Product Patent Reform and its Impact on Korea's Pharmaceutical Industry

Our analysis focuses on the effect of U.S. government pressure on Korea to adopt product patents for chemical and pharmaceutical products. American pressure began in November 1985 and ended with the Korean Legislature's passage of a new patent law in December 1986. We conduct an event study of the effect of the new patent law on the value of Korean pharmaceutical firms listed on the Korea Stock Exchange. Regression analysis shows that the new law induced excess returns of-74 percent over the 14-month analysis period. The results suggest that adoption of stronger patent laws reduced Korea's wealth. [G14, O34]     

STRUCTURAL VECTOR AUTOREGRESSIONS: CHECKING IDENTIFYING LONG‐RUN RESTRICTIONS VIA HETEROSKEDASTICITY

Long‐run restrictions have been used extensively for identifying structural shocks in vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis. Such restrictions are typically just‐identifying but can be checked by utilizing changes in volatility. This paper reviews and contrasts the volatility models that have been used for this purpose. Three main approaches have been used, exogenously generated changes in the unconditional residual covariance matrix, changing volatility modelled by a Markov switching mechanism and multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models. Using changes in volatility for checking long‐run identifying restrictions in structural VAR analysis is illustrated by reconsidering models for identifying fundamental components of stock prices.     

Exchange Rate Crises and Fiscal Solvency

This paper combines insights from generation one currency crisis models and the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) to create a dynamic FTPL model of currency crises. The initial fixed‐exchange‐rate policy entails risks due to an upper bound on government debt and stochastic surplus shocks. Agents refuse to lend into a position for which the value of debt exceeds the present value of expected future surpluses. Policy switching, usually combined with currency depreciation, restores fiscal solvency and lending. This model can explain a wide variety of crises, including those involving sovereign default. We illustrate by explaining the crisis in Argentina (2001).     

铁路三线大桥帽梁无支架法施工技术及受力检算

帽梁施工采用无支架法施工相对满堂支架法施工而言,具有施工简便,对地面承载力无要求,节约大量钢管,降低施工成本,缩短工期等优点。文章针对洛湛铁路旺甫1号三线大桥设计出穿心棒无支架法施工帽梁的支撑系统方案,成功地解决了三线大桥因帽梁砼重量大、跨度长而致使常用材料不适合做承托梁的问题,并对支撑系统进行了受力检算。     

EXPLICIT SOLUTIONS OF CONSUMPTION-INVESTMENT PROBLEMS IN FINANCIAL MARKETS WITH REGIME SWITCHING

We consider a consumption and investment problem where the market presents different regimes. An investor taking decisions continuously in time selects a consumption–investment policy to maximize his expected total discounted utility of consumption. The market coefficients and the investor's utility of consumption are dependent on the regime of the financial market, which is modeled by an observable finite-state continuous-time Markov chain. We obtain explicit optimal consumption and investment policies for specific HARA utility functions. We show that the optimal policy depends on the regime. We also make an economic analysis of the solutions, and show that for every investor the optimal proportion to allocate in the risky asset is greater in a "bull market" than in a "bear market." This behavior is not affected by the investor's risk preferences. On the other hand, the optimal consumption to wealth ratio depends not only on the regime, but also on the investor's risk tolerance: high risk-averse investors will consume relatively more in a "bull market" than in a "bear market," and the opposite is true for low risk-averse investors.     

Cooperative membership and farmers’ choice of marketing channels – Evidence from apple farmers in Shaanxi and Shandong Provinces,China

Cooperatives are established to improve farmers' production conditions, to increase their bargaining power and to enable them to benefit from modern value chains. In China, farmers are members of a cooperative for multiple reasons. Little is known on whether and how cooperative membership affects farmers’ choice of marketing channels. This paper examines determinants of farmers’ choice of marketing channels, especially how cooperative membership impacts upon this choice. Our analysis is based on survey data collected in 2015 among 625 apple growing farm households in the provinces Shaanxi and Shandong. We employ endogenous switching probit models to deal with potential endogeneity of membership in estimating the determinants of marketing channel choices. We find that cooperative membership has a positive impact on selling to wholesalers and a negative impact on selling to small dealers, but no significant impact on selling to the cooperative itself. As products sold through cooperatives generally comply with relatively stringent food quality and safety standards, these results imply that policies promoting cooperative members to sell their products through cooperatives are likely to have a significant impact on food quality and food safety in China.     

风神汽车焊装车间设备基础梁板脚手架施工方法

焊装设备基础构件大,梁板柱结构复杂,脚手架支设为工业厂房建设中较为复杂的土建施工的代表。文章通过介绍焊装设备基础脚手架的设计与施工,为此类工程的脚手架设计施工提供参考。     

A Markov switching analysis of contagion in the EMS

This paper applies the multivariate version of the Forbes and Rigobon (2002) contagion test, as proposed by Dungey et al. (2005a), to detect contagion effects in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS). Crisis and non-crisis observations are determined endogenously via a Markov-switching vector autoregression (MSVAR). We show that the MSVAR is suitable for this purpose, as it does particularly well in identifying the 11 realignments of the ERM. We examine whether Denmark’s rejection of the Maastricht Treaty and Italy’s competitiveness problems affected other EMS participants and find evidence for contagion.     

津西钢铁异型坯中间包快换

为了节约中间包换包时间,提高连浇生产率,从而提高产量,津西钢铁集团与安徽工业大学共同开发异形坯连铸中间包快换技术,实现三机三流薄腹板异形坯连铸中间包快换的目的,减少铸机停机次数,提高异形坯连铸机的作业率,提高铸机产能。