China’s Foreign Trade: Perspectives From the Past 150 Years

This paper studies the trade of China in the past 150 years, starting from the first opening of China after the Opium War. The main purpose of the paper is to identify what is (and was) China’s ‘normal’ level of foreign trade, and how these levels changed under different trade regimes, from 1840 to the present. We present new evidence on China’s foreign trade during the treaty port era (1842–1948), drawn from disaggregated trade data collected by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, that yields important findings for current research. First, although the volume of foreign trade remained limited initially, there was a notable expansion in the diversity of products, with many new goods being imported into China. Second, the regional diffusion of foreign goods through China was greatly facilitated by the expansions of the port system. Third, the importance of Hong Kong as an intermediary in China’s trade has undergone long‐term fluctuations suggestive of learning effects. China’s recent wave of liberalization has led by the early 1990s to a trade level comparable to the high of the 1920s. While much of China’s recent growth in world trade is in line with her income growth, there is no doubt that China’s trade openness today, comparable by some measures to Denmark’s, is a stunning reversal relative to the pre‐1978 and also the pre‐1840 period. The paper emphasises the roles that history and institutional change have played in this.     

A comparison of academic performance in traditional and hybrid sections of introductory managerial accounting

This paper reports the results of a comparison of academic performance (course grade) in two sections of a principles of managerial accounting course, one held in a traditional format (classes held two days per week in a classroom setting) and one in a hybrid format (one class period held in a classroom setting and one in a web-based environment). After controlling for other factors, academic performance was not significantly associated with class delivery format (traditional or hybrid).     

Darmfunktionsstörungen – Herausforderung im Pflegealltag

Stuhlinkontinenz und Obstipation - Im Pflegealltag stellen Darmfunktionsst?rungen eine Herausforderung dar: Denn die Versorgung des stuhlinkontinenten Patienten bedeutet einen immensen Zeitaufwand und die chronische Obstipation erscheint als Wohlstandskrankheit, die trotz intensiver Bemühungen nur teilweise beherrscht werden kann.     

Union Formation through Merger: The Case of Ver.di in Germany

This article is concerned with the recent merger of five German unions to form the new multi‐industry union, ver.di. Its focus is on the effects of the merger and on developments in the post‐merger phase. The article explores the various internal problems of the new union, concentrating on those that flow from the adoption of a matrix form of organisation. It deals also with the external relations of ver.di, with other unions and with the central organisation of German trade unions, the DGB. Central conclusions here are that the creation of ver.di is likely to exacerbate competition amongst German unions and further erode the position of the peak association.     

American options on assets with dividends near expiry

Explicit expressions valid near expiry are derived for the values and the optimal exercise boundaries of American put and call options on assets with dividends. The results depend sensitively on the ratio of the dividend yield rate D to the interest rate r . For D > r the put boundary near expiry tends parabolically to the value rK / D where K is the strike price, while for D ≤ r the boundary tends to K in the parabolic-logarithmic form found for the case D =0 by Barles et al. (1995) and by Kuske and Keller (1998) . For the call, these two behaviors are interchanged: parabolic and tending to rK / D for D < r , as was shown by Wilmott, Dewynne, and Howison (1993) , and parabolic-logarithmic and tending to K for D ≥ r . The results are derived twice: once by solving an integral equation, and again by constructing matched asymptotic expansions.     

III. Weltwirtschaft und wirtschaft einzlner länderund und gebiete

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Savings liesure,consumption and taxes: The household expenditure system

This paper presents a model which integrates the various aspects of household decisions (such as those concerning savings behavior, the liesure-consumption decision and the allocation of the consumption budget between different commodities). Using a nested CES utility function, attractive solution of the utility maximization problem are derived, where price indices play an important role. The length of the planning period of the household is discussed; an infinite horizon model is proposed. Using post-war data, we estimated the household expenditure system for the Netherlands.