School meals and pupil satisfaction. Evidence from Italian primary schools

This paper aims to analyse to what extent pupils value the characteristics of the state school foodservice and identify which variables affect the degree of pupils’ satisfaction with the quality of school meals. A representative sample of 33 state primary schools providing meals was extracted for the metropolitan city of Naples. Two questionnaires were distributed, one to the headteachers concerned and the other to 5th grade pupils (10–11 years old). Information about the catering companies was mainly sourced from the AIDA database. Pupil satisfaction was measured by two key variables: pleasantness of eating at school and food tastiness. Controlling for pupil, family, school, foodservice and catering company characteristics, the paper shows that the catering company size negatively impacts upon pupil satisfaction with the foodservice, whereas the estimated meal average production cost is positively associated with pupil satisfaction. The study could assist city boroughs in devising meal quality indicators to be taken into account in designing competitive tendering.     

The relative income hypothesis

Despite its theoretical dominance, the empirical case in favor of the permanent income hypothesis is weak. Contrary to one of its basic implications, a growing body of evidence suggests that rich households save a higher proportion of their permanent income than poor households. We propose an overlapping-generations economy where households care about relative consumption. As a result, an individual's consumption is driven by the comparison of his lifetime income and the lifetime income of his reference group; a permanent income version of Duesenberry's (1949) relative income hypothesis. Across households the savings rate increases with income while aggregate savings are independent of the income distribution.     

行为公司财务的最新发展及其启示

行为金融学目前已逐渐成为金融学研究中的一个重要领域,在它的影响下,公司财务领域内也形成了行为公司财务的研究范式。与经典的公司财务理论相比,行为公司财务引入了行为因素的影响,它认为外部市场的非有效性和内部管理者的非理性影响着公司的财务决策和公司价值最大化的行为。文章简单总结了行为公司财务的最新研究进展,也就是市场的非有效性和管理者的非理性对公司的融资政策、投资政策、股利政策和并购行为等各方面的影响。针对目前我国资本市场的非有效性,文章认为在我国上市公司的财务研究中应该引入行为公司财务的理论范式和研究方法,才能使得研究前提和结果符合我国的实际经济情况。     

Random Effects Misspecification Can Have Severe Consequences for Random Effects Inference in Linear Mixed Models

There has been considerable and controversial research over the past two decades into how successfully random effects misspecification in mixed models (i.e. assuming normality for the random effects when the true distribution is non‐normal) can be diagnosed and what its impacts are on estimation and inference. However, much of this research has focused on fixed effects inference in generalised linear mixed models. In this article, motivated by the increasing number of applications of mixed models where interest is on the variance components, we study the effects of random effects misspecification on random effects inference in linear mixed models, for which there is considerably less literature. Our findings are surprising and contrary to general belief: for point estimation, maximum likelihood estimation of the variance components under misspecification is consistent, although in finite samples, both the bias and mean squared error can be substantial. For inference, we show through theory and simulation that under misspecification, standard likelihood ratio tests of truly non‐zero variance components can suffer from severely inflated type I errors, and confidence intervals for the variance components can exhibit considerable under coverage. Furthermore, neither of these problems vanish asymptotically with increasing the number of clusters or cluster size. These results have major implications for random effects inference, especially if the true random effects distribution is heavier tailed than the normal. Fortunately, simple graphical and goodness‐of‐fit measures of the random effects predictions appear to have reasonable power at detecting misspecification. We apply linear mixed models to a survey of more than 4 000 high school students within 100 schools and analyse how mathematics achievement scores vary with student attributes and across different schools. The application demonstrates the sensitivity of mixed model inference to the true but unknown random effects distribution.     

Government support and bank performance during the 2007–2008 financial crisis

Though previous studies suggest a state participation has a negative impact on banks, this paper highlights the potential benefits of state ownership for confidence and stability in the post-crisis period that can outweigh the inefficiencies and potential for corruption of political intervention. We find that the state guarantees are valuable during the crisis. The negative (positive) relation between state ownership and bank profitability (risk) is mitigated in the post-crisis period. Financially troubled banks that receive a transfer payment or capital injection experience improved performance during the post-bailout period.     

Adaptive market hypothesis: The story of the stock markets and COVID-19 pandemic

Since the level of markets’ information efficiency is key to profiteering by strategic players, Shocks; such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can play a role in the nature of markets’ information efficiency. The martingale difference and conditional heteroscedasticity tests are used to evaluate the Adaptive form of market efficiency for four (4) major stock market indexes in the top four affected economies during the COVID-19 pandemic (USA, Brazil, India, and Russia). Generally, based on the martingale difference spectral test, there is no evidence of a substantial change in the levels of market efficiency for the US and Brazilian stock markets in the short, medium, and long term. However, in the long term, the Indian stock markets became more information inefficient after the coronavirus outbreak while the Russian stock markets become more information efficient. Intuitively, these affect the forecastability and predictability of these markets’ prices and/or returns. Thereby, informing the strategic and trading actions of stock investors (including arbitrageurs) towards profit optimization, portfolio asset selection, portfolio asset adjustment, etc. Similar policy implications are further discussed.     

An empirical test of the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis: Evidence from eight middle-income countries in Africa

The paper tests the validity of the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis (BSH) using the within-effects and the dynamic panel generalised methods of moment (GMM) techniques for a panel of eight middle-income African countries over the period 1960–2009. We selected these countries because they exhibited a mixture of relative productivity growth and real exchange rate misalignment that fits the characterization of the BSH well. The results strongly support the BSH for this group of countries. The results are valid even after we controlled for potentially omitted variables and endogeneity. The implication is that as these countries become more productive, their currencies appreciate in real terms.     

数学推理方法与现代经济学的杜撰性质

本文针对现代经济学的研究方法及其理论内涵中存在的问题进行研究。通过对现代经济学假设条件及其思维程序的分析,并将科学研究的三种方法与现代经济学的研究方法加以比较,得出的结论是:现代经济学没有事实基础,只是一套凭空杜撰的理论。而数学推理只是用来杜撰理论的工具;经济社会"客观性"和经济学"科学性"幻觉的驱动以及经济学界生存竞争等使得现代经济学走向远离现实的空想境界;经济学正确的研究方法应该是观察经济社会这个天然实验室中真实的实验结果。     

我国服务业"成本病"及其就业效应——基于鲍穆尔-富克斯假说的区域检验与比较

本文基于鲍穆尔—富克斯假说,通过对1978-2005年我国东、中、西部地区29省市的面板数据分析发现,除东部地区外,在我国大部分区域,服务业就业增长均是以其劳动生产率增长的相对滞后为代价,表现出成本病的征兆,这一问题可能会引起整体经济的通胀倾向与财政拖累,并对服务业自身发展造成不利影响。因此,当前应积极转换服务业发展机制,强化创新,推进服务业结构升级,在提高服务质量与劳动生产率的同时,进一步拓展服务业就业空间。     

Do government owned banks trade market power for slack?

The ‘Quiet Life Hypothesis (QLH)’ posits that banks with market power have less incentives to maximize revenues and minimize cost. Especially government owned banks with a public mandate precluding profit maximization might succumb to a quiet life. We use a unified approach that simultaneously measures market power and efficiency to test the quiet life hypothesis of German savings banks. We find that average local market power declined between 1996 and 2006. Cost and profit efficiency remained constant. Nonparametric correlations are consistent with a quiet life regarding cost efficiency but not regarding profit efficiency. The quiet life on the cost side is negatively correlated with bank size, quality of loan portfolio and local per capita income. The last result indicates that the quiet cost life is therefore potentially due to benevolent excess consumption of local input factors by public savings banks.