On the New Economic Policies Promoted by the 17th CCP Congress in China

The 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress in October 2007 attracted attention within and outside China for the bold development agenda that was placed before delegates. After 30 years of economic reform that has produced a remarkable improvement in living standards and China's reintegration into the world economy, the Party unveiled a programme that would push China to become a world superpower over the next 30 years. China's ambition is to become a technologically innovative state, to make China a ‘moderately prosperous’ and ‘harmonious society’ with a ‘scientific outlook on development’, and to achieve full industrialisation and sustainable prosperity. Whether China is able to attain its objectives will critically depend on the Party's ability to implement the new economic policies and address the social and political challenges that economic growth has created. The aim of the paper is to examine the policies, motivations and constraints that China faces in achieving the objectives laid out at the Party Congress.     

A Strong Test of the von Liebig Hypothesis

An implication of the von Liebig hypothesis is that crop-production functions have right-angle isoquants. This article presents a nonparametric estimation of right-angle isoquant production functions. It then describes a new test for right-angle isoquants. The procedures are used to test experimental data on corn and wheat.     

How much does an Illegal Insider Trade?

This paper examines the choice of trade size by an illegal insider. Previous literature (i.e. Meulbroek 1992) tends to focus on the price impact of such a trader. Using a unique data set hand‐collected from the litigation reports of the Securities and Exchange Commission and court cases, we provide evidence, which suggests that the size of an illegal insider's trade is a function of the value of his private information, the probability of detection and the expected penalty if detected. Our results have important implication for security market regulators.     

The 2010 FIFA World Cup and South Africa: A study of longer-term effects and moderators of country reputation

Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication has long been an important source of information influencing consumer attitudes and purchase behaviour. Despite this, relatively little attention has been directed at important questions regarding how WOM is measured. This paper focuses on two measurement issues: who to measure (the giver or receiver) and when to measure (immediately after the message is received or over time). Based on information processing and related theories, three hypotheses were developed and tested. Using a survey approach, respondents' WOM communications were matched to a receiver and the evaluation of the communication was assessed for both groups. It was found that the giver and receiver of a WOM communication did not evaluate the message in the same way, even at the time of transmission. In addition, the evaluation by the receiver was unstable over time. As time passed the evaluation regressed towards the scale mean. Implications for research and management practice are discussed.     

Why prisons have become a growth industry

Unable to break out of the straightjacket of local authorities’ administrative areas and the bureaucratic concept of ‘need to spend,’ the Department of the Environment has come up with an index of deprivation that is, to say the least, counter‐intuitive. If it were to use better indicators and to focus on smaller areas, it would stand a better chance of directing resources to where they are most needed.     

Government Policy in a Stochastic Growth Model with Elastic Labor Supply

Endogenous labor supply is introduced into a stochastic growth model. Money is superneutral, and the real part of the equilibrium can be characterized by two nonlinear trade-off loci between the time devoted to leisure and the mean growth rate that ensure the following: (i) equality among the risk-adjusted rates of return and (ii) equilibrium in the output market. The balanced growth equilibrium is characterized analytically and policy implications derived. Extensive numerical simulations are also conducted. These assess the effects of risk on growth and the impact of fiscal policy on both the mean growth rate and its volatility. Implications for optimal monetary policy are also addressed.     

The resort lifecycle theory: Generating Processes and Estimation

One of the most discussed paradigms in the literature on destination development is the lifecycle model. Although varieties of lifecycle paths have been described, they have been drawn up without consideration of the underlying generation processes. This article examines the time path of tourist growth patterns that could give rise to such a cycle and in doing so, permits the exact demarcation of the five stages of the lifecycle. The model is tested using long run time series and the overall conclusion is that the restrictions imposed by the aggregation process limit the resort cycle paradigm, in a quantitative context, to being no more than a statistical caricature of the real world.     

Transactions,credit, and central banking in a model of segmented markets

A segmented markets model is constructed in which transactions are conducted using credit and currency. Goods market segmentation plays an important role, in addition to the role played by conventional segmentation of asset markets. An important novelty of the paper is to show how the nonneutralities of money and their persistence depend on the nature of goods market transactions and on the arrangements for clearing and settlement of consumer credit. The model permits open market operations, daylight overdrafts, reserve-holding, and overnight lending and borrowing, allowing the consideration of a rich array of central banking arrangements and their implications.