宁波水资源利用效率现状及趋势分析

对水资源利用效率问题的研究,有助于发现和改善水资源开发利用中存在的不合理、低效率等问题,促进水资源利用效率的提高。本文运用回归分析和H-P滤波法对1997—2006年宁波市用水效率进行分析,发现全市用水效率总体上呈现逐渐上升的趋势,未来不论是生产用水,还是生活用水,都存在较大的节水空间。     

产业集群形成的内在机理研究——一个博弈分析的框架

产业集群并不是众多企业在同一区域内的简单拼凑和集中,它的产生和发展遵循着本身的内在逻辑和运行规律。用博弈的分析框架来研究产业集群的形成机理可以清楚地看到产业集群在其萌芽、发展、成熟等不同阶段集群内企业之间表现出来的不同相互关系。这种关系本身也反映出企业在追求效率和利益方面采用方式的演变过程。     

Assessment of regional trade and virtual water flows in China

The success of China's economic development has left deep marks on resource availability and quality. Some regions in China are relatively poor with regards to water resources. This problem is exacerbated by economic growth. Flourishing trade activities on both domestic and international levels have resulted in significant amounts of water withdrawal and water pollution. Hence the goal of this paper is to evaluate the current inter-regional trade structure and its effects on water consumption and pollution via ‘virtual water flows’. Virtual water is the water embedded in products and used in the whole production chain, and that is traded between regions or exported to other countries. For this assessment of trade flows and effects on water resources, we have developed an extended regional input-output model for eight hydro-economic regions in China to account for virtual water flows between North and South China. The findings show that the current trade structure in China is not very favorable with regards to water resource allocation and efficiency. North China as a water scarce region virtually exports about 5% of its total available freshwater resources while accepting large amounts of wastewater for other regions' consumption. By contrast, South China a region with abundant water resources is virtually importing water from other regions while their imports are creating waste water polluting other regions' hydro-ecosystems.     

Modelling superannuation fund management function as a two-stage process for overall and stage-level performance appraisal

We assess superannuation fund performance in a multi-dimensional framework by conceptualizing its management function as a serially linked two sub-process; operational management (OM) and portfolio management (PM). The procedure that we adopt is data envelopment analysis (DEA). We express overall efficiency as a weighted average of the two sub-process efficiencies and assess overall efficiency conditional on their relative importance. We demonstrate application of our model using a sample of Australian superannuation funds. By appraising performance in two sample periods; crisis (2008) and relatively non-crisis (2014), we show that some findings of previous studies may be explained further through the proposed multi-stage framework. The best overall performer in 2008 is public sector funds and in 2014 it is corporate funds. Decomposition of overall efficiency reveals that public sector funds, on average, outperform all other fund categories in OM. However, no specific fund category dominates PM performance in both assessment periods. The driving force behind the observed inverse association between superannuation fund size and performance appears to be PM performance. Number of investment options offered is not associated with overall, OM and PM performance. Here, we demonstrate that performance appraisal from different aspects of management provide insightful information to superannuation fund managers.     

Relationship between oil price and exchange rate by FDA and copula

This article investigates the relationship between daily crude oil prices and exchange rates. Functional data analysis is used to show the clustering pattern of exchange rates and oil prices over the time period through high dimensional visualizations. We select exchange rates for important currencies related to crude oil prices by using the objective Bayesian variable selection method. The selected sample data exhibits non-normal distribution with fat tails and skewness. Under the non-normality of the return series, we use copula functions that do not require to assume the bivariate normality to consider marginal distribution. In particular, our study applies the popular and powerful statistical methods such as Gaussian copula partial correlations and Gaussian copula marginal regression. We find evidence of significant dependence for all considered pairs, except for the Mexican peso-Brent. Our empirical results also show that the rise in the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price returns is associated with a depreciation of the US dollar.     

Forecasting UK consumer price inflation using inflation forecasts

The inflation rate is a key economic indicator for which forecasters are constantly seeking to improve the accuracy of predictions, so as to enable better macroeconomic decision making. Presented in this paper is a novel approach which seeks to exploit auxiliary information contained within inflation forecasts for developing a new and improved forecast for inflation by modeling with Multivariate Singular Spectrum Analysis (MSSA). Unlike other forecast combination techniques, the key feature of the proposed approach is its use of forecasts, i.e. data into the future, within the modeling process and extracting auxiliary information for generating a new and improved forecast. We consider real data on consumer price inflation in UK, obtained via the Office for National Statistics. A variety of parametric and nonparametric models are then used to generate univariate forecasts of inflation. Thereafter, the best univariate forecast is considered as auxiliary information within the MSSA model alongside historical data for UK consumer price inflation, and a new multivariate forecast is generated. We find compelling evidence which shows the benefits of the proposed approach at generating more accurate medium to long term inflation forecasts for UK in relation to the competing models. Finally, through the discussion, we also consider Google Trends forecasts for inflation within the proposed framework.     

WHAT DETERMINES VACATION LEAVE? THE ROLE OF GENDER

Vacation leave is introduced in workplaces to improve the working environment. Surprisingly, it has been observed that a large number of workers do not use all of their entitled vacation days. This paper provides a novel set of facts about the gender differences in taking vacation time using the Canadian Workplace Employee Survey, which is a linked longitudinal employer‐employee dataset. The results show considerable differences between men and women in the estimated effects of some demographic characteristics after controlling for job and workplace characteristics. However, they reveal significant implications of work arrangements (e.g., part‐time work, flexible work schedules, and home‐based work), job promotion, supervisory tasks, and union membership for vacation use, for both men and women. This paper provides further insights on the use of fringe benefits that may be useful to policymakers and businesses.     

Measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in Italy

Environmental and economic efficiency has being receiving growing attention among researchers. In general terms, this concept is related to the capability of the economic systems to employ natural resources efficiently, so as to increase economic and human wealth. This clearly implies that both the economic and ecological aspects of decisions ought to be considered. Bearing this in mind, this article considers economic and ecological performance together, by applying data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist productivity index to investigate the efficiency of the 20 Italian regions from 2004 to 2011. The results reveal that the northern regions have been more efficient than the southern ones, highlighting the strong geographical differences between the two. Furthermore, this article uses the grey system theory to forecast regional, economic and environmental efficiency. The results of the forecasting analysis show that the north–south duality remains strong and will possibly increase since the regions in the south get worse in term of environmental and economic efficiency.     

Labour values and energy values: some developments on the common substance of value since 1867

Abstract

Marx’s Das Kapital (1867) singled out labour as the common substance of value in all commodities. Costanza (1980 Costanza, Robert. 1980. “Embodied Energy and Economic Valuation.” Science 210 (4475): 1219–1224. doi:10.1126/science.210.4475.1219[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in Science chose energy and propagated energy values (a century after Engels criticised Podolinsky on energy). Mainstream economists quickly questioned Marx’s logic. Pareto advocated simultaneous equations, unaware of their use by Mühlpfordt and Dmitriev. Contributions by Charasoff and Potron were also overlooked. Already in 1927, Leontief and Sraffa knew how to replace labour values by other commodity values. Generalising Sraffa’s subsystems and using “percentage formulas” for price-value deviations, I discuss some empirical results for labour or energy theories of value.     

企业动漫角色商品化权收益影响因素的灰关联分析

本文通过文献研究、案例分析和实地调研,提出基于"动漫形象资产——动漫角色声誉——营销管理能力——制度环境友好性"的动漫企业角色商品化权收益的4要素分析模型。本文通过灰关联分析显示:对当期商品化权收入影响最大的是制度环境友好性,其次是营销管理能力、企业的动漫形象资产及动漫角色声誉;对后期商品化权收入影响最大的是动漫角色声誉,其次是制度环境友好性,企业的营销管理能力以及动漫形象资产。