Feeling Richer or Poorer than Others: A Cross‐section and Panel Analysis of Subjective Economic Status in Indonesia*

This paper examines what makes us feel richer or poorer than others. It investigates cross‐sectional and longitudinal determinants of individuals’ subjective economic status in Indonesia. Using two waves of Indonesian Family Life Surveys, 1997 and 2000, I show that individuals’ perceptions of where they are on the economic scale are more dependent on a number of socioeconomic characteristics, as well as their attitudes towards their future economic status, than their current spending capacities would suggest. I also find significant, albeit weaker, expenditure and income effects on individuals’ subjective economic status once individual fixed effects are controlled for in the regression.     

Protecting Education for the Poor in Times of Crisis: An Evaluation of a Scholarship Programme in Indonesia*

This paper analyses the impact of an Indonesian scholarship programme, which was implemented in 1998 to preserve access to education for the poor during the economic crisis. Scholarships were targeted pro-poor and the allocation process followed a decentralized design, involving both geographic and individual targeting. The identification strategy exploits this decentralized structure, relying on instrumental variables constructed from regional mistargeting at the initial phase of allocation. The programme has increased enrolment, especially for primary school-aged children from poor rural households. Moreover, the scholarships seem to have assisted households in smoothing consumption during the crisis, relieving pressure on households’ investments in education and utilization of child labour.     

Resource Curse or Not: A Question of Appropriability*

Whether natural resources are good or bad for a country's development are shown to depend on the interaction between institutional setting and, crucially, the types of resources possessed by the country. Some natural resources are, for economical and technical reasons, more likely to cause problems such as rent‐seeking and conflicts than others. This potential problem can, however, be countered by good institutional quality. In contrast to the traditional resource curse hypothesis, we show the impact of natural resources on economic growth to be non‐monotonic in institutional quality, and increasingly so for certain types of resources. In particular, countries rich in minerals are cursed only if they have low‐quality institutions, while the curse is reversed if institutions are sufficiently good. Furthermore, if countries are rich in diamonds and precious metals, these effects—both positive and negative—are larger.     

Private value of European patents

I examine the joint patent designation-renewal behavior of the European Patent Office (EPO) patent applicants during 1978-1996, using both nonparametric techniques and a parametric model. The European patents granted through the EPO are substantially more valuable than those through the national route. Value distribution of patents is highly skewed, and even more so for the EPO patent families. The value of patent rights increases with the economic size of the country and exhibits modestly increasing returns to scale. Model estimation also reveals significant institutional differences across EPO member countries in patent protection.     

From Experience: Demystify Creativity, Enhance Innovation

Creativity need not be a chance occurrence. The authors of this article believe there is a technology that facilitates creativity. It is a technology that can be learned and applied and managed. They describe the specific steps that they followed in helping a group of R&D professionals learn, apply, and manage the creative processes in the lab. It is a story of practical steps that dealt with the everyday realities of managing in a large corporation.     

Social Affiliation and the Demand for Health Services: Caste and Child Health in South India

This paper assesses the role of social affiliation, measured by caste, in shaping investments in child health. The special setting that we have chosen for the analysis - tea estates in the South Indian High Range - allows us to control nonparametrically for differences in income, access to health services, and patterns of morbidity across low caste and high caste households. In this controlled setting, low caste households spend more on their children's health than high caste households, reversing the pattern we would expect to find elsewhere in India. Moreover, health expenditures do not vary by gender within either caste group, in contrast once again with the male preference documented throughout the country. A simple explanation, based on differences in the returns to human capital across castes in the tea estates is proposed to explain these striking results.     

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION: HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION UNDER PARENTAL TEACHING*

This paper examines a simple overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation under both the public and private education regimes. Both young individuals and their parents allocate time to human capital accumulation. Under the public education regime, the government collects tax to finance expenditure for education resources. We show that there exists a level of tax which maximizes the speed of human capital accumulation because of parental teaching; and, if the government chooses tax rates adequately, human capital grows faster and welfare levels become higher under the public education regime than under the private.     

提高CET4中复合式听写能力的研究

学生在做CET4复合式听写题目过程中,应快速阅读卷面已给文字,把握文章主旨,采用速记法,注意边听边写,核对要点内容。     

Do Natural Barriers Affect the Relationship Between Trade Openness and Growth?*

This article investigates whether there are threshold effects in the relationship between openness and productivity growth that are fashioned by a country's natural barriers, using a cross‐country growth model. Alternative methods of modelling thresholds are explored. An endogenous threshold model is shown to be preferable to the use of interaction effects. The results identify critical levels of natural barriers which affect how greater openness or liberalization impacts on productivity growth. We find that only countries with higher natural barriers receive growth benefits from trade liberalization.