Bureaucratic integration and regional specialization in China

Fiscal decentralization introduced as part of China's economic reform since 1979 has unleashed strong incentives for China's local governments to pursue economic development, but the same incentives have also led to local protectionist policies inhibiting the process of regional specialization. This paper focuses on the constraints or freedom with which local governments can implement their protectionist policies. Using a panel data of 29 China's regions over the time period of 1985–1997, we find that China's political system of bureaucratic integration (specifically, concurrent appointment of local government officials in the central government) imposes constraints on the local governments from practicing protectionism. We also find that the effectiveness of local protectionist policies is limited by market competition, specifically, competition from foreign-invested firms operating in China and foreign imports. Our results on the role of local protectionism remain robust to controls for the regional variations in the size of the economy and the stage of economic development.     

浅议中央银行沟通策略的选择

近十多年来,中央银行货币政策操作逐步从隐秘性转向开放和透明.中央银行与公众之间,不仅沟通内容日趋丰富,而且沟通渠道更加多样化.为了保持沟通的连贯性和一致性,提高沟通的有效性,中央银行必须实施明确的沟通策略.     

全球视野下中国保险业的发展趋势

中国保险市场是全球最重要的新兴保险市场之一,在经济全球化背景下,国际保险业发展的新趋势将对中国保险业的发展产生重大而深远的影响,中国保险业在经营理念、发展模式、扩张路径和运营模式等方面将发生深刻的变革。     

International interest rates and US monetary policy announcements: Evidence from Hong Kong and Singapore

This paper investigates the responses of market interest rates to US monetary policy announcements for the US and two emerging economies, Hong Kong and Singapore which are similar on many respects but have experienced opposite exchange rate regimes in the last twenty years. Our results, based on market expectations extracted from federal fund futures rates, document that FOMC announcements significantly affect the term structure of interest rate in the US and both Asian countries. Further, international interest rate differentials around FOMC meeting dates tend to be negative for short maturities with the impact gradually dissipating as bond maturity increases. Finally, for the case of Singapore, we find that domestic interest rates react to both external and domestic monetary policy announcements with a magnitude that is larger over the full bond maturity spectrum for domestic announcements. These results are robust to time-varying futures risk premia and alternative measures of interest rates expectations.     

Asymmetric volatility in the foreign exchange markets

We examine the presence or absence of asymmetric volatility in the exchange rates of Australian dollar (AUD), Euro (EUR), British pound (GBP) and Japanese yen (JPY), all against US dollar. Our investigation is based on a variant of the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility model, using daily realized variance and return series from 1996 to 2004. We find that a depreciation against USD leads to significantly greater volatility than an appreciation for AUD and GBP, whereas the opposite is true for JPY. Relative to volatility on days following a positive one-standard-deviation return, volatility on days following a negative one-standard-deviation return is higher by 6.6% for AUD, 6.1% for GBP, and 21.2% for JPY. The realized volatility of EUR appears to be symmetric. These results are robust to the removal of jump component from realized volatility and the sub-samplings defined by structural-changes. The asymmetry in AUD, GBP and JPY appears to be embedded in the continuous component of realized volatility rather than the jump component.     

基于引力模型的中美农产品贸易边境效应研究

针对中美两国在农产品贸易上的新变化,应用引力模型的派生模型——边境效应引力模型对中美两国农产品贸易的流量和流向进行理论和实证研究。首先介绍了边境效应引力模型基本模型的推导过程,并引入了调整模型。然后采用1987至2005年其中5年的截面数据进行计算,结果发现:中美农产品贸易的边境效应显著存在,且呈逐年下降趋势;两国之间的农产品贸易边境效应存在流向和区域上的差异;距离的平方并不影响模型的可靠性。     

伪满时期东北农业雇工研究

伪满时期,由于日本帝国主义的入侵,影响和改变了东北农村的社会经济结构和农民的生存环境.雇工(或雇农)作为东北农民社会的一个阶层,在这期间经历了极为显著的变化,诸如雇农数量激增;雇农内部结构发生变化;雇佣劳动在农业劳动中所占比率上升;雇农群地域分布的不平衡性;雇工形态及雇工工资的变化;雇工家庭生活水平的下降等.     

旅行社的旅游线路优化设置问题探讨

尽管在旅游线路的设计过程中需要解决的问题很多,但从优化的角度而言,如何设计出一条能实现出发地与目的地间的最短路径目标,便是其中的最为关键性的一个问题。由于不同的交通方式的不同组合能对应着不同的路程、时间与成本问题,因而,如何通过有效的选择来形成最佳的旅游线路也就有了相当的必要性。此外,在旅游线路设计与安排过程中,旅行社除了要合理安排和规划旅游线路的长度以力求不走回头路、不走冤枉路和形成有效的闭合回路外,还需充分考虑到其中的线路在时间安排上的合理问题;否则,再好的线路安排也会失去其内在的价值与影响力。     

政府在发展高等职业教育中的角色定位思考

高等职业教育是我国高等教育的有机组成部分,政府在发展高等职业教育培训中拥有无可争议的地位,但政府能否对自己的角色加以理性定位却事关高职教育的健康发展。依据中国的具体国情,本文提出政府在高职教育发展中应该扮演催化剂、支持者、激励者和调控者的理性角色。     

Generalized piecewise linear histograms

We extend the concept of piecewise linear histogram introduced recently by Beirlant, Berlinet and Györfi. The disadvantage of that histogram is that in many models it takes on negative values with probability close to 1. We show that for a wide set of models, the extended class of estimates contains a bona fide density with probability tending to 1 as the sample size n increases to infinity. The mean integrated absolute error in the extended class of estimators decreases with the same rate n^–2/5 as in the original narrower class.