Pensions reforms,workforce ageing and firm-provided welfare

This paper investigates the impact of an exogenous increase in the legal retirement age on the firms’ propensity to provide welfare services voluntarily to their employees. To this purpose we exploit a unique information derived from the Rilevazione su Imprese e Lavoro (RIL), a survey conducted in 2015 on a large and representative sample of Italian firms. Applying different regression models we show that firms which were forced to give up previously planned hirings because of the Law 201/2011 (the so-called ‘Fornero pension reform’), increased the probability of providing welfare services at workplace. By referring to the sociological, human resource management and economic literature we then argue that a sudden increase in the legal retirement age may motivate the employers to establish welfare schemes as a way to cope with an ageing workforce. Our findings also hold when propensity score matching methods are used in order to control for sample selection issues.     

有效供给不足抑制中国消费需求——从长短期消费函数看消费不足的问题

2005年是中国经济改革的关键一年,但目前宏观经济中出现了GDP增速减缓和消费需求疲软的突出矛盾。如何解决这一矛盾?相关文献通常在凯恩斯短期消费函数的基础上,认为消费拖累了GDP增长,并建议实施提高消费倾向、刺激消费需求的宏观消费管理政策。文章通过长期消费函数分析后发现是有效供给不足压抑了消费。因此,文章建议从加强供给管理入手,为社会提供更多的有效供给才是化解宏观经济矛盾的战略选择。     

上海世博会的乘数效应

本文主要运用投资乘数模型,对世博会为上海GDP的贡献进行了分析和预测,并对理论乘数效应在举办世博会中的制约因素进行了讨论,为上海市政府的宏观调控提出建议。     

The Case of the Missing Pollution Haven Hypothesis

One particularly vexing puzzle for economists and policymakers over the past several decades concerns the empirical significance of the theoretically predicted pollution haven hypothesis. While neoclassical theory and conventional wisdom both surmise that local economies will suffer deleterious effects from stricter environmental regulations, empirical studies have largely failed to validate such claims. This study utilizes the method of matching to show that the impact of stricter regulation is heterogeneous spatially, varying systematically based on location-specific attributes. Previous studies that assume a homogenous response may therefore inadvertently mask the overall impact of more stringent regulations by pooling unaffected and affected regions.JEL Classification: Q25, Q28, H00, L51, R1The authors wish to thank to Michael Crew, Anthony Heyes, an anonymous referee, Werner Antweiler, Randy Becker, Wayne Gray, Shelby Gerking, Michael Greenstone, Vern Henderson, and Arik Levinson. Participants at various university seminars and conferences also lent useful insights to this line of research.     

Youth labor market expectations and job matching in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from school-to-work transition surveys

In this paper, we investigate the factors that influence youth labour market expectations and outcomes. We also perform a job matching exercise to understand youth labour market dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results show that youth education is an influential factor of youth employment expectations and employment, ceteris paribus. Higher educational attainments have a great impact on expecting and securing better jobs, particularly in the technical and professional fields. Youth with low educational attainments, particularly primary education and lower, have a higher tendency to expect to be employed in occupations with low job complexity. Our results indicate a severe job-skill mismatch in all occupational categories, both before and after the youth’s transition into the labour market. Using education as the only selection criterion, we found that less than 10 per cent of employment expectations match with skills required while 55 per cent and 34 per cent are under or over-educated for the jobs expected, respectively. Over and under education is a notable feature in youth labour markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 47 per cent of employed youth in the sample are overqualified for their respective jobs while 28 per cent are under qualified.     

城镇标准地块定位技术探讨

根据重庆市建立标定地价体系的科学实践．提出城镇标准地块空间定位的技术途径为：从分析土地级别内各定级单元土地质量空间分布规律或房地产市场价格空间分布规律入手，采用定级单元总分平衡法和房地产市场价格平衡法确定标准单元，依据功能特征评价成果将标准地块定位。     

具有自动撮合与视频通信的高校就业网站设计

文章针对传统就业网站功能单一、服务起点低、没有充分发挥网络交互通信作用的弊端,提出了一个具有撮合算法和视频通信功能的新型招应聘网络平台的设计,文章介绍了系统的结构、基于模糊向量的撮合算法以及基于对等通信模型的视频功能实现,对同类研究和设计有一定参考作用。     

Three Corrected Score Tests for Generalized Linear Models with Dispersion Covariates

We develop three corrected score tests for generalized linear models with dispersion covariates, thus generalizing the results of Cordeiro , Ferrari and Paula (1993) and Cribari-Neto and Ferrari (1995) . We present, in matrix notation, general formulae for the coefficients which define the corrected statistics. The formulae only require simple operations on matrices and can be used to obtain analytically closed-form corrections for score test statistics in a variety of special generalized linear models with dispersion covariates. They also have advantages for numerical purposes since our formulae are readily computable using a language supporting numerical linear algebra. Two examples, namely, iid sampling without covariates on the mean or dispersion parameter oand one-way classification models, are given. We also present some simulations where the three corrected tests perform better than the usual score test, the likelihood ratio test and its Bartlett corrected version. Finally, we present a numerical example for a data set discussed by Simonoff and Tsai (1994) .     

Price discrimination and efficient matching

This paper considers the problem of a monopoly matchmaker that uses a schedule of entrance fees to sort different types of agents on the two sides of a matching market into exclusive meeting places, where agents randomly form pairwise matches. We make the standard assumption that the match value function exhibits complementarities, so that matching types at equal percentiles maximizes total match value and is efficient. We provide necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for the revenue-maximizing sorting to be efficient. These conditions require the match value function, modified to incorporate the incentive cost of eliciting private type information, to exhibit complementarities in types.JEL Clalssification Numbers C7, D4We thank Jonathan Levin, Tracy Lewis, and the seminar audience at University of California at Los Angeles, University of British Columbia, Duke University, and 2003 Econometric Society North American Summer Meeting for comments and suggestions. We are also grateful for helpful suggestions from the referees and the Editor     

金融租赁公司的利率风险及管理对策

金融租赁公司所面临的诸多利率风险中,成熟期错配风险是最为关键的,久期模型是其通用的衡量方法。金融租赁公司的久期缺口分析是利用久期管理利率风险的主要方法,但久期模型运用中也存在着诸如久期对称成本高、利率风险免疫动态性及凸性等问题。金融租赁公司面对利率上升的风险,应采取设立风险管理部门、做好基础资料积累与分析、加强利率走势预测及对金融衍生工具的研究等对策措施。