The Impact of Cannabis Use on Health

Summary Chronic daily cannabis use has been shown to have long term harmful health effects, which in turn is expected to reduce labour market productivity. The evidence is less clear on the health impact of less frequent consumption, which is the more typical mode of use, and previous empirical studies fail to find robust evidence of an adverse impact of these modes of use on labour market productivity. This paper attempts to shed some light on this issue by directly estimating the impact of cannabis consumption in the past week and past year on health status using information on prime age individuals living in Australia. We find that cannabis use does reduce self-assessed health status, with the effect of weekly use being of a similar magnitude as smoking cigarettes daily. Moreover, we find evidence of a dose-response relationship in the health impact of cannabis use, with annual use having roughly half the impact of weekly use.Helpful comments on an earlier draft were received from Jan van Ours, Rosalie Pacula, two anonymous referees and participants at the 81st Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International.     

Price Rigidity and the Selection of the Exchange Rate Regime

We evaluate and qualify Friedman's, 1953, “case for flexible exchange rates” in the presence of sticky prices in a two country model. We find that a flexible regime performs indeed better when the degree of nominal price rigidity is high while a bilateral peg does better when prices are fairly flexible. This result obtains independent of whether monetary policy is activistic or not and is mostly due to the negative relationship between employment and productivity shocks when prices are relatively sluggish (Gali, 1999). A unilateral peg tends to produce the lowest level of world welfare but it sometimes represents the best monetary arrangement for the pegger. JEL Classification Numbers: E32, E52, F33, F42     

Industrial Policy and Technology Diffusion: Evidence from Paper Making Machinery in Indonesia

In this paper, we analyze the diffusion and adoption of paper making machinery in the Indonesian pulp and paper industry, from 1923 till 2000. We develop a machine level index of technological sophistication (mach), which measures the technological distance of each paper machine to the world technological frontier. The data reveal a pattern of rapid technological catch up. But catch up was not an industrywide phenomenon. Some modern firms installed state-of-the-art machinery, while others installed older vintages. The paper argues that industrial policy has played an important role in the speed and nature of diffusion of paper making machinery.     

试论产业政策的独立性

干预市场经济运行已经成为现代政府实现资源优化配置的重要手段,国家对经济的干预形式,一般被认为有两种:一种是宏观调控;另一种是微观规制。而产业政策是否可以并入宏观调控或微观规制,抑或它是一种独立的经济政策?目前学术界对此看法不一。文章通过分析微观规制、产业政策和宏观调控三者在实施的目的、作用的方式、作用的对象以及理论基础等方面存在的显著差别,说明了产业政策可以成为一种独立的国家干预经济的形式。     

大学生医疗保障制度创新研究——基于厦门大学的实证调查

大学生的医疗保障问题日益突出。目前针对大学生医疗保障改革的基本思路还不明朗,具体的方案也仅在个别地区试行,并且没有形成较为统一的政策。结合厦门大学的调研资料,分析了目前大学生公费医疗的现状,提出建制理念,旨在建立一种能够有效保障大学生切身利益的医疗保障制度。     

论我国高等教育捐赠税收政策

我国高等教育事业在快速发展的同时,出现了规模的扩张和教育投入不足的突出矛盾,社会捐赠作为弥补高校经费不足的重要途径,其作用的发挥却受到种种不利因素的制约,在现行税制方面存在诸多问题。完善我国高等教育捐赠税收制度,需要健全机构,规范管理,有效运作;全面启动捐赠配套资金工程;鼓励直接向高校捐赠;进行流转税、所得税改革;开征遗产及赠与税。     

The Effects of Central Banks’ Rate Change Patterns on Financial Market Variables

This study examines whether different patterns of change to the benchmark interest rates of central banks are associated with their contributions to variances in the forecast errors of three financial market variables: the long-term interest rate, the foreign exchange rate, and the stock market index. On average, the central bank’s interest rate accounts for approximately 20% of the variance in each variable. We find that the total range of changes is more important than the frequency of changes. The panel regression shows that the range and frequency of policy rate changes is positively associated with the volatility of long-term interest rates but no association with the volatility of stock prices and exchange rates. These results suggest that small and frequent adjustments of policy rates are desirable for reducing the volatility of interest rates. The panel VAR represents interest rate channel is a more important than exchange rate and stock price channel.     

China's Free Trade Ports: Effective Action Against the Threat of De‐globalization

With sluggish external demand and increasing trade protectionism by the USA and the European Union, China is facing severe challenges in implementing its deeper, ongoing reforms. To respond actively to such challenges, the Communist Party of China's 19th National Congress proposed to “promote a new pattern of all‐round opening up.” In particular, the establishment of free trade ports is considered an important means to realize deeper integration with the world economy. This paper discusses the background, the motivation, the possible challenges as well as a feasible path for the successful implementation of free trade ports in China. Based on the international experience, the construction of free trade ports in China requires freer trade in goods, high mobility of talent and free capital flow.     

基于VAR 的我国预期通货膨胀率的估计问题研究

在当前影响物价变动的因素愈加广泛和复杂的背景下,如何准确把握未来通货膨胀预期走势进而有效调控通货膨胀至关重要。本文首先通过建立附加前瞻性政策变量的 VAR 预期模型, 根据 2002 年第一季度至 2014 年第三季度的通货膨胀率、实际利率和产出偏差的实际值与预期目 标值的偏差值季度数据,采用卡尔曼滤波递归算法得出我国的通货膨胀预期的估计结果。随后基 于理性预期理论对初步估计结果进行检验。研究结果表明,采用前三个月实际利率、实际通货膨 胀率的算术平均作为下期中国人民银行调控目标的预期值是较为符合我国情况的选择。