Trade and dietary diversity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

In public and academic debates, the linkages between agricultural markets and nutrition across the world are vividly discussed. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate by analyzing the relationship between greater openness to trade and dietary diversity. It focuses on the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia where trade reforms triggered growth in trade flows and foreign direct investment, which in turn affected food systems in these countries. This shift provides a natural experiment for studying the effects of trade openness on agricultural markets and consumer behaviour. Reduction in trade barriers, for instance in the context of the accession to the WTO and the EU, and the gradual integration with world markets after 1991 had implications for diets through changes in production, prices and incomes. We utilize country-level panel data for 26 post-communist countries in the period 1996–2013 to assess the effects of trade costs, agricultural trade openness and incomes on dietary diversity measured by the Shannon entropy index. The results from fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation are consistent with previous findings that income growth affects dietary diversity positively. They also provide novel evidence that trade barriers reduce variety of products available in domestic markets, in particular fruits and vegetables.     

不同利率对我国上市银行信用风险的影响

对我国16家上市银行进行的实证检验表明：3个月同业拆借利率与银行信用风险显著正相关，人民币5年期基准存款利率与银行信用风险的关系不确定，人民币1年期基准存款利率与银行信用风险显著正相关，贷款利息收入占贷款比例与银行信用风险显著负相关。     

关于公路与桥梁之间过渡段施工技术初探

本文主要分析了公路桥梁间过渡段出现不均沉降的原因以及公路桥梁间过渡段的施工技术的应用情况,此项技术对降低施工成本,提升桥梁的可靠性与安全性有重要作用。     

INVESTMENT BEHAVIOUR,CORPORATE CONTROL,AND PRIVATE BENEFITS OF CONTROL: EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF UKRAINIAN FIRMS

We analyse the impact of ownership and corporate control on firms’ investment using the 2001 survey of Yacoub et al. on Ukrainian firms. The model explains investment by output, financial and soft budget constraints, and corporate control (and ownership) categories potentially enjoying private benefits of control. We find that the corporate control model fits better than the ownership model, a negative relationship between state and employee control and firms’ investment, and evidence for the presence of soft budget constraints. A negative relationship between firms’ investment and the relative size of non‐monetary transactions strengthens the conclusion of private benefits of control impacting investment.     

A Geometrical Interpretation of Collinearity: A Natural Way to Justify Ridge Regression and Its Anomalies

Justifying ridge regression from a geometrical perspective is one of the main contributions of this paper. To the best of our knowledge, this question has not been treated previously. This paper shows that ridge regression is a particular case of raising procedures that provide greater flexibility by transforming the matrix X associated with the model. Thus, raising procedures, based on a geometrical idea of the vectorial space associated with the columns of matrix X , lead naturally to ridge regression and justify the presence of the well-known constant k on the main diagonal of matrix X ^′ X . This paper also analyses and compares different alternatives to raising with respect to collinearity mitigation. The results are illustrated with an empirical application.     

Reluctant Generalised Additive Modelling

Sparse generalised additive models (GAMs) are an extension of sparse generalised linear models that allow a model's prediction to vary non-linearly with an input variable. This enables the data analyst build more accurate models, especially when the linearity assumption is known to be a poor approximation of reality. Motivated by reluctant interaction modelling, we propose a multi-stage algorithm, called reluctant generalised additive modelling (RGAM), that can fit sparse GAMs at scale. It is guided by the principle that, if all else is equal, one should prefer a linear feature over a non-linear feature. Unlike existing methods for sparse GAMs, RGAM can be extended easily to binary, count and survival data. We demonstrate the method's effectiveness on real and simulated examples.     

Separate waste collection in mountain municipalities. A case study in Campania

This paper aims to analyse the impact of land characteristics (i.e. altimetry and housing dispersion) on separate waste collection, with a focus on mountain municipalities. The high spatial heterogeneity of the driving factors of separate waste collection allows traditional techniques, such as OLS, to offer only a partial depiction of the situation, missing important information. In this view, we perform the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), which allows to control for the local determinants of waste management. Our data cover 550 municipalities of Campania, in Southern Italy. We control for a set of morphological and socio-economic variables, drawn from official records for 2012. Our results show that the relationships between land characteristics and separate waste collection are not constant over space. Moreover, they suggest that in the presence of non-modifiable factors (such as land characteristics) local governments should act on citizen motivations, promoting awareness on environmental issues, and should implement time-saving collection methods.     

TFP growth in Chinese cities: The role of factor-intensity and industrial agglomeration

This article estimates agglomeration effects via calculating EG (Elilsion & Glaeser) and TFP growth (Total Factor Production) by considering the undesired output of the industrial enterprise database and the entropy weight method. Using panel data of 207 county-level cities in China and 28 two-digit manufacturing industries from 2003 to 2013 based on SIC codes, this paper analyzes the relationship between agglomeration and TFP growth through the smooth transition model under different regions and factor-intensity. The results are as follows. (1) A negative relationship appears in manufacturing productivity. The agglomeration effect changes to the crowded effect. Environmental pollution is also generated by transportation and inadequate pollution treatment technology. (2) The excessive agglomeration phenomenon of developed areas (eastern region) is less than the less developed areas (central and western regions). (3) Resource-intensity industries present two thresholds that indicate complex regional features. For various intensive industries in different regions, the relationship between GML and agglomeration is different. High agglomeration does not always promote TFP growth. (4) At different levels of urban industrial agglomeration, the influences of efficiency change and technical change on GML are different. Overall, moderate agglomeration in all regions helps promote economic development.     

How efficient airways act as role models and in what dimensions? A superefficiency DEA model enhanced by social network analysis

In this empirical study, a five-stage methodology is used to examine the efficiency of 45 worldwide known airline companies from the financial, operation and marketing perspectives. Initially, the superefficient data envelopment model is run with inputs and outputs that are selected based on the literature review. However, because 21 out of 45 airline companies are found to be efficient based on this analysis, a stepwise regression-based mechanism is applied to four reduced models – one for each output variable – for better discrimination. The outputs are, namely, net profit margin (financial output), passengers carried, on-time departure performance (operational outputs), and customer satisfaction (marketing output). In this way, the significant input variables are found for each reduced model. In the third stage, in order to provide even more discrimination, social network-based eigenvector centrality values are used as the weights of the superefficiency scores, and the strengths and weaknesses of efficient airlines for each output are specified in terms of their related significant inputs. The results show that, when net profit margin is taken as an output, Vietnam Airlines has the top weighted superefficiency value and excels in terms of available seat kilometers and liquidity, but it should improve its debt level. Although Norwegian Airlines has the highest efficiency with respect to debt level, it is not the best role model because its eigenvector centrality value is relatively low. However, Norwegian airlines also has the highest weighted superefficiency and acts as a role model in terms of on-time departures with respect to this output. Its main strength is liquidity, and it has no significant weaknesses. On the other hand, in terms of overall satisfaction and passengers carried, Vietnam Airlines and Thai Airways are the leaders, respectively. Vietnam Airlines is the only superefficient company with respect to overall satisfaction, while the basic strengths of Thai Airways in terms of passengers carried are its employee and fleet, and it has no significant weakness. A final aggregation of the results is made by making pairwise comparisons of the relative importance of four outputs for 7 experts selected from different departments of airline companies. According to the results, Net Profit Margin has the highest priority, followed by On-time Departure and Overall Customer Satisfaction, while passengers carried has the lowest importance. Based on these relative priorities, it can be said that Vietnam Airlines can be accepted as the top performing airline company, followed by Norwegian Airlines.     

Threshold effect of economic openness on bank risk-taking: Evidence from emerging markets

This paper investigates the non-linear effects of two aspects of economic openness, namely, trade openness and financial openness, on banking system stability. We use a panel of 42 emerging markets from 2000 to 2014 to test whether bank risk-taking behaviour varies with the level of openness. We find that a higher degree of trade openness promotes bank stability linearly. Conversely, the non-linear effect of financial openness on bank risk-taking is evident. When the financial system is not sufficiently open, the impact of financial openness on bank stability is insignificant. However, as the domestic financial market becomes more open, financial openness can help discipline the behaviour of banks, making them more stable. We also find evidence that these effects are transmitted through the market discipline channel. Our findings highlight the importance of strengthening the domestic regulatory framework and transparency as the economy becomes more integrated.