Labour use efficiency in the Indian and Pakistani commercial banks

The Indian and Pakistani banking industry is said to have an excessive use of labour due to the significant market share of government owned banks. Both countries have undertaken a process of regulatory reform to bring about market discipline in the usage of inputs and to increase the labour use efficiency and productivity. The focus of this paper is the estimation of productivity and efficiency of labour use in the banking sectors of the Indian sub-continent. The results show that the efficiency of labour use across the Indian sub-continent is improving over time and that foreign banks are more efficient compared to domestically owned banks in their usage of labour.     

Land use externalities, open space preservation, and urban sprawl

Parcel data on residential land conversion are used to investigate how land use externalities influence the rate of development and modify policies designed to manage urban growth and preserve open space. Several “smart growth” policies are found to significantly influence land conversion, including a development clustering policy that concentrates development and generates preserved open space. In addition to directly affecting a parcel's hazard rate of conversion, this policy is found to affect neighboring parcels' conversion by generating a positive open space externality that hastens their development. The implication that the clustering policy could generate a more sprawled pattern of development is explored using spatial simulation.     

The housing question in Japan

This article first examines how bad housing conditions are in Japan based on international comparisons. The next question is whether the extremely high land prices in Japan can be explained by economic logic. We then turn to more specific housing policy questions that are peculiar to or important in Japan, such as the tax advantages of owning land that have caused under-utilization of land and the reasons why the average size of Japanese rental housing is so small.     

Legalization of drugs: Effects on the workplace

In the last few years bipartisan support for legalizing drugs has grown to a surprising level. Because of the lack of involvement of the business community in this debate, we surveyed the human resource managers of 127 firms about their perceptions of the effects of legalization. Their responses were uniformly negative, with expectations that drug use, absenteeism, worksite crime, and liability costs would increase, while the quality and quantity of work would decline. They also forecast increases in drug testing, performance monitoring, and education and rehabilitation programs as a result.     

Socioeconomic predictors of forest use values in the Peruvian Amazon: A potential tool for biodiversity conservation

Conservation is a crisis discipline requiring rapid action with limited funds. This study examines the potential of socioeconomic variables to predict forest use values. If natural resource use can be predicted from socioeconomic data, conservation planners could rapidly identify and focus conservation programs on the sectors of local populations that most intensively utilize local flora and fauna. Families in three communities in the northern Peruvian Amazon were surveyed over a 6-month period. Data were collected on use of flora and fauna from six locally determined use categories (food, medicine and poisons, wood, weavings, adornments, and “other”) in forest types of three age classes (fallow fields—very young forests, young secondary forests, and old secondary forests). Forest use values were the dependant variables calculated in $/ha/year. Socioeconomic variables included: age, education, family size, residence time, land worked, land owned, number of fishing nets, chickens, pigs, cows, and/or mules owned (all proxies for productive assets), and level of ecological knowledge (ability of informants to correctly identify forest species and answer basic questions about their biology). Ordinary least square multiple regressions were run independently for each forest type. Regressions were also run separately for the two most valuable use categories, food and wood. Low R² adjusted values (all < 0.3) reflect the difficulty in predicting human behavior due to confounding variables and complex interactions. Residence time and a household's community of residence were the most significant predictors of forest use values. Households in Vista Alegre, the community with the highest density of people and smallest landholdings per household, extracted the highest value of forest products per hectare. The longer a family stayed in any community the higher the value of forest goods they extracted. If families that lived in an area longest are the most intensive extractors of forest products, they should be a major focus for conservation programming. In addition, the higher value of products extracted from forests by some families may make them more open to strategies seeking to protect long-term viability of the resources they utilize. The importance of residence time also indicates that planners need to account for changes in the resource use patterns of stakeholders over time.     

Structural Decomposition Analysis of Physical Flows in the Economy

Many environmental problems can be attributedto the extraction and emissions of physicalsubstances. Increasing our understanding of theeconomic and technological driving forcesbehind these physical flows can contribute tosolving the environmental problems related tothem. The input-output framework is a usefulsetting in which to integrate detailedinformation about economic structure andphysical flows. In this article a specificmethod in input-output analysis is reviewed,namely Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA).It is based on comparative static analysis,which decomposes historical changes of a policyvariable into determinant effects. SDA has beenapplied, for example, to analyze the demand andtechnological driving forces of energy use,CO₂-emissions and various other pollutantsand resources. This article examines thetheoretical aspects of structuraldecomposition, in particular those concerningphysical flows and environmental issues.Furthermore, the article includes an extensivesurvey of empirical studies.     

杭嘉湖平原地区土地利用变化驱动机制分析

选择位于杭嘉湖平原地区社会经济快速发展的浙江省海盐县为研究区,利用遥感数据,对研究区土地利用类型的空间转移与格局变化进行分析的基础上,选取研究区土地利用变化的社会经济驱动因子,运用典型相关分析方法诊断各社会经济驱动因子对土地利用变化格局形成贡献作用的大小,同时运用典型相关系数和冗余度分析,检验了分析结果。研究结果表明,人口密度、单位面积工业总产值、单位面积农业总产值、城镇化水平、农民人均年纯收入等5个因子是影响研究区土地利用变化的主要社会经济驱动因子。     

2017年北京社区卫生服务中心处方集中点评结果

目的汇总分析北京市16个区县近100家社区卫生服务中心处方抽样点评的结果,比较各区之间的差异,细化点评结果,促进全市合理用药。方法抽取2017年6月第2周,全门诊不包括草药处方,共计50189张处方,进行精细化集中点评。结果2017年北京16个区县社区卫生服务中心平均处方金额为160.07元,注射剂使用率为5.56%,全部基本药物占比为68.29%,处方的不合理率为8.8%。结论对于北京市社区卫生服务中心门诊处方集中点评最应改进的为统一点评标准,其次还应完善处方管理,强化药剂师自身的业务学习.     

反向抵押贷款风险研究

反向抵押贷款作为一种金融产品,其核心问题是风险管理,但目前国内对于反向抵押款风险的研究仅仅停留在简单对国外文献的翻译上,并未结合中国实际进行具体分析.结合中国具体实际对反向抵押贷款中的三级风险作了详细分析,并对反向抵押贷款中的风险防范提了几点建议.     

论毛泽东的对外开放思想

毛泽东的思想不是封闭的。早在革命战争时期，毛泽东的对外开放思想就非常明显，主要表现在引进外援方面。建国后，毛泽东的对外开放思想有所发展。本文主要从四个方面探讨毛泽东的对外开放思想。