Poland and the euro zone enlargement: Monetary policy,ERM II,and other issues

In this paper, Poland's preparations to introduce the euro and discussions surrounding them are briefly analyzed. Its first part deals with legal and macroeconomic developments before Poland's accession to the EU in May 2004. The second part considers Poland's official position and possible future scenarios. The main conclusions are twofold. Firstly, it is argued that after finishing successfully the disinflation process, Poland's monetary integration is above all subject to fiscal and exchange rate developments. In both cases, they are a function of the economy's structural changes. Secondly, as a consequence, fulfilling the Maastricht Treaty nominal convergence criteria by Poland will imply enough degree of real convergence for its successful participation in the euro zone. The opinions expressed in the paper are of the author and should not be attributed to any institution he is working for. He would like to expresshis gratitude to Witold Grostal and Robert Woreta for providing the graphs. Helpful comments were made by Michal Brzoza-Brzezina, Tomasz Chmielewski, and by Eduard Hochreiter. Language assistance was provided by Barton D. Raven. Any remaining errors are solely the author's responsibility.     

Divorce and female labor force participation: Evidence from times-series data and cointegration

The divorce rate in the United States has increased over the last 40 years. This increase was accompanied both by growing female labor force participation and rising female income. These changes were accompanied by a significant reduction in the birth rate for married women. This article uses time-series data and cointegration techniques to determine the direction of causality between these variables. Analysis of the impulse functions show that the divorce rate will increase if either female labor force participation or income increases. Positive innovations to the divorce rate increase the labor force participation rate of married women. Rising levels of income lead to greater female participation in the labor market.     

用科学发展观指导东港灌区工程建设与管理

介绍了东港市目前水利工程的现状及存在的普遍问题,着重介绍了东港灌区续建配套与节水改造工程建设,并提出以科学发展观为指导,加强水利工程建设及建后的管理。     

美国的政府采购制度

美国联邦政府开支十分庞大，政府一直是某些企业最大的客户。各大企业为了获得政府采购订单，使出了浑身解数，其中不乏使用不正当的途径，有关这方面的报道常见诸报端。近年来，美国政府为了规范政府采购，加强了对政府采购方法和技巧方面的研究，并对现行的政府采购制度进行了必要调整。美国有关法律规定，合同金额2．5万美元以上的采购为“大额采购”，应使用公开招标和谈判采购的方式；2．5万美元以下的采购视为“小额采购”，采用灵活方式进行。     

The Impact of an increasing share of RES-E on the Conventional Power Market — The Example of Germany

The intermittency of wind power has a decreasing effect on day-ahead spot prices. Data from Germany illustrate this effect and explain the underlying relationships. This short-term price effect leads to an adaptation process in the conventional generation capacity mix. In the long-run, a higher peak load plant share is required to cope with the increasing volatility of the residual demand. The result is an adapted merit-order. This merit-order intersects with an increasingly volatile residual demand curve and leads to a higher price volatility in the power market, which is going to trigger further adaptations. Therefore this article concludes with a list of open research questions, which can be derived from the illustrated relationship. These research questions should be investigated as soon as possible in order to induce the required adaptations in time.     

评估不确定性披露与金融风险防范——基于评估师的调查

不确定性是评估的本质特征,本次研究的主要目的为验证和探讨我国资产评估中不确定性因素的存在性、程度及其披露方式,对评估报告的信息披露方式以及防范金融市场泡沫和金融市场风险提供借鉴。笔者通过对评估师进行的匿名问卷调查,发现大多数评估从业者认为不确定因素是广泛存在的,应该用一定的区间范围披露评估结果,对不确定性因素的披露标准的统一存在高度的认同。     

Sorry Winners

Bidders who receive both “common-value” and “private-value” signals about the value of an auction prize cannot fully infer their opponents’ information from the bidding. So bidders may overestimate the value of the prize and, subsequently, regret winning. When multiple objects are on sale, bidding in an auction provides information relevant to the other auctions, and sequential auctions are more vulnerable to overpayment and winners’ regret than are simultaneous auctions. With information inequality among bidders, the seller’s revenue is influenced by two contrasting effects. On the one hand, simultaneous auctions reduce the winner’s curse of less informed bidders and allow them to bid more aggressively. On the other hand, sequential auctions induce less informed bidders to bid more aggressively in early auctions to acquire information.