Effects of Transport Regulation on the Oil Market: Does Market Power Matter?

Instruments used to regulate the consumption of oil in the transport sector include fuel taxes, biofuel requirements, and fuel‐efficiency standards. However, the effects that these have on oil consumption and price vary. If market power is present in the oil market, the directions of change in consumption and price might contrast with those in a competitive market. As a result, the market structure affects not only the effectiveness of the policy instruments used to reduce oil consumption, but also the terms of trade and carbon leakage. In particular, reduced oil consumption, as a result of increased fuel‐efficiency standards, will unambiguously increase the price of oil under a monopoly.     

Labour participation in Colombia

A model is estimated for the decision of participating in the labour market for different groups of household members: not coupled (single, divorced and widow) women and men and coupled (married and in permanent union) women and men. The differences among these groups are significant. Probit models are estimated for the period 1984?:?1–2000?:?4 using the National Housing Survey. The neoclassical static model performs fairly well in describing the empirical determinants of the decision of participating. In terms of sign and significance of estimated coefficients the best performance of the model is reached for women. In terms of prediction the model proves useful for not coupled persons. Except for the variable named ‘children aged less than six years’, all variables perform well.     

Effects of income and social awareness on consumer WTP for social product attributes

Recent developments in environmental and animal welfare issues, and the introduction of new production practices may have affected consumer attitudes and preferences toward differentiated product choice. Factors such as animal well-being, environmentally friendly production, and the use of antibiotics appear to be increasingly core consumer concerns. We link the aforementioned with Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggesting that the higher income consumers should be more altruistic in their consumptive behavior and test this by evaluating consumer preferences for these attributes in pork chops. We also test whether social consciousness of the consumers translates into choice behavior. Data was obtained by choice experiment surveys and mixed logit estimation was used to estimate consumers' willingness-to-pay for the credence attributes. Results reveal that both, higher income and socially aware consumers are on average willing to pay higher premiums for the antibiotic-free attribute, but not for other two social attributes. Also, the group of higher income consumers is highly heterogeneous in their preferences, whereas socially aware consumers tend to be more homogeneous in their preferences.     

The cointegrated vector autoregressive model with general deterministic terms

In the cointegrated vector autoregression (CVAR) literature, deterministic terms have until now been analyzed on a case-by-case, or as-needed basis. We give a comprehensive unified treatment of deterministic terms in the additive model $X_t=\gamma Z_t+Y_t$, where $Z_t$ belongs to a large class of deterministic regressors and $Y_t$ is a zero-mean CVAR. We suggest an extended model that can be estimated by reduced rank regression, and give a condition for when the additive and extended models are asymptotically equivalent, as well as an algorithm for deriving the additive model parameters from the extended model parameters. We derive asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimators and discuss tests for rank and tests on the deterministic terms. In particular, we give conditions under which the estimators are asymptotically (mixed) Gaussian, such that associated tests are ${\chi }^2$-distributed.     

Trade Structure and Trade liberalization: The emerging pattern between the EU and Transition Economies

The purpose of this study is to find empirical evidence for the assumption that trade liberalization unlocks the potential of the Transition Economies (TEs) to achieve technological upgrading, productivity progress and catching-up (in terms of income). The study examines the trade structure now emerging between the European Union (EU) and the TEs in the light of two sets of differently liberalized trade items identified by the European Agreements. The aim is to determine whether trade liberalization has helped to supersede the structures – reflected mainly in the low quality of products – inherited by the TEs from the command economy. The empirical results are interpreted in the light of the Flam-Helpman quality-cycle model. We find evidence of an ongoing division of labor between high quality products (EU) and low quality products (TEs) according to a cycle. The first stage comprises the already well established dominance of quality advantage products by EU countries producing and exporting high-quality products, which crowd out the TEs' production of similar products. The second stage is the exploitation of cost-advantages by TEs in less liberalized trade, and there they appear to achieve better results. All these results may be taken as support for an active government in TEs.     

新古典生产函数的质疑与货币量值的生产函数

新古典理论以生产函数和效用函数为基础,建立了技术关系的稀缺资源有效配置理论,其核心是表明商品和要素稀缺性的相对价格.生产函数在微观尚可应用,但并不能用于解释总量经济和经济增长与波动问题.尤其是总供给完全取决于实物生产函数的投入产出关系,这与总需求分析所采用的货币支出是不协调的.货币量值的生产函数的推导表明,总供给只是企业的货币成本函数而不联系到技术上的投入产出关系,而所有的国民收入核算中的货币量值都只是表明人们经济关系的名义变量而与实物的技术关系或生产函数是完全无关的.     

中国农畜产品虚拟水区域分布空间差异

虚拟水是当今水科学的研究热点,被认为是解决粮食与水资源安全的重要策略.在测算中国各地区农畜产品虚拟水总量的基础上,利用伪基尼系数对虚拟水区域差异的成因进行凶子分解,表明畜产品中的禽蛋、猪肉、牛肉和农产品中稻谷、小麦、玉米成为影响中国虚拟水空间差异的丰要因子.同时,借助锡尔指数对1996-2006年的中国八大区域虚拟水-耕地资源空间差异进行分解,结果表明:虚拟水-耕地资源区域总体差异在不断缩小,影响区域总体差异形成的主导因素是八大区域问的差异.文章旨在揭示地均农畜产品虚拟水区域差异来源以及差异背后体现的农业集约化空间分异特征规律,为制定不同区域类型的农业发展决策提供相应的理论参考.     

中小企业融资与信用理财产品开发研究

＂融资难＂问题是制约中小企业发展的重要瓶颈,＂只贷不存＂和＂信息不对称＂让小额贷款公司和商业银行分别陷入了自己向中小企业贷款的相对困境。通过信用理财产品,可以将小额贷款公司和商业银行的优势互补,降低信息不对称成本和交易成本,从而解决中小企业的融资困难问题。     

关于博客产品属性的探讨

博客是由博客作者和托管服务商的劳动共同完成的,因此博客可以看作一种劳动产品.在这一基础之上,文章讨论了博客产品属性的复杂性即博客应该属于私人产品还是公共产品.对于博客产品的物质形态来说,博客是公共产品;对于博客的服务来说,博客是准公共产品;对于博客产品负载的"注意力资源"来说是私人物品.博客之所以能在一定程度上在市场交换并成为一种商品.并不是因为博客的物质形态,而是因为附着在媒介产品上的服务项目或"注意力资源".正是由于这种私有性,才使得博客具有了商业化运作的可能.     

发展中国家贸易条件波动探析——基于相关文献的回顾

长期以来,在贸易条件研究方面,理论界主要关注于贸易条件的变动趋势,而对其波动现象重视不够。文章首先分析了发展中国家贸易条件波动的原因,然后具体探讨了贸易条件波动对发展中国家宏观经济的影响,最后提出了发展中国家的应对策略。