中部崛起与西部开发的财政收支分析

本文研究表明，在西部开发进程中，国债投资占有较大比重，中部崛起需要充分调动地区的积极性；中部、西部与东部相比，地方企业上缴税收的能力相对不足；中部、西部对于行政收费和农业税收依赖较重，取消农业税后需要开辟新的财政收入渠道；优化中部、西部地区的财政收支状况，关键在于调整地方财政的收支结构。     

有关国家不发达地区开发的财政制度安排与借鉴

本选择美国、印度尼西亚等典型国家，就其不发达地区开发的财政制度安排问题，进行比较与分析，概括其异同，总结规律，为我国西部大开发提供借鉴。     

Managing and financing metropolitan public services in China: experience of the Pearl River Delta region

Under China’s current fiscal policies and inter-governmental relations, it is a significant challenge to finance and deliver public services across jurisdictions. This challenge was met in the Pearl River Delta region in southern China with a collaborative governance approach. Directives from higher-level governments and horizontal inter-city fiscal arrangements were successfully combined to deliver public services. Effective networks should be developed to improve co-ordination and collaboration in delivering cross-jurisdictional public services.     

Personalized multi-period tour recommendations

During a trip planning, tourists gather information from different sources, select and rank the places to visit according to their personal interests, and try to devise daily tours among them. This paper addresses the complex selection and touring problem and proposes a “filter-first, tour-second” framework for generating personalized tour recommendations for tourists based on information from social media and other online data sources. Collaborative filtering is applied to identify a subset of optional points of interest that maximize the potential satisfaction, while there are some preselected mandatory points that the tourists must visit. Next, the underlying orienteering problem is solved via an Iterated Tabu Search algorithm. The goal is to generate tours that contain all mandatory points and maximize the total score collected from the optional points visited daily, taking into account different day availabilities and opening hours, limitations on the tour lengths, budgets and other restrictions. Computational experiments on benchmark datasets indicate that the proposed touring algorithm is very competitive. Furthermore, the proposed framework has been evaluated on data collected from Foursquare. The results show the practical utility and the temporal efficacy of the recommended tours.     

Searching for empirical linkages between demographic structure and economic growth

Demographic structure could affect economic growth through many channels. However, little is known about how demographic structure affects economic growth since no study has examined an extensive collection of channels through which demographic structure could affect economic growth in a single context. This paper overcomes this limitation by examining 45 potential mediating variables between demographic structure and economic growth. A causal search algorithm is used to identify channels through which demographic structure affects economic growth. Our results suggest that demographic structure affects economic growth differently between developed and developing countries. For developed countries, we find that an increase in the share of middle-aged workers has a positive effect on economic growth through institutions, investment and education channels. On the other hand, an increase in the share of the senior population has a negative effect on economic growth through institutions and investment channels. For developing countries, we find (but with weak evidence) that an increase in the share of young workers has a negative effect on economic growth through investment, financial market development and trade channels.     

Neighborhood quality and labor market outcomes: Evidence from quasi-random neighborhood assignment of immigrants

Settlement in a socially deprived neighborhood may hamper individual labor market outcomes because of lack of employed or highly skilled contacts. I investigate this hypothesis by exploiting a unique natural experiment that occurred between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to municipalities quasi-randomly, which successfully addresses the methodological problem of endogenous neighborhood selection. I show that individuals sort into neighborhoods. Taking account of location sorting, living in a socially deprived neighborhood does not affect labor market outcomes of refugee men. Their labor market outcomes are also not affected by the overall employment rate and the overall average skill level in the neighborhood. However, an increase in the average skill level of non-Western immigrant men living in the neighborhood raises their employment probability, while an increase in the employment rate of co-national men living in the neighborhood raises their real annual earnings. This provides quasi-experimental evidence that residence-based job information networks are ethnically stratified.     

A decision method for supplier selection in multi-service outsourcing

Although supplier selection in multi-service outsourcing is a very important decision problem, research concerning this issue is still relatively scarce. This paper proposes a decision method for selecting a pool of suppliers for the provision of different service process/product elements. It pioneers the use of collaborative utility between partner firms for supplier selection. A multi-objective model is built to select desired suppliers. This model is proved to be NP-hard, so we develop a multi-objective algorithm based on Tabu search for solving it. We then use an example to show the applicability of the proposed model and algorithm. Extensive computational experiments are also conducted to further test the performance of the proposed algorithm.     

Online search – Online purchase in franchising: An empirical analysis of franchisor website functionality

The aim of this paper is to characterize franchisors’ e-commerce strategies by studying their website functionality. Franchisors can use their website to facilitate consumer search. They can also provide content and tools to promote online purchasing (e.g., promotion codes, online payment, delivery options). Why are some franchisor websites more “search oriented”? What are the factors that influence the provision of informational tools and/or transactional tools? This empirical study is based on a detailed observation of 130 e-commerce websites of franchisors operating their chains in the French market.     

鲁奎山铁矿成因探讨

鲁奎山铁矿为分布于滇中地区中元古代早期昆阳裂谷中,位于康滇地轴南段,赋存于昆阳群大龙组的菱铁矿床。铁矿产于大龙口组底部条带状灰岩中,呈似层状分布,层控明显。该类型铁矿为目前已探明的昆阳群中最大的铁矿,占云南省内已探明铁矿的20%以上。本文通过对鲁奎山铁矿的区域构造、矿床地质、控矿因素的分析,确定矿床成因,为更好的开发利用此类铁矿提供基础。