Financing China’s unprecedented infrastructure boom: the evolution of capital structure from 1978 to 2015

ABSTRACT

The authors examine the sources of the funds that have financed China’s infrastructure development since 1978. They define the five periods in which this development has taken place in terms of predominant financing: fiscal funds, build-operate-transfer (BOT), treasury bonds, the land financing, and local bonds. The system is characterized by a heavy reliance on debt financing and one-off revenues. These approaches have raised widespread concerns about fiscal sustainability in China. The authors explain why a shift towards the more conventional approach of fiscal funds is necessary.     

Smoking Habits: Like Father,Like Son,Like Mother,Like Daughter?*

We use instrumental variable methods to investigate whether the impact of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions is a causal one. We find suggestive evidence of same‐sex role models in two‐parent households: mothers play a more crucial role in determining their daughters’ smoking decisions, whereas fathers’ smoking habits are primarily imitated by their sons. This same‐sex parent–child link is no longer at play for teenagers living in single‐mother households, for whom the influence of their only cohabiting parent turns out to be predominant independently of gender.     

Optimal investment-reinsurance with dynamic risk constraint and regime switching

We study an optimal investment–reinsurance problem for an insurer who faces dynamic risk constraint in a Markovian regime-switching environment. The goal of the insurer is to maximize the expected utility of terminal wealth. Here the dynamic risk constraint is described by the maximal conditional Value at Risk over different economic states. The rationale is to provide a prudent investment–reinsurance strategy by taking into account the worst case scenario over different economic states. Using the dynamic programming approach, we obtain an analytical solution of the problem when the insurance business is modeled by either the classical Cramer–Lundberg model or its diffusion approximation. We document some important qualitative behaviors of the optimal investment–reinsurance strategies and investigate the impacts of switching regimes and risk constraint on the optimal strategies.     

International investment and Nazi politics: The cloaking of German assets abroad, 1936–1945

This article deals with the relationship between business and government during the Third Reich in making policy toward attempts by German companies to protect their foreign assets. In contrast to the widely held view of many professional historians and journalists, we argue that business engaged in these efforts largely without governmental assistance, indeed often in the face of resistance from the regime, since for the most part companies set up structures that were contrary to the wishes of the National Socialist political bureaucracy. Although some of the evidence we present here is known to historians, much of our interpretation of the data has not penetrated professional accounts of the period. The cloaking story, moreover, has implications for contemporary multinational business. As the Second World War approached, fear of expropriation became a more important motivation for cloaking, but even in the late 1930s German managers created these structures for a variety of commercial reasons. Firms are still confronted by a myriad of pressures and political risks, not the least of which are those posed by their own home countries' actions that affect the value of their foreign assets. We argue here that one of the commercial objectives of German businesses' cloaking efforts was to reduce the political risk of the actions of the country in which they were incorporated.     

Measuring the road safety performance of Iranian provinces: a double-frontier DEA model and evidential reasoning approach

Abstract

Road traffic accidents are critical public issue in developing countries, and they annually waste a significant amount of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In order to urgently consider how this problem is related to the current policies, a proper safety evaluation of regional programmes in crash reduction is fundamental to the governments. The current research aims to employ a double-frontier Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to assess the productivity of Iranian regional safety programmes in reducing the number of road fatalities. The safety efficiencies of Iranian provinces are simultaneously estimated using the double frontier DEA to reflect both the optimistic and pessimistic points of view. Then, the Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach is applied to aggregate the obtained efficiency values. These provinces are ranked based on the data panel for 2014–2016. Finally, a double-frontier Malmquist productivity index (MPI) is used to comprehensively measure the safety performance of Iranian roads over a period of time.     

FEMALE LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION AND RELIGION: A CROSS‐COUNTRY ANALYSIS

This paper empirically examines whether female labour force participation (FLFP) in a cross‐section of countries between 1985 and 2005 varies depending upon the religion practised in these countries. Using a cross‐sectional empirical specification, we initially find that FLFP is lower in Muslim countries. However, the association between Islam and FLFP greatly diminishes once other controls are included in the regression, suggesting that Islam might not diminish FLFP as some have argued. Moreover, once these additional controls are included, the association between Islam and FLFP is similar to that between Catholicism and FLFP. Countries where Protestantism is prevalent or where no religion is practised have higher FLFP. Finally, we find some evidence that the association between FLFP and religion is weakening over time.     

一种简单快捷的完全可扩展线阵设计

本文设计了一种具有准均匀线阵形式的完全可扩展线阵,在实现了可简单快捷设计的同时又获得了较大的阵列孔径,其孔径接近完全可扩展线阵中具有最大孔径的约束最小冗余线阵,但却无需设计约束最小冗余线阵中的繁冗搜索,在阵元数很大时本文的设计显得尤为实用。     

Multivariate L1 mean

The center of a univariate data set {x ₁,…,x _n} can be defined as the point μ that minimizes the norm of the vector of distances y′=(|x ₁−μ|,…,|x _n−μ|). As the median and the mean are the minimizers of respectively the L ₁- and the L ₂-norm of y, they are two alternatives to describe the center of a univariate data set. The center μ of a multivariate data set {x ₁,…,x _n} can also be defined as minimizer of the norm of a vector of distances. In multivariate situations however, there are several kinds of distances. In this note, we consider the vector of L ₁-distances y′₁=(∥x ₁- μ∥₁,…,∥x _n- μ∥₁) and the vector of L ₂-distances y′₂=(∥x ₁- μ∥₂,…,∥x _n-μ∥₂). We define the L ₁-median and the L ₁-mean as the minimizers of respectively the L ₁- and the L ₂-norm of y ₁; and then the L ₂-median and the L ₂-mean as the minimizers of respectively the L ₁- and the L ₂-norm of y ₂. In doing so, we obtain four alternatives to describe the center of a multivariate data set. While three of them have been already investigated in the statistical literature, the L ₁-mean appears to be a new concept. Received January 1999     

Dynamics of Firm Profitability and Growth: Do Knowledge-Intensive (Business) Services Persistently Outperform?

This paper explores the persistence of profitability and growth for firms operating in the Greek service sector, paying special attention to knowledge-intensive services (KIS) and knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). The generalized method of moments is used on a rich panel of firms over a recent nine-year period. Quantile regressions are complementarily applied for KIS and KIBS industries. The key results from both growth and profit dynamics suggest that firms in KIS and KIBS industries persistently outperform firms in less knowledge-intensive service industries, pointing to strategic advantages of the former. Importantly, KIS and KIBS seem to be able to sustain their growth and profitability persistent trends even in times of crisis. Further insight into these issues is provided by the quantile analysis, the exploration of the profitability and growth inter-linkages, and the investigation of differences among various size groups in KIS and KIBS.     

关于股票期现货市场T+0和T+1交易机制的思考

本文从T+0交易与信用交易的内在联系、T+0对投资者的影响、T+0对市场的影响、交易机制改革的出发点四个方面对期现货交易机制进行分析。结论是:T+0是证券市场信用交易的必然产物,T+0和T+1交易机制的制度套利来自于信用交易,而不是股指期货;是否需要取消T+1,从而消除这一制度套利,不能单纯从维护散户交易权利的角度出发,而应当综合考虑对市场和投资者的影响;交易机制改革可行的方法是实行T+0并辅以配套的风险管理措施。