糖料生产的扶持政策因应:滇省例证

近年来,国内糖料价格连年大涨,但价格上涨并未带动糖料产量增加,国内糖料生产反而连年下滑,食糖产量快速下降,糖价持续高涨,进口食糖量、价均创历史新高,形势较为严峻。对第二大糖料主产区云南省进行的专题调研表明,应通过大力开展甘蔗高产创建活动、积极推广机械化、给予糖料同等支持、加大对境外糖料甘蔗替代种植的支持和进一步完善糖蔗价格联动机制等加大对糖料生产的支持力度。     

Asia Confronts Its Inflation Challenge

Asia is finally waking up to its inflation challenge.Recent weeks have seen a further round of monetary tighten-ing, with a succession of central banks raising interest rates, or taking other measures to put a cap on rising prices.India, in particular, has taken tougher action than before, with a large rate hike, whilst others such as China have again pushed up reserve requirements.     

寻求农村集体资产实现的新形式

在社会主义初级阶段，非公有制工业经济在农村经济发展中起着重要作用，这是需要支持和鼓励的。但是，在农村非公有制工业经济已经大面积成长起来的新格局下，农村集体资产和集体工业经济发展的状况和前景如何?这同样值得人们高度关注。集体经济毕竟是中国农民共同富裕的经济基础，而在工农业生产力存在差别的市场经济条件下，农村集体致富不能没有集体工商业经济，土地归集体所有的农民还必须有集体工商业职能资本的积累，才能真正拥有缩小贫富差距、加快共同致富的决定性物质条件。近期，我们到江阴市，对这个问题做了专题调研。     

Modelling Electricity Prices: International Evidence*

This article analyses the evolution of electricity prices in deregulated markets. We present a general class of models that simultaneously takes into account several factors: seasonality, mean reversion, GARCH behaviour and time‐dependent jumps. The models are applied to daily equilibrium spot prices of eight electricity markets. Eight different nested models were estimated to compare the relative importance of each factor in each of the eight markets. We find strong evidence that electricity equilibrium prices are mean‐reverting, with volatility clustering (GARCH) and with jumps of time‐dependent intensity, even after adjusting for seasonality.     

Project Management of Production Line Automation: A Comparative Analysis of Project Management in Brazil and Colombia

This article aims to evaluate the production line automation projects developed by Brazilian and Colombian companies from the Project Management perspective, through the analysis of the application degree of PMBOK processes, to understand how formal techniques are being employed in these countries and also to identify improvement opportunities, when necessary. Data were collected through a survey. The similarity index between the ten processes, with the highest application degree in the Brazilian and Colombian samples, was 70%. For the processes with the lowest application degree, the similarity index was 60%. No similar study was found in the literature.     

Stock picking,market timing and style differences between socially responsible and conventional pension funds: evidence from the United Kingdom

As far as we are aware, this study presents the first comparative analysis of the stock picking and market timing abilities of managers of conventional and socially responsible (SR) pension funds, and of their use of superior information. For the United Kingdom, the results obtained show a slight stock picking ability on the part of SR pension fund managers (although it disappears if multifactorial models are considered), and a negative market timing ability on the part of both SR and conventional pension fund managers (these results hold for multifactorial models controlled by home bias). In relation to the management styles, both conventional and SR pension funds usually invest in small cap and growth values, although it is the SR pension funds that are the most exposed to these styles. We also observed that, while conventional pension fund managers make certain use of superior information to follow stock picking strategies, managers of SR pension funds use superior information to follow market timing strategies.     

Does the Quality of Institutions Limit the MENA's Integration in the World Economy?

Using a large sample of countries over the 1990s, this paper examines the extent to which institutions’ functioning disables a greater participation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the world economy. It focuses on the impact on manufactured exports and FDI attractiveness and considers a broad index of political risk as well as indices targeted toward specific aspects of governance (corruption, government effectiveness and the rule of law). The results are robust to different econometric approaches and lend strong support to the hypothesis that the functioning of institutions may disable the participation of MENA countries in the world economy. They suggest that the impact of an improvement in the quality of institutions may result in a sensitive increase of FDI inflows and manufactured exports. That increase is comparable to the one resulting from liberalisation policies. Hence, although institutional reforms can take time, they deserve the necessary efforts given their outcomes as compared to other reforms.     

Managing seller-buyer new product development relationships for customized products: a contingency model based on transaction cost analysis and empirical test

Sellers often customize their product offerings in order to increase the value offered to individual buyers and gain a competitive advantage over the seller’s competitors. However, such customization has a downside—it usually requires considerable seller-buyer interactions aimed at matching the seller’s technological capabilities with the buyer’s needs, which can pose exchange risks such as the safeguarding and adaptation problems noted in the transaction cost analysis literature. In the present study, we develop a contingency model to investigate the impact of product customization on sellers’ perceived relationship satisfaction and subsequent expectations of relationship continuity. We draw on the logic of transaction cost analysis to hypothesize that product customization’s effect on satisfaction and continuity may be moderated by three activities that sellers may engage in during the new product development (NPD) process: education, product knowledge generation, and joint new product development.Our substantive hypotheses were tested with data from a national survey of 296 small to medium size firms in several high-tech industries using a series of hierarchical OLS regression models. Overall, we found mixed support for our hypotheses. The results indicated that joint new product development reduced the negative effect of product customization on seller satisfaction and enhanced customization’s positive effect on continuity, as expected. Contrary to our expectations, product knowledge generation activities increased the negative effect of customization on satisfaction; it also had no significant moderating impact on continuity. Buyer education activities were found to reduce the negative impact of customization on satisfaction, but showed no moderating effect on continuity.This study offers important theoretical and managerial implications. It is one of the first to rely on transaction cost analysis as a basis for examining how various relationship activities conducted during the new product development process moderate product customization’s effect on qualitative outcomes. Whereas traditional NPD processes have emphasized unilateral approaches to product development, our study provides evidence of how bilateral approaches to NPD can benefit sellers of innovations. We provide new insights for managers to consider when deciding whether to engage buyers early on and then continue interacting with them throughout the product development process when developing customized products.     

Business Ethics in Spain

This article is an introduction to the selection of papers on "Business Ethics in Spain" included in this monographic issue of the Journal of Business Ethics. Specifically, this article is a survey of the development of the social, political, cultural and economic background of business in Spain since 1940, in order to show how the ethical values, attitudes and problems of the Spanish managers changed in these years. First, the global evolution of this background is explained, and then several relevant problems are discussed, namely those of the attitudes of business towards the State and the law (with an aside on the attitudes of society towards profit and wealth), corruption, and the grey economy, taxes, and irregular labour. The article concludes with a survey of the scientific developments of business ethics in Spain.