应对“生态赤字”:企业的“中性”和“零增加”思维

全世界各个国家的领导下月将在巴西举办"里约+20"峰会,探讨过去二十年中在推动可持续发展方面的进展以及将来的挑战。以整体来看,自1992年开始,全球经济发展迈出了一大步,但同时生态系统付出的代价很高,并且很多国家没有达到当时就环境保护所提出的目标及承诺。对企业而言,针对宏观政策的高峰会议所带来的影响看似离得很远,但实际上如果各地政府无法制定与实施更有效的新政策,就会对企业产生许多新挑战。     

A calm investigation into Mr Ricardo's principles of international trade

Abstract

This paper deals with some difficulties presented by Ricardo's texts on international trade, taking seriously Ricardo's account of the systematic interaction of real and monetary phenomena. After a brief reassessment of the main features of Ricardo's views on foreign trade, some basic questions are examined, concerning the method of analysis and the alleged invalidity of the labour theory of value at the international level. The enquiry goes on to state that, for Ricardo, there are no significant differences between domestic and international exchanges, and on this basis, proposes a simple and general rule explaining the flows of trade. The “principle of comparative advantage” and the “gains from trade” thus appear as simple unintended consequences of the decisions of agents in free markets. Finally, the characteristics of an international equilibrium and the nature and impact of destabilising shocks are analysed.     

North–South Trade Liberalization and Economic Welfare

We consider a general equilibrium model of a developing economy (the South) that opens to trade with a developed economy (the North). The southern economy is characterized by open urban unemployment and rural–urban migration, a competitive agricultural sector and a monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector. Hence, there is potential for both inter‐ and intra‐industry trade to arise on liberalization, in addition to distortionary effects of duality. Southern comparative advantage in agriculture may arise from the labor market distortion and the basis for intra‐industry trade is love for variety. We characterize various configurations of the trade pattern, and the resulting welfare consequences of opening to trade in this context. We illustrate a new mechanism under which in some circumstances it may be possible for trade liberalization to lower economic welfare in the South.     

Ethical Issues in Electronic Commerce

This article reviews the incredible growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) and presents ethical issues that have emerged. Security concerns, spamming, Web sites that do not carry an "advertising" label, cybersquatters, online marketing to children, conflicts of interest, manufacturers competing with intermediaries online, and "dinosaurs" are discussed. The power of the Internet to spotlight issues is noted as a significant force in providing a kind of self-regulation that supports an ethical e-commerce environment.     

Commonality in the LME aluminum and copper volatility processes through a FIGARCH lens

Dynamic representation of spot and three‐month aluminum and copper volatilities is considered. Aluminum and copper are the two most important metals traded in the London Metal Exchange. They share common business cycle factors and are traded under identical contract specifications. The bivariate FIGARCH model, which allows parsimonious representation of long memory volatility processes, is applied. The results show that spot and three‐month aluminum and copper volatilities follow long memory processes, that they exhibit a common degree of fractional integration and that the processes are symmetric. However, there is no evidence that the processes are fractionally cointegrated. This high degree of commonality may result from the common LME trading process. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:935–962, 2008     

Uncertainty avoidance,risk tolerance and corporate takeover decisions

In this paper, we examine the role of national culture in corporate takeover decisions, by arguing that managerial risk tolerance (a combination of risk aversion and risk perception), at the national level, is a cultural trait and affects the expected net synergies CEOs require. We propose a theoretical framework that links CEO risk tolerance to the expected net synergies. We empirically show that CEOs of firms located in countries with lower levels of risk tolerance, measured by Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) uncertainty avoidance score, require higher premiums on takeovers, and show that uncertainty avoidance plays a greater role in relatively large takeovers. Additional testing reveals that CEOs from high uncertainty avoiding nations engage less in cross-border/cross-industry takeovers, suggesting that uncertainty avoidance captures more the CEO’s risk perception than his/her risk aversion.     

Capital specificity,imperfect labor mobility and growth in developing economies

Labor markets in developing economies may be afflicted by a multiplicity of interacting distortions. We consider a general equilibrium model of an economy distorted by both sector-specific sticky wages and imperfect mobility of labor. In this framework, we contrast the implications of capital accumulation in the short and long run. We show that, in contrast to both the case in the absence of a sector-specific sticky wage and the case in the absence of imperfect labor mobility, the short and long-run effects of growth on the economic system converge as the degree of labor mobility is limited.     

INSIDER TRADING,REGULATION, AND THE COMPONENTS OF THE BID–ASK SPREAD

In this article we investigate the relation between insider trading regulations and the bid–ask spread. We decompose the spread into its components before and after the enactment of strict new insider trading rules in New Zealand. We find that the enactment led to a significant decrease in the information asymmetry component of the spread, which is observed mainly in illiquid and high prechange information asymmetry companies. These findings are robust to model specification. In addition, we find a decrease in the contribution of information asymmetry to price volatility.     

Diversity Management: A New Organizational Paradigm

Currently, an increasing number of organizations are attempting to enhance inclusiveness of under represented individuals through proactive efforts to manage their diversity. In this article, we define diversity management against the backdrop of its predecessor, affirmative action. Next, selected examples of organizations that have experienced specific positive bottom line results from diversity management strategies are discussed. The present paper also provides a conceptual model to examine antecedents and consequences of effective diversity management. Additional research areas identified from the model and literature review result in a number of research propositions intended to enhance the exploration and understanding of diversity management.     

Application of sparse matrix techniques to inter-regional input-output analysis

Conclusions Combining the concepts described in this paper makes it possible to solve inter-regional input-output systems (and other types of large, sparse, linear systems) with considerable efficiency in storage and computation. The exact number of operations and corresponding savings in computational time and storage depend on the particular zero-non zero structure of each matrix in the system, but in any case the savings can be enormous. A recommended procedure is summarized below.1. Take the entire inter-regional IO system which includes the representation of each of the regions and of the links among them and express it in the formMx=Bz or, more simply,Mx=b (since bothB andz are known). It may be helpful for this purpose to draw a picture of the large matrixM.2. PartitionM into blocks, exploiting the structure of the particular system. For example, at the very least, the matrix or matrices corresponding to each region will probably be separate blocks. The analysis required for this step may lead to reformulating the matrix representation of the given economic system by, for example, replacing a set of equations with linear combinations of these same equations, particularly for the equations representing the links among regions.3. Identify an appropriate partition of the blocks ofM, and a corresponding partition of the vectorsx andb, for performing a block factorization. This solution algorithm, which solves forx inMx=b (whereM now represents the entire system) is not available as a packaged program and so for the foreseeable future must be written in home-made computer code that assumes a sparse matrix storage scheme compatible with the package to be used (as in 4 below). The algorithm for block factorization in the 2×2 case relevant to our particular inter-regional IO system is given in Section 8 of this paper.4. Some steps of the algorithm require solving smaller systems of the formHu=v foru, given some matrixH and some vectorv. Efficient packaged subroutines can be obtained at low cost in order to solve these systems by finding the block triangular form corresponding to a particularH, then performing theLU factorization of the diagonal blocks only. The home-made code will interact with these subroutines.The idea of applying the sparse matrix techniques described in this paper to input-output models was conceived in 1978 at meetings of the first author and Dietrich Fischer with Fred Gustavson and with Don Goldfarb and Olof Widlund. Both Fred Gustavson and Olof Widlund made valuable suggestions while the work was carried out, and they, Dietrich Fischer, Wassily Leontief and Vu Viet reviewed early drafts of the paper, making many corrections and valuable suggestions. We also thank Alan George for useful discussions.This paper was presented at the Seventh International Conference On Input-Output Techniques at Innsbruck, Austria, 9–13 April 1979. Since then, the design described here has been implemented and the operational World Model has served as a tool for several empirical studies.