Growth and enduring epidemic diseases

This paper analyzes the interplay of human capital formation and economic growth when there is premature adult mortality. Failing adequate insurance arrangements, a long wave of such mortality can so undermine human capital formation as to induce an economic collapse. In nuclear family structures, random matching of partners is superior to assortative mating only if the shock is not too big and initial levels of human capital are not too low. Full pooling of mortality risks with equal treatment of all children in extended families may fend off a general collapse, depending on the initial conditions and the size and duration of the shock. To avoid undesirable effects on expectations, awareness campaigns should be complemented by policies that credibly promise to reduce future mortality. If mortality depends on the general level of human capital, indeterminacy can arise in the form of more than one rational expectations path.     

35/10kV总降压变电站电气设计与防雷保护研究

35/10kV总降压变电站是我国电网重要组成部分之一,在我国电网中占有着重要位置,本文对35/10kV总降压变电站电气设计和防雷保护的相关方案进行了研究,以期为我国35/10kV总降压变电站电气设计和防雷保护提供一些参考。     

Are Art Auction Estimates Biased?

This article considers whether presale auction estimates are unbiased predictors of price when “no‐sales” are considered utilizing a newly constructed sample of over 500 works by eight early twentieth‐century American artists. Unbiased presale auction estimates in predicting price, while expected, are generally not supported in previous work, but these studies (excepting one) do not include no‐sales in the calculations. In order to study the question, we employ a standard approach that uses an inverse Mills ratio arising from a sample selection probit to correct for selection bias. We find that controlling for selection bias, presale auction estimates appear to be biased downward, and we offer possible reasons for this result.     

Forced Intercourse,Mental Health,and Human Capital

Previous studies have found evidence that experiencing a traumatic event during childhood or adolescence can interfere with the acquisition of human capital. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate the effects of being the victim of forced intercourse on the mental health, academic performance, and educational attainment of young women paying careful attention to the role of unobservables at the individual, family, and community levels. Our results suggest that forced intercourse is strongly related to depression. Moreover, there is evidence that the psychological damage caused by forced intercourse leads to reduced academic performance and educational attainment.     

GROWTH,INTER‐INDUSTRY AND INTRA‐INDUSTRY COMPETITION AND WELFARE*

In this paper we introduce strategic interaction between firms in an R&D growth model which captures both the intra‐industry competition between firms operating within an industry and the inter‐industry competition between firms in different industries. We show that the more substitutable the goods produced within each industry (across industries) are, that is, the more intense the intra‐industry (inter‐industry) competition, the higher is the growth rate. In the comparison between social optimum and a decentralized economy, it is shown that the market outcome is characterized by inefficiently high entry of firms within each industry and insufficient productivity growth.     

The Effect of Exchange Rate on Bilateral Trade Balance: New Evidence from Malaysia and Thailand

This paper attempts to identify the major economic factors that influence the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia and Thailand with the US and Japan. To this end, an unrestricted VAR model was estimated using quarterly frequency data from 1980: I to 1996: IV. The Johansen results indicate a stable long-run relation between trade and three macro variables: exchange rate, domestic income and foreign income. The main findings of this paper are: (i) the real effective exchange rate is an important variable in the trade balance equation and devaluation improves the trade balances of both economies in the long-run; (ii) the other important variables that determine trade balance include domestic and foreign incomes; (iii) the results indicate no J-curve effect and causal run from exchange rate to trade balance, (iv) the real effects of devaluation are distributed over a period of eight to nine quarters.     

A model of collateral, investment, and adverse selection

This paper characterizes the relationship between entrepreneurial wealth and aggregate investment under adverse selection. Its main finding is that such a relationship need not be monotonic. In particular, three results emerge from the analysis: (i) pooling equilibria, in which investment is independent of entrepreneurial wealth, are more likely to arise when entrepreneurial wealth is relatively low; (ii) separating equilibria, in which investment is increasing in entrepreneurial wealth, are most likely to arise when entrepreneurial wealth is relatively high and; (iii) for a given interest rate, an increase in entrepreneurial wealth may generate a discontinuous fall in investment.     

Economic transition and gender differentials in wages and productivity: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing enterprises

We use firm-level data to analyze male–female wage differences in Chinese industry in the late 1990s. Our estimates indicate that employers' discrimination against women was not a significant source of the gender wage gap in Chinese state-owned enterprises. Instead, we find that the relative wage of unskilled female to male workers was higher than their relative productivity. This result indicates that unskilled female workers in the state sector had historically received wage premiums and consequently accounted for a disproportionate share of the sector's labor surplus.