Crises in Asia: Recovery and policy responses

The goal of this paper is to provide stylized facts on recovery from economic downturns and to evaluate the role of macroeconomic policies in promoting recovery. In particular, we examine gross domestic product (GDP) recessions and financial downturns (credit contractions and stock price declines) using data from 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies and 21 developing Asian economies. We find, in general, recovery from a GDP recession in the Asian economies is somewhat slower than in the OECD economies. However, recovery from a financial downturn is not much different between Asia and the OECD. We also find the OECD economies have been more active and effective in using counter-cyclical policies than the Asian economies in the face of GDP recessions and financial downturns. Recent evidence, however, suggests the Asian economies may have better success in the current global crisis.     

Persistence and Change at the Top of the IT Sector

We use the DATAMATION index of the top 50 domestic IT companies (1975–1995) to track persistence and change at the top of the sector. The trends that we uncover are increasing instability, rejuvenation (declining average age of entrants coupled with increasing average age of quitters), democratization (diminishing revenue inequality at the top) and growing supply‐side intertwining of sub‐sectors and industries within IT due to diversification by long‐term survivors.     

Quasitransitive social preference: why some very large coalitions have very little power

Summary. If only the strict part of social preference is required to be transitive then Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives implies that there is a coalition containing all but one individual that cannot force x to be socially ranked above y for at least half of the pairs of alternatives (x,y). Received: August 29, 1996; revised version: March 24, 1997     

当中国向世界展示设计主导而非研发主导的创新时

增长市场的关键不在于对科技研发主导的产品进行逐步的改善和优化，真正的业务增长来自于对用户的理解：揭示消费者未被满足的，未被提出的需求，然后满足这些需求     

China's health care reform: A tentative assessment

China has recently unveiled an ambitious new health-care reform plan, entailing a doubling of government health spending as well as a number of concrete reforms. While the details of the plan have not yet been completely announced, we offer a preliminary assessment of how well the reform is likely to achieve its stated goal of assuring every citizen equal access to affordable basic health care. The reform is based on three fundamental tenets: strong role of government in health, commitment to equity, and willingness to experiment with regulated market approaches. Within this framework, the reform offers a number of laudable changes to the health system, including an increase in public health financing, an expansion of primary health facilities and an increase in subsidies to achieve universal insurance coverage. However, it fails to address the root causes of the wastes and inefficiencies plaguing China's health care system, such as a fragmented delivery system and provider incentives to over-provide expensive tests and services. We conclude that China should consider changing the provider payment method from fee-for-service to a prospective payment method such as DRG or capitation with pay-for-performance, and to develop purchasing agencies that represent the interests of the population so as to enhance competition.