Non-market valuation of forest goods and services: Good practice guidelines

The European COST Action E45 on European Forest Externalities (EUROFOREX) participants developed a set of good practice guidelines for the non-market valuation of forests, elaborating on stated and revealed preference methodologies, as well as benefit transfer and meta-analytical procedures. This article presents a summary of the guidelines.     

Flexible Working,Individual Performance,and Employee Attitudes: Comparing Formal and Informal Arrangements

In the context of a wider trend to individualize human resource management, this article examines the relationship between flexible working arrangements and individual performance. Drawing on a range of theories, this article also examines potential indirect effects on employee performance via job satisfaction and organizational commitment and analyzes whether these relationships vary according to whether the arrangement was set up through a formal process or negotiated informally between the employee and his or her line manager. Extant research has tended to focus on formal arrangements, however, informal arrangements are widespread and may better accommodate work‐life preferences, thereby potentially fostering more positive attitudes from employees. Survey data from 2,617 employees in four large organizations with well‐established flexible working policies are analyzed. Results from structural equation models show average positive indirect effects from informal flexible working, but also negative direct effects from formal flexible working. When two forms of flexible working amenable to being set up by both formal and informal means are examined separately, formal arrangements for flexibility over working hours are found to be negatively associated with performance, but also a source of greater job satisfaction; informal remote working arrangements have positive indirect effects via organizational commitment and job satisfaction on worker performance. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

煤发热量含义及其相互关系

指出煤的发热量是一项重要指标。重点介绍不同燃烧状态,不同基准的发热量的含义及其相互关系。     

Optimal prepayment and default rules for mortgage-backed securities

We study the optimal stopping problems embedded in a typical mortgage. Despite a possible non-rational behaviour of the typical borrower of a mortgage, such problems are worth to be solved for the lender to hedge against the prepayment risk, and because many mortgage-backed securities pricing models incorporate this suboptimality via a so-called prepayment function which can depend, at time t, on whether the prepayment is optimal or not. We state the prepayment problem in the context of the optimal stopping theory and present an algorithm to solve the problem via weak convergence of computationally simple trees. Numerical results in the case of the Vasicek model and of the CIR model are also presented. The procedure is extended to the case when both the prepayment as well as the default are possible: in this case, we present a new method of building two-dimensional computationally simple trees, and we apply it to the optimal stopping problem.     

Methods for Default and Robust Bayesian Model Comparison: the Fractional Bayes Factor Approach

In the Bayesian approach to model selection and hypothesis testing, the Bayes factor plays a central role. However, the Bayes factor is very sensitive to prior distributions of parameters. This is a problem especially in the presence of weak prior information on the parameters of the models. The most radical consequence of this fact is that the Bayes factor is undetermined when improper priors are used. Nonetheless, extending the non-informative approach of Bayesian analysis to model selection/testing procedures is important both from a theoretical and an applied viewpoint. The need to develop automatic and robust methods for model comparison has led to the introduction of several alternative Bayes factors. In this paper we review one of these methods: the fractional Bayes factor (O'Hagan, 1995). We discuss general properties of the method, such as consistency and coherence. Furthermore, in addition to the original, essentially asymptotic justifications of the fractional Bayes factor, we provide further finite-sample motivations for its use. Connections and comparisons to other automatic methods are discussed and several issues of robustness with respect to priors and data are considered. Finally, we focus on some open problems in the fractional Bayes factor approach, and outline some possible answers and directions for future research.     

Linking job insecurity to well-being and organizational attitudes in Belgian workers: the role of security expectations and fairness

The aim of this study was to investigate how perceptions of job insecurity and fairness associate with individual well-being (job satisfaction and general health) and organizational attitudes (organizational commitment and turnover intention), under the condition that the psychological contract as perceived by the employee includes a promise on job security, or not. More specifically, we suggest that (H1) job insecurity is negatively related to individual well-being and organizational commitment and positively related to turnover intentions when job security is expected as part of the psychological contract, (H2) that job insecurity is negatively related to fairness perceptions when job security is expected as part of the psychological contract, (H3) that fairness associates positively with individual well-being and organizational commitment and negatively with turnover intentions and (H4) that the association between job insecurity, individual well-being and organizational outcomes is mediated by fairness under the condition that job security is expected as part of the psychological contract. Thus, we propose a model of mediated moderation. Results based on a sample of Belgian employees (N = 559) supported our hypotheses for organizational outcomes. For individual well-being, the mediation framework was not conditional upon a perceived promise of job security as part of the psychological contract. We conclude that employees' perceptions of job insecurity and fairness are important factors in employees' well-being and their attitudes towards the organization. More importantly, these perceptions can in part be shaped by organizational agents such as managers and supervisors. Additionally, the active utilization of the psychological contract in management strategies seems to have favourable results for the fostering of pro-organizational attitudes among employees.     

The political economy of financial reform: How robust are huang's findings?

Using new data on financial liberalization taken from Abiad et al. (2008, IMF Working Papers, No. 08/266) for 62 countries over the period 1975–2005, we show that some of the main findings of Huang's (2009, Journal of Applied Econometrics 24 : 1207–1213) replication study on the drivers of financial liberalization are not robust. Major changes concern the effect of democracy on financial reform and the supposed relationship between the desired level of financial liberalization and a country's per capita income. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

1999年度我院自然科学基金项目中标率高的几点思考

国家自然科学基金申报是科学性与艺术性高度结合的创造性劳动。高中标率背后离不开高效务实的科技管理。思想重视、措施得力、主攻目标明确,迎来了我院 1999年基金项目申报的大丰收。     

A Structural Decomposition Analysis of Pollution in the Netherlands

This paper reviews the results of a structural decomposition analysis in which the annual changes in a number of air pollutants and solid waste are decomposed according to their causes. The analysis in this paper is applied with the help of the so-called National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts (NAMEA) for the Netherlands, covering annual data for the period 1987-1998. In a sensitivity analysis it is shown that the average of any pair of so-called 'mirror image' decomposition forms will substantially reduce the variation in the estimates. These mirror image couples are approximately just as reliable as the full average of all decomposition forms. Besides reliable results, the full average also foresees the mutual comparability between the distinguished change factors and is therefore applied in the empirical analyses presented in this paper. The results of these analyses contain the macro-economic developments, results on the industry level as well as a comprehensive overview of the origin and destination of pollution in the Dutch economy that includes the environmental consequences of consumption and international trade.