Poverty Reduction in China： The Contribution of Popularizing Primary Education

Using the instrumental variable model and the regression discontinuity approach,this paper explores how access to primary education affects the Chinese labor market and helps people to escape poverty.Several important findings are obtained.The popularization of primary education has significantly reduced poverty in China,especially in urban areas.In contrast,the Compulsory Education Law has not been well implemented for older children in rural areas.In addition,the labor market premium for completing primary education is much larger in urban areas than in rural areas.Poor rural school quality might explain this rural-urban disparity.Effort needs to be made to further reduce poverty by ensuring adequate financial resources for primary education in poor areas and improving school quality in rural China.     

通信用热交换型户外机柜节能降噪设计

通信用热交换型户外机柜节能降噪设计突破常规使用的集成式热交换器的设计,以一个全新设计的机柜结构,以最简单的风机加散热风道的设计革新了热交换户外机柜的设计,在直接成本、噪音、能耗上均比集成式热交换户外机柜要好,甚至在噪音和能耗上高于风扇型户外机柜,各项性能指标均高于行标。真正达到功耗小、无污染、防护等级高。     

The impact of microcredit on self‐employment profits in Vietnam

This study examines the impact of microcredit on household self‐employment profits in Vietnam. For two indicators of credit participation – a dichotomous participation dummy and the accumulated amount of microcredit received per household – the analysis reveals a positive effect on household profits. The analysis also reveals that an instrumental variable method within a fixed‐effects framework can control for the possible endogeneity of credit and thereby identify the true effect of credit.     

Noise trading and prime and score premiums

This paper documents that a common element drives the time-series variation of the premium pricing of Primes and Scores. I argue that this common element is noise trading. The noise trading model of Delong, Shleifer, Summers and Waldmann (1990) predicts that returns on assets that are predominantly traded by noise traders will be correlated, since the misperceptions of noise traders are cross-sectionally correlated. Consistent with the noise trading hypothesis, changes in the average premium of Primes and Scores, which are predominantly traded by individual investors, are correlated with both changes in average discounts of closed-end funds and small firms returns. These empirical facts provide additional evidence that noise traders can affect security prices.     

Forced Versus Voluntary Dividend Reduction: An Agency Cost Explanation

We examine whether the agency cost arising from shareholder‐bondholder conflict is an important determinant of the timing of dividend reduction decisions. Firms forced to reduce dividends owing to bond covenant violations experience lower earnings, more frequent losses, and greater earnings declines around the dividend reduction year than do firms that voluntarily reduce dividends. Relative to voluntary‐reduction firms, forced‐reduction firms have higher debt‐to‐equity ratios and managerial holdings. These findings coupled with the increased dividend payout ratios and lower announcement period returns suggest that financially distressed firms that anticipate poor performance have greater incentives to delay reducing dividends to avoid a wealth transfer to bondholders.     

Domain-independent approach to risk reduction

Abstract

The popular domain-specific approach to risk reduction created the illusion that efficient risk reduction can be delivered successfully solely by using methods offered by the specific domain. As a result, many industries have been deprived of efficient risk reducing strategy and solutions. This paper argues that risk reduction is underlined by domain-independent methods and principles which, combined with knowledge from the specific domain, help to generate effective risk reduction solutions. In this respect, the paper introduces a powerful method for reducing the likelihood of computational errors based on combining the domain-independent method of segmentation and local knowledge of the chain rule for differentiation. The paper also demonstrates that lack of knowledge of domain-independent principles for risk reduction misses opportunities to reduce the risk of failure even in a mature field like stress analysis. The domain-independent methods for risk reduction do not rely on reliability data or knowledge of physical mechanisms underlying possible failure modes and are particularly well suited for developing new designs, with unknown failure mechanisms and failure history. In many cases, the reliability improvement and risk reduction by using the domain-independent methods reduces risk at no extra cost or at a relatively small cost. The presented domain-independent methods work across unrelated domains and this is demonstrated by the supplied examples which range from various areas of engineering and technology, computer science, project management, health risk management, business and mathematics. The domain-independent risk reduction methods presented in this paper promote building products and systems characterised by high-reliability and resilience.     

Information reduction via level crossings in a credit risk model

This paper provides an alternative credit risk model based on information reduction where the market only observes the firm’s asset value when it crosses certain levels, interpreted as changes significant enough for the firm’s management to make a public announcement. For a class of diffusion processes we are able to provide explicit expressions for the firm’s default intensity process and its zero-coupon bond prices.      

电力市场环境下发电环节的节能减排

介绍了国内外在发电环节采用的两种节能减排技术,即洁净煤技术和可再生能源发电技术。从政策支持、价格鼓励、税费减免、科研和产业化的促进等多个方面论述了电力市场化改革环境下,发电环节节能减排的政策、法规及发展思路。建议对化石燃料发电征收较高的能源税、CO2税、SO2税以及征收CO2排放费用,增大可再生能源发电配额比例,鼓励私人投资,建立绿色电力发展基金,加快技术和设备的国产化进程等。     

Growth options and poverty reduction in Ethiopia – An economy-wide model analysis

This study focuses on which agricultural subsectors are important in Ethiopia’s economic growth and poverty reduction and what kind of agricultural and nonagricultural growth is needed to achieve the millennium development goal of halving the incidence of poverty by 2015. A spatially disaggregated, economy-wide model was developed, enabling the analysis of growth and poverty reduction linkages at national and regional levels using national household surveys, agricultural sample surveys, geographic information systems, and other national and regional data. The study reveals that agriculture can play a central role in decreasing poverty and increasing growth in Ethiopia. Within the agriculture, growth in cereals and other staple crops should receive priority. Agricultural growth also requires concurrent investments in roads and other market conditions. At the subnational level, similar growth rates within agricultural subsectors have different effects on poverty, necessitating regionally based strategies for growth and poverty reduction.     

Targeting agricultural research based on potential impacts on poverty reduction: Strategic program priorities by agro-ecological zone in Nigeria

Growing concern for poverty in the face of declining agricultural research budgets has increasingly required formal priority setting of public agricultural research in developing countries to ensure that scarce research resources are allocated in ways that will have the greatest impact on the poor. This paper assessed the potential impacts of alternative commodity research programs on poverty reduction in three agro-ecological zones of Nigeria and identified strategic agricultural research priorities in the three zones. The paper discusses the poverty reduction-based priorities and their role in facilitating dialogue between research managers and policymakers aimed at sharpening the focus of agricultural research to achieve poverty reduction objectives in Nigeria.