Does studying economics in college influence loan decisions later in life?

The authors investigate the relationship between undergraduate economics coursework or majoring in economics and the debt behavior of the college graduates. The data come from the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) longitudinal survey of the National Center for Education Statistics. College graduates who took courses in undergraduate economics or majored in the subject appear less willing to assume debt through auto loans or federal student loans. If they do assume debt, the amount of the monthly payment (auto loans) or the total amount owed (student loans) is less for college graduates with economics coursework or an economics major compared with other students. The findings are robust for college graduates one year and four years after graduation.     

A Martingale Characterization of Consumption Choices and Hedging Costs with Margin Requirements

This paper examines optimal consumption and investment choices and the cost of hedging contingent claims in the presence of margin requirements or, more generally, of nonlinear wealth dynamics and constraints on the portfolio policies. Existence of optimal policies is established using martingale and duality techniques under general assumptions on the securities' price process and the investor's preferences. As an illustration, explicit solutions are provided for an agent with ‘logarithmic’ utility. A PDE characterization of the cost of hedging a nonnegative path‐independent European contingent claim is also provided.     

地方政府竞争：理解中国旅游经济现象的重要视角

中国旅游经济发展中旅游资源争夺战、遗产申报热、产品同质化、景区门票无序涨价、区域旅游合作失灵等现象存在的深层次原因在于地方政府之间的过度竞争。在现行体制下,旅游地政府竞争的根源在于中央与地方之间的行政性分权、资源配置的市场化转轨、政绩考核制度的经济化导向,监督与约束机制的实质性弱化加剧了竞争。消解地方政府过度竞争对旅游发展的负面影响需要明确中央与地方政府之间关系、改革政绩考核制度、强化约束机制,将是一个循序渐进的长期过程。     

浅谈高压油泵的管理与维护

柴油机的高压油泵相当于人体的心脏,对柴油机的性能有至关重要的影响,文中通过对高压油泵的过度磨损事故进行分析,详细阐述了高压油泵管理与维护中应该注意的事项,可以为轮机管理人员提供借鉴参考。     

Foreign currency borrowing surrounding the global financial crisis: Evidence from Korea

We present a complete profile of firms’ foreign currency borrowing surrounding the 2007 global financial crisis. Employing extensive data from Korean firms during 2002–2012, we find that foreign currency borrowing is significantly related to firm attributes of export revenues, firm size, tangible assets and asset growth, as well as to macro-level factors. These results offer two important implications. First, macroeconomic factors alone cannot fully explain firms’ foreign currency borrowing. Second and more importantly, these firm attributes are indicative of a lower default probability and larger collateral value, which would not only facilitate borrowers’ access to foreign currency debt markets but also offer lenders a better protective cushion from possible loan defaults in the face of exchange rate changes and information asymmetry on borrowers’ credits. Period wise, asset-related firm attributes have more pronounced effects in the post- than pre-crisis period. We further show that banking regulations following the crisis effectively limit the access to foreign currency borrowing by Korean firms, most significantly by those belonging to large business groups.     

Stock market illiquidity,bargaining power and the cost of borrowing

We show that firms with illiquid stock have higher syndicated loan spreads. This result is invariant to measurement of stock illiquidity, and is robust to a wide set of cross-sectional loan and firm features, firm and time fixed effects. It also holds using a matched difference-in-differences estimator, at an exogenous reduction in the minimum tick size of major United States exchanges, and using a two-stage least squares estimator. Stock illiquidity is shown to increase spreads more when a lead lender has a high market share or a borrower has a low credit rating. It increases spreads less when a borrower has public rated debt and it diminishes the benefit to the loan recipient of a lending relationship. Measurements of stock price informativeness and firm-level governance do not affect the stock illiquidity and loan spread relation. A rationale for these findings is that stock illiquidity impairs the bargaining power of corporate borrowers, in negotiating a loan rate, as it raises the cost of alternatively raising funds by issuing equity.     

河南粮食核心区建设中资源禀赋优势逆转与对策  ———基于粮食综合生产能力视角

河南农村剩余劳动力在粮食生产核心区建设中出现了要素禀赋优势逆转,即劳动力资源的短缺导致了粮食核心区建设与区域经济发展争夺劳动力资源的矛盾,土地的稀缺性导致了城镇化和工业化发展与粮食生产核心区建设在空间和区域上争夺土地资源的矛盾,这些因素制约了粮食生产能力。文章提出了引导投入务工与务农劳动力结构比例、妥善处理土地开发和保护耕地关系、以市场手段改善农业基础设施等具体建议。     

日本式公司治理结构的形成、机能及其演化

日本企业治理结构与英美国家相比有自身的显著特征。它的形成与日本的历史和国情有关。这种特殊的治理结构曾是战后日本经济高速增长的微观基础，然而今日又成为日本经济恢复的制度性障碍。具体说，即原有促进经济增长的机能转换为诱发投资过剩的机能。目前日本的股权结构、董事会组织结构和主力银行的监控机制都在发生变化。其变化的取向可能是日本治理结构原型与美英式治理结构的融合。     

货币需求弹性、有效货币供给与货币市场非均衡模型——解析"中国之谜"与长期流动性过剩

Chinese excessive liquidity problems are more serious than other main countries. The upgrading industrial structure and the increasing opening degree lead to the excessive money demand and higher money demand elasticity. Bad credits weaken money supply effectiveness and lead to illusive increasing money. We set up the money market disequilibrium model under the condition of the excessive liquidity. The imbalance between money demand and money supply is the key of Chinese excessive liquidity problems. __________ Translated from Jingji lilun yu jingji guanli 经济理论与经济管理(Economic Theory and Business Management), 2007, (11): 38–44     

Managing Permit Markets to Stabilize Prices

The political economy of environmental policy favors the use of quantity-based instruments over price-based instruments (e.g., tradable permits over green taxes), at least in the United States. With cost uncertainty, however, there are clear efficiency advantages to prices in cases where the marginal damages of emissions are relatively flat, such as with greenhouse gases. The question arises, therefore, of whether one can design flexible quantity policies that mimic the behavior of price policies, namely stable permit prices and abatement costs. We explore a number of “quantity-plus” policies that replicate the behavior of a price policy through rules that adjust the effective permit cap for unexpectedly low or high costs. They do so without necessitating any monetary exchanges between the government and the regulated firms, which can be a significant political barrier to the use of price instruments.