中国与厄瓜多尔石油贸易简析

<正>一、导言厄瓜多尔的经济基础是主要满足国内需求的石油产品以及供国内消费和出口的农产品。2008年,原油与精炼石油产品占出口收入的63%。厄瓜多尔经济年平均增长率为4.6%。促进经济增长的因素主要有石油价格居高不下,国内消费需求旺盛,非传统产品出口的增长和居住国外的厄瓜多尔人的汇款持续增加等因素。人均收入在2000年为1,296美元,2008年增长到3,961美元,贫困人口比例     

COST,QUALITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL TRADEOFFS FOR PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD ASSEMBLY

After exhausting all “pollution prevention pays” opportunities, further efforts towards environmental protection often engender some type of cost to the manufacturer. Then, designers must weigh tradeoffs between environmental impacts and equally pressing needs to reduce costs, improve product quality, and reduce cycle time: all while meeting customer demands, which are the driving force behind the design process. Although there is a growing market for “green” products as customers' desire to be environmentally responsible increases, it is extremely difficult to accurately assess the customer's actual willingness to pay for environmental protection. This paper first briefly reviews methods for assessing customer preferences. Then, it presents a decision model for use by design engineers to assist in making these tradeoffs between cost, quality, and environmental impact in which customer preferences can be reflected in weighting factors assigned by the design engineer. Qualitative HOQ information is used as a starting point to derive a mathematical programming formulation for multiobjective optimization. Finally, an illustrative example for printed circuit board assembly is provided.     

Does Consumer Protection Enhance Disclosure Credibility in Reward Crowdfunding?

We study how the interplay of disclosure and regulation shapes capital allocation in reward crowdfunding. Using data from Kickstarter, the largest online reward crowdfunding platform, we show that, even in the absence of clear regulation and enforcement mechanisms, disclosure helps entrepreneurs access capital for their projects and bolsters engagement with potential project backers, consistent with the notion that disclosure mitigates moral hazard. We further document that, subsequent to a change in Kickstarter's terms of use that increases the threat of consumer litigation, the association between project funding and disclosure becomes stronger. This evidence suggests that consumer protection regulation enhances the perceived credibility of disclosure. We find the effect of the change in terms of use to be more pronounced in states with stricter consumer protection regulations. Taken together, our findings yield important insights on the role of disclosure, as well as on the potential effects of increased regulation on crowdfunding platforms.     

Real Exchange Rates and Fundamentals: A Cross‐Country Perspective

This paper employs newly constructed measures for productivity differentials, external imbalances, and commodity terms of trade to estimate a panel cointegrating relationship between real exchange rates and a set of fundamentals for a sample of 48 industrial countries and emerging markets. It finds evidence of a strong positive relation between the consumer price index‐based real exchange rate and commodity terms of trade. The estimated impact of productivity growth differentials between traded and nontraded goods, while statistically significant, is small. Increases in net foreign assets, government consumption, and trade restrictions tend to be associated with appreciating real exchange rates.     

AFTER THE INK DRIES: THE INTERACTION OF TRUST AND CONTROL IN US-BASED INTERNATIONAL JOINT VENTURES

This study empirically examines the moderating effects of age and partner trust on the relationship between control mechanisms and perceptions of performance in 129 US‐based international joint ventures (IJVs). A reliance on formal control mechanisms and general managers’ perceptions of IJV performance were found to be positively related in younger IJVs, but this relationship became negative in more mature IJVs. In addition, social control mechanisms and perceptions of IJV performance were positively related, but only in the presence of affect‐based trust between the parents.     

STRATIFICATION AND BETWEEN‐GROUP INEQUALITY: A NEW INTERPRETATION

Traditionally, the literature has seen stratification as linked closely to within‐group inequality. More recently, some papers have focused on measuring the impact of stratification on between‐group inequality. In this paper, we show that when two groups are involved, such an impact can be measured by a simple comparison of the two cumulative distribution functions. This approach allows an interpretation of stratification in terms of probabilities and paves the way for a neat and simple graphical illustration. We apply it to the analysis of between‐continent inequality.     

RISKY VERSUS RISKLESS BARGAINING PROCEDURES: THE AUMANN‐ROTH CONTROVERSY REVISITED*

In a series of papers, Aumann and Roth discussed a game in which players can cooperate in pairs and two of them prefer to form a coalition with each other. Roth argued that the only rational outcome is that the players who prefer each other form a coalition; Aumann argued that all three coalitions are possible because the players have a problem of expectation coordination. A non‐cooperative analysis provides additional support for Aumann's arguments and shows that the difference between Aumann's and Roth's views can be traced back to a difference (risky versus/riskless) in the bargaining procedure.     

The effect of water hardness on washing performance of built and unbuilt surfactants

Five different surfactants were used at 2.0% concentrations. The most and least effective were found to be Synthrapol N and Ahcowet RS respectively; based on their rating of whiteness index. Synthrapol N and Ahcowet RS were evaluated with the addition of sodium carbonate, sodium tripolyphosphate and a 1:1 combination of the two builders. In both cases the addition of a builder improved the cleaning efficiency of the surfactant. Although each builder alone improved the cleaning efficiency, the combination of sodium carbonate and sodium tripolyphosphate improved efficiency at a lower total concentration.