Costs of providing local public services and compact population in Spanish urbanised areas

This paper addresses the impact of land use patterns associated with compact population on the costs of provision and maintenance of urban public services for local entities, controlling for other factors. The aim is to develop an econometric analysis using a panel data set of municipalities of the Spanish Mediterranean area and Madrid in the period 2006–2014. The estimations derived from the study confirm one main hypothesis and indicate that compact population impacts positively on the decrease of municipal costs of urban public services. This study suggests that municipal planning instruments of local entities could contribute to efficiently manage their budgets, as well as orients public policy in terms of its local land use decision-making.     

实行中国国防经济制度创新的主要措施分析

国防经济保持持续又好又快发展是保证国防建设顺利进行的重要条件,同时也是保证国民经济健康持续发展的有力保障。在新时期条件下,我们应该做好国防经济制度创新,已适应不断变化的局势与与环境。本文就实行国防经济制度创新的措施进行分析。     

高校网络安全主动式防御策略的研究

计算机网络带给人们便利的同时,其安全问题日显重要。传统的网络安全策略过于被动,对于网络威胁显得越力不从心。网络安全主动式防御策略能更加积极的采取措施提高网络的安全性,降低潜在的威胁,是当今网络安全发展的主流趋势。文中结合传统的网络安全措施,对主动式防御策略作了一些分析和阐述。     

Nonseparable Preferences,Frisch Labor Supply,and the Consumption Multiplier of Government Spending: One Solution to a Fiscal Policy Puzzle

This paper proposes a theoretical explanation of the positive consumption multipliers of government spending often found in the data. The explanation requires two ingredients. First, labor demand expands (e.g., prices are sticky). Second, general nonseparable preferences over consumption and leisure should be such that the two goods are substitutes; that is, Frisch labor supply elasticity is lower than the constant‐consumption elasticity; this implies that constant‐consumption labor supply shifts left. Existing empirical evidence on the relative magnitudes of the two elasticities supports this hypothesis. The parametric conditions under which the result occurs are consistent with restrictions of concavity and noninferiority of consumption and leisure.     

Incorporating Freud’s Theory on Cognitive Processes into Business Ethics Education

Most educators in business ethics tend toconcentrate on various philosophical theories and theapplication of these theories to ethical dilemmas. Anumber of pedagogical techniques are often used forthis purpose. These approaches concentrate on(conscious) reasoning and decision making. It is thecontention of this paper that an understanding ofFreudian psychology would help students to develop agreater awareness of the unconscious mechanisms thatsometimes come into play when an individual is facedwith a stressful ethical dilemma. Freud and histheories are widely known and have been influential inthe development of many other theoreticalperspectives. Freud demonstrated the importance ofthe unconscious mind on human behaviour. Included inhis theory was an explanation of how various defensemechanisms such as rationalization anddenial are sometimes (unconsciously) used toalleviate feelings of guilt when an individual isconfronted with a particularly stressful moraldilemma. The paper offers suggestions on how egodefense mechanisms can be incorporated into businessethics education.     

AN ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIC DEFENCE AND SECURITY REVIEW: RECONSTITUTING A SHRINKING FORCE

This paper critically examines the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. It is argued that despite budgetary constraints the government could build forces far more capable of power projection than envisaged under current plans. Defence is a true necessity but it does not have to be unaffordable provided risky procurement decisions are avoided.     

Macroeconomic Effects of Government Spending: The Great Recession was (Really) Different

We estimate the effect of government spending shocks on the U.S. economy with a time‐varying parameter vector autoregression. The recent Great Recession period appears to be characterized by uniquely large impulse responses of output to fiscal shocks. Moreover, the particularity of this period is underlined by highly unusual responses of several other variables. The pattern of fiscal shock responses neither completely fits the predictions of the New Keynesian model of an economy subject to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates, nor does it suggest regular variation of fiscal policy effects depending on the state of the business cycle. Rather, the Great Recession period seems special in that government spending shocks had a strongly negative effect on the spread between corporate and government bond yields and a strongly positive effect on consumer confidence and private consumption spending.     

Transparency of the organization and activity of carbon funds

ABSTRACT

Public and mixed carbon funds buy carbon credits on behalf of public authorities and make use of public money, thus there is a need for clear information regarding their operations. The paper presents a new transparency index for the organization and activity of carbon funds that takes account of information disclosed via the internet. The construction of the index is based on the Linaburg-Maduell Transparency Index for sovereign wealth funds. The empirical study demonstrates that public and mixed carbon funds varied significantly in terms of their transparency but, in general, mixed carbon funds performed slightly better than public carbon funds.     

Fiscal Policy and the Terms of Trade in an Analytical Two-Country Dynamic Model

This paper presents a two-country dynamic perfect foresight Ricardian model with wealth effects to study the relationship between government spending financed by alternative taxation, the terms of trade and welfare. An increase in domestic government spending financed by a distortionary capital income tax leads the real exchange rate initially to appreciate (a pure demand effect). But along the transitional path an intertemporal terms of trade effect (a supply side effect) operates and the real exchange rate depreciates to a steady state value ultimately higher relative to the initial equilibrium. The welfare of the domestic resident increases due to a reversed immiserizing growth effect.     

Social security and the rise in health spending

In a quantitative model of Social Security with endogenous health, I argue that Social Security increases the aggregate health spending of the economy because it redistributes resources to the elderly whose marginal propensity to spend on health is high. I show by using computational experiments that the expansion of US Social Security can account for over a third of the dramatic rise in US health spending from 1950 to 2000. In addition, Social Security has a spill-over effect on Medicare. As Social Security increases health spending, it also increases the payments from Medicare, thus raising its financial burden.