富力抢跑保障房“政企合建”

6月3日,由广州市政府与富力地产合作建设的金沙洲保障房项目正式开工。在开工仪式上,广东省委常委、广州市委书记张广宁宣布开工,广州市委副书记、市长万庆良致辞,广州市委常委、常务副市长苏泽群主持了开工仪式。该项目是广州市第一个引入社会力量合作建设的保障性住房项目,项目正式开工,成为广州保障房建设进程中的又一重要里程碑。     

ECONOMETRIC ESTIMATION OF ARMINGTON IMPORT ELASTICITIES FOR A REGIONAL CGE MODEL OF THE ILLINOIS ECONOMY

One of the main concerns associated with the development and use of regional CGE models is the determination of key parameter values, particularly substitution and other price elasticities. A common problem is the lack of appropriate regional data for econometric estimation. Consequently, it is important to identify key parameters that are likely to be important in determining quantitative results and then to prioritize these for estimation where appropriate data are available. In this paper, the focus is on the estimation of the regional trade (import) substitution parameters, which tend to be important in analysis for regional economies (given their openness to trade). Here, commodity import elasticities for the Illinois economy are estimated and tested in a single region CGE model of the Illinois economy. In our econometric estimation, we apply a model that takes account of market size and distance in estimating the substitutability between commodities produced in Illinois and other US states.     

THE ROLE OF TIME‐VARYING PRICE ELASTICITIES IN ACCOUNTING FOR VOLATILITY CHANGES IN THE CRUDE OIL MARKET

There has been a systematic increase in the volatility of the real price of crude oil since 1986, followed by a decline in the volatility of oil production since the early 1990s. We explore reasons for this evolution. We show that a likely explanation of this empirical fact is that both the short‐run price elasticities of oil demand and of oil supply have declined considerably since the second half of the 1980s. This implies that small disturbances on either side of the oil market can generate large price responses without large quantity movements, which helps explain the latest run‐up and subsequent collapse in the price of oil. Our analysis suggests that the variability of oil demand and supply shocks actually has decreased in the more recent past, preventing even larger oil price fluctuations than observed in the data. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: STRATEGIES FOR ACTION IN HIGHLY-ORDERED CONTEXTS*

Writers in the management literature use one of three general concepts of culture: homogeneous organizational culture, heterogeneous subgroup cultures, and ambiguous cultures. In spite of their differences, each of these conceptualizations focuses attention primarily on the context in which the individual member of an organization acts, and suggests that the latitude for individual action increases as the orderliness of that context decreases. In doing so, the culture literature has underestimated the role of individual actors as active agents in their contexts, regardless of the degree of orderliness prevailing in them. By incorporating a more dynamic perspective of action into the cultural analysis of organizations, this article develops a framework which focuses attention on how individuals not only adhere to, but also depart from even highly-ordered organizational and subgroup cultures. This framework is then used to investigate managerial interactions during a planning meeting in HAPCO (a pseudonym), a Fortune 500 company. Two general conclusions emerge from these analyses. First, the normative force of HAPCO culture suppresses conflict, as well as the discussion of alternative ideas during decision-making meetings. Thus, this particular organizational culture severely limits the range of individual action. Second, even in large, highly-ordered organizations such as HAPCO, culture never completely dominates action because individuals comment critically on their situation. Consequently, individuals possess the capacity not only to adapt to, but also to challenge and depart from cultural rules. Four general types of strategies for individual action are empirically observed and conceptually distinguished.     

POOLING VERSUS MODEL SELECTION FOR NOWCASTING GDP WITH MANY PREDICTORS: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR SIX INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES

This paper discusses pooling versus model selection for nowcasting with large datasets in the presence of model uncertainty. In practice, nowcasting a low‐frequency variable with a large number of high‐frequency indicators should account for at least two data irregularities: (i) unbalanced data with missing observations at the end of the sample due to publication delays; and (ii) different sampling frequencies of the data. Two model classes suited in this context are factor models based on large datasets and mixed‐data sampling (MIDAS) regressions with few predictors. The specification of these models requires several choices related to, amongst other things, the factor estimation method and the number of factors, lag length and indicator selection. Thus there are many sources of misspecification when selecting a particular model, and an alternative would be pooling over a large set of different model specifications. We evaluate the relative performance of pooling and model selection for nowcasting quarterly GDP for six large industrialized countries. We find that the nowcast performance of single models varies considerably over time, in line with the forecasting literature. Model selection based on sequential application of information criteria can outperform benchmarks. However, the results highly depend on the selection method chosen. In contrast, pooling of nowcast models provides an overall very stable nowcast performance over time. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

OLDER WORKERS, GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGEING POPULATIONS OF A GLOBALISING ECONOMY

Though there is a consensus surrounding the importance of people working at older ages – and in a more flexible way – trends in employment and trade patterns mean that existing policies are not as effective as they need to be.     

ETHNIC DIVERSITY,PUBLIC SPENDING,AND INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR THE WELFARE STATE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on public spending and on individual support for the welfare state. The survey puts a particular focus on the fast‐growing literature that uses experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity. Many of these studies have appeared since the pioneering survey by Alesina and La Ferrara and have not been covered by a survey before.