Russian enterprises in mid-2010: Slow improvements in the context of a high degree of economic uncertainty

The results of a recent regular survey of opinions among enterprises of the real economy sector, which was conducted by the Laboratory for the Analysis and Forecasting of Microeconomic Processes of the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the RAS (IEF), are analyzed in this paper.     

Russian industries at the beginning of 2011: Current issues and investment climate

The results of a regular survey of companies in the real economic sector conducted by the laboratory of analysis and forecasting of microeconomical processes of the Institute of Economic Forecasting, Russian Academy of Sciences, are analyzed and commented.     

The Changing Pattern of Productive Efficiency in the Chinese Iron and Steel Industry

This study aims to explain the changing pattern of productive efficiency of the Chinese iron and steel industry during the 1980s. By decomposing productive inefficiency into technical, allocative and scale inefficiencies, the effect of market-oriented reform measures on inefficient resource utilization is empirically tested. A consistent improvement is found in technical efficiency from different sized firms. An improvement in allocative efficiency of investment in upgrading and innovation from different sized firms is also found. Allocative efficiency of working capital was found to have hardly improved which could be largely due to distorted factor markets. Different sized firms exhibited scale inefficiency which could be due to segmented local production and the impact of a two-tier price system on the distribution of production share among firms.     

E-commerce sellers' ratings: Is user feedback adequate?

The literature on the theory of public procurement points out two well-known informational problems arising out of information asymmetry: (i) adverse selection and (ii) moral hazard. To reduce these issues and foster credibility and trust in the procurement process while maintaining quality and efficiency in public procurement, e-procurement platforms have turned to reputation or rating systems. Therefore, the research and design of such rating systems are crucial. In this study, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of procurement and employ the information-theoretic, regression analysis, artificial neural network and principal component analysis (PCA) approaches to estimate the weights of the variables entering the rating system. Using real data from Government e-Marketplace, a business-to-business public e-commerce portal, we empirically determine the weights of the rating variables derived from the transaction-level and user feedback data for sellers. The weights obtained from the PCA are the most applicable compared with the other three methods. We compare the old rating system with the newly proposed design using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. This results in a statistically significant difference between the two ratings. The canonical correlation and Wilks' trial reveal that the ratings derived from transaction-level data and user feedback are uncorrelated to a great extent. Hence, considering only transaction-level data or user feedback is unlikely to divulge sellers' intrinsic worth. E-commerce platforms can use this approach to quickly implement methods to obtain rating scores on a real-time basis for sellers on online platforms.     

School and family environments promote adolescents' financial confidence: Indirect paths to financial literacy skills in Finnish PISA 2018

This study investigates the associations of adolescents' financial socialization factors—financial education in school and families—with financial confidence (i.e., confidence in using financial and digital financial services). In addition, we examine how financial socialization factors indirectly relate to financial literacy skills through financial confidence and the role of demographic factors (adolescent gender, grade level, parental education, family wealth) on financial socialization, financial confidence, and financial literacy scores. We used data on the 4328 Finnish 15-year-olds participating in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We measured financial literacy by cognitive test items and assessed financial socialization and financial confidence by adolescent questionnaires. First, the results showed that financial education in school positively predicted adolescents' confidence in using financial and digital financial services. Second, financial education at schools and in families indirectly predicted students' financial literacy through confidence in using digital financial services. Third, older adolescents were more exposed to financial education at school and in families, whereas adolescents from wealthier families and girls (vs. boys) were exposed to a more frequent discussion of financial matters with parents at home. Furthermore, the boys were more confident in using financial services than the girls, although the financial literacy score did not differ by gender; older adolescents were more confident in using financial services and achieved better financial literacy than younger ones. Finally, higher parental education in the family related to higher financial literacy but not to higher financial confidence, whereas family wealth was related to higher financial confidence but not financial literacy.     

Optimal measure preserving derivatives revisited

This article clarifies the relationship between pricing kernel monotonicity and the existence of opportunities for stochastic arbitrage in a complete and frictionless market of derivative securities written on a market portfolio. The relationship depends on whether the payoff distribution of the market portfolio satisfies a technical condition called adequacy, meaning that it is atomless or is comprised of finitely many equally probable atoms. Under adequacy, pricing kernel nonmonotonicity is equivalent to the existence of a strong form of stochastic arbitrage involving distributional replication of the market portfolio at a lower price. If the adequacy condition is dropped then this equivalence no longer holds, but pricing kernel nonmonotonicity remains equivalent to the existence of a weaker form of stochastic arbitrage involving second-order stochastic dominance of the market portfolio at a lower price. A generalization of the optimal measure preserving derivative is obtained, which achieves distributional replication at the minimum cost of all second-order stochastically dominant securities under adequacy.