Bandwagon mergers,international competitiveness,and government policy

This paper suggests that while the static welfare losses of merger predilections among Western firms may not be dramatic, they may lead to substantial dynamic losses when merger-prone firms need to compete with firms which instead focus on equipment investment and investments in R&D. It is suggested that such diverging investment priorities have been the real cause of the deteriorating competitiveness of many of the largest Western enterprises vis-à-vis their Japanese rivals. While mergers are generally taken to be determined by either efficiency or monopoly considerations, this paper argues that Western merger predilections are likely to be generated by a combination of imitative and defensive routines as well. That would make it difficult for firms to unilaterally break away from these competitiveness-threatening investments. If correct, this would imply that competition policies would need to be refocused. However, it is also suggested that the implications for international competitiveness should make merger questions a subject of industrial policies too. In that respect, the paper suggests some basic attitudinal changes.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a Global Forum for Competition and Trade Policy conference in Vienna and at a EUNIP workshop at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Financial support from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (contract nos. 54473 and 57305) and the European Commission (contract no. ERB CHRX CT94-0454), research assistance from Michel Renirie and Chee-Wai Chan, and helpful comments from the conference and workshop participants, especially Kurt Bayer and Keith Cowling, are gratefully acknowledged. Only the author is responsible for the contents of, and any flaws in the paper.     

How to control a chaotic economy?

An economic system which exhibits chaotic behaviour has been stabilized on various periodic orbits by use of the Ott-Grebogi-Yorke method. This procedure has been recently applied to controlling chaotic phenomena in physical, chemical and biological systems. We adopt this method successfully for Feichtinger's generic model of two competing firms with asymmetrical investment strategies. We show that the application of this control method to the particular economic process considered brings a substantial advantage: one can easily switch from a chaotic trajectory to a regular periodic orbit and simultaneously improve the system's economic properties. Numerical simulations are presented in order to illustrate the effectiveness of the whole procedure.The work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and by the Polish National Council (KBN) Grant No 2 P302 038 04.     

Economic Valuation of Health for Environmental Policy: Comparing Alternative Approaches. Introduction and Overview

Protecting human health is a primary goal of environmental policy and economic evaluation of health can help policy-makers judge the relative worth of alternative actions. Economists use two distinct approaches in normatively evaluating health. Whereas environmental economists use benefit-cost analysis supported by monetary valuation in terms of willingness-to-pay, health economists evaluate interventions based on cost-effectiveness or cost-utility analysis (CEA), using quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) or similar indexes. This paper provides background on the controversy about the relative merits of these approaches and introduces the remaining papers in the special issue. These papers (with one exception) were presented at a conference sponsored by the Department of Economics at the University of Central Florida with support from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Although CEA might not lead to substantially different implications for environmental policy than benefit-cost analysis, and QALY may provide a benefit transfer tool to fill gaps in the morbidity valuation literature, the papers in this issue raise serious concerns about the suitability of QALY-based CEA for environmental regulatory analysis. QALY does not in general appropriately represent individual preferences for health and CEA is neither independent of income distribution nor adequate to assess efficiency.     

我国农村环境问题的经济分析及解决途径

本文分析了我国农村存在的环境问题,从经济学角度分析了农村环境问题产生的原因,并提出了农村环境问题的治理措施与途径:消除其公共物品性和外部性。     

振兴东北老工业基地资本运营效益研究

现阶段,东北老工业基地存在着高消耗、低性能、低附加值、产品生产能力过剩等问题,因而,在市场经济的大潮中,造成了竞争力减弱、经济效益下滑的局面.发达国家的实践告诉我们,传统产业高科技化能改变这种局面,但高科技需要大量投入资本,故而需要研究传统产业高科技化资本运营的模式,从而降低高风险,实现高效益.     

民工流动与乡村中年失业

对包括民工在内的各类乡村劳动力的年龄结构进行了分析。城市民工需求年轻化导致三个后果。首先导致青年民工的供不应求,从而在乡村还存在大量剩余劳动力的前提下,出现了全国性的民工荒;其次,导致乡村现有中年剩余劳动力难于在城市就业;最后,导致进入中年后的民工绝大多数无法继续在城市就业,中年民工家庭因不具备在城市定居的经济能力不得不回乡。后两个结果的不断积累产生了中国特有的一个经济现象-乡村劳动力的中年失业。     

Modelling exchange of probabilistic opinions

Summary. This paper studies how communication or exchange of opinions influences correlation of beliefs. The paper focuses on a situation in which agents communicate with each other infinitely many times without observing data. It is an extension to the ‘Expert Problem’ in Bayesian theory, where the informational flow is asymmetric. Moreover, this paper generalizes the existing literature of communication that employs the common prior assumption (CPA) by allowing for heterogeneous beliefs. Some basic convergence results are shown in contrast with the results obtained under the CPA. Furthermore, several economic implications of the basic results are provided. Received: August 27, 2001; revised version: April 16, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The results presented in this paper are taken from my Ph.D. thesis at Stanford University. I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration obtained from innumerable discussions with Mordecai Kurz about this subject. Also, I appreciate comments from Kenneth J. Arrow, Peter J. Hammond, Maurizio Motolese, Carsten K. Nielsen, Ho-Mou Wu and the anonymous referee.     

黄龙洞旅游开发对洞内生态环境和人的影响研究

通过对黄龙洞年内不同季节定点测定，同时与对旅游影响还不大的龙王洞对比测定，作者发现黄龙滑滑内空气CO2浓度的明显变化主要受客流量的影响。旅游旺季和黄金周客流量急剧增长带来的洞内空气CO2浓度大幅度增长，有利于岩溶作用，但洞内黑暗、高湿、低温的生态环境，对洞内工作人员身体健康有害。洞穴内岩溶景观的变化，主要受漫长的自然岩溶过程的影响，与洞内开发旅游活动的关系不大，但与洞顶山地植被保护状况有密切关系。     

城市地理学研究新的领域思考

改革开放以来，由于国民经济的迅速发展，我国工业化、城市化的进程明显加快。从国情分析可知，我国的城市化出现了五种特有的现象，这为城市地理学的研究提供了广阔的平台。城市地理学在我国城市发展与城市化的重大问题研究上，长期以来取得了许多重要成果，理论方法上也有重大建树，成为人文科学与自然科学研究领域中最为活跃的一支生力军^①。文章从我国实际出发，提出了城市地理学研究的思维方法及其若干新的研究领域。     

房地产还原利率的构成与测算

从分析投资的风险补偿入手，提出了房地产还原利率的构成和测算公式，同时指出了构成房地产还原利率的银行利率应是复利计算方式下，相应年期的利率，然后探讨了房地产还原利率各构成部分的测算过程，并以中国房地产市场个人住房抵押贷款市场为例，给出了不同收益年限的房地产还原利率参考数据。