Adding insult to injury: consumer experiences of being denied credit

To inspire confidence in consumer credit and improve outcomes for consumers, negative experiences such as being denied credit must be handled appropriately. We conducted an online survey with 298 UK citizens who had a credit application denied to gain a better understanding of their experience of being denied credit. We found that privacy issues make this experience more upsetting for consumers than necessary. When being denied credit, respondents are most concerned about (1) being denied credit ‘in public’; and (2) not being informed about the reasons why they are denied. Only 23% of our respondents knew why they had been denied; 116 (62%) believed they had been denied credit because of their credit record, but 28% had never checked it. Out of the 194 respondents who had checked their record, 38 identified errors in their credit reports, and in 14 of these cases (38%) debts that they had paid off were incorrectly listed as outstanding. Based on our findings, we propose several changes to the credit application process: (1) providing sensitive but helpful information in a private manner, e.g. a preview of their credit score before they commit a loan application; (2) credit denial notifications with information on what to do next; and (3) giving applicants more information about checking their credit report and who to contact for correcting errors.     

成本冲击、通货膨胀与货币政策——基于总供给-总需求框架的实证分析

本文系统地回顾了有关中国通货膨胀的文献,我们发现,现有的研究通常偏重于数据挖掘,而忽视了普适性宏观经济理论的约束,因而所得出的结论其经济学含义值得商榷。尽管总供给-总需求框架是十分简洁的宏观分析框架,但是很少有人用它的具体方程来推导通货膨胀的决定式,并将所得来的决定式用之进行中国的实证分析,使理论研究与实证分析相互印证。本文创新性地在总供给-总需求框架下,首先对封闭经济下的通货膨胀成因做了较为深入分析,接着将模型推广到开放经济中以获得计量上可估的线性方程,并利用中国的数据进行了实证分析。结果表明,中国通胀的形成是由供给面和需求面两方面因素共同决定的,这也在数量上验证了总供给-总需求框架在中国的适用性。其中,产出缺口增大、劳动力增速放缓、货币增速变大、人民币实际有效汇率同比增速减缓、大宗商品价格增速走高都显著性地导致通胀率的抬升,且它们对于通货膨胀的影响的显现具有一定的时滞性。鉴于此,我们建议,当经济体遭遇供给冲击(刘易斯拐点、大宗商品价格高企等)时,货币政策尤其需要审慎,以避免因刺激性宏观政策形成成本推动与需求拉动相互强化所导致的螺旋式价格上涨。     

Competitive product lines with quality constraints

Competing firms often use product lines to screen different types of customers. Examples include, in general markets, product lines that screen the purchasing ability or preference for quality; in credit markets, product lines that screen the risk of the projects with different collateral; in insurance markets, product lines that screen the risk of accident with different coverage; and in labor markets, wage schedules that screen the employees’ abilities with different education levels. In some of these markets there can be some natural quality constraints: a maximum available quality in general markets, no negative collateral in credit markets; coverage not above 100% in insurance markets; minimum education level in labor markets. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of a pure strategies equilibrium (in such markets) under differentiation and a continuous distribution of customer types. We show that the equilibrium exists if there is a sufficiently high degree of differentiation among firms. Furthermore, we show that this equilibrium involves, under certain general conditions, pooling of customer types at the top and at the bottom of the distribution of customer types. The middle types may still be screened by the firms.

Larry Page on Google北大核心CSSCISSCI

Last month, Larry Page sat down with Fortune Senior Writer Miguel Helft for a lengthy interview for a forthcoming Fortune magazine article. It was only Page’s second wide-ranging conversation with a print publication since becoming CEO of Google in April 2011. Fortune: When you’re thinking about the next bet you’re going to make, how do you pick? Larry Page:     

Digging out the PPP hypothesis: an integrated empirical coverage

We use several popular tests to test the validity of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis. In particular, we analyze four classes of tests??standard univariate unit root tests, co-integration, panel unit root tests, and unit root tests for nonlinear frameworks??for a dataset consisting of 20 bilateral exchange rates. Through this approach, we ascertain the effectiveness of each methodology in assessing the validity of PPP. Overall, our results suggest little evidence to support PPP. Among the conducted tests, the Panel Analysis of Nonstationarity in the Idiosyncratic and Common components (PANIC) provides the richest insights by disentangling the possible sources of non-stationarity of real exchange rates. The relevance of using price indices with different characteristics is also pinpointed.     

War and local collective action in Sierra Leone

We study the brutal 1991–2002 Sierra Leone civil war using nationally representative household data on conflict experiences, postwar economic outcomes, local politics and collective action. Individuals whose households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings, more likely to join local political and community groups, and more likely to vote. Tests using prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results. More speculatively, the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic recoveries observed in Sierra Leone and after several other recent African civil wars.     

A hybrid simulation optimization method for production planning of dedicated remanufacturing

This paper presents a hybrid cell evaluated genetic algorithm (CEGA) for optimization of the dedicated remanufacturing system with simulation. The paper first summarizes the special characteristics and problems of the dedicated remanufacturing. The paper then proposes a simulation model with a prioritized stochastic batch arrival mechanism, considering factors that affect the total profit. Based on the simulation model, the CEGA algorithm is developed to optimize the production planning and control policies for dedicated remanufacturing. A case study is provided based on the remanufacturing facility located at Austin, USA     

A cross-national study of corporate governance and employment contracts

Corporate governance (CG) can be seen to operate through a 'double agency' relationship: one between the shareholders and corporate management, and another between the corporate management and the firm's employees. The CG and labour management of firms are closely related. A particularly productive way to study how CG affects and is affected by the employment relationship has been to compare CG across countries. The contributions of this paper to that literature are threefold. (1) An integration of aspects of the labour management literature in the CG debate. (2) Based on a sample of about 1000 firms from 31 countries, we find evidence of complementarities between the CG and the labour management of firms. Extreme cases, in general, outperform mixed cases. (3) Firm differences within countries are more important than scholars have assumed so far. We present the results of the study and implications for future research and for practice.