What types of homeowners are more likely to be entrepreneurs? The evidence from China

Small Business Economics - This paper highlights a previously undocumented observation regarding the heterogeneity of the association between entrepreneurship and homeownership across ownership...     

Reassessing the productivity gains from trade liberalization

This paper reassesses the impact of trade liberalization on productivity. We build a new, unique database of effective tariff rates at the country‐industry level for a broad range of countries over the past two decades. We then explore both the direct effect of liberalization in the sector considered, as well as its indirect impact in downstream industries via input linkages. Our findings point to a dominant role of the indirect input market channel in fostering productivity gains. A 1 percentage point decline in input tariffs is estimated to increase total factor productivity by about 2 percent in the sector considered. For advanced economies, the implied potential productivity gains from fully eliminating remaining tariffs are estimated at around 1 percent, on average, which do not factor in the presumably larger gains from removing existing non‐tariff barriers. Finally, we find suggestive evidence of complementarities between trade and FDI liberalization in boosting productivity. This calls for a broad liberalization agenda that cuts across different areas.     

Measuring price discovery between nearby and deferred contracts in storable and nonstorable commodity futures markets

Using price discovery measures, including Putniņš’ (2013) information leadership share and intraday data, we quantify the proportional contribution of nearby and deferred contracts in price discovery in the corn and live cattle futures markets. On average, nearby contracts reflect information more quickly than deferred contracts in the corn market, but have a relatively less dominant role in the live cattle market. In both markets, the nearby contract loses dominance when its relative volume share dips below 50%, which typically occurs when the nearby is close to maturity. Regression results indicate that the share of price discovery is mainly related to trading volume and time to expiration in both markets. In the corn market, price discovery share between nearby and deferred contracts is also related to inverse carrying charges, crop year differences, USDA announcements, market crashes, and commodity index position rolls. Differences between corn and live cattle markets are consistent with differences in the contracts’ liquidity and commodity storability.     

Understanding Heterogeneous Consumer Preferences in Chinese Milk Markets: A Latent Class Approach

We examine heterogeneous consumer preferences in Chinese milk markets. Using a discrete choice experiment, we examine how the brand, quality certification, traceability label and price influence consumers' milk choices. We identify four consumer segments using a latent class model: price conscious (9.8%), balanced thinking (19.8%), health conscious (57.5%), and environment conscious (12.9%) consumers. These four segments have distinct preferences: price conscious consumers prefer green certification; balanced thinking consumers have the highest willingness to pay for traceability labels; health conscious consumers have strong brand awareness; and environment conscious consumers prefer organic certification and traceability labels and use price as a quality signal. Such diversity of consumer preference can be explained by four psychological factors: price consciousness, food safety concerns, health consciousness and environmental concerns.     

The impact of trading restrictions and margin requirements on stock index futures

Stock index futures in Chinese market have consistently diverged from their theoretical values. In this paper, we try to provide some explanations by proposing an equilibrium model. Although the model itself does not provide analytical solutions, it enables us to conduct extensive numerical studies and compare them with our empirical results on two major Chinese market indices, CSI300 and SSE50. Our results show that the divergence of stock index futures prices from their theoretical values may be due to various trading and regulatory constraints, such as position limits and margin requirements, which play significant roles in Chinese market.     

荧光碳量子点探针应用于食品中Mn(Ⅶ)的高灵敏度检测

本文首次建立了一种基于硫、氯和氮共掺杂的碳量子点(S,Cl,N-CQDs)的新型荧光探针,并将其用于高锰酸根离子Mn(Ⅶ)的高效测定。其检测原理是基于Mn(Ⅶ)对S,Cl,N-CQDs荧光的猝灭效应。在最佳工作条件下,基于S,Cl,N-CQDs的荧光探针对Mn(Ⅶ)检测具有高灵敏度,在0.1~110μmol·L-1浓度范围具有良好的线性范围,检测限低至13.1 nmol·L-1。所建立的荧光方法具有简单、分析速度快和成本低的优点。     

金音石砚有传奇

"兼长翰墨世俱钦,一袭征袍万里心,艳说胭脂鲜血代,谁知草檄有金音。"1944年,郭沫若在重庆参观明末女英雄秦良玉文物展时,挥毫写下了《咏秦良玉诗四首》,这即是其中之一。在这首诗中,郭沫若作了一个注释,"石柱有金音石,可作砚,传秦良玉草檄用之。"意思是说石柱县有一种金音石,可以制作成砚台,传说秦良玉就曾经用金音石砚来草拟过檄文。金音石砚的来头可不小,它与重庆的夔砚、峡石砚并称"巴渝三大名砚"。由于历史上金音石砚制作时断时续,流传于世的精品更是凤毛麟角,渐渐地不为人熟知。     

Chinese cross‐border mergers and acquisitions in the developing world: Is Africa unique?

China has emerged as an important partner for Africa. Not surprisingly, Chinese business and investment relations with Africa have been growing. This article contends that Africa offers a different proposition to Chinese business interests in non‐African developing economies. In this optic, it takes a “comparative” institution‐based view treating factors that determine Chinese multinationals' cross‐border merger and acquisition (CBMA) decisions as comparatively different for Africa to the rest of the developing world. From a panel data estimation of the number of Chinese CBMAs from 2007 to 2016, we find among market size, natural resources, strategic assets, labor productivity, and institutional governance, only natural resources and market size have a distinctive effect, with Chinese investors being more attracted to African natural resources than the African market. The drive for natural resources provides impetus for Chinese MNEs to choose CBMAs over greenfield investment, and through majority ownership to exercise control. Our inference is that Africa is “significantly” different from other developing regions, in terms of CBMAs, as Chinese multinationals have a strong motive to control access to natural resources.     

加强村镇银行网络信息安全的做法及相关建议

村镇银行作为金融业的新兴力量,逐步成为推动区域经济发展、强化金融服务的重要力量。指导村镇银行网络信息安全是一项长期、艰巨的工作,应密切关注村镇银行的网络安全状况以及安全技术,确保村镇银行的信息安全。本文介绍了人民银行九江市中心支行指导辖内村镇银行网络信息安全的基本做法,如加强组织领导、落实业务指导、增强沟通协调,并对加强村镇银行网络信息安全提出提升网络安全风险意识、加强人员技术水平、提高制度执行力等建议。     

网上技术交易趋势预测模型及应用研究

网上技术交易平台开展交易趋势预测和交易潜力识别，可提高平台技术信息管理水平和网上技术市场运作效率。从网上技术市场和专利情报分析理论出发，提出网上技术交易趋势预测分析指标，设计构建预测模型和相关流程方法，并以广州知识产权交易中心的网上挂牌专利数据为例，进行定量测度和评价分析，从而提出发展网上交易服务能力的建议。结果表明，提出的技术交易趋势预测模型与流程具有适用性和可操作性，可针对网上平台技术资源确定差异化预测类型及其关键影响指标，建立基于技术领域分类的平台分析体系。研究结论可为网上平台设计基于自身特点的技术信息管理策略，提高信息服务专业化能力提供参考。