外资水务企业在华直接投资浅析

对外资水务企业在我国直接投资的发展阶段进行研究,认为外资水务企业在我国的直接投资大致经历了初期、扩张与撤退并存、停滞与渗透并存3个阶段;探讨了外资水务企业进入我国市场带来的主要问题,即:水务产业安全、与我国水务企业的竞争加剧、公众利益保护等。最后提出解决以上问题的方案:根据水务产业的特征将水务产业链细分成自然垄断环节和非自然垄断环节,对自然垄断环节进行严格的管制,而非自然垄断环节,可以适度引入竞争机制;通过示范效应和人才流动学习外资水务企业先进的管理经营和技术,构建我国水务企业的竞争优势;提高公众和企业的参与度,加强对外资水务企业的监督管理。     

居民参与城市森林生态服务供给的行为分析

从生态效用构成角度分析居民参与城市森林生态服务供给的行为动因,将参与城市森林生态服务供给的居民划分为关心社区绿化、受利益驱动和随波逐流等三种类型,居民对环境状况的心理偏好、对环境的满意程度、户外活动习惯以及收入水平、受教育程度、社会阅历、空气质量情况、周边环境绿化状况、周围人的态度等因素决定和影响居民参与城市森林生态服务供给行为,同时给出研究结论和相应的建议.     

On the Relation between Local Amenities and House Price Dynamics

This study explores the extent to which local amenities are related to house price volatility, returns and risk‐adjusted returns across 238 MSAs. We find strong evidence that high amenity areas experience greater price volatility. In regards to returns, high amenity areas experience greater (lower) real returns in appreciating (depreciating) markets. However, high amenity areas experience little to no abnormal risk‐adjusted returns. Results from the study are robust to an endogenous treatment of amenities and land supply elasticity. Overall, we conclude that the desirability of a metropolitan area is a significant channel through which land values drive house price dynamics.     

High Leverage and Willingness to Pay: Evidence from the Residential Housing Market

I document a strong correlation between paying the full listing price on homes and borrowing 100% loan‐to‐value. Homebuyers who do both overpay by 2.8% to 3.9% ($4,800 to $6,700) and are 22.7% more likely to have their properties foreclosed within one year. The correlation is not mechanical: there is a discontinuity in the average leverage around the full listing price. The correlation is stronger in areas with a high fraction of financially constrained and unsophisticated residents, and in areas of high past price growth (potentially indicative of buyer optimism).     

Establishing the validity of cycle path capacity assumptions in the Highway Capacity Manual

Cycle mode share increase is widely desired, but highway design practitioners lack the numerical tools to deliver infrastructure, instead relying on design standards and intuition, with little literature basis. As a case in point, the US Highway Capacity Manual (which is well used internationally) has developed levels of service for cycle infrastructure that are, at their core, based on an assumption of noninteraction between multiple cyclists. This paper uses a modified implementation of the Social Force Model to test the validity of this assumption. Necessary changes such as the consideration of acceleration characteristics and minimum maintainable speed are included. The resulting model produces valid outcomes in keeping with established traffic flow properties, reflecting three-phase traffic flow theory and the ability for the stochastic elements in traffic flow to cause flow breakdown. The developed simulation indicates that there is a fundamental difference in outcome if cyclists are assumed to have a fixed speed versus one they can change given their surroundings. This difference in outcomes is found to exist within the range of literature design flow capacities for bicycle infrastructure and also yields emergent outcomes that align closely with those known behaviors of highway vehicles, which intuitively transfer to cyclists. These findings reinforce the standing need for large-scale empirical studies to determine the basic numerical and behavioral parameters for cyclists, upon which all design ultimately rests.     

Improving the speed of adoption of agricultural technologies and farm performance through farmer groups: evidence from the Great Lakes region of Africa

The article examines the effect of membership in farmer groups (MFG) on adoption lag of agricultural technologies and farm performance in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. We use duration and stochastic production frontier models on farm household data. We find that the longer the duration of MFG, the shorter the adoption lag and much more so if combined with extension service delivery. Farmer groups function as an important mechanism for improving farm productivity through reduced technical inefficiency in input use. We discuss policy implications under which farmer groups are a useful channel to reduce adoption lag, and the means through which improved farm performance can be achieved.     

The predictive ability of a risk-adjusted yield spread for economic activity in Europe

This paper examines whether the pricing of risk is important for macroeconomic activity at the country level. We design a risk-adjusted yield spread and test its predictive content for economic activity on the periphery and the centre of Europe over the 1990–2012 period. This risk-adjusted bond yield spread is defined in a cross-country context and referred to as the GZ-type spread. Increases in the yield on corporate bonds issued in the countries on the periphery relative to the riskless yield (calculated using German zero-coupon term structure data) reflect increases in the risk premium that the financial market imposes on borrowers. The risk premium rises in all countries during European-wide recessions of the recent past, particularly those associated with the Global Financial and the Sovereign Debt Crisis. Our findings indicate further that this GZ-type spread acts as a reliable signal for imminent and near-term economic activity in countries where financial markets were shaken to their foundations during the Crisis period. For Germany, the GZ-spread has predictive content for industrial production but not for the unemployment rate. For GDP its predictive ability is confined to the EMU period.     

THE DYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF ALTERNATIVE ASSUMPTIONS ON PRICE ADJUSTMENT IN NEW KEYNESIAN MODELS

This paper presents a classification of the different new Phillips curves existing in the literature as a set of choices based on three assumptions: the choice of the structure of price adjustments (Calvo or Taylor), the presence of backward indexation and the type of price contracts (fixed prices or predetermined prices). The paper suggests study of the dynamic properties of each specification, following different monetary shocks on the growth rate of the money stock. We develop the analytical form of the price dynamics, and we display graphics for the responses of prices, output and inflation. We show that the choice made for each of the three assumptions has a strong influence on the dynamic properties. Notably, the choice of the price structure, while often considered as unimportant, is indeed the most influential choice concerning the dynamic responses of output and inflation.     

Institutional Quality and Public Debt Accumulation: An Empirical Analysis

The question of public debt management for both developed and developing economies has generated an enormous amount of political as well as academic interest. This study examines how governance affects public debt accumulation in the MENA countries during the 1996–2015 period. The six Worldwide Governance indicators (voice and accountability, political stability and the absence of violence/terrorism, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption) were used to measure the quality of governance in these countries. The results show that only three governance indicators support well the hypothesis that poor governance leads to higher accumulation of MENA public debt. Moreover, the estimates suggest a significant indirect impact of bad governance operating via decreased GDP growth. These findings have important implications for policy makers of these countries, which are currently facing major fiscal and external imbalances due to the high cost of war and terrorist attacks, low oil prices and a decline in trade. Sound public debt management represents an urgent task especially that public debt management problems often find their origins in the lack of attention paid by policymakers to the costs of bad governance and weak macroeconomic management.     

Mergers of not-for-profit hospitals in the 1980s: Who were the most likely targets?

Proponents argue that mergers should be encouraged as a legitimate strategy to avert (presumably undesirable) hospital closures. More recently, antitrust activity directed at not-for-profit hospitals has intensified. This study attempts to shed some light on the policy debate by testing whether merger targets are indeed candidates for closure, namely hospitals with persistent losses. Acquisitions of independent not-for-profit hospitals by other hospitals and by multihospital corporations are observed from a national sample for the period 1982–1987. The likelihood of being acquired in during any year within that period is estimated using a discrete-time hazard rate model. We find no evidence to support the notion that hospitals with weak financial indicators are more likely to be acquired. Rather, we find that hospitals with high operating-margins that are located in less regulated markets, and to a certain extent in high-growth markets, are more likely to be acquired. These findings cast doubt on certain predictions found in the theoretical literature, but are in agreement with empirical studies of other industries.