Impact Fees and Real Estate Prices: Evidence from 35 Chinese Cities

Local governments often charge developers impact fees to finance local public goods. This has been practiced in Chinese cities for more than two decades; however, no empirical studies have tested the effect of impact fees on real estate prices. Using a panel data set for 35 large- and medium-sized cities from 1998 to 2008, we find that impact fees lead to a significant increase in real estate prices. For a given city, an increase in impact fees by one yuan leads to an increase of about 5 yuan in the price of newly-built housing; a 1% increase in impact fees leads to an increase of 5 percentage points in the housing price index and 7 percentage points in the land price index.     

EDGAR on the internet: The welfare effects of wider information distribution in an experimental market for risky assets

Policies such as the SEC’s Fair Disclosure Rule, and technologies such as SEC EDGAR, aim to disseminate corporate disclosures to a wider audience of investors in risky assets. In this study, we adopt an experimental approach to measure whether this wider disclosure is beneficial to these investors. Price-clearing equilibrium models based on utility maximization and non-revealing and fully-revealing prices predict that in a pure exchange economy, an arbitrary trader would prefer that no investors are informed rather than all are informed; non-revealing theory further predicts that an arbitrary trader would prefer a situation in which all traders are informed rather than half the traders are informed. These predictions can be summarized as “None > All > Half”. A laboratory study was conducted to test these predictions. Where previous studies have largely focused on information dissemination and its effects on equilibrium price and insider profits, we focus instead on traders’ expected utility, as measured by their preferences for markets in which none, half, or all traders are informed. Our experimental result contradicts the prediction and indicates “Half > None > All”, i.e. subjects favor a situation where a random half is informed. The implication is that in addition to testing predictions of price equilibrium, experiments should also be used to verify analytical welfare predictions of expected utility under different policy choices. JEL Classification D82, D53, G14, L86 This work was largely completed while this author was at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.     

瑞典核废料管理经验与启示

瑞典的核废料处置技术和管理模式都处于世界领先之列,特别是乏燃料最终处置计划更是其他各国效仿的对象.文章在对瑞典核废料处置情况作简要概述之后,重点分析了瑞典核废料管理的经验.完善的规划与系统、绝对安全的理念与要求、公众的全程参与和对话,建构了一个特色鲜明的瑞典模式,给我国核废料处置和管理带来很多有价值的启示.     

物联网在我国流通领域应用前景分析

本文分析了国际上物联网在流通领域应用的情况及其在我国流通领域应用推进缓慢的原因,包括成本制约、信息化基础建设滞后、产业链尚未形成以及技术标准、安全隐私、商业模式等问题。本文研究表明,从未来发展前景来看,在国家政策引导和物联网产业快速发展的推动下,物联网技术在流通领域应用将逐步进入规模化、市场化、专业化发展阶段,呈现出RFID技术大规模应用、物联网技术集成应用等趋势,并创造“智慧流通”模式,促进流通业服务内容和形式的不断延伸。     

Anticipated Environmental Policy and Transitional Dynamics in an Endogenous Growth Model

This paper makes a new attempt toinvestigate how an anticipatedenvironmental policy governs the transitionaldynamics of an economy when pollutionexternality is taken into account. Themodeling strategy we use is an AK technologyendogenous growth framework with an endogenousleisure-labor choice. It is found that, unlikeinelastic labor supply framework, a rise inpublic abatement expenditure will stimulate thebalanced economic growth rate. It is alsofound that public abatement technology plays animportant role in determining the transitionaladjustment of the economic growth rate inresponse to a pre-announced environmentalpolicy.     

Trends in British public investment

British public investment has declined sharply both as a share of GDP and as a share of government spending since the 1970s. Only part of this decline is explained by privatisation, which transferred some public investment to the private sector. More important was the very large and permanent reduction in public house‐building between the mid‐1970s and the early 1980s. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the rate of public investment recovered somewhat, but after that time it declined again, reaching a record low in 1999. The most recent decline in public investment has affected a range of central government programmes, and it has not been significantly offset by investment under the Private Finance Initiative. The government now plans to increase investment spending, although levels look set to remain low by historical standards for some time to come.     

Continuity and Discontinuity in Accounting Technology in Danish State Institutions

The development of accounting technology in the Danish state sector is characterised by episodes of disruption and the longevity of certain principles that define accounting's accountability as involved in producing the state as a unit, as providing a continuous concern for productivity, and as providing the means by which a parliamentary democracy may work. The episodes of disruption may often repair on this trinity of issues. The recent transformations are radical as they introduce a new form of management via individualised 'accounting-cultured' institutions and managers. They do so via a heightened emphasis on a core technology already in place supplemented by a new mode of output orientation rather than input orientation via a Company Accounts . In addition to reporting on spending, this set of accounts introduced a series of non-financial measures such as productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.     

西方公共服务供给模式的演变及启示

西方公共服务供给模式的演变大致经历了公共服务供给模式的传统官僚制阶段、市场多元化阶段和整体合作三个阶段.借鉴西方公共服务供给模式改革的先进经验,对我国有许多启示:公共服务的导向机制应以民为本,创新哲学基础已转为总体系统论,管理应实行网络化,同时应合理统筹公共服务的财政支出.     

论我国城市规划的公众参与

以西方国家城市规划的公众参与理论发展与实践活动为背景,就我国城市规划公众参与的现状与问题,对公众参与的法的依据与保障、公众参与主体、公众参与的社会化功效、公众参与模式等方面进行了分析与探讨.     

知识分子:从总体工人的一个器官到第一生产力的体现者

国家人力资源和社会保障部制定和组织实施的事业单位养老保险制度改革方案,引起知识界的全国政协委员和人大代表的强烈关注和批评。从争论双方的立场来看,似乎都没有意识到,知识分子已经从马克思所说的总体工人的一个器官和邓小平所说的知识分子是工人阶级的一部分,转化为邓小平的第一生产力的体现者。