欧佩克面临的挑战及调整

石油输出国组织(欧佩克)诞生在20世纪60年代,是世界石油工业和石油经济发展、世界石油市场和国际石油贸易变革,以及世界石油地缘政治和国际石油关系演化的综合产物.它的发展、变化始终没有离开过世界石油发展演进的大环境,同样,也自始至终影响世界石油市场的发展进程.两者相互依存、……     

欧佩克面临的挑战及调整

石油输出国组织(欧佩克)[1]诞生在20世纪60年代,是世界石油工业和石油经济发展、世界石油市场和国际石油贸易变革,以及世界石油地缘政治和国际石油关系演化的综合产物。它的发展、变化始终没有离开过世界石油发展演进的大环境,同样,也自始至终影响世界石油市场的发展进程。两者相互依存、相互影响。21世纪,石油工业和石油经济进入了一个新阶段,欧佩克的未来前途也面临新的挑战和机遇。对伊战争,加快了世界石油市场格局的变化进程。这一变化是朝着石油市场一体化的方向发展。欧佩克作为世界经济和世界贸易活动中的重要参与者,在经济全球化的…     

The distribution of financial aid in China: Is aid reaching poor students?

China's central government incrementally introduced various kinds of student financial aid since the late 1990s in response to public concerns about the rising burden of college prices. Despite the marked increase in financial assistance from governmental as well as non-governmental sources in recent years especially, little is known about how well aid is currently distributed across Chinese universities and whether it is successfully reaching needy students.We use a unique randomly-sampled dataset of all local senior college students in one northwest province and a combination of non-parametric, semi-parametric and fixed effects methods to examine how various types of financial aid are currently distributed to students of different backgrounds across the university system. We also evaluate whether aid is reaching the main target population of low-income students. We primarily find that government-financed aid is allocated evenly across universities of varying selectivity and is reaching its target population of low-income students within universities. By contrast, university- and society-financed aid is not reaching low-income students. In addition, students in the most selective universities receive large implicit subsidies as they have high instructional costs, get more aid, and pay low tuition fees. Finally, a significant proportion of disadvantaged students do not seem to receive any type of aid.     

Foreign aid and fiscal response: Does aid disaggregation matter?

Foreign Aid and Fiscal Response: Does Aid Disaggregation Matter? —The present paper constitutes a new approach in the aid-effectiveness literature in two important respects. Firstly, it develops and then tests a model of foreign aid and fiscal response, which, for the first time in the aid-effectiveness literature, embraces the aiddisaggregation issue; we do this by disaggregating aid flows into three main components, namely programme aid, project aid and technical assistance, and by subsequently estimating our model for two countries, India and Kenya. Secondly, on the modelling front, we improve on earlier work in this area by using an appropriate specification for the recipient-country government’s welfare function, with significant positive implications for the empirical findings obtained. This new approach adopted in the paper and the empirical results obtained may have important implications for a better understanding of the fiscal impact of aid in aid-recipient countries.     

Uganda's experience with aid

This paper presents Uganda's experience with aid flows overthe period 1970-96. It discusses the compilation of aid dataand also reviews the chronological developments in aid flowsto Uganda. Over this period, the sectoral distribution and typeof aid is largely dictated by the government's economic programmesin place. The period 1962-71 largely reflects government borrowingfor on-lending to agriculture and industry whereas the period1979-85 shows a wider range of sector-specific programmes drivenby the need to reconstruct and rehabilitate the economy. Althoughthe need to reconstruct and rehabilitate the economy continued,support for policy reform began to take up an increasing proportionof aid over the period 1987-96. We also analyse the impact ofaid on some major macroeconomic variables and find that investmentand real exchange rate developments have been largely drivenby official development aid flows. Although we find a similarrelationship between aid and improved policy environment, thefindings show that in the latter part, i.e., 1992-6, the continuedpolicy reform was driven more by ownership of the programmethan by aid. Indeed, in this latter period, the aid/GDP ratiosdeclined. The major lesson drawn from this study is that ownershipof a reform programme is more critical for its success, henceour conclusion that aid should be used for financing ratherthan buying reforms.     

The economics of aesthetics and record prices for art since 1701

Aggregate art price patterns mask a lot of underlying variation—both in the time series and in the cross-section. We argue that, to increase our understanding of the market for aesthetics, it is helpful to take a micro perspective on the formation of art prices, and acknowledge that each artwork gives rise to a market for trading in its private-value benefits. We discuss relevant recent literature, and illustrate the potential of this approach through a historical study of record prices for art at auction since 1701.     

The Effectiveness of aid in Improving Regulations: An Empirical Assessment

The paper empirically assesses the impact of foreign aid on the change in economic freedom, which is closely related to the quality of regulations. We build on a relatively large panel of 77 developing countries and examine the period 2002–2012 using different econometric methods. In addition to standard country fixed‐effects regressions as well as estimations in first differences, we apply the system Generalised Method of Moments estimator. We, therefore, control for the potential endogeneity of foreign aid. We find that highly targeted aid can be a driver of change: Sectorspecific Aid for Business has a significantly positive impact on regulations across developing countries, but we do not find any effects for overall aid or aid directed at broad governance areas. The result that Aid for Business drives improvements in regulatory quality is robust using different model specifications and country samples. The strongest results are found for low‐income countries and for subsamples that exclude outliers. This outcome could partly explain the inconclusive evidence from the previous literature and it confirms our hypothesis that targeted, sector‐specific aid matters.     

The LDC external debt and the euromarkets: The impressive record and the uncertain future

This paper deals in detail with the volume and nature of LDC borrowing in the eurocurrency markets over the past 10 years. The factors affecting borrowing and lending on the euromarket are discussed, followed by an evaluation of the terms and conditions attached to euromarket loans. These borrowing activities, which have grown considerably recently, are analysed with a view towards clarifying a number of major issues related to the general problem of the increasing LDC external indebtedness and to the future of financial relations between the LDCs and the rest of the world economy.     

East European aid to India

The aid-relationship is part of a wider economic relationship between India and the East European countries, in a far more integrated sense than is the case with some of India's other donors. The group has been a significant though not a dominant source of aid to India, the USSR being the most important member of the group. Easy generalizations about the terms of East European aid, in comparison to aid from other sources, are not possible. The same is true for India's experience in the actual utilization of aid from various sources. The main usefulness of the East European countries as a source of aid has lain in their willingness to give aid for particular public-sector projects and in improving India's bargaining powers vis-à-vis other donors.     

Does Korea follow Japan in foreign aid? Relationships between aid and foreign investment

Korea, an emerging donor country, largely considers its economic relations to recipients when allocating its aid. Such practices were preceded by Japan before the 1990s. We expect those similar practices between the two countries will make resemblance in aid outcomes. On a macro-level, we show similarities in aid allocations by type, region, income, and sector. The similarities are ascertained also at a micro-level by our statistical analysis on the relationships between aid and FDI. The analysis based on the FDI gravity model and panel dynamic system GMM estimation shows that only aids from Korea and Japan create more inflow of FDI into their respective recipient developing countries. Those are contrasted with other donors’ aids, which are not related to FDI or the substitute for FDI.     

Identifying thresholds in aid effectiveness

In this paper, the author focuses on the nonlinear nature of the aid to growth relationship to show that the “Big Push” hypothesis is consistent with capacity constraints in the understanding of aid effectiveness. The Big Push hypothesis proposes the existence of one threshold below which aid is not effective, whereas the constraints inferred by the concept of absorptive capacity suggest the existence of a second threshold above which aid is no longer effective. This paper addresses the issue of these thresholds which characterize the aid to growth relationship. Using a semi-parametric econometric method, the author finds that aid becomes effective only above a critical level, but what is more it becomes detrimental to growth at high aid flows. The author also investigates how the quality of institutions and economic vulnerability modify the level of these two thresholds. He finds that economic vulnerability is a key factor conditioning aid effectiveness.     

另一种记录中的昭通

在滇东北行走的日子里,我始终不能推开的一个动词就是“断“.《现代汉语大词典》对它的解释是:“断即长形的东西分成两段或几段,有断绝、拦截等引申义.“世间的人事大凡一旦断裂,就往往再难接合.可是也总有例外,它们历经数次折断、挫裂,却可以在艰难的时光里,紧紧凭借着空气、阳光、水以及土壤里的养分再生、再植,倔强而无声地生长成它们自己最初渴望成为的模样.……