CAPACITY UTILIZATION,INVESTMENT AND NORMAL PRICES: SOME ISSUES IN THE SRAFFA-KEYNES SYNTHESIS

Drawing on recent debate over the theoretical significance of (Sraffian) normal prices this paper begins by outlining an interpretation of the relation between normal prices and administered pricing. This interpretation takes the anticipated average or normal rate of capacity utilization in each sector as data in the calculation of prices and profit rates. However, anticipated average utilization in each sector, in a cyclically disturbed system, will depend on relative prices and thus on distribution. This interdependence between prices, profit rates and utilization has an important bearing on certain issues arising out of attempts at a Sraffa-Keynes synthesis. The paper attempts to shed light on those issues by exploring further the links between pricing, utilization and investment, using a simplified three-sector model.     

经济增长目标、异质性环境规制与产能利用率

在中央政府与地方政府之间的委托代理关系中,地方政府作为代理人,同时扮演着环境规制实际执行者以及工业产能过剩治理实际落实者的角色。在央地政府之间信息非对称且目标非一致性情形下,地方政府行为、动机与激励不但受到官员行政绩效考核制度与官员特征的影响,而且受到地方设定的经济增长目标、地方财政收支的影响。本文基于2001—2015年全国30省数据构建静态面板模型,采用随机效应模型方法,研究经济增长目标、环境规制及二者交互项对产能利用率的影响。研究发现,经济增长目标明显提高工业产能利用率水平;异质性环境规制对工业产能利用率影响随规制工具类型与地区而不同;全国与东部地区费用型环境规制显著提高了工业产能利用率;西部地区仅有环境处罚有助于提高工业产能利用率水平。经济增长目标与费用型环境规制交互项抑制了工业产能利用率,西部地区经济增长目标与环境处罚交互项降低了工业产能利用率,经济增长目标与环境规制相互作用不显著。     

The Effect of Delays in Information Exchange in Electronic Markets

In this research I explored the impact of information delays in a simple model of negotiation through an electronic market system. I found that a market can accurately reflect buyers' and sellers' preferences only if the rate of injection of price information multiplied by the rate of transfer of price information falls between 0 and 2. It is argued that markets adjust themselves to this constraint in practice. The alternatives are to experience chaotic and catastrophic volatility in prices or to go out of operation. Thus, electronic commerce can provide value beyond merely speeding up operations and increasing capacity. It also helps avoid misleading behavior by both buyer and seller and allows markets to operate in a wider range of trading environments.     

Yen or Yuan? The law of one price and economic integration in Asia

Using highly comparable local retail prices of 146 goods and services across 18 Asian countries over 1990–2014, we analyse price dispersion and test convergence to the law of one price (LOP ) for these prices around three price benchmarks—Asia‐average, Japan and China prices—to gain insight about market integration in overall Asia as well relative integration of Asian economies to Japan and China. Cross‐Asia price dispersion around China‐price benchmark, for both tradables and non‐tradables, diminishes significantly over the sample period whereas that around Japan‐price benchmark increases considerably, particularly after the 2008 crisis. There is convergence to the LOP for about half of goods and services in China‐ and Asia‐average price benchmarks. The percentage of convergent prices is significantly smaller in Japan‐price benchmark. Direct estimates of the convergence speed parameter also confirm these observations. Overall, our results show evidence of increasing economic integration in Asia in the last two decades. The process of price convergence appears to be driven by the emergence of China as the centre of economic gravity in the region. There is much room for improvement as economic integration in Asia is still far below that in Europe in the 1990s or USA in the 1980s.     

Further Mining the Predictability of Moving Averages: Evidence from the US Stock Market

Most studies on the predictability of moving average (MA) technical analysis use the discrete (buy/sell) trading recommendations. However, it is possibly incomplete or unreliable to explore the predictability of MA by only employing its generated trading signals. To further explore the forecastability of MA, we study its measurable impact on the stock market returns by using a conventional predictive regression framework. Our empirical study on the US stock market with respect to more detailed price information finds, (i) that the proposed predictor, MADP (MA based on daily prices) shows significant predictability in‐ and out‐of‐sample, and significantly outperforms the historical average (HA) benchmark as well as the MA based on monthly prices, (ii) that the predictability of MADP centers on the short‐term lags (within the most recent 10 days) and disappears when lags are beyond 20 days, and (iii) that the economic evaluation of the portfolios based on trading strategies confirms the superior performance of MADP with short‐term lags against the benchmark even though considering transaction costs.     

Density forecasts of crude‐oil prices using option‐implied and ARCH‐type models

The predictive accuracy of competing crude‐oil price forecast densities is investigated for the 1994–2006 period. Moving beyond standard ARCH type models that rely exclusively on past returns, we examine the benefits of utilizing the forward‐looking information that is embedded in the prices of derivative contracts. Risk‐neutral densities, obtained from panels of crude‐oil option prices, are adjusted to reflect real‐world risks using either a parametric or a non‐parametric calibration approach. The relative performance of the models is evaluated for the entire support of the density, as well as for regions and intervals that are of special interest for the economic agent. We find that non‐parametric adjustments of risk‐neutral density forecasts perform significantly better than their parametric counterparts. Goodness‐of‐fit tests and out‐of‐sample likelihood comparisons favor forecast densities obtained by option prices and non‐parametric calibration methods over those constructed using historical returns and simulated ARCH processes. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 31:727–754, 2011     

财政压力、经济刺激与以地引资——基于工业用地微观数据的经验证据

尽管我国地方政府面临较大的财政压力,但各地为了招商引资,往往竞相低价出让工业用地。地方政府的土地出让策略反映了官员的行为驱动机制。本文基于2006—2015年我国289个地级市约34万宗工业用地出让的微观数据,按是否低于政策规定的最低出让价为标准,将工业用地出让划分为以地引资性质出让和正常出让两类。文章借助经济刺激政策的外生冲击,考察了财政压力下地方政府的工业用地出让策略,并探讨了官员特征对出让策略的影响。研究发现:财政压力会显著减少地方政府以地引资性质的工业用地出让。而当经济刺激政策出台后,尽管财政压力增大,但由于体制外融资渠道增多,财政压力对地方政府以地引资行为的约束作用明显减弱,导致地方以地引资的出让面积显著增加。从官员的晋升激励来看,在刺激政策实施后,任期更长的官员更倾向于增加以地引资的工业用地出让。因此,应合理安排中央与地方的财力与事权,把握宏观调控的力度和方式,同时构建起适应高质量发展需求的干部考核制度。     

旅游景区门票价格影响因素研究——基于全国222家5A级景区的实证分析

基于旅游供给视角,以全国222家5A级景区的门票价格为被解释变量,选取景区交通可达性、旅游地经济水平、旅游地旅游发展水平三个外部因素和景区瞬时容量、资源品质、资源属性三个内部因素为解释变量,构建多元线性回归模型,并进行最小二乘(OLS)估计和相关检验。研究显示:景区门票价格主要受到核心资源属性、旅游地旅游发展水平的影响;景区的可达性、瞬时容量在门票价格模型中未能通过统计性检验,但在理论上与景区门票价格紧密相关;旅游地经济水平与旅游发展水平对景区门票的影响有异曲同工之妙,但旅游发展水平对门票的影响更大。     

Should reputable e-retailers undertake service activities along with sales?

With the growth of e-commerce and the elevated service requirements of consumers, e-retailers should carefully evaluate the profitability of delivering product services themselves that were once provided by suppliers. Within this context, we apply game theory to construct a principal-agent model to study a sales and service choice problem faced by an e-retailer. Three strategies are proposed in our paper, pure platform strategy (as the benchmark), resale strategy, and resale plus service strategy. Through comparison and analysis, we find that the sales and service strategy preferences of the e-retailer are influenced by reputation and service costs. Additionally, highly reputable e-retailers tend to provide superior levels of service and prices rather than excessively pursue market demand under the resale plus service strategy. Furthermore, we define the ratio of quality plus service to price as the consumer's performance ratio. Interestingly, reputable e-retailer may bring bad consumer's performance ratio. Moreover, the win-win situation occurs when the e-retailer provides the resale strategy or when the supplier prefers the resale plus service strategy. Our study suggests that e-retailers should make tradeoff between control over services and service costs, and make full use of the advantage of reputation to adjust their income strategy, avoiding blindly pursuing low prices and ignoring the service. In addition, for the supplier, it is appropriate to transfer the service to the e-retailer according to his own conditions.     

外资并购对中国企业产能利用率的影响

改革开放40年来,中国外资并购频繁发生,对经济增长做出了积极的贡献。然而伴随中国经济的高速发展,产能过剩问题日益凸显。本文基于1998—2007年中国企业数据,采用PSM-DID方法系统地研究了外资并购对中国企业产能利用率的影响及作用机制。实证结果表明,外资并购显著促进了企业产能利用率的提高;影响机制检验发现,出口扩张、研发创新和生产效率是外资并购提升企业产能利用率的重要途径;进一步的动态效应估计显示,外资并购后五年内对企业产能利用率具有显著的促进作用,且该效应呈"倒U型"动态变化特征。此外,本文还考察了外资并购对企业产能利用率的异质性影响,发现外资并购对内陆地区企业、高资本密集度企业和高融资约束企业产能利用率提高的促进作用更大。本文最后采用面板分位数回归方法检验了外资并购的产能利用率效应在不同产能水平企业之间的差异性,发现外资并购在更大程度上提升了落后产能企业的产能利用率。以上研究意味着,外资并购有助于缩小企业间产能利用率差距,这对于减少社会资源浪费、提高资源配置效率以及推动产业结构转型升级具有重要的作用。     

生物质能源开发利用对“三农”的影响分析

对农业而言,生物质能开发利用能够促进我国农业结构升级、改善农业经济管理模型、发展林业经济。对农村而言,生物质能开发利用能够改善农村能源结构,优化农村生态环境和生活环境,促进农村工业发展。对农民而言,生物质能开发利用能够增加就业机会,增加农民收入,提高农民生活质量。然而,开发生物质能有可能增加对生产资料的竞争,增加相关农林产品价格的波动以及由于大面积种植单一作物而降低生物多样性,因此开发利用生物质能要合理规划。     

Forecasting the World Economy in the Short Term

(1433) Audrone Jakaitiene and Stephane Dees Forecasting the world economy is a difficult task given the complex interrelationships within and across countries. This paper proposes a number of approaches to forecast short‐term changes in selected world economic variables and aims, first, at ranking various forecasting methods in terms of forecast accuracy and, second, at checking whether methods forecasting directly aggregate variables (direct approaches) outperform methods based on the aggregation of country‐specific forecasts (bottom‐up approaches). Overall, all methods perform better than a simple benchmark for short horizons (up to 3 months ahead). Among the forecasting approaches used, factor models appear to perform the best. Moreover, direct approaches outperform bottom‐up ones for real variables, but not for prices. Finally, when country‐specific forecasts are adjusted to match direct forecasts at the aggregate levels (top‐down approaches), the forecast accuracy is neither improved nor deteriorated (i.e. top‐down and bottom‐up approaches are broadly equivalent in terms of country‐specific forecast accuracy).     

Modeling price-related consequences of the brand origin cue: An empirical examination of the automobile market

Price-related consequences of the country-of-origin (COO) cue have been widely neglected in the literature. This paper applies hedonic price analysis to examine a brand’s COO effect on new car prices. The application of our models to an extensive dataset demonstrates that prices of new cars reflect not only implicit prices of performance and technological characteristics but also price distortions that arise out of COO heterogeneity. Moreover, by allowing model parameters to vary across car type segments, we are able to capture patterns of differential attribute and COO effects on prices, which are indicative of implicit price discrimination strategies. The paper provides new interesting insights into critical issues for pricing strategy and demonstrates the role of brand origin, segments, and observed product differences in the price structure of the automobile market. Our findings yield important implications for manufacturers and researchers.     

关于“新经济”的理性思考

美国新经济的出现引起了各个方面对经济形态、经济理论的思考。通过实证分析认为，美国的新经济是处在工业经济向知识经济过渡的延点上，是知识经济的雏形；同时阐述新经济的特征以及对理论经济学的贡献，以期明晰新经济的本质。     

矿产资源价格改革及对策研究

目前,我国的矿产资源定价方法主要有成本定价法、收益还原法、供求定价法和CGE模型法。我国矿产资源价格总体偏低,市场供求调节机制滞后,价格机制失灵,资源价格不能反映供需和稀缺状况。应充分认识矿产资源价格改革对促进经济可持续发展的重要意义,重新定位矿产资源价值地位,确定合理的矿山地租,矿山开采实行完全成本核算等,建立矿产资源价格机制,形成政策体系,发挥市场机制在资源配置及资源定价方面的重作用;构建矿产资源税费新体制。     

基于弹性分形维的开放式基金投资风格漂移研究

投资风格漂移的量化研究是规范基金产品设计与控制基金经理投资行为的关键环节。根据分形维和经济弹性定义,在分析业绩比较基准风格指数对基金业绩影响的基础上,给出了基金投资风格漂移的价格弹性分形维定义,并推导出该分形维数的计算公式:基金对数收益序列与比较基准风格指数对数收益序列的比值。以我国2003年成立的18只开放式基金为研究样本,测算出基金投资风格漂移的价格弹性分形维,实证结果表明:基金投资风格均发生了明显的漂移现象;根据价格弹性分形维与投资风格一致性基准线得到了基金投资风格漂移的阀值,为控制较严重的投资风格漂移现象提供了衡量标准。本文研究方法与结论对完善基金产品创新发行理念、提高基金市场的效率提供了决策依据,并为进一步量化我国开放式基金投资风格漂移风险提供了新的研究思路。     

How Biased are Current Measures of Asian Output Growth and Price Change?

“Rational economic agents” making optimal choices, such as shifting to less expensive products, is a fundamental paradigm for theoretical and applied economics. This requires accurate and unbiased economic information on prices. Since the mid-1990s, several nations have switched to estimation methods for price indices that improve the accounting for the shifting basket of new goods and services produced in the economy. This change required the adoption of “ideal” measures of growth and price change. Nevertheless, many Asian nations continue to prepare non-ideal measures of growth and price change. This paper assesses the bias in current Asian measures of growth and price change and explores how such bias can lead to poor investor and policymaker decisions.     

我国省域外商直接投资产业结构绩效比较分析——基于福建与江苏两省实际

在经济全球化背景下,外商直接投资早已在区域经济增长中占据着不可动摇的重要地位。笔者选取了有代表意义的福建、江苏两省作为研究对象,在对两省的外商直接投资与产业结构的发展现状分析中首先从理论上论证了外商直接投资时产业结构绩效会产生一定的作用,之后通过实证分析了两省外商直接投资的产业结构绩效并从中发现两者间存在着一定的变化趋势;最后笔者提出了更好地利用外商直接投资推进产业结构绩效的相关建议:应不断完善外商投资环境;促进闽台交流以提高产业对接能力;优化外商直接投资的产业导向。     

Benchmarking of Corporate Social Responsibility: Methodological Problems and Robustness

This paper investigates the possibilities and problems of benchmarking Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). After a methodological analysis of the advantages and problems of benchmarking, we develop a benchmark method that includes economic, social and environmental aspects as well as national and international aspects of CSR. The overall benchmark is based on a weighted average of these aspects. The weights are based on the opinions of companies and NGO's. Using different methods of weighting, we find that the outcome of the benchmark is rather robust for a sample of more than 50 large Dutch companies.