商业银行中间业务在我国欠发达城市的战略选择

我国商业银行中间业务的发展远落后于西方发达国家,而欠发达城市的状况更差.面对外资银行的进入,体现核心竞争力的中间业务成为商业银行发展的必然选择,但目前对欠发达城市商业银行中间业务的研究甚少.本文在分析了我国欠发达城市商业银行中间业务的现状和缺陷后,对它的发展提出了一些战略性的建议.     

探索校企结合的保险教育新途径

近年来,我国保险业发展很快,亟需高素质的一线人才,单纯依靠学校培养或企业培训均有其局限性.根据我国目前实际情况,可从培养人才的源头抓起,整合保险教育资源,形成以学校培养为主,企业培训为辅,学界与业界融合这种方式来解决保险教育与市场脱节的问题,建立校企合作的人才培养途径.     

Rural taxation and government regulation in China

This paper places the problem of Chinese rural taxation in the context of government regulation and seeks to present an integrated theoretical framework of Chinese rural development in the past two decades. Our theoretical framework reconciles the seemingly contradictory facts that the average level of rural taxation relative to rural net income did not increase quickly from 1990, but rural taxation became a very serious problem in this period. Our findings suggest that this is in large part due to increases in rural income disparity from 1990 and uneven tax distribution among different income groups. We argue that differentiated enforcement of government regulations such as grain procurement and birth control play an important role in the rural taxation problem, and more generally, the problem of local government expansion and rising rural income disparity. The empirical findings support our hypotheses.     

'Technoscience' Education: Empowering Citizens Against the Tyranny of School Science

The status quo for school science and technology is unacceptable. While the former often is required for admission to university engineering, as well as to science programmes, the latter is deemed most appropriate for less able, concrete thinkers. This situation persists, despite the fact school science tends to generate large groups of citizens who are relatively scientifically and technologically illiterate, largely as a result of its preoccupation with identifying and training potential scientists and engineers. This practice is tyrannical. It must be abandoned forthwith. A realistic alternative is a combined technology and science programme – perhaps called 'technoscience' education – that would treat science and technology as equals. Such courses may, as well, be more democratic in the sense that technological problem solving often is more natural to everyday situations that everyone may find useful, not just future scientists or engineers. A framework for combined technology and science courses is described and defended here. Originally developed through collaborative action research amongst practising teachers of science, the approach appears to be feasible, under certain – perhaps ideal – conditions. A number of changes to science and technology education may be necessary for broader implementation, not the least of which is a general retrenchment in expectations for pre-determined learning, along with adjustments to teacher education. Nevertheless, the approach is recommended because of its emphasis on: personalization, inclusion, problematization, explicitness, apprenticeship, authenticity, contextualization and freedom. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

试论建立存款保险制度的重要性

随着金融改革的大步深入和WTO的加入，我国银行业的经营环境将发生很大变化，对此，有效的“存款保险制度”的建立，将对构筑一个安全性和效率性并存在的金融体系发挥出其积极的作用。     

永乐家电能否“永乐”京城

上海家电连锁大鄂永乐家电在经过两年筹划之后于6月18日正式登陆北京．开设了在北京的第一家店。永乐家电董事长陈晓说：“如果不拿下北京与广东的市场，永乐就谈不上是全国性的连锁。“陈晓的这番话让我们看出永乐进入北京的决心，但永乐究竟是“永乐”京城还是永乐自身，是包括像国美、苏宁这样大的家电连锁企业所共同关心的问题。     

Discussion of “The Role of Expectations in Explaining the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”

This paper discusses Copeland et al. (2004), which empirically investigates the role of changes in expectations in explaining contemporaneous cross-sectional stock returns. Because the main results in this study are largely confirmatory of results reported in prior literature, my discussion emphasizes conceptual issues in the econometric specification of earnings–return relations. I derive three versions of return specifications from popular valuation models based on residual earnings, free cash flows, or earnings growth, and contrast them with that adopted by Copeland et al. (2004). This analysis suggests that firmer grounding in theory would help the paper in empirical specifications as well as interpretations of results.     

Should the Pre‐Notification of Mergers Be Compulsory in Australia?

Australia is unusual among the world's antitrust jurisdictions in not making the pre‐notification of mergers compulsory. However, if the parties are concerned that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is likely to object to the merger, there are strong incentives for them to notify the ACCC as the regulator has developed a strong reputation for imposing heavy costs on parties that fail to notify such mergers. The result is a system of quasi‐compulsory notification that creates the strongest incentives for parties to notify the ACCC of those proposals to which it is most likely to object. This study analyses data extracted from the ACCC's merger database and the empirical results are consistent with this characterisation. Mergers reported voluntarily by the parties are found to experience longer delays to completion, and are more likely to be challenged by the ACCC, when compared with a sample of all other mergers assessed by the regulator. The results suggest that non‐compulsory notification allows the parties themselves to pre‐sort the proposed merger vis‐à‐vis its interest to the ACCC.     

Lies,damned lies and statistics: the accuracy of survey responses

That survey research is error prone is not a new idea and different varieties of non-sampling error have been investigated in the literature as well as consideration being given in many statistics textbooks to the issue of sampling error. The paper here considers research upon corporate environmental reporting. It compares information provided by corporate environmental reports with information that survey respondents claim their organization’s environmental report contains. This enables the accuracy of the claims to be assessed. Consideration is given to two different industries the Water industry and the Energy industry. Errors due to inaccurate reporting by survey respondents are shown to be relatively infrequent and respondents appear just about as likely to claim they report information that they do not, in fact, report as to fail to indicate that they report information that is, in fact, actually reported.