花灯传奇

秀山花灯,起于唐,兴于宋,上千年的历史渊源,使秀山花灯在流传过程中,在得天独厚的生态土壤里,显示出一种民俗民间艺术的魅力。秀山花灯是重庆“十大民间艺术之一”。秀山土家族苗族自治县被文化部命名为“全国民间艺术之乡”。     

快乐地滑翔,自由地飞

一切从滑翔开始滑翔伞,被称为“最接近鸟类的运动”。飞翔从来就是人类向往自由的天性,对热爱滑翔伞的人来说,这项运动真正带来的愉悦,是体力和智慧驾驭的满足感。从古至今,人类在不停探索能够像鸟儿一样自由自在飞翔的方法,随着科技的进步和现代航空技术的发展,人类发明了各种     

诗人李亚伟

上世纪80年代李亚伟是一个才气像个性一样鲜明的诗人,20年后进入成熟期的他成了文化商人。但勿庸置疑,他依旧是江湖传说中那个“心比天高,文章比表妹漂亮”的诗人李亚伟。诗歌,已成为他身体上的精神胎记,让他的人生如一道麻辣鲜烫的火锅,煎熬出无比酣畅淋漓的江湖快意。     

Enhanced Special Drawing Rights: How China Could Contribute to a Reformed International Monetary Architecture

Since the end of the Bretton Woods era, the world has operated on a de facto system of free‐floating exchange rates, with the US dollar as the dominant international currency. The system, characterized by large pro‐cyclical capital flows and chronic imbalances, is inherently unstable, and has contributed to repeated crises, recessions and geopolitical tensions. One potentially “least‐difficult” line of reform would be to allow the evolution of a multi‐currency system, underpinned by an expanded role for Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Attempts to promote wider use of the SDR have foundered on the liquidity premium. However, for Chinese corporations and institutions, at present restricted in their capital account activities, the SDR liquidity premium would appear less daunting. The Chinese authorities could provide policy encouragement for the use of SDRs by their institutions. This initiative, supported by China's Special Administrative Region Hong Kong, would kick‐start an international SDR ecosystem, and encourage even broader use of SDRs, to the benefit of international monetary stability.     

Fixed-Term Contracts and Labor Market Duality in France

The French labor market is segmented between permanent and temporary workers. The second category has difficulty in getting an open-ended contract. This paper aims at depicting workers on short-term contracts and shows the consequences on their professional career are negative and significant. A large part of the wage gap between permanent and temporary workers remains unexplained by observable characteristics. They receive less on-the-job training and their likelihood of obtaining a stable job is lower than 30% after 1 year and a half. They have also a higher probability of being the adjustment variable in case of an economic negative shock. These different findings show the importance of using public policies to encourage transitions from fixed-term to permanent employment and reducing labor-market duality.     

The Surge in Short-Duration Contracts in Spain

Until the outbreak of the recent economic and financial crisis, Spain was leading the ranking of countries with the largest share of temporary employees. During the crisis this share has fallen to its lowest level in decades, but this does not mean that working conditions in Spain have improved. The flow of new temporary contracts is larger than ever before. A particularly striking feature is the steep growth in the volume of fixed-duration contracts lasting less than a week or a month. We document these trends and analyse how this phenomenon has affected the transition from temporary to permanent employment.     

The Diffusion of Local Differentiated Waste Disposal Taxes in the Netherlands

The diffusion of a novel taxing scheme (among Dutch municipalities over the period 1998–2005) is studied in which the waste disposal tax is increasing in the amount of waste a household produces. Inspection of the rise and spread of this tax shows that it is contagious: the probability of introduction is increasing in the number of neighboring municipalities that have already introduced this taxing scheme. A possible rationale is that the tax encourages the dumping of waste in neighboring municipalities. These municipalities may then introduce a similar tax to prevent dumping (spillover effect). Using panel data and a recently developed spatial probit approach (Elhorst et al. in J Appl Econom 32:422–439, 2017), it is possible to distinguish this spillover effect from time-specific effects. The results indicate the presence of strong spillovers.     

Oil Price Shocks and the Credit Default Swap Market

We investigate the impact of supply and demand shocks in the global crude oil market on the CDX spread, in the context of a structural VAR model based on monthly data, over the period from November 2003 to October 2015. We find that the reaction of the CDX spread to changes in the real price of crude oil differs considerably depending on the sources of shocks. In the long run, crude oil supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks, and oil-specific demand shocks together account for nearly 90% of the variation of the CDX spread.     

Currency Misalignments in the BRIICS Countries: Fixed Vs. Floating Exchange Rates

In the present paper we attempt to investigate whether the real effective exchange rates of the BRIICS countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa, converge or not to their equilibrium levels. Our analysis is based on the use of an external balance model as well as the implementation of recent panel cointegration techniques. Our evidence indicates the existence of a valid long-run relationship between the real effective exchange rate, the net foreign assets, the GDP differential and the real interest rate differential for each of the six countries of our sample. Furthermore, our empirical results imply that after the adoption of a free floating exchange rate regime by Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and South Africa and the liberalisation of the Chinese exchange rate policy that took place during the last decade, currency misalignments have been gradually reduced, leading the real effective exchange rates of the respective currencies very close to their equilibrium levels.