Parallel imports and price controls

Price controls create opportunities for international arbitrage. Many have argued that such arbitrage, if tolerated, will undermine intellectual property rights and dull the incentives for investment in research‐intensive industries such as pharmaceuticals. We challenge this orthodox view and show, to the contrary, that the pace of innovation often is faster in a world with international exhaustion of intellectual property rights than in one with national exhaustion. The key to our conclusion is to recognize that governments will make different choices of price controls when parallel imports are allowed by their trade partners than they will when they are not.     

纵谈中国液化天然气小区气化的发展

中国开展LNG小区气化建设仅仅5年,已有106座汽化站建成投产,从建设速度到建设规模都是世界其他国家不可比拟的.这是因为:中国政府提供了宽松的投资环境;国产LNG启动了市场;进口LNG站线项目方兴未艾;LNG设备基本实现了国产化.LNG小区气化在中国具有广阔的发展前景:LNG将天然气体积缩小600多倍,可进行灵活高效的运输;LNG小区汽化站建设投资省、见效快、方式灵活;LNG汽化成本比LPG汽化成本低,价格比LPG便宜且波动小;与LPG比较,LNG更加安全可靠;LNG小区汽化工艺流程简单,容易实现自动化操作;小区汽化站可作为城镇供气源,将来还可成为城市天然气调峰和储存设施.未来中国在LNG小区气化的发展中,应注意循序渐进、合理定位,尽可能建设多功能LNG汽化站,慎重考虑运输距离和辐射半径.当前迫切需要制订适合中国国情的LNG小区气化安全管理规定和操作规程.     

On the asymptotic normality of some unbiased estimates

Abstract

Let X _m(n) =(X _j , n, ..., X _{j m,n} ) be a subset of observations of a sample X_n = (X_1n X _2n ... , X _nn ). Here the X_jn 'S in Xn are not necessarily independent or identically distributed, and m(n) mayor may not tend to infinity as n tends to infinity. Suppose the joint density function h_n =h_n (x _m (n); θ) of the X _jn 's in Xm(n) is completely specified except the values of the parameters in the parameter vector θ = (θ1 θ2, ... , θ _k ), where θ belongs to a non-degenerate open subset H of the k-dimensional Euclidean space Rk and k?m(n).     

A revisit to the dependence structure between the stock and foreign exchange markets: A dependence-switching copula approach

This paper develops a dependence-switching copula model to examine dependence and tail dependence for four different market statuses, namely, rising-stocks/appreciating-currency, falling-stocks/depreciating-currency, rising-stocks/depreciating-currency, and falling-stocks/appreciating-currency. The model is then applied to daily stock returns and exchange rate changes for six major industrial countries over the 1990–2010 period. The dependence and tail dependence among the above four market statuses are asymmetric for most countries in the negative correlation regime, but symmetric in the positive correlation regime. These results enrich the findings in the existing literature and suggest that analyzing cross-market linkages within a time-invariant copula framework may not be appropriate.     

A new look at factors influencing total quality management failure: work process control or workforce control?

By drawing on multi-case data, there is some evidence to suggest that total quality management (TQM) effectiveness can be viewed as a direct function of the controlling mechanisms that senior managers created prior to TQM implementation. More importantly, control tools of TQM were not used by non-managerial employees, with which they could reduce variability or achieve uniformity; rather, they were regarded as a weapon used by their managers against them.     

家电行业绿色供应链构建研究

电子废弃物是21世纪增长最快的垃圾之一,传统的处理方式不仅会对生态环境造成严重的污染,同时也是对可再生资源的一种浪费.本文介绍了国外发达国家针对电子废弃物所颁布的相关法令法规,分析了我国目前对电子废弃物处理的现状,在"4R"原则的指导下,对如何构建家电行业绿色供应链以及不同的回收方式进行了探讨.     

The dynamic unsubstitutability of sterilization operations and neutral-intervention operations under dual exchange rates

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether neutral-intervention operations are a substitute for sterilization operations under the dual-exchange regime from the viewpoint of dynamic adjustment. It is found that both operations will generate quite different behavior throughout the adjustment process, although they are substitutable from the viewpoint of insulating money supply from the status of the current account. In addition, we also found that if the monetary authorities either intervene in the financial foreign exchange market or undertake sterilization operations in the open market, the dual-exchange regime will lose its insulation function to external financial disturbances.     

Groups Formation and Operations in the Web 2.0 Environment and Social Networks

The Internet and the Web are evolving to a platform for collaboration, sharing, innovation and user-created content—the so-called Web 2.0 environment. This environment includes social and business networks, and it is influencing what people do on the Web and intranets, individually and in groups. This paper describes the Web 2.0 environment, its tools, applications, characteristics. It also describes various types of online groups, especially social networks, and how they operate in the Web 2.0 environment. Of special interest is the way organization members communicate and collaborate mainly via wikis and blogs. In addition, the paper includes a proposed triad relational model (Technology–People–Community) of social/work life on the Internet. Particularly, social/work groups are becoming sustainable because of the incentives for participants to connect and network with other users. A discussion of group dynamics that is based on the human needs for trust, support, and sharing, regardless if the setting is a physical or virtual one, follows. Finally, future research directions are outlined.