Sources of business fluctuations: Financial or technology shocks?

Despite the widespread belief that technology shocks are the main source of business fluctuations, recent empirical studies indicate that in the absence of financial frictions, a shock to the marginal efficiency of investment is the main source and is closely related to financial conditions for investment. We incorporate a financial accelerator mechanism and two types of financial shocks to the external finance premium and net worth in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment, the investment-good price markup, and the rates of neutral and investment-specific technological changes. This model is estimated using eleven US time series that include data on loan, net worth, the loan rate, and the relative price of investment. Our estimation results show that the (non-stationary) neutral and investment-specific technology shocks primarily drive output and investment fluctuations, while the external finance premium shock plays an important role for investment fluctuations. This financial shock induced substantial falls and subsequent sharp hikes in the external finance premium and caused boom–bust cycles over the past two decades.     

Competition in the stock market with asymmetric information

We build a game theoretical model to examine how the level of information advantage of insiders and the competition between insiders and sophisticated investors affect stock price movements and traders’ trading strategies and profits. We show that the competition between insiders and sophisticated investors can reduce the losses of less sophisticated investors, and thus alleviates the disadvantaged position of the less sophisticated investors. Further, traders’ profits are affected by the accuracy of insiders’ private information, and the number of days that insiders have obtained the information in advance. These findings show the importance of information transparency and the role of sophisticated investors in limiting insiders’ trading advantages and mitigating the expropriation of investors by insiders.     

Beyond Asymmetry: Substantive Beliefs in Preference Formation and Efficiency of Asymmetrical Negotiations

Contrary to extant propositions on the primacy of trade dependency in compelling faster agreement by subordinate states in asymmetrical economic negotiations, in the European Union–Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (EU–ACP) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations, it is the states that were least materially vulnerable that were quickest to accept an EPA. Why so? I argue that the speed and propensity of ACP states to accept and ratify their EPAs were principally hinged on variances in preference formation based on what Ikenberry and Kupchan [(1990), ‘Socialization and Hegemonic Power’, International Organization, 44 (3), pp. 283–315: 283] call ‘substantive beliefs rather than material payoffs’. The quickest states to ratify an EPA were those which most intensely shared the EU's neoliberal belief in an automatic correlation between trade liberalisation and economic growth, rather than those that were most materially vulnerable. Therefore, by taking the normative sources of preference formation by subordinate states seriously, we can not only derive a parsimonious explanation of EPA negotiating efficiency but also form a foundational conceptual model of predicting efficiency in asymmetrical negotiations that unifies the role of both normative and material considerations.     

Why do commercial banks hold government bonds? The case of Japan

We investigate the determinants of the demand for Japanese government bonds (JGBs) by commercial banks in Japan. In particular, by estimating portfolio equations for JGB demand and bank loans, based on a panel data set from the late 1990s to the 2000s, we rigorously test the popular assertion that the long stagnation of the real economy caused a shift in the portfolios of commercial banks from bank lending to JGBs. We find that the popular assertion is not empirically supported. Rather, the portfolio shift from loans to JGBs has been caused by a fall in the ratio of the loan rate to unit lending costs, or the bank’s price–cost margin for lending.     

海关支持综合保税区高水平开放高质量发展研究——以江苏省综合保税区为例

2019年1月12日,国务院印发了《关于促进综合保税区高水平开放高质量发展的若干意见》(国发〔2019〕3号,以下简称《若干意见》),推出21项政策措施加快推进制度创新、促进综合保税区(以下简称“综保区”)升级发展。文件出台后,各地综保区围绕“五大中心”的建设目标,在海关及其他相关职能部门的支持下,加强政策宣传,推动改革创新,强化考核评价,努力推动各项政策落地。为了更好地推进综保区高水平开放高质量发展,课题组对江苏省综保区发展情况开展全方位调研,并且以江苏省综保区为例,对当前制约综保区发展的原因,特别是影响《若干意见》实施效果的原因进行了深入分析,按照制度型开放的要求,从管理机制、发展目标、监管模式等角度提出合理建议,探索新时期海关支持综保区高水平开放高质量发展的路径。     

The efficiency of small and medium enterprises in informal metal manufacturing in Zimbabwe: Implications for stakeholders in the agricultural sector

This study uses the structure–conduct–performance framework to examine the structure and efficiency of small and medium enterprises in the informal metal manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe. Small and medium enterprises provide a lifeline to the country's resource-poor farmers, whose numbers increased exponentially after the agrarian reform in 2000. The study utilises nationally representative, enterprise-level data from five major towns (Harare, Chitungwiza, Bulawayo, Mutare and Rusape) in Zimbabwe. Various performance measures are applied at the industry level to assess efficiency, profitability and competitiveness; these include the Herfindahl–Hirschman index, concentration ratios, average yearly profits and Tobin's q ratio. The results indicate that small and medium enterprises in Zimbabwe are modestly efficient, profitable and competitive. These findings highlight the need to integrate informal metal fabrication activities into Zimbabwe's national economic development plans.     

高科技企业一线经理领导力研究

高科技企业经理的领导力水平直接影响着员工的积极性与创新性。作为员工直接主管的一线经理，其领导力对于激发员工的积极性和主动性、最大限度地发挥人力资源的潜能至关重要。通过对高科技企业一线经理领导情景的分析，提出了一线经理领导力的核心要素，并探讨了培育和提升领导力的具体措施。     

Truthful germs are contagious: A local-to-global characterization of truthfulness

We study the question of which social choice functions from an abstract type space to a set of outcomes are truthful, i.e., implementable by truthful mechanisms, when utilities are quasi-linear. For convex domains, our main theorem characterizes truthful social choice functions as those satisfying two properties: local weak monotonicity and vortex-freeness. The first of these constrains the function values at any two sufficiently proximal points, while the second asserts that its line integrals around sufficiently small triangular loops must vanish.The characterization implies a local-to-global principle that allows one to deduce truthfulness of a function from its behavior on arbitrarily small neighborhoods of each point. Other consequences include a simple alternate derivation of the Saks–Yu Theorem that weak monotonicity characterizes truthfulness of functions having a convex domain and finite range, and a sufficient condition for constructing truthful functions by “stitching together” truthful subfunctions on different subsets of the domain.     

创新驱动先前实践对建设目标的影响

基于各省出台的创新型省份建设方案，运用省级政府面板数据，实证研究了创新型省份建设对预期建设目标的影响。结果发现，创新型省份建设仅对可操控程度较高、完成难度较低的建设目标具有显著影响，而对可操控程度较低、完成难度较高的建设目标无显著影响；高强度激励对建设目标实现的影响作用较大。公开建设方案、科学设定建设目标、促进多部门参与、建立监督和评估机制是改进创新型省份建设和推进创新驱动发展战略实施的重要突破口。     

Where has all the skewness gone? The decline in high-growth (young) firms in the U.S.

The pace of business dynamism and entrepreneurship in the U.S. has declined over recent decades. We show that the character of that decline changed around 2000. Since 2000 the decline in dynamism and entrepreneurship has been accompanied by a decline in high-growth young firms. Prior research has shown that the sustained contribution of business startups to job creation stems from a relatively small fraction of high-growth young firms. The presence of these high-growth young firms contributes to a highly (positively) skewed firm growth rate distribution. In 1999, a firm at the 90th percentile of the employment growth rate distribution grew about 31 percent faster than the median firm. Moreover, the 90−50 differential was 16 percent larger than the 50−10 differential reflecting the positive skewness of the employment growth rate distribution. We show that the shape of the firm employment growth distribution changes substantially in the post-2000 period. By 2007, the 90−50 differential was only 4 percent larger than the 50−10, and it continued to exhibit a trend decline through 2011. The overall decline reflects a sharp drop in the 90th percentile of the growth rate distribution accounted for by the declining share of young firms and the declining propensity for young firms to be high-growth firms.