The President Versus the Senate: Appointments in the American System of Separated Powers and the Federal Reserve

For politicians, appointments are an instrument of policy influence.By installing their representatives in an institution, politicianscan count on policy influence for the duration of their appointees'terms. Given the stakes, the occasional controversy regardingnominees is understandable. On the whole, however, nominationsare not controversial; in fact, Senate confirmation votes areoften unanimous. Nevertheless, the Senate can have substantialinfluence in the appointment process. Using a formal model,this article examines how the president and Senate strategicallybargain with one another within the confines of the FederalReserve appointment process to influence monetary policy. Witha new way to estimate monetary policy preferences, this articleshows empirically that policy influence occurs via appointments.     

Do insurance activities enhance the performance of financial services holding companies?

Stiroh and Rumble (2006) and Yeager et al. (2007) have argued that extension of banks into nonbanking activities produces no diversification benefits for financial services holding companies (FSHCs) eligible to consolidate banking and insurance products. We investigate the effect of aggregate nonbank activities, as well as two main areas of insurance business, namely agency and underwriting enterprise, on the risk-adjusted performance of FSHCs. Our sample includes a quarterly panel data of FSHCs over the period 2003–2011. We find that the effect of FSHCs’ entry into agency insurance activities on their risk-adjusted returns is dependent on their size; it is positive for FSHCs in the top quartile of our sample (assets greater than $4.495 billions), but negative for smaller and mid-size FSHCs. The effect of underwriting insurance activities on risk-adjusted returns is generally negative or statistically insignificant, except for some of the largest-size firms.     

Casino regulations and economic welfare

Abstract This paper studies the entry and tax regulation of oligopolistically competitive privately run casinos and government‐run casinos in a jurisdiction. We highlight three important external effects from casino‐style gambling: non‐casino income creation, social disorder costs, and cross‐border gambling. The laissez‐faire equilibrium need not be overcrowding compared with regulated or government‐run regimes. Entry regulation may lead to higher jurisdiction welfare than tax regulation. Government‐run casinos always operate on a larger scale and achieve higher welfare than other regimes, given the same number of casinos. With an endogenous fraction of external gamblers, a dispersed casino configuration yields higher welfare than a centralized one.     

Avoiding arbitrary exclusion restrictions using ratios of reduced-form estimates

We show how to obtain coherent structural-form (SF) exclusion restrictions using the reduced-form (RF) parameter ratios. It will be shown that an over-identified SF corresponds to a group of regressors sharing the same RF ratio value; those regressors should be excluded jointly from the SF. If there is no group structure, then the SF is just-identified; in this case, however, it is no longer clear which regressor should be excluded. Hence, just-identified SF’s are more arbitrary than over-identified SF’s in terms of exclusion restrictions. This is in stark contrast to the notion that the former is less arbitrary than the latter, because the former excludes fewer regressors. We formalize these points, and then suggest to find the number of modes in the estimated RF ratios as a way to find groups in the ratios. For this purpose, an informal graphical method using a kernel nonparametric method and a formal modality test are employed. An empirical example with selling price in a residential real estate market and duration on the market as two endogenous variables is provided. The authors are grateful to the editor and two anonymous referees for their comments     

人力资源管理与区域经济发展的对策研究

文章首先论述了人力资源与区域经济可持续发展的关系,在深入分析了当前我国人力资源区域协调的障碍与约束的基础上,提出了战略人力资源管理与区域可持续发展的对策。     

Driving force from authorities: the evolution of innovation system for biomedical industry in China

Over the past 30 years, China has fully exploited its advantage to steadily foster an innovation system for the biomedical industry with Chinese characteristics, that is, ‘Government-guided, resource-integrated and long-term planning.’ The system originated from historically famous ‘863 program’ in the 1980s, evolved with a series of favourable policies in the different periods, and eventually has taken shape in the industrial clusters across the country. It features with a systematic and integrated R&D infrastructure (or public platform) at different levels. In this study, China’s biomedical innovation system will be examined and the leading role of Chinese authorities will be explored from the perspective of Triple Helix theory. As the ‘highland of innovation’, Shanghai case is highlighted with plentiful information gathered from primary sources in the involved agencies for the first time, including the Shanghai Biopharma Service Platform.     

Assessing market power in the U.S. commercial banking industry under deregulation

This study attempts to investigate market power in the U.S. commercial banking industry since the U.S. government began to deregulate the banking sector in the early 1990s using the static Bresnahan–Lau model (SBLM) and dynamic Bresnahan–Lau model with error corrections (DBLEC). In particular, panel unit root and panel cointegration techniques are utilized to examine the dynamic model. The empirical results of the SBLM show that the banking industry is highly competitive. The empirical results of DBLEC also suggest that the commercial banking industry is close to being perfectly competitive in the short run. By contrast, the adjustment speeds of the supply and demand sides towards the long-run equilibrium are quite slow in that market, which implies that the U.S. commercial banks enjoy a certain degree of long-run market power.