Explaining the aggregate price level with Keynes's principle of effective demand

The mainstream view of Keynes's principle of effective demand is that it states something about quantities—and about quantities only. The principle is held to determine the levels of output and employment in a world not governed by Say's law. This paper argues that the principle of effective demand goes beyond this to explain not only ‘real’ activity levels but also the aggregate price level. A variant of the post-Keynesian D/Z-model is brought together with Marxian reproduction schemes to derive this result.     

Understanding the influence of farmer motivations on changes to soil erosion risk on sites of former serious erosion in the South Downs National Park,UK

Serious soil erosion occurred in the South Downs National Park, southern England in the years 1982–2006 and details of around 400 sites are contained in a database. In 2010 we revisited 85 of the most serious sites where erosion of >10 m³ ha⁻¹ y⁻¹ had been recorded in order to assess land use change and any conservation measures undertaken. At 79% of the sites land use change had resulted in a reduction in the risk of erosion, most notably at 28 sites with a shift to permanent grass from winter cereals. At only 21% of sites was the risk of erosion unchanged. Twenty two farmers responsible for 66 of the sites were interviewed. Land management practices had changed on all of the fields of interest to this study since the time of the serious erosion events, to those which have the potential to lower soil erosion risk. Sixteen interviewees claimed that erosion was a motivating reason for changing their practices, due to either experiencing on or on- and off-farm impacts firsthand (12), having knowledge or suspicion of serious erosion having occurred on their land prior to their management (three), or having no knowledge of any serious erosion on their land but just wanting to reduce overall erosion risk (one). Amongst the main changes reported are changes of land use from winter cereals to grass or to overwinter stubble which have undoubtedly reduced the risk of erosion. However, some changed practices claimed by farmers, such as along-the-contour-working, earlier sowing and the use of rollers may be of little value. Furthermore, deeper analysis of farmers’ motivations regarding changes in land management practices suggests a complex picture in which a range of socio-economic influences come into play over time including financial incentives offered by agri-environmental schemes which were found to be an important driver of change. Future changes in farming economics may therefore undermine the reduction in erosion risk in the longer term.     

Collaborative governance arrangements to deliver spatially coordinated agri-environmental management

Several studies show that agri-environment schemes (AES) are likely to be more effective if they are designed at the landscape scale. However, this requires spatial coordination of environmental management across multiple farm holdings and collaboration among governmental and other actors, including, possibly, groups of farmers. In this study we analyse alternative approaches to spatial coordination and collaboration. Through case studies from five EU member states in North West Europe we analysed collaborative governance arrangements, from the perspective of the distribution of governance tasks among collaborating actors and changes to these over time. Of these governance tasks, spatial coordination had our particular interest. The collaborative governance arrangements were shaped in various ways. In four out of five case studies a group of farmers had become involved in the performance of more governance tasks over time. In all cases a professional(ized) organisation (governmental organisation or a group of farmers) was responsible for spatial coordination, possibly due to the complexities inherent to a landscape approach. In relation to the change of schemes over time, we argue that adaptive collaborative governance, incorporating learning, monitoring and evaluation in the governance arrangements, is key to effective agri- environmental management.     

The premium of dynamic trading in a discrete-time setting

Chiu and Zhou [Quant. Finance, 2011, 11, 115–123] show that the inclusion of a risk-free asset strictly boosts the Sharpe ratio in a continuous-time setting, which is in sharp contrast to the static single-period case. In this paper, we extend their work to a discrete-time setting. Specifically, we prove that the multi-period mean-variance efficient frontier generated by both risky and risk-free assets is strictly separated from that generated by only risky assets. As a result, we demonstrate that the inclusion of a risk-free asset strictly enhances the best Sharpe ratio of the efficient frontier in a multi-period discrete-time setting. Furthermore, we offer an explicit expression for the enhancement of the best Sharpe ratio, which was referred to as the premium of dynamic trading by Chiu and Zhou [op. cit.], although they do not present a computational formula for it. Our results further show that, in the case with a risk-free asset, if an investor can extract some money from his initial wealth at time 0, the efficient frontier with a risk-free asset can be tangent to that without a risk-free asset. Finally, based on real data from the American market, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the results obtained in this paper; a numerical comparison between the discrete-time case and the continuous-time case is also provided. Our numerical results reveal that the continuous-time model can be considered to be a limit of the discrete-time model.     

Applications of Business Process Management （BPM） in Chinese Firms： A Managerial Accounting Perspective

Based on a questionnaire survey, the aim of this paper is to explore the relationship of business process management （BPM） with managerial accounting system （MAS） and their economic performance consequences in Chinese firms. Statistical data show that more firms accept business process improvement （BPI） other than business process reengineering （BPR） and optimize their activity chains other than supply chains. Through the construction of three elements, i.e., goal-setting, monitoring, and incentive schemes, of MAS, the study finds that when implementing BPM, firms usually use accounting indexes to set goals of the effect of business processes and combine the goals with monitoring and incentive schemes. Statistical data also show that incentive schemes get the lowest usage degree compared with goal-setting and monitoring. In addition, there are differences in their managerial accounting usages for BPM among firms considering ownership, industry, and scale. The main finding of this paper is that BPM empirically brings favorable changes to firms＇ economic performance via managerial accounting in general, and via goal-setting, monitoring, and incentive schemes in particular.     

Nonuniform Staggered Prices and Output Persistence

Staggered prices are a fundamental building block of New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. In the standard model, prices are uniformly staggered, but recent empirical evidence suggests that deviations from uniform staggering are common. This paper analyzes how synchronization of price changes affects the response to monetary policy shocks. I find that even large deviations from uniform staggering have small effects on the response of output. Aggregate dynamics in a model of uniform staggering may serve well as an approximation to a more complicated model with some degree of synchronization in price setting.     

试议公司瑕疵设立原则有效

关于公司瑕疵设立，有原则有效和原则无效两种观点。从维护交易效率的角度出发，兼及考虑企业维持理念，我国法律应尊重瑕疵公司作为市场主体的事实存在，设置公司设立瑕疵补正规则和程序，对瑕疵公司进行拯救，原则上承认设立瑕疵公司之人格及既已形成的社会经济秩序。     

The frequency and size of price changes: evidence from non-parametric estimations

The majority of price setting models predict a negative correlation between the frequency and size of price changes. Using a unique micro-level price data from Slovakia, we find that a negative correlation between frequency and size of price changes holds only for more rigid prices. On the other hand, less rigid prices such as gasoline prices exhibit positive correlation in line with Rotemberg's pricing model.     

Price Setting in the Euro Area: Some Stylized Facts from Individual Producer Price Data

This paper summarizes the microevidence on the setting of producer prices in the euro area. The main findings are: (i) 21% of producer prices are adjusted each month, (ii) producer prices are changed more frequently and by smaller amounts than consumer prices (even after controlling for product characteristics), (iii) price decreases are relatively frequent, (iv) inflation correlates positively with the difference between the frequency of price increases and decreases, and (v) there is substantial variation in price flexibility across sectors, which can be explained in part by differences in the cost structure, the degree of competition, and the level of sectoral inflation.