Childhood investments and skill formation

The skills needed to ensure good life chances are rising (and changing) and, despite decades of education reforms, there has been little progress in terms of equalizing opportunities. The impact of social origins on child outcomes persists, and may even strengthen. This suggests that the pursuit of more equality and future productivity come together. A major challenge is to minimize the dispersion of skills. The foundations of policy lie in the realization that learning abilities are formed during the first years of childhood. The pursuit of an optimal human capital policy needs to consider three issues: (1) the uneven capacity of parents to invest in children; (2) the impact of mothers’ employment on child outcomes; and, (3) the potential benefits of early pre-school programmes.     

The Distributional Incidence of Growth: A Social Welfare Approach

This paper provides a normative framework for the assessment of the distributional incidence of growth. By removing the anonymity axiom, such framework is able to evaluate the individual income changes over time and the reshuffling of individuals along the income distribution that are determined by the pattern of income growth. We adopt a rank dependent social welfare function expressed in terms of initial rank and individual income change and we obtain partial and complete dominance conditions over different growth paths. These dominance conditions account for the different components determining the overall impact of growth, that is the size of growth and its vertical and horizontal incidence. We then provide an empirical application for Italy: this analysis shows the distributional impact of the recent economic crisis suffered by the Italian populaltion.     

众里寻他!?——一个基于婚姻匹配理论的综述

家庭作为社会经济生活的最小单位,继Becker的开创性研究之后,成为经济学研究的新领域。对于婚姻的研究不仅涉及到微观个体的选择及福祉,而且也通过影响人力资本积累、收入分配等影响社会不平等。通过梳理婚姻的匹配模型、婚姻的形成方式、婚姻带来的转移支付以及婚姻的解体,文章对相关研究进行了综述。并立足于我国婚姻是两个家庭之间的联姻这种特有现象,结合我国目前劳动力流动和城市化带来的经济发展背景下,由于户籍导致的城乡分割引致的特有的婚姻匹配模式,对于未来的研究进行了展望。     

Devaluation, Capital Formation, and the Current Account

This paper re-examines the effects of devaluation and a rise in the rate of devaluation on capital formation and the current account in an optimizing monetary model of a small open economy with endogenous labor, investment with adjustment costs, and perfect capital mobility. It is shown that devaluation leads to capital accumulation and a current-account deficit in the long run and during the adjustment process, whereas a rise in the rate of devaluation has an ambiguous impact on capital formation and the current account depending on the relationship between consumption and real balances in the utility function. If consumption and real balances are separable or complements, then a rise in the rate of devaluation produces capital decumulation and a current-account surplus in the long run as well as on the transition path. These results stand in sharp contrast with Calvo (1981). JEL Classification Numbers: F41     

人口流动对农户环境治理支付意愿的影响——基于双栏模型

农村环境治理关乎乡村振兴的成效,农户的参与与否及其参与程度直接影响着农村环境治理的成效。基于农村人口流动的现状,对福建、安徽、陕西三省的529位农户进行了调查,采用双栏模型检验家庭人口流动对农户环境治理支付意愿及其支付额度的影响程度。结果表明,人口流动对农户环境治理支付意愿有显著的负向作用,而对农户环境治理支付额度有显著的正向作用。此外,不同省份区域人口流动对环境治理支付意愿的影响机制不同。     

增强收入流动性，提高居民消费能力——基于天津市伪面板数据的群体分析

2008年后期波及全球的金融危机对各国的实体经济产生了严重影响,中国的出口贸易也严重受阻,如何在出口持续下滑的同时保证经济持续稳定增长,刺激消费需求增长成为关注的焦点。利用天津城市住户调查数据,运用群体分析方法构造伪面板数据进行实证分析,发现整体的收入流动性偏低;按年龄分组时,收入流动性表现出先增大,35岁左右达到最大之后逐渐变小的趋势;按出生年分组时,发现改革开放以前出生群体的收入流动性较小。针对不同群体收入流动性特点,提出增强收入流动性的启示性对策,以优化城镇居民消费结构,提高消费能力。     

流动性过剩的调控思路研究

目前,中央银行不断采取上调存款准备金率和基准利率及发行巨额央行票据等货币政策手段控制流动性过剩,但效果并不显著。应转变思路,引导资金合理分流,努力扩大内需。     

Mobility in China

The evidence on rank and income mobility in China reveals an important change around the year 2000. Using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey we show that rank mobility fell markedly from the decade immediately preceding the millennium to the decade immediately following: in this respect China is becoming noticeably more rigid. By contrast income mobility has carried on increasing; so has income inequality. The simultaneous increase in rigidity and inequality presents China with a challenging policy problem.