Expanding Childminding Provision in Areas of Deprivation

This paper suggests that Government plans to increase childminding provision in areas of deprivation may be seen as an entrepreneurial opportunity for lone parents in receipt of welfare benefits. But if it is to offer a route out of poverty, they will need integrated, specialist and continuing assistance to negotiate the fragmented systems currently associated with business and personal finances, and to understand the inter-connections between them. The findings from a small-scale feasibility project are presented as the starting point for the development of a recruitment and support strategy which foregrounds the financial aspects of childminding.     

德意志银行风险管理的借鉴与启示

该文总结学习了德意志银行的全球风险管理框架、稳健的发展战略、国家风险管理以及科学的银行风险管理技术;认为我国商业银行应尽快构建完整独立的全面风险管理框架,完善商业银行全面风险的管理模式。     

Barriers to Matching New Technologies and Market Opportunities in Established Firms

In industries that produce high‐technology products or are reliant on technology for administrative or manufacturing processes, it is essential appropriately to link technologies to markets in order to increase shareholder value and to build future cash flows. Research and development (R&D) allocations in such industries are greatly dependent on forecasts of the R&D project's estimated potential contribution to future cash flows, which is related to the project's ability to satisfy current or future customer needs. The resource allocation decisions are difficult, however, since both markets and technology are likely to be highly uncertain. Although the innovation literature ably has addressed specific relationships between certain factors and new product development outcomes, less attention has been given to obstacles faced in linking technology to markets. Grounded in a literature‐based discussion of technology and market opportunity, the authors develop a conceptual framework for identifying and understanding the barriers facing managers in the process of matching technologies to market opportunities. Technology and market barriers include technology‐market linkage, technology availability, technology and market capabilities of competitors, and business model feasibility. Strategy and structure barriers include competition for limited resources, technology capabilities, technology portfolio goals, current market strategies, and competition for control of market charters. Social and cultural barriers include interpretive and communication barriers between functional units and language and cultural barriers within the technology workforce. The article concludes with implications for researchers and managers. The conceptual framework presented here can encourage the development of a stream of research in the area of technology strategy and planning processes, allowing researchers to improve our understanding of the process of technology innovation. Managers can use the framework as a guide for addressing a wide range of issues related to the process of matching technologies to market opportunities. For example, rather than relying strictly on cash flow projections for estimating the value of a new technology, managers also should consider how the technology could create new market opportunities or could reshape existing ones.     

金融市场创新产品运行监测分析报告

从2006年开始,中国人民银行上海总部金融市场管理部以2004年以来人民银行推出的金融创新产品为基础,持续进行跟踪评估。跟踪结果表明,2007年,金融创新产品运行平稳,基础性产品规模迅速扩大,交易类创新产品规模呈爆炸性增长;金融创新产品的流动性显著提高;对扩大直接融资比例、降低融资成本、管理金融风险、推动利率市场化进程等方面发挥着重要作用。监管部门应坚持将丰富创新产品类型作为金融市场的核心环节加以推动,重点考虑逐步放宽对创新产品的投资限制,解决市场运行的环境问题。金融创新产品对于扩大Shibor作为基准利率的使用,可以发挥更大的推动作用。     

Asymmetry and downside risk in foreign exchange markets

Abstract

This paper evaluates the double gamma distribution as a means of modelling asymmetry in the conditional distribution of financial data. To do this the model is applied to ten exchange rate series covering mature and emerging market countries. A second contribution of this paper is to highlight the link between the double gamma distribution and the measurement of the second lower partial moment (or semi-variance). The resulting empirical performance of the double gamma model is found to be mixed when compared to a symmetric GARCH-t model. Estimates of conditional downside risk based on the double gamma model are constructed for each series. The results for the Malaysian Riggit, Zimbabwe Dollar and the Korean Won demonstrate the extreme downside volatility experienced by these countries during the emerging markets currency crisis.     

中国债券市场发展回顾与展望

改革开放30年来,中国债券市场已经发展成以银行间市场为主、交易所市场为辅,涵盖各类机构投资者和债券投资品种的多层次债券市场体系。文章介绍了中国债券市场的发展历程与目前的运行结构,并从推进市场创新、完善债券收益率曲线等方面对债券市场的发展前景进行了展望。     

A strategic and welfare theoretic analysis of free trade areas

We construct a three-country model to determine how the formation of free trade areas (FTAs) affects optimal tariffs and welfare. We find that, at constant rest of the world (ROW) tariffs, the adoption of internal free trade induces union members to reduce their external tariffs below the Kemp-Wan [J. Int. Econom. 6 (1976) 95-97] level, and causes ROW's terms of trade to improve and its welfare to rise. When ROW also behaves optimally, its policy response to the formation of the FTA is to raise tariffs. Generally, FTA members prefer to liberalize internal trade partially and find regional integration appealing only if their collective size is sufficiently large. We also demonstrate how FTAs may undermine the attainment of global free trade.     

Misallocation and productivity effects of the Smoot–Hawley tariff

Using a newly created microeconomic archive of US imports at the tariff line level for 1930–1933, we construct industry-level tariff wedges incorporating the input–output structure of US economy and the heterogeneous role of imports across sectors of the economy. We use these wedges to show that the average tariff rate of 46% in 1933 substantially understated the true impact of the Smoot–Hawley (SH) tariff structure, which we estimate to be equivalent to a uniform tariff rate of 70%. We use these wedges to calculate the impact of the Smoot–Hawley tariffs on total factor productivity and welfare. In our benchmark parameterization, we find that tariff protection reduced TFP by 1.2% relative to free trade prior to the Smoot–Hawley legislation. TFP fell by an additional 0.5% between 1930 and 1933 due to Smoot–Hawley. We also conduct counterfactual policy exercises and examine the sensitivity of our results to changes in the elasticity of substitution and the import share. A doubling of the substitution elasticities yields a TFP decline of almost 5% relative to free trade, with an additional reduction due to SH of 0.4%.     

男性网络消费增加解密网购服装的男性顾客

长久以来老是让人捉摸不透的男性顾客正在越来越频繁地上例购买服装,而shopBop网的员工们正在摩拳擦掌地准备迎战