Public Sector Capital and the Production Efficiency of U.S. Regional Manufacturing Industries

This paper applies a stochastic frontier production model with time-varying technical efficiency to investigate the relationship between public capital and technical efficiency. It is based on the proposition that public capital has an effect on actual output by enhancing technical efficiency, thereby reducing the gap between maximum potential output and actual output. Empirical results using panel data from U.S. state manufacturing industries during 1969–86 show that technical efficiencies varied substantially, both between states and between years; variations in technical efficiency are significantly explained by variations in public-sector capital.
JEL Classification Numbers: O20, H54, C23.     

南通市废旧轮胎回收利用现状的思考

橡胶作为高分子材料,具有高弹性的特征,被广泛用于国民经济的各个领域.随着经济的快速发展,我国于2002年首次超过美国而成为世界橡胶消耗第一大国(见表1).随着橡胶制品的大量使用,废橡胶产生量也同步增长,这给废橡胶的综合利用带来了新的挑战和机遇.废橡胶的主要来源是废旧轮胎,占废旧橡胶来源总量的70%以上;其次是废旧橡胶制品,占20%以上.过去一直被视作"黑色污染"的废旧橡胶,伴随着循环经济的发展,其再利用价值为社会各界所关注.     

Intelligent Order Matching Systems for Commodity Markets

Automatic order matching systems have emerged as an electronic alternative to traditional markets. In current automatic order matching systems, price and quantity are the only product dimensions used for the order matching. However, a single-commodity market is made up of many heterogeneous goods which are close to each other but different in qualities and delivery conditions. Price and quantity are important but represent only parts of product attributes that commodity traders want to take into account. This study aims to extend current automatic order matching systems by diversifying product dimensions. An intelligent order matching system not only maximizes the total transaction volume based on the price and quantity but also satisfies traders' qualitative preferences over attributes other than price and quantity. The intelligent order matching mechanism combines an economic model with a preference model to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative utility of market participants. Constraint logic programming is investigated as a new information technology to structure and implement the intelligent order matching system.     

Educational attainment and cohort size

"We argue that the postwar baby boom [in the United States] caused substantial fluctuations in both the economic rewards to education and educational attainment over the last 3 decades. If substitutability between young and old workers diminishes with education, the present value of lifetime earnings for a boom cohort is depressed more for highly educated workers, reducing incentives for educational attainment. The opposite is true for pre- and postboom cohorts. The diminishing substitutability hypothesis explains the declines in both the returns to college and college completion rates in the 1970s and predicts a substantial increase in educational attainment for postboomers."     

An appreciation of our referees

Editorial

An appreciation of our referees     

执政经济成本的效益测评

执政是要支付成本的。执政经济成本的高低与执政的业绩有很大联系。“提高执政效率”是党的十六届四中全会《决定》中的一个重要思想。要提高执政效率,就必须考察执政的成本与效益之间的关系,开展对执政的经济成本效益及其测评方法的研究。     

在效率优先的基础上重建社会公平

效率和公平是经济学研究的核心问题,而且二者的优先次序一直是经济学界甚至其他学科研究的重点问题,历史上曾经形成了公平优先论、效率优先论以及公平效率同等重要论,现阶段应当对效率和公平的认识进行科学的、必要的深化。社会公平问题是我国当前一个比较突出的问题,但是现阶段我们仍然要坚持效率优先的原则,初次分配注重效率,再次分配注重公平,特别是教育公平和医疗公平,在效率优先的基础上重建社会公平。     

日本保险业危机对我国保险监管的启示

本文分析了日本保险业危机前监管中存在的问题:政府主导型监管体制存在弊端,投资监管不力,事后安全网建设缺乏,信息公开受到限制,市场集中度高.然后从监管体制、市场集中度、外部监督、监管力度、退出机制等方面揭示了我国保险监管的存在问题并做了相应的对策分析.