can be characterized as falling into a low- and a high-inflation regime. Over time all central banks have assigned changing weights to inflation and the output gap. Switching in the residual variance turns out to be important for the fit of the model. As a reaction function is a reduced form, coefficients embody preference parameters as well as parameters characterizing the structure of the economy. To recover the central banks’ preferences, we estimate the preference parameters jointly with a small model of the economy. The results show that the Bundesbank has placed a relatively higher weight on inflation than the Fed. Moreover, for the Bundesbank and the Fed the differences between both regimes seem to originate mainly from a changing preference for interest rate smoothing.     

Policy Uncertainty and the Demand for Money in Korea: An Asymmetry Analysis

Previous studies included money supply volatility as well as output volatility as measures of uncertainty in estimating the demand for money. However, a more comprehensive measure of uncertainty is now constructed for many countries and is known as policy uncertainty. When we included this new measure in the formulation of the demand for money in Korea and relied upon a nonlinear specification of the money demand which allows us to assess the asymmetric effects of changes in the policy uncertainty measure, we found asymmetric long-run effects of policy uncertainty on the demand for cash in Korea. Our conjecture is that increased uncertainty induces Koreans to hold less cash in favor of safer assets and decreased uncertainty has opposite effects, though at different rate.     

Effects of explicit FOMC policy-rate guidance on equities and risk measures

We quantify the impact of explicit Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy-rate guidance used as an unconventional monetary-policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on US equity prices, as well as on the risk indicators of credit and CDS spreads, implied volatilities and US equity index risk reversals. We find that explicit FOMC policy-rate guidance announcements at the zero lower bound led to a significant increase in US equity prices, for an aggregate equity index as well as for US commercial bank and US nonfinancial equities. Moreover, we find that they led to a significant reduction in some credit spreads. They also led to a significant reduction in an implied volatility index for US government bonds, as well as in the absolute value of US equity risk reversals, implying a lower perceived risk attached to a large fall in the equity index.     

Combined benchmarking of hospital outcomes and utilization

A strong case is made for developing quantitative benchmarks for hospital outcomes as well as utilization that includes both acute care re-admissions and lengths of stay. A number of hospitals in two distinctly different geographic health care environments [CA and NY] are studied as to the differences in outcomes and utilization for three of the most common high-cost DRGs. Unscheduled hospital readmissions (within 30 days of initial discharge) were employed as outcome indicators because they reflect both the quality of acute care and the need for case management in the post-discharge period. Benchmark targets were established for patients with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, acute MI treated medically, or COPD using scattergrams that showed each hospital's mean acute LOS on the x axis and the re-admission rates on the y axis. "Benchmarks were identified as those points with the lowest values for both indicators, as demonstrated by points that were closest to the intersection of the two axes."