微电影 一个产业生态变革的开始

贾樟柯搬了张凳子坐在导演位置,仔细看着眼前小屏幕里的每一个细节,神情却和往常略有不同——在这组名为《爱的联想》的微电影里他并不是导演,而是监制。贾樟柯曾执导过多部获奖电影,首部长片《小武》被法国《电影手册》赞誉为摆脱了中国电影的常规,是标志着中国电影复兴与活力的影片,2011年被第68届威尼斯国际电影节"地平线单元"邀请担任评委会主席。     

Cinematic Explosion: New Products,Unpredictabilty and Realized Quality in the Digital Era

While file sharing has undermined firms’ ability to generate revenue for their products, other technological change has reduced entry barriers in cultural industries, with substantial positive impacts on the availability of new books and recorded music. Unpredictability of product quality is a generic feature of cultural goods, including music, books and movies, so an infusion of new products holds the possibility of bringing not just low‐appeal products but also new products that consumers find highly appealing. This paper explores the effects of reduced costs of production, promotion and distribution in the motion picture industry, asking four questions. First, we document substantial growth in the number of movies brought to market, particularly since the early 2000's. Second, we document growth in institutions by which consumers can discover new movies, many of which are produced outside of the major studios and not released in theaters. Third, we show that the new independent movies account for a growing share of commercially successful movies. Finally, we present evidence, based on both critical assessments and usage, that recent vintages are more appealing to consumers than earlier offerings. These findings on movies echo developments documented elsewhere for recorded music and books.     

社会学习与消费升级——来自中国电影市场的经验证据

文化服务产业消费“扩容”与“提质”对于中国当前消费升级至关重要。以2012—2016年中国1854部电影为研究对象,本文将每日电影院层面票房数据汇总至全国层面,构建“电影—日”全国票房数据。为避免弱工具变量问题,采用新近发展的套索(LASSO)回归选择最优的天气与空气污染变量作为电影首映周非预期票房的工具变量,识别了社会学习对电影跨期消费增长的影响。研究发现:受外生冲击影响的电影首映周非预期票房变化对于后续周票房存在显著的正向跨期溢出效应,且该溢出效应随着时间推移而逐渐减小。进一步地,制作质量越高、事前质量信息不确定性越高以及市场偏好越集中,电影消费的跨期溢出效应就越明显。这一结果表明,社会学习是引致电影消费跨期溢出效应的主要机制,观察学习与社会网络外部性等机制并未得到实证证据的支持。总体而言,本文揭示了社会学习是影响电影消费“扩容”与“提质”的关键因素,从个体间微观互动机制这一全新视角为激发中国新一轮消费升级提供了可行的实践路径。     

Is Selection Bias Inherent in Housing Transactions? An Equilibrium Approach

We develop an equilibrium model for residential housing transactions in an economy with houses that differ in their quality and households that differ in their planned holding horizon. We show that, in equilibrium, a clientele effect persists, with long‐horizon buyers overwhelmingly choosing higher quality properties and short‐horizon buyers settling for lower quality properties. This clientele effect creates a sample selection bias: the properties that are on the market are predominantly of lower quality. Since these are the preferred choice of short‐horizon buyers, they demonstrate a faster turnover. Both the clientele effect and the selection bias are more pronounced with an increase in the variance of house quality and in the variance of the planned holding horizon. Our theoretical model supports empirical evidence on the existence of such bias in home price indices and explains it by the differences in ex ante holding horizons.     

Playlisting favorites: Measuring platform bias in the music industry

Platforms are growing increasingly powerful, raising questions about whether their power might be exercised with bias. While bias is inherently difficult to measure, we identify a context within the music industry that is amenable to bias testing. Our approach requires ex ante platform assessments of commercial promise – such as the rank order in which products are presented – along with information on eventual product success. A platform is biased against a product type if the type attains greater success, conditional on ex ante assessment. Theoretical considerations and voiced industry concerns suggest the possibility of platform biases in favor of major record labels, and industry participants also point to bias against women. Using data on Spotify curators’ rank of songs on New Music Friday playlists in 2017, we find that Spotify’s New Music Friday rankings favor independent-label music, along with some evidence of bias in favor of music by women. Despite challenges that independent-label artists and women face in the music industry, Spotify’s New Music curation appears to favor them.     

Productive efficiency of specialty and conventional coffee farmers in Costa Rica: Accounting for technological heterogeneity and self-selection

A steep decline in coffee prices at the producer level led to considerable pressure for farmers in Costa Rica and producer countries all over the world. One possible reaction was moving to specialty markets, where price pressure was perceived to be lower. We use original survey data from 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 to analyze the factors influencing participation in specialty markets and to estimate separate production functions for specialty and conventional coffee farmers allowing for farm-specific inefficiencies. Applying a sample selection framework, we find significant selection bias in the sub-sample of specialty farmers and evidence for the overestimation of efficiency, if this bias is not adequately controlled for. Among the most important factors that influence farm-specific efficiency levels in the two sub-samples are the availability of additional income activities, experience in coffee cultivation, and membership in cooperatives. Based on the results, we derive policy recommendations to improve farmers’ production performance and ability to cope with the effects of the coffee crisis. These policy measures include the provision of extension services with respect to farm management skills, the creation of income opportunities in rural areas, and the support of farmer-owned cooperatives.     

Using Revenue Sharing to Implement Flexible Prices: Evidence from Movie Exhibition Contracts

Movie exhibition contracts entail revenue‐sharing terms that go down with weeks since release. We develop a simple model to show how the form of these contracts can be explained by the distributors’ desire to set flexible prices. We then use detailed data on theater‐movie contracts in Spain, where we exploit the information available at the time of contracting for movies previously released in the U.S., and other movie and theater characteristics, to show how the implications of our flexible pricing argument are supported in the data, and differentiate our explanation from prior, more standard risk‐sharing and moral‐hazard explanations.     

Explaining the reduction in child undernutrition in the Indian state of Maharashtra between 2006 and 2012: An analysis of the policy processes

The Indian state of Maharashtra has been lauded as a ‘success story’ for its rapid and significant decline in undernutrition amongst children. Between 2006 and 2012, childhood stunting fell from 39 to 24%. Whilst the global policy and academic literature strongly emphasises the need to act on nutrition, there are still too few studies outlining the policy processes which been part of successful state-led strategies – particularly at a sub-national level. This study is intended to contribute to future policy via unpacking the unfolding story of policy and programme attention to nutrition. Stakeholder perceptions and opinions on the wider policy, political and contextual reasons for Maharashtra’s decline in child undernutrition were sought and used alongside documentary evidence to construct a chronology of key events. Key factors identified via this process include the way in which issue framing and evidence helped catalyse a political response; the particular governance structures employed in response (the State’s ‘Nutrition Mission’) and the way in which leadership and a focus on system-wide capacity combined in an innovative fashion to focus resources on pockets of deprivation in high-burden areas.     

图案在童装设计中的应用

通过对童装设计中不同年龄段童装图案的应用和中国传统图案的应用的研究和分析,发现不同年龄阶段对图案的选择是存在一定差异性的,不同年龄段童装设计选择的图案要符合这一年龄阶段的儿童的心理需求.卡通形象、儿童简笔画、热门电影的人物插画,有童趣抽象的图案,民族风格的图案再设计,跨界合作的漫画家和插画师的作品常用在童装设计中.将中...     

Climbing the Job Ladder: New Evidence of Gender Inequity

An explanation for the gender wage gap is that women are less able or less willing to “climb the job ladder.” However, the empirical evidence on gender differences in job mobility has been mixed. Focusing on a subsample of younger, university‐educated workers from an Australian longitudinal survey, we find strong evidence that the dynamics of promotions and employer changes worsen women’s labor market position.     

Plant Closures and Unionization in British Establishments

This paper examines whether there is a link between establishment closure and union presence using data from the 1984–90 panel sample of establishments of the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. It considers whether the notion that unions damage long term performance and ultimately force uncompetitive establishments to shut down is a reasonable one.
I can find no evidence whatsoever for this hypothesis. There is no evidence that establishment closure and union presence are positively correlated. The relationship is usually negative and sometimes significantly so.
These results are important for at least two reasons: (i) it does not seem that unions have detrimental effects that force establishments to close down in the long run; (ii) the idea that union establishments have been dying at a faster rate forms no part of the explanation of the sharp union decline observed in the 1980s.     

Sample selection bias and Heckman models in strategic management research

Research summary: The use of Heckman models by strategy scholars to resolve sample selection bias has increased by more than 700 percent over the last decade, yet significant inconsistencies exist in how they have applied and interpreted these models. In view of these differences, we explore the drivers of sample selection bias and review how Heckman models alleviate it. We demonstrate three important findings for scholars seeking to use Heckman models: First, the independent variable of interest must be a significant predictor in the first stage of a model for sample selection bias to exist. Second, the significance of lambda alone does not indicate sample selection bias. Finally, Heckman models account for sample‐induced endogeneity, but are not effective when other sources of endogeneity are present. Managerial summary: When nonrandom samples are used to test statistical relationships, sample selection bias can lead researchers to flawed conclusions that can, in turn, negatively impact managerial decision‐making. We examine the use of Heckman models, which were designed to resolve sample selection bias, in strategic management research and highlight conditions when sample selection bias is present as well as when it is not. We also distinguish sample selection bias, a form of omitted variable (OV) bias, from more traditional OV bias, emphasizing that it is possible for models to have sample selection bias, traditional OV bias, or both. Accurately identifying the type(s) of OV bias present is essential to effectively correcting it. We close with several recommendations to improve practice surrounding the use of Heckman models. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business cycle stylized facts and inventory behaviour: New evidence for the Euro area

The purpose of this paper is for the first time to use Business Tendency Survey data, first, to identify new facts that are useful for the interpretation of the decline in the volatility of real activity in the Euro area, and, second, to test the inventory management hypothesis as an explanation for the Great Moderation in Europe. We present stylized facts from the Business Tendency data on series for inventories, current production, current orders, and expected production for the Euro area, emphasizing the decline in the volatility of the series. Further, we investigate whether the decline in inventory volatility can be attributed to an endogenous change in the persistence of shocks to the accumulation dynamics of inventories or to an exogenous change in the shocks hitting the inventory optimisation process. Our results at Euro level generally indicate that there is no evidence of a break in the inventory accumulation process. On the contrary, the impact of exogenous shocks on inventory volatility appears to be steadily declining over time, beginning from the mid-1980s.     

Is faster better? Quantifying the relationship between broadband speed and economic growth

In this paper, I aim to quantify the relationship between higher broadband speeds (10 Mbps versus 25 Mbps) and the growth rates in important economic outcomes in U.S. counties including jobs, personal income, and labor earnings. Doing so exposes the potential for severe selection bias in studies of broadband's economic impact, which is addressed in this study using Coarsened Exact Matching. Once balanced, the data reveal no economic payoff from the 15 Mbps speed difference between the years 2013 and 2015 (when data is available). I also revisit an early and widely-cited study on broadband's effect on employment to evaluate the possible impacts of selection bias, and conclude that the positive benefits of broadband reported in that particular study are likely spurious. The selection bias problem may infect other studies on the economic impacts of broadband Internet services. Future research on broadband's economic impact should explicitly address selection bias.     

Self‐selection,endogeneity, and the relationship between CEO duality and firm performance

This study focuses explicitly on the methodological implications of the endogenous theory of governance as applied to firm performance. In particular, if firms choose their governance structures as part of a constrained performance maximization process, then application of an appropriate empirical methodology should reveal statistical evidence of such behavior. In this study we take advantage of the endogenous switching regression model framework to determine whether such predicted optimizing behavior can be corroborated by the data. The model allows us to test explicitly for selection behavior in accordance with comparative advantage and, concomitantly, the presence of selectivity bias, in estimating the impact of CEO duality on firm performance. The selection and performance equations are modeled in accordance with the extant accounting, economics, and management literature on the impact of the dual governance structure on firm performance. Overall, we tested four performance measures for the entire sample of firm‐year observations as well as for the largest three industries in terms of sample sizes. The major finding, robust in all cases, is that there is no evidence to support a contention that CEO duality is a structure purposefully chosen for optimizing performance. If firms are indeed choosing the dual leadership structure, they are doing so for reasons other than improving performance from what it would be otherwise. In fact, for performance measured as market return and earnings per share, there is evidence of a significant selectivity bias that acts to lower performance below what it would have been under random assignment. For performance measured by Tobin's q and return on assets, we found neither evidence of selectivity bias, nor any significant marginal performance impacts of CEO duality. Such findings are inconsistent with an endogenous governance theory, at least when applied to firm performance. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

未来原油品质变化趋势及其对炼油行业的影响

剑桥能源咨询公司对全球范围的原油和凝析油的整体品质变化情况进行了评估,主要结论如下:一是全球原油品质出现下降的趋势,但在近期内世界原油品质总体变化很小,API度将从2011年的36.1降至2020年的35.8.二是原油品质的区域性变化较为显著并呈现较大波动性.中东北非原油供应中断对世界原油品质的总体影响不大,但对欧洲炼油行业影响较大.三是超重原油供应比例的增加速度超过炼油业的适应能力,对原料具有更大适应能力的超级炼油厂可能不断出现.此外,考虑到中东原油在中国原油进口结构中的重要地位,预计中国进口原油在未来一段时间内将有变重、变酸的趋势,这将对中国炼油厂加工重油的能力及灵活性提出更高要求.     

Yield effects of climate-smart agriculture aid investment in southern Malawi

Binding resource constraints in many low- and middle-income countries aggravate food insecurity risk in the face of climate change. To help mitigate such risk and increase food security, international development agencies have invested billions of dollars in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) programs over the past decade. However, rigorous evidence on the food security impacts of CSA aid through crop yields remains scant generally, and specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Most studies have not explicitly linked CSA adoption and yield impacts with CSA aid interventions among smallholder farmers. Here, we respond to this knowledge gap by estimating the impact of a major CSA aid effort (the United States Agency for International Development-funded Wellness and Agriculture for Life’s Advancement (WALA) project) on agricultural yields in Southern Malawi. Based on primary survey data from a sample of 808 households in the project area, we use endogenous switching regression and a control function approach to estimate CSA adoption and impacts on maize yield in 2016, controlling for potential program placement bias, selection bias in CSA adoption, and endogeneity issues. We found a 53% increase in maize yield among CSA adopters in the drought year of 2016. Results demonstrate that policies and funding streams supporting CSA in low-income, dryland contexts such as southern Malawi can have important impacts on food security by boosting crop yields in the face of increasing climate uncertainty and extreme weather shocks.     

Contestability and creative destruction: Two approaches to monopoly

The theory of contestability ’attempts to base a model of economic efficiency on oligopolistic markets, thereby justifying adoption of laissez-faire policies in the absence of atomistic competition. The analysis is similar to Schumpeter’s condemnation of government intervention in the theory of creative destruction: both theories claim that superior economic performance is associated with concentrated rather than competitive market structures. Yet in many respects the contestability analysis is less convincing than Schumpeter’s. Whereas Schumpeter admitted the existence of short rum profits and restrictive strategies, arguing that these inefficiencies, are outweighed in the long run, the theory of contestable markets is based on short run efficiency and cannot accommodate evidence of excess profits nor many of the existing models of oligopolistic strategies, including collusion and predatory pricing. Furthermore, the theory lacks a logical explanation of investment, by entrants and convincing empirical support for its claim that concentrated markets maximize consumer welfare.     

Unobserved heterogeneity and adjustment to behavioral bias: The case of used cars

With novel data on ex-post quality after used-car purchases, I evaluate left-digit bias, a type of inattention bias, for underlying quality of used cars. My main result is that the used-car market exhibits a quality discontinuity in parallel to a price discontinuity at 10,000 multiples of mileage. I discuss explanations for how quality adjusts to the price discontinuity. The explanations differentiate between exogenous and endogenous quality, and by the extent of the information asymmetry about quality. Quality assurance mechanisms, like used-car knowledge, trust, or recommendations, can reduce information asymmetry. Additional evidence on quality assurance shows that buyers use much more information — both before and after the purchase — than the pure inattention interpretation of left-digit-bias would suggest.     

Retrenchment: Cause of turnaround or consequence of decline?

In a recent investigation of the turnaround attempts of 32 U.S. textile firms, Robbins and Pearce (1992) concluded that retrenchment is an integral component of successful recovery from decline. In this note we critique, replicate and provide an alternative explanation for their findings using data from the same sample of firms attempting turnarounds. Based on our analyses, we find that little evidence exists to support the assertion that retrenchment is integral to turnaround. We conclude by offering several recommendations for turnaround researchers.