Inter-vivos Transfers and Exchange

Most parents divide their bequests equally among their children, whereas inter-vivos transfers are usually unequal. We propose that exchange is better for inducing inter-vivos transfers than bequests. Inter-vivos transfers can be adjusted quickly to the amount of care, are less costly than writing a will, and can be kept secret from other family members and the public. The results from national longitudinal data show that, as expected, if a parent gives any inter-vivos transfers, she is more likely to give to children who provide informal care. Informal care has no effect on the equality of intended bequests.     

Earnings Attribution and Information Transfers

Managers frequently attribute the news in their earnings forecasts to various economic events. Using textual analysis, we identify the economic factors underlying earnings news from press releases. We document a wide range of industry‐wide shocks and firm‐specific actions to which the earnings news in management forecasts is attributed. As expected, earnings attributions significantly affect peer firms’ price reactions to the earnings news. Specifically, earnings news attributed to industry‐wide trends or firm structural changes leads to positive information transfers but earnings news attributed to firm competitive moves triggers negative information transfers. Information transfers are much stronger when each economic factor is mentioned the first time in a given industry‐year. Further analysis reveals that the strength of information transfers varies with firm‐level rivalry within the industry (i.e., similar business strategies, market position, and level of competition).     

账户金与实物金的对比

2006年是我国加入WTO后承诺五年过渡期的最后一年，金融市场的全面开放迫在眉捷。对于我国许多投资者而言，将黄金作为投资品还相当陌生。     

Sibling Rivalry and Strategic Parental Transfers

This paper develops a noncooperative Nash model in which two siblings compete for their parents' financial transfers. Treating sibling rivalry as a “rent-seeking contest” and using a Tullock-Skaperdas contest success function, we derive the conditions under which more financial resources are transferred to the sibling with lower earnings. We find that parental transfers are compensatory and that the family as an institution serves as an “income equalizer.” Within a sequential game framework, we characterize the endogeneity of parental transfers and link it to parents' income, altruism, and children's supply of merit goods (e.g., parent-child companionship or child services). We show that merit goods are subject to a “moral hazard” problem from the parents' perspective.     

On Income Transfers and Equivalence Scales

This article focusses on the relations between equivalence scales and income transfers linked to household characteristics, also called demogrants. Since transfer payments have to be financed, the relation is analyzed in the framework of an optimal tax model. The – in a second-best sense – optimal demogrants and optimal marginal tax rate are characterised by their first-order conditions. Some general properties of the demogrant structure are derived and discussed. Finally, an adopted version of Stern's model for the numerical calculation of optimal taxes is used to obtain more explicit indications about how different factors affect the structure of demogrants and the marginal tax rate.     

Taxes and Transfers 1997-2001

Significant change was made to both tax and benefits systemsduring the period 1997–2001. The impact of the changeswhich directly affect households is highly progressive, reflectinga significant increase in means-tested benefit levels. But theunderlying distribution of income has moved such that overallinequality of income has not fallen, and the government hasmade less progress on reducing poverty than it had hoped.     

钱币与邮品

“生活之近,艺术之远”是多年来贴在钱币和邮品这类藏品上的标签。不可否认．它们属于“真金白银”之类．这也在无形中成了它们远离艺术的界栏。然艺术之精深博大,更在于其所蕴含的精神命脉．正如钱币对历史变换的写照、如邮品对生命距离的感叹。此间艺术不在于风雅．而在于其重视与贴近生命的独特魅力．从而彰显出的特殊气质和风韵。     

Careless Money and Lottery

Careless money is the money or interests that can be neglected in personal economic activities such as shopping, donation and entertainment. It is discovered that careless money has quantitative relation, which is One per mill, with individual＇s income＇as well as volume of the transaction. We name it the millesimal law. It is universally true that the law facilitates government to decide that rational amount of lottery should be issued, and help individual make rational decisions on investment.     

Gender and Ethnicity--Married Immigrants in Britain

In this paper we investigate the economic activity of marriedor cohabiting female immigrants in Britain. We distinguish betweentwo immigrant groups: foreign-born females who belong to anethnic-minority group and their husbands, and foreign-born whitefemales and their husbands. We compare these to native-bornwhite women and their husbands. Our analysis deviates from theusual mean analysis and investigates employment, hours workedand earnings for males and females, as well as their combinedfamily earnings, along the distribution of husbands' economicpotential. We analyse the extent to which economic disadvantagemay be reinforced at the household level and investigate theextent to which it can be explained by differences in observablecharacteristics. We find that white female immigrants and theirhusbands have an overall advantage in earnings over white nativeborn, both individually and at the household level. Minorityimmigrants do less well, in particular at the lower end of thehusbands' economic potential distribution. This is mainly dueto the low employment of both genders, which leads to a disadvantagein earnings, intensified at the household level. Only part ofthis differential can be explained by observable characteristics. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: c.dustmann{at}ucl.ac.uk; francesca.fabbri{at}lrz.uni-muenchen.de     

山西老鹳窝与济南移民

周末游走在济南的大街小巷,听到有老人对几个小孩子说咱是山西洪洞县老鹳窝底下的人。为了证实这种说法,老人让孩子们看了小脚趾甲,说凡是过去从山西洪洞县老鹳窝底下迁来的,最小的那个脚趾甲都是两瓣的。原来,不仅在济南,在山东其他县市,在河南、在安徽……乃至大半个中国,都有这样一种说法。传说让我们不禁去追寻、还原发生在明代的那些惊天动地的老鹳窝底下事件的真相。     

Sibling Rivalry and Strategic Parental Transfers: A Comment

This note shows that Proposition 5 in Chang and Weisman (Southern Economic Journal 71:821–36) contains a mistake. Although not affecting the paper's basic intuition, our result shows that the parental transfer under the noncooperative game could be less than under the cooperative one if the children oversupply family services.     

Incumbency and Distributive Politics: Intergovernmental Transfers in Mexico

In this article, the objective is to focus on the likelihood that politicians will rely on intergovernmental transfers to pursue political ambition. In what circumstances are incumbents more likely to rely on transfers to win votes, than to reward core supporters? How are constraints (introduced to ensure that politicians rely on predetermined formulae which reduce the incentive to design transfers to win re‐election) likely to influence “distributive politics?” Predictions in this article are tested with reference to intergovernmental transfers to 31 Mexican states between 2004 and 2012.     

Money illusion and aggregation bias

Summary This note shows that what often has been called money illusion in macro consumption functions can well be due to aggregation bias: micro consumption functions that are homogeneous of order one in (nominal) income, (nominal) wealth and prices may result in an aggregate consumption function that does not show such a homogeneity.Thanks are due to Professors W. H. Somermeyer and T. Kloek for positive criticism on the first draft of this paper.     

Money creation and economic activity

Summary In the Netherlands not much attention is paid to money supply figures as an indicator of actual monetary conditions. This can be partly explained by the publication lag and the continuous revisions of seasonally adjusted data. However, the information that can be derived from money supply figures is limited because of temporary disturbances originating from the foreign exchange market. In this paper a correction method for these temporary disturbances is proposed. Money supply figures show a much closer link to real economic activity when corrected in this way.A different version of this essay with less emphasis on Holland but more information about other West-European countries has been published as chapter II Watching the money supply in: Eduard J. Bomhoff,Monetary Uncertainty, Amsterdam and New York, 1983. We gratefully acknowledge the able research assistance of Isolde B. Woittiez and Geert Rouwenhorst; Kempen and Co. kindly provided the two figures.