Trade liberalization,forward‐looking firms,and welfare

We set up an oligopolistic model with two exporting firms selling to a third market to investigate the welfare implications of trade liberalization when the exporting firms are forward‐looking. The results show that with cost asymmetry trade liberalization encourages the exporting firms to engage in tacit collusion, which may not only be detrimental to the domestic welfare, but also to the consumer surplus of the importing country. Moreover, we find that tacit collusion is less sustainable if the government of the importing country imposes a lower (higher) tariff on the more (less) efficient exporting firm. If a nonforward‐looking or a forward‐looking cost‐efficient domestic firm exists in the importing country, then trade liberalization also encourages tacit collusion.     

Multifactor implied volatility functions for HJM models

This study evaluates two one‐factor, two two‐factor, and two three‐factor implied volatility functions in the HJM class, with the use of eurodollar futures options across both strike prices and maturities. The primary contributions of this article are (a) to propose and test three implied volatility multifactor functions not considered by K. I. Amin and A. J. Morton (1994), (b) to evaluate models using the AIC criteria as well as other standard criteria neglected by S. Y. M. Zeto (2002), and (c) to .nd that multifactor models incorporating the exponential decaying implied volatility functions generally outperform other models in .tting and prediction, in sharp contrast to K. I. Amin and A. J. Morton, who find the constantvolatility model superior. Correctly specified and calibrated simple constant and square‐root factor models may be superior to inappropriate multifactor models in option trading and hedging strategies. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:809–833, 2006     

The assessment of agritourism policy based on SEA combination with HIA

The decline in agricultural and other forms of rural employment in many countries has created a need for a diversified range of rural businesses. In most cases, agritourism has become an important element of the diverse activities in rural areas of Taiwan. However, there are a number of significant impacts from tourism activities that can be influenced by agritourism policy.Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a procedural tool to assess policies and can aid the development of more sustainable policy formulation. However, SEA aims to assess environmental impacts; the health issues are often overlooked. Hence, a Delphi-Indicator approach to SEA is proposed here to integrate Health Impact Assessment (HIA). This new approach is based on the impact indicator system, and then the Delphi method is employed to collect experts’ opinions. After the evaluation system was established, the current agritourism policy and another alternative policy are assessed to examine this new method.Finally, various types of impacts from current agritourism policy in Taiwan are identified, and the significant impacts are as follows: resources usage (water, electricity, petroleum), pollution generation (waste, noise), and other landscape problems (mudflows and landslide, harmony of the rural landscape). In addition, several benefits are found from the alternative policy (agro-ecotourism) such as the amount of pesticides used per unit area, and environmental quality of local community since agro-ecotourism development is based on organic agriculture and combination with ecotourism to provide acceptable recreation opportunity without destroying natural rural environment. In summary, the impacts are less significant from agro-ecotourism than those from current agritourism policy, and these positive changes are not only in the environmental sector, but also within the economic, social, and health issues.     

An Empirical Study on the Lapse Rate: The Cointegration Approach

We use the cointegration technique to reexamine the contending lapse rate hypotheses: the emergency fund hypothesis and the interest rate hypothesis. We find that the unemployment rate affects the lapse rate in both the long and short run, whereas the interest rate causes variations in the lapse rate mainly in the long run. This evidence seems to be in favor of the emergency fund hypothesis. However, according to the impulse response analysis of the estimated error‐correction model, the interest rate overwhelms the unemployment rate on the overall impact on the dynamics of lapse rate. In other words, the interest rate hypothesis is favored against the emergency fund hypothesis in the sense that the interest rate is more economically significant than the unemployment rate in explaining the lapse rate dynamics.     

浅谈如何做好新时期水利档案工作

水利档案是水利部门对水资源规划、水利建设、水利管理工作的依据,是水利部门进行水利建设的真实记录。建立完整、准确、系统的水利档案,充分利用水利档案,对加快全社会的水利建设,提高各地区的经济效益和社会效益都有重要的现实意义和深远的历史意义。现在当务之急是要转变观念,把握机遇,使水利档案改革与水利改革相适应,水利档案事业的发展要跟上水利事业的前进步伐,更好地为水利事业的发展建设提供服务。     

营口经济技术开发区多河口滨水景观特色及开发

入海口是沿海城市独享的特殊场所,对于营口经济技术开发区这种拥有多河口的沿海城市来说,河口滨水景观特色及开发特色是提升城市形象,改善城市环境的重要手段。     

QoS服务质量及流量控制设备在校园网中的应用

随着信息技术的高速发展，网络流量也急剧增加，这不仅促进了网络技术的飞速发展，比如从共享10Mbps到交换10Mbps、100Mbps、1000Mbps，甚至10Gbps以太网标准也已经完成。网络带宽如何合理、高效、充分地利用等也是今天人们谈论得越来越多的话题。但是现在我们对网络的管理不应只局限于考虑整体带宽资源方面，更多的应该关心具体的网络应用流量的控制问题。     

Trading Mechanisms and Market Quality: Call Markets versus Continuous Auction Markets

On July 29, 2002, the trading mechanism in the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) was switched from an exclusive call market to a continuous auction market. Based upon several proxies of market quality, in the present study, we set out to empirically examine whether this switch has resulted in any significant improvement in market quality within the TAIFEX. We find that while the quoted spreads, effective spreads, and price volatility are all smaller in the continuous auction market, the call auction market exhibits greater market depth and smaller pricing errors; the latter is also found to be more effective in resolving the problem of information asymmetry. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that the choice between call and continuous auction trading mechanisms essentially involves trade‐offs between the bid‐ask spread, market depth, price volatility, information asymmetry costs, and price efficiency.     

Development and Validation of Ethical Computer Self-Efficacy Measure: The Case of Softlifting

The concept of self-efficacy is concerned with people's beliefs in their ability to produce given attainment. It has been widely applied to study human conduct in various settings. This study, based on Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory, proposes the employment of self-efficacy for investigating people's ethical conduct related to computer use. Specifically, an ethical computer self-efficacy (ECSE) construct concerning software piracy is developed and validated. The measurement model of the construct was rigorously tested and validated through confirmatory factor analysis. The results suggest that ECSE can be operationalized as a second-order factor model. The first order constructs are termed use&keep (do not use), distribution (do not distribute), and persuasion (persuade others not to commit piracy). These factors are governed by a second-order construct of ECSE. This construct could be useful to research a wide range of information ethics in the future.