贸易垂直专业化之研究综述

对贸易垂直专业化与国际分工的研究,使标准贸易理论的研究视野由产品问分工扩展到产品内分工。对该领域研究的内容、方法与结论做了归纳,就贸易垂直专业化的发展趋势、理论模型拓展以及经济效应分析三个方面的问题加以系统评述。     

Fragmentation and heterogeneity in the euro-area corporate bond market: Back to normal?

We assess the degree of market fragmentation in the euro-area corporate bond market by disentangling the determinants of the risk premium paid on bonds at origination. By looking at over 2400 bonds we are able to isolate the country-specific effects which are a suitable indicator of the market fragmentation. We find that, after peaking during the sovereign debt crisis, fragmentation shrank in 2013 and receded to pre-crisis levels only in 2014. However, the low level of estimated market fragmentation is coupled with a still high heterogeneity in actual bond yields, challenging the consistency of the new equilibrium.     

Whereto land fragmentation–land grabbing in Romania? The place of negotiation in reaching win–win community-based solutions

The present study seeks to discuss and advance the understanding of land fragmentation and land grabbing within Romania's economic historiography landmarks, depicting how the origins of the land property issues are deeply embedded politically, socially, and culturally in history and still strongly exist in today's collective mind. Scientific evidence on the perceptions and behaviors of land owners regarding land grabbing was obtained through a non-probabilistic survey. The data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire, which was applied through face-to-face interviews to a sample of 52 Romanian land owners from various regions of the country. The results show that in the land owners’ perception, if land is sold to foreigners, national security is the most vulnerable aspect. Regarding the preference for the nationality of the land buyer, the majority of the people investigated prefer to sell to a Romanian buyer, thus making a clear statement in favor of the Romanian ownership of the land. The empirical results are placed in the context of a bottom-up approach—negotiation, with a high potential, unexplored in Romania, for implementing win–win agricultural solutions. Negotiation is valued as part of the answer to land fragmentation–land grabbing, a “back and forth” matter. The study recommends several measures for land use policy, tailored according to specific Romanian conditions, such as using an open access electronic registry of foreign land acquisitions, establishing a threshold for these acquisitions, and securing the preservation of the agricultural destination of land. In a political and economic context where land fragmentation and grabbing are two realities that are hard to deny and separate, a significant implication of the research is the enrichment of knowledge related to the sources of the “chronical” nature of fragmentation and to land owners’ attitude toward land grabbing, thus contributing to the design and implementation of future integrative land use solutions.     

Government Weakness and Local Public Debt Development in Flemish Municipalities

The Weak Government Hypothesis states that government fragmentation leads to higher public deficits and debt. This relation can be explained by government inaction, common pool problems or the strategic use of debt that arise in coalition governments. Importantly, whereas government inaction models concentrate on the short-term effects of government fragmentation on indebtedness, common pool and strategic debt models imply that such effects will persist in the long term. We test these hypotheses using a large panel of data on municipal debt in 298 Flemish municipalities (1977–2000). We find that there is no long-run effect from weak governments. However, there is general support for the fact that the number of parties in a coalition has a positive effect on the municipality’s short-term debt levels–in line with government inaction models.JEL Code: E62, H72, H74     

Political fragmentation and projected tax revenues: evidence from Flemish municipalities

The level of revenues pocketed by a government during the fiscal year often deviates from that projected by this government in its budget. Despite a flourishing literature on, for example, the technical or procedural determinants of such forecast errors, little is yet known about how political stratagems may affect forecast errors. In the present paper, we analyse whether differences in the level of government fragmentation are useful in explaining local government tax revenue forecast errors—controlling for various other factors. Using data on 242 Flemish municipalities for the period 1992–2002, we find that two-party governments are more optimistic than single-party governments. In contrast to our initial expectations, governments with at least three parties are significantly more careful (or less optimistic) in their revenue projections than single- or two-party governments.      

The Farmland Rental Paradox: Extreme land ownership fragmentation as a new form of land degradation

Extreme farmland ownership fragmentation is becoming a limiting factor for sustainable land management in some countries. Scattered, excessively small parcels cease to be viable for individual farming, and owners feel forced to rent these parcels to larger enterprises farming on adjacent land. Our study demonstrates a phenomenon that we call the Farmland Rental Paradox, where very small parcels tend to create large production blocks by being rented to larger farmers, and therefore to significantly homogenize the land-use pattern. The parcel size established as the threshold for this phenomenon is 1.07 ha. Below this threshold, the smaller the parcels were, the larger the blocks that they tended to create.Using the example of the Czech Republic, a state with extremely high farmland ownership fragmentation, it is demonstrated that this phenomenon can currently determine the land use of up to 40% of the country's farmland. Our study also points to other countries where this phenomenon may apply, especially the transitional countries of Central and Eastern Europe.The study discusses the tempo of the fragmentation process, which accelerates exponentially in countries with the equal inheritance system. It goes on to discuss defragmentation, social impacts of the dominance of the land rental market, and environmental impacts of significant homogenization of the land-use pattern. The serious negative impacts of extreme land-ownership fragmentation show that this phenomenon can be considered as a significant form of land degradation.     

Land consolidation – A great need to improve effectiveness. A case study from Poland

Among the different factors which have an influence on the profitability of small and medium-size farms, a very significant and sometimes even crucial role is played by the unfavourable parameters of land fragmentation (LF). However, this adverse limiting factor can be improved in a relatively short time through land consolidation (LC) treatment. The financial support of these kinds of activities is one of the main aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which aims to equalise the conditions for farming production. Since accession to the EU in 2004, Poland is one of the biggest beneficiaries of various financially-supported projects oriented to the development of rural area, where LC work takes a special position.This paper sums up the outcomes of the LC work that was undertaken in Poland over the period 2007–2013. The results of the investigation delivered the information about the effectiveness of LC work at the farm level. Also, the efficiency of the existing funding strategy of LC work was evaluated. Additionally, the findings revealed poor effects of land swapping and re-parcelling activities, which is disturbing bearing in mind the financial scale and the amount of time spent conducting these actions. As a remedy, several solutions for improvement of the inefficient LC proceedings were proposed.     

How Did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor? Homeownership and Social Fragmentation in a Spanish Neighborhood

When working‐class localities in developed countries are in question, social fragmentation is often analyzed along ethnic lines. Instead, this article claims that it is more critically fruitful to explore fragmentation in terms of people's relations with the state and different forms of capital. It does this by considering housing in Spain as a key resource that connects state policies both with the forms of reproduction and (dis)organization of the disadvantaged, and with the development of real estate and finance capital. First, it unfolds the historical formation of the Spanish ‘homeownership culture’ and the construction–finance complex. Second, starting from an in‐depth ethnography of a peripheral neighborhood in Barcelona, it emphasizes the embeddedness of recent financialization in the livelihood strategies of poor households. Finally, it shows how the process led to a commodification and erosion of those social relations on which it partially depended, thereby exposing problems for class reproduction and fracture lines among the urban poor.     

The communal roots of entrepreneurial–technological growth – social fragmentation and stagnation: reflection on Atlanta's technology cluster

Why do some entrepreneurial high-technology industrial clusters grow and prosper, while others stagnate? Even after several decades of research, we have yet to find a definitive answer. One of the main debates in the literature revolves around the importance of societal variables, such as the growth of a cohesive community, versus the importance of factor availability, such as the supply of highly educated labour. Employing a critical case study design to analyse the technology industry in metropolitan Atlanta, this article shows that although the availability of certain factors might be necessary, it is not sufficient without the crystallization of a cohesive social structure. More specifically, we argue that unless a local high-technology industry develops rich multiple, locally centred social networks, which embed companies in the region, cluster development will stagnate. This is true even if the region is extremely rich in all the factors identified as growth-inducing in the literature.     

Stakeholders’ perception of defragmentation of new plots in a land consolidation project: Given the surprisingly different Slovak and Czech approaches

There is a fundamental difference in the way of merging the fragmented plots of one owner within a land consolidation (LC) in Slovakia (the Slovak Republic, SK) and the Czech Republic (CZ). All the scattered shares of a single owner in SK are merged into a minimum amount of new plots in the proportion of 1/1; the shares of one owner in CZ are merged only to a group of owners who are on the same ownership title.Through an LC project a Slovak owner automatically acquires sole ownership and the Czech one remains in an unchanged ownership in equal shares. Authors wondered what general public and the owners themselves in particular think of these two ways of merging. A simple online questionnaire for all surveyed groups (representatives of owners, public administration officials, LC designers/experts) for a virtual model territory was created. The results based on the questionnaire (563 responses, 10–25% estimated rate of return, were evaluated at the time of preparing the contribution) show that there is a clear preference (90–98%, estimated margin of error 5–16%) for the exclusive ownership. The (surprising) differences in merging as well as subsequent findings provoked an informed debate about the causes which is still pending.