Determinants of agro-food trade competition of Central European countries with the European Union

The two-way trade flows are classified into four competition categories: successful price competition when trade surplus is at lower export than import price, unsuccessful price competition when trade deficit is at higher export than import price, successful quality competition when trade surplus is at higher export than import price, and unsuccessful quality competition when trade deficit is at lower export than import price. Using a panel dataset of determinants of agro-food trade competition between the five Central European Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and the European Union, we found the effect of trade balance on trade competition to be more significant than the effect of export–import unit values. Natural, and to a lesser extent human factor endowments increase price and quality competition and reduce unsuccessful price and quality competition. R&D expenditures improve quality competition and reduce price competition. Foreign direct investment reduces unsuccessful price competition and increases unsuccessful quality competition. The size of the economy improves price competition and reduces quality competition. Consumer demands associated with higher level of income per capita increase unsuccessful price and quality competition.     

The Tourism System Research Categorization Framework

This analysis produced a tourism system research categorization framework comprising mutually exclusive subject areas to classify the keywords in academic journal articles. The primary research goals were to develop this framework and then assess the frequency levels of specific tourism research subject areas in the 10-year period of 2002–2011. A database of 37,918 author-selected keywords from 9,588 research articles in 31 tourism, hospitality, and leisure journals was created. Using the proposed framework, the database was divided into six main categories (destination; demand; travel; marketing; geographical areas; and generic terms) and 61 sub-categories. The destination category captured the most keywords, followed by demand and then marketing.     

Do stronger intellectual property rights lead to more R&D-intensive imports?

There is much evidence that intellectual property rights (IPR) protection stimulates trade flows between countries. Yet less is known whether this effect is stronger for technology-intensive products. Using data for 119 countries over the period 1976–2010, this paper shows that the impact of IPR protection on manufacturing imports is significantly stronger for products with greater technology embodiment, as measured by their R&D intensity. An increase in the level of IPR protection leads to 22 per cent faster increase in the value of imports of products at the 90th percentile of R&D intensity than products at the 10th percentile.     

经济均衡增长的必要条件与我国经济发展战略

经济均衡增长要求两大部类之间必须保持合理的比例关系、消费需求能够稳定增长。社会再生产过程中,两大部类之间的比例关系及投资率、储蓄率是由资本产出率、资本淘汰率、经济增长率三个因素所决定的,在技术、资源不制约经济发展的条件下,消费增长速度越快,投资率、储蓄率会越高,经济发展速度也越快。20世纪90年代中后期,中国经济增长速度放慢的最主要原因是体制改革对人们消费心理的影响,因此应从发展速度、发展方向、调控手段等方面规划我国经济未来发展的道路。     

Exploring the effect of a middle response category on response style in attitude measurement

In this research we focus on the link between response style behaviour in answering rating data such as Likert scales and the number of response categories that is offered. In a split-ballot experiment two versions of a questionnaire were randomly administered. The questionnaires only differed in the number of response categories, i.e. 5 vs. 6 categories. In both samples a latent-class confirmatory factor analysis revealed an extreme response style factor. The 6-response categories version, however, revealed the more consistent set of effects. As far as the content latent-class factors, i.e. familistic values and ethnocentrism, are concerned, results were fairly similar. However, a somewhat deviant pattern regarding the familistic values items in the 6-response categories version suggested that this set of items is less homogeneous than the set of ethnocentric items. The effect of gender, age and education was also tested and revealed similarities as well as differences between the two samples.     

Ethics in Practice: What Are Managers Really Doing?

This study asked managers with different educational backgrounds and experience from a variety of industries of a variety of sizes representing both genders and various predominant managerial functions at different levels to “describe the skills they think are necessary to perform their jobs effectively”. In particular, they were asked to rank 178 behavioral skills presented under 22 different categories that described different aspects of management. Data were then examined first to determine the importance of ethics or integrity overall in the group of managerial activities and then to explore how specific ethical activities of managers differ across various managerial and organizational characteristics. Findings indicate that ethics is still considered one of the least important skills necessary in managers’ daily work. However, once specific ethical activities are analyzed separately, significant differences are found across characteristics of managers, as well as those of the organizations at which they work.     

刍议我国稀土研究的概况及趋势

本文首先简要介绍稀土的概念、应用及其研究意义,其次通过CNKI对我国近十年来稀土研究文献进行检索和统计,最后得出我国稀土研究层次较高,研究领域重点在工程技术领域,研究机构主要是"211"和"985"工程大学等特点。     

Comments

The marginal-products-of-labour (MPL) wage gap is studied in the early-reform Chinese economy, using the Olley-Pakes estimation technique to estimate the production function, based on micro data including different categories of labour. From this measurement of MPL-wage gaps and econometric analyses, several conclusions are drawn. First, the MPL-wage gap was anomalously large for managers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) compared with other categories of labour. Second, the large MPL-wage gap of managers raised the average MPL-wage gap across various categories of labour, resulting in higher than the average wage MPL throughout the entire workforce, which is regarded as homogeneous. Third, the large MPL-wage gap, or, in other words, the under-employment of managers, occurred not only because the state still centrally employed and allocated labour to SOEs, but because the economy faced a labour-supply constraint of managers in early-reform China. This observation supports a modified version of the state labour-monopsony hypothesis.     

Simple Correspondence Analysis: A Bibliographic Review

Over the past few decades correspondence analysis has gained an international reputation as a powerful statistical tool for the graphical analysis of contingency tables. This popularity stems from its development and application in many European countries, especially France, and its use has spread to English speaking nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Its growing popularity amongst statistical practitioners, and more recently those disciplines where the role of statistics is less dominant, demonstrates the importance of the continuing research and development of the methodology.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the theoretical, practical and computational issues of simple correspondence analysis and discuss its relationship with recent advances that can be used to graphically display the association in two-way categorical data.     

论英语泛读教学中的语篇结构分析法

泛读教学的目的在于全篇的理解，而从章结构和语境入手分析全，同时运用表格分析、提纲分析、段落分析，不但能帮助学生把握章脉络，正确理解章内容，掌握中心思想，还能激发其阅读兴趣。