EFFECTS OF A CHILD'S DISABILITY ON AFFECTED FEMALE'S LABOUR SUPPLY IN AUSTRALIA

Australia has experienced a growing rate of child disability, with the rate of 3.7 per cent in 1998 increasing to 4.3 per cent in 2003 for children aged under four years and from 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent for children aged five to 14 years in the same period. However, surprisingly no study has examined the economic effects of child disability in the Australian context. This paper attempts to quantify the link between a child's disability and the work behaviour of the female in the affected family. Our findings provide empirical justifications for the current policy linking the severity level of child disability to the assessment of eligibility for Carer Payment (Child). We also found that child disability has different impacts on the labour market activities of married women and non‐married women. It appears that child disability imposes a greater hardship on non‐married women than on married women in terms of work choice decision. Once non‐married women manage to enter the labour force, they may have to stay on to work as usual even if they have a disabled child, because they may not have other family members to turn to for help as married women do.     

Has the IASB Been Successful in Making Accounting Earnings More Useful for Prediction and Valuation? UK Evidence

When producing International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), one of the main goals of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was to create a set of standards which were more useful to investors as a predictive tool. We assess the success of the IASB in achieving this goal by investigating the effects of the introduction of IFRS on the relative information content of reported earnings and forecasted earnings under UK generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) and IFRS. Results indicate that the value relevance of forecasted earnings is significantly lower under IFRS while the value relevance of reported earnings is significantly larger. These findings suggest that IFRS substitutes price‐relevant information previously provided to the market in the form of analyst forecasts with information encoded by companies in their reported earnings. This implies that the IASB was indeed successful in its stated goal and points towards IFRS forecasts being more accurate and less dispersed than UK GAAP forecasts. This, in turn, implies that analysts are able to provide more informative forecasts under IFRS than under pre‐IFRS regimes and that the aforementioned substitution effect is not a consequence of any decrease in the quality of forecasts under the new regime.     

政企关系、地方政府环境规制差异与环境信息选择性披露--基于重污染上市公司经验证据

基于部门利益理论与印象管理理论,研究政企关系、地方政府环境规制等因素对环境信息披露的影响。通过对1391家重污染行业上市公司2010—2011年数据实证研究发现,政企关系与环境信息披露成负向相关关系;在政企关系作用下,地方政府环境规制不但没有起到相应的规制作用,反而降低了企业环境信息的披露质量;政企关系削弱了地方政府环境规制对企业环境信息披露的显著性与时间性,但是对于量化性并没有起到削弱作用。     

The interaction effect of gender and ethnicity in loan approval: A Bayesian estimation with data from a laboratory field experiment

Microfinance targets women and uses loan provision as a tool for empowerment, which translates into better household nutrition, improved education, and a scale down of domestic violence. However, ethnic discrimination in microfinance may exist in countries with a segregated indigenous population. We assessed this possibility with a field experiment in Bolivia. The controlled laboratory experiment evaluated whether credit officers rejected microloan applications based on the interaction effect of ethnicity and gender of potential borrowers. Point estimates of a Bayesian mixed‐effects logistic regression, estimated with the experimental data, indicate that nonindigenous women have double the chance of loan approval, but indigenous women have only 1.5 times the chance of loan approval when compared with men. While the findings about gender are limited, the evidence for the interaction of gender and ethnicity is more robust and suggests the existence of positive taste‐based discrimination favorable for nonethnic women in Bolivia. We conclude that the affirmative actions towards women promoted by development agencies and microfinance institutions must not overlook ethnicity as an important factor for financial policies of sustainable development. In practice, these policies should be aimed at identifying and reducing both social desirability bias and the structural barriers to financial inclusion that indigenous women may face when trying to obtain access to a loan.     

复杂产品系统项目的组织与技术创新管理研究现状

技术密集型的复杂产品系统是现代社会经济发展中的技术支柱,也是目前颇具前景的研究领域之一。在研究了国内外关于复杂产品系统相关文献的基础上,从复杂产品系统项目的组织和技术创新管理两个方面,阐述了复杂产品系统的研究现状,并提出了复杂产品系统的研究前瞻。     

How Significant Is Sub‐Saharan Africa's Demographic Dividend for Its Future Growth and Poverty Reduction?

Sub‐Saharan Africa will be undergoing substantial demographic changes over the next 15 years with the rising working‐age share of its population. The opportunity of African countries to convert these changes into demographic dividends for growth and poverty reduction will depend on several factors. The outlook will likely be good if African countries can continue the gains already made under better institutions and policies, particularly those affecting the productivity of labor, such as educational outcomes. If African countries can continue to build on the hard‐won development gains, the demographic dividend could account for 11–15% of gross domestic product (GDP) volume growth by 2030, while accounting for 40–60 million fewer poor in 2030. The gains can become more substantial with better educational outcomes that allow African countries to catch up to other developing countries. If the skill share of Africa's labor supply doubles because of improvements in educational attainment, from 25 to about 50% between 2011 and 2030, then the demographic dividends can expand the regional economy additionally by 22% by 2030 relative to the base case and reduce poverty by an additional 51 million people.     

全球化背景下文化创意产业创新模式研究

作为一种新兴产业,文化创意产业成为我国经济结构调整和经济发展方式转变的重要手段。尤其是自2006年以来,文化创意产业在中国展现出强劲的发展势头,文化创意产业园区如雨后春笋般在各大城市兴起,有关文化创意产业的博览会、设计周、动漫展、高峰论坛等也是层出不穷。这表明中国已经迈开了从"中国制造"走向"中国创造"的伟大脚步。通过分析全球化的特征及其对中国经济的影响来揭示我国文化创意产业发展的必然性和前进方向,针对我国文化创意产业的发展现状总结其发展的创新模式。     

FAIR RETIREMENT UNDER RISKY LIFETIME*

A premature death unexpectedly brings a life and a career to their end, leading to substantial welfare losses. We study the retirement decision in an economy with risky lifetime and compare the laissez‐faire with egalitarian social optima. We consider two social objectives: (1) the maximin on expected lifetime welfare, allowing for a compensation for unequal life expectancies, and (2) the maximin on realized lifetime welfare, allowing for a compensation for unequal lifetimes. The latter optimum involves, in general, decreasing lifetime consumption profiles as well as raising the retirement age. This result is robust to the introduction of unequal life expectancies and unequal productivities.     

大动态PCM/FM信号的载波频率同步

针对大动态脉冲编码-频率调制（PCM/FM）遥测信号的载波频率同步,提出了基于快速傅里叶变换（FFT）及频谱重心的载波频率估计方法,并采用了频谱叠加及频谱截取的优化方法提高算法估计精度。相对于其他基于FFT的频率估计算法,频谱重心法有着更高的估计精度及更好的抗噪声性能,而且复杂度代价很小。仿真的均方误差结果表明,基于FFT长度为2 048和2块叠加以及保留信号99.9%能量的频谱截取方案有最好的估计性能。在最大多普勒频率、多普勒一阶变化率及二阶变化率分别为0.5倍、0.3倍及0.2倍符号率的大动态条件下,基于频谱重心法的二阶锁频环能够较好地完成载波频率跟踪。误码率曲线表明,经过频偏校正后的多符号非相干解调（MSD)性能与无频偏情况相比,无性能损失。