Double Dividend with Involuntary Unemployment: Efficiency and Intergenerational Equity

This paper analyzes the double dividend and distributional issues within an overlapping generations model framework with involuntary unemployment. We characterize the necessary conditions needed to obtain a double dividend, when the revenue of the environmental tax is recycled by a variation of the labor tax rate. We show that an employment dividend may occur without any efficiency dividend and that the young generation is not always harmed by the fiscal reform, even without any intergenerational transfers. Therefore, three dividends (environmental, efficiency and intergenerational equity) can occur simultaneously.     

知识经济时代呼唤工程咨询监理业

如何面对知识经济的挑战,如何迎接知识经济的到来?对于以知识和智力劳动来创造价值的,与知识经济有着天然亲情的咨询机构,在思考和解答这个问题时,应该是一个先知先觉者.应透过当前我国国有大中型企业不景气,咨询市场难开拓的暂时现象,看到咨询业大有作为的明天.本文仅对咨询业的一个新兴领域--"信息工程咨询监理业"进行剖析,试图对以上问题作出几点回答.     

中国石油业的安全形势分析与发展策略选择

我国在充分发挥政治、外交、经济等多种手段保障能源安全的同时，还应重点考虑如何以能源节约、体制改革、科技进步、国际合作、建立石油储备以保障石油安全供应的措施，并针对这一问题提出相应的对策。     

中国改革时期省际生产率增长变化的实证分析(1979-2001年)

中国经济的发展是否正在背离比较优势的原则?今后中国是否要加快经济增长模式的转变?该文试图通过对省际全要素生产率(TFP)及其组成部分的测算,从技术效率和技术进步这两个不同的方面来考察中国改革开放以来的TFP增长性质和近几年来的变化趋势,以便为相关政策讨论提供一些实证依据.我们的研究结果表明,中国经济增长在1978-1995年期间经历了一个TFP高增长期(为4.6%);而在1996-2001年期间出现低增长期(为0.6%),其变化的具体特征为:技术进步速度减慢、技术效率有所下降.     

Pricing-to-market tests in instrumental regressions: Case of the transportation equipment industry

Pricing-to-market (PTM) theory suggests that exporting monopolistic firms adjust their destination-specific mark-ups in the face of exchange rate shocks. A large proportion of the existing evidence for PTM comes from Wald tests applied to OLS- and IV-estimated parameters of single-equation models. Such tests can seriously over-reject in the presence of endogeneity and weak instruments so that some of the available results supporting PTM could be spurious. In this paper we revisit the PTM evidence for Japanese and German exporting firms in the transportation equipment industry. Using the model of Marston (1990), we apply exogeneity and LR-LIML-based tests for which the error probability is controlled irrespective of the quality of the available instruments. Our results show right-hand-side endogeneity in almost all of the examined PTM equations. In addition, we find that statistical decisions often differ depending on whether they are based on the traditional Wald test or on our proposed test.The authors would like to thank Philippe Barla, Jean-Thomas Bernard, Christos Constantatos, Larry Schembri, seminar participants at the Bank of Canada, and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Richard Marston for providing data. Finally, a special thanks to Marjorie Santos for excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are our own and should not be attributed to the Bank of Canada.First version received: May 2002/Final version received: December 2002     

Art as an investment: Short and long-term comovements in major painting markets

This paper examines the short and long-term price linkages among major art and equity markets over the period 1976–2001. The art markets examined are Contemporary Masters, French Impressionists, Modern European, 19^th Century European, Old Masters, Surrealists, 20^th Century English and Modern US paintings. A global equity index (with dividends and capitalisation changes) is also included. Multivariate cointegration procedures, Granger non-causality tests, level VAR and generalised variance decomposition analyses based on error-correction and vector autoregressive models are conducted to analyse short and long-run relationships among these markets. The results indicate that there is a stationary long-run relationship and significant short and long run causal linkages between the various painting markets and between the equity market and painting markets. However, in terms of the percentage of variance explained most painting markets are relatively isolated, and other painting markets are generally more important than the equity market in explaining the variance that is not caused by innovations in the market itself. This suggests that opportunities for portfolio diversification in art works alone and in conjunction with equity markets exist, though in common with the literature in this area the study finds that the returns on paintings are much lower and the risks much higher than in conventional financial markets.The authors would like to thank delegates to the 14th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, University of New South Wales, seminar participants at the Queensland University of Technology and Massey University, Masaki Katsuura, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The financial assistance of a Queensland University of Technology, Faculty of Business Research Initiative Grant is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Using data envelopment analysis approach to estimate the health production efficiencies in China

By using Data Envelopment Analysis approach, we treat the health production system in a certain province as a Decision Making Unit (DMU), identify its inputs and outputs, evaluate its technical efficiency in 1982, 1990 and 2000 respectively, and further analyze the relationship between efficiency scores and social-environmental variables. This paper has found several interesting findings. Firstly, provinces on frontier in different year are different, but provinces far from the frontier keep unchanged. The average efficiency of health production has made a significant progress from 1982 to 2000. Secondly, all provinces in China can be divided into six categories in terms of health production outcome and efficiency, and each category has specific approach of improving health production efficiency. Thirdly, significant differences in health production efficiencies have been found among the eastern, middle and western regions in China, and among the eastern and middle regions. At last, there is significant positive relationship between population density and health production efficiency but negative relationship (not very significant) between the proportions of public health expenditure in total expense and efficiency. Maybe it is the result of inappropriate tendency of public expenditure. The relationship between abilities to pay for health care services and efficiency in urban areas is opposite to that in rural areas. One possible reason is the totally different income and public services treatments between rural and urban residents. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust health policies and service provisions which are specifically designed to different population groups. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2006, (7): 92–105     

Explaining momentum profits with an epidemic diffusion model

We show that information diffusion is a function of its dissemination and assimilation. Whereas dissemniation is a function of observable factors such as volume and price volatility, assimilation is dependent on unobservable factors such as the usefulness and reliability of information. We find that buying low volume (or low volatility) past losers and shortselling low volume (or low volatility) past winners generates a positive net return across the entire sample period and especially during bear markets. Second, buying high volatility past winners and shortselling high volatility past losers generates a positive net return, especially during bear markets.     

物流系统货物损失分析及模糊综合评价

针对我国物流系统货物损失现状,阐述了物流系统货物损失的概念、种类及影响,提出了应用模糊综合评价方法评判物流系统货物损失的思路与方法。