R&D,trade in intermediate inputs,and the comparative advantage of advanced countries

This paper examines the accumulation of physical capital versus knowledge (R&D) capital as a determinant of advanced countries’ comparative advantage. I show that advanced countries are abundant in R&D resources, specialize in knowledge-intensive stages of high-technology industries, and outsource labor-intensive stages of the industries to labor-abundant countries. In contrast, global data on production and trade cannot support the conventional view that advanced countries specialize in and export capital-intensive goods. My results indicate that the accumulation of knowledge capital plays a vital role in explaining advanced countries’ comparative advantage.     

Investigation of the “China effect” on crowding out of Japanese FDI: An industry-level analysis (1990–2004)

This paper applies a dynamic panel model to investigate whether China is crowding out Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) from other economies of Asia. We examined this with industry-level data on Japanese FDI flows into Asian economies. In order to deal with possible problems of serial correlation and endogeneity, we estimated coefficients using a difference and system generalized method of moments to examine the “China effect” on industries. We found a significantly high degree of crowding out effect by China on its Asian counterparts. Among twelve industries, a crowding out effect was found in nine industries, including electrical &; electronics—the biggest industry for Japanese FDI. However, a complementary effect was found in two industries, one of them being transport, which is the second biggest industry for Japanese FDI. We conclude that while China's rise is a prominent threat for the region, it could be transformed into an opportunity in vertically fragmented industries.     

德国煤矿安全生产管理的经验及启示

近年来，虽然我国煤矿安全生产在稳步好转，但是，仍然面临严峻的形势，重特大事故仍时有发生。尤其是与发达国家德国相比，我国的煤矿安全生产管理还有待加强与改善。所以，本文试图提出合理地借鉴德国的煤矿安全生产管理经验，以推进和完善我国的煤矿安全生产。     

On the emergence of scale-free production networks

We propose a simple dynamical model for the formation of production networks among monopolistically competitive firms. The model subsumes the standard general equilibrium approach à la Arrow–Debreu but displays a wide set of potential dynamic behaviors. It robustly reproduces key stylized facts of firms׳ demographics. Our main result is that competition between intermediate good producers generically leads to the emergence of scale-free production networks.     

Export-promoting production subsidies and the dynamic gains from experience

This paper examines export-promoting production subsidies in a dynamic product-cycle model with learning by doing and spillovers from experience. History dictates that the South is less experienced than the North and, thus, produces less advanced goods. Non-uniform Southern export promoting production subsidies applied to a small set of marginal industries that are on the verge of being internationally competitive, generate conventional static benefits for the South and costs for the North. Since such an industrial policy expands the South's range of production, it ultimately enhances Southern learning. The South's rate of production and technology transfer and the North's rate of innovation both increase, creating dynamic benefits for each country. While the South must gain overall, the North will also gain if the dynamic benefits outweigh the static costs.     

A round trip on decentralization in the tourism sector

Although the performance of the tourism sector has been investigated extensively, the effects of institutional governance have largely been unexplored. This study uses a quasi-natural experiment setting owing to differences in tourism policy devolution between special and ordinary statute Italian regions. Using panel data for the period 1995–2010, we first assess the efficiency of each region by a smoothed bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and an order-m frontier estimator. Next, we adopt a difference-in-difference strategy and a fully non-parametric approach to assess whether decentralization affects the performance of regions as tourism destinations. We find that regions affected by decentralization worsened their performance, compared to unaffected regions. The results are robust to different estimators and empirical specifications.     

新疆生产建设兵团养老保险运行机制分析

新疆建设兵团在20世纪50-60年代建立了养老保险制度。兵团的养老保险制度在维护团场职工权益、维持兵团稳定和发展等方面发挥了难以替代的作用。随着市场经济的深入发展,兵团养老保险受到一系列因素的制约,难以良性运行。文章全面描述了新疆生产建设兵团养老保险的制度构架和运行状况,尤其分析了老龄化和养老金支付能力弱等问题给兵团养老保险健康发展带来的不利影响。文章在此基础上提出促进兵团养老保险制度平稳运行的意见和建议。     

Spam mails impede economic growth

We estimate labor losses caused by spam mails and input these estimated values into a production function, while also estimating damage to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Japan. As a result, we have found that spam mails decreased the Japanese GDP by about 500 billion yen in 2004. This marginal negative effect of spam mail to the GDP increased with the progress of broadband in 2000. Moreover, from the result of a social simulation conducted by the authors, the amount of damage is projected to reach 1% of the Japanese GDP by 2010, unless adequate countermeasures are taken against spam mails. This projection provides a statistical fundamental to several theoretical analyses of spam mails.     

A multi-echelon supply chain model for reworkable items in multiple-markets with supply disruption

The objective of this paper is to develop a multi-echelon supply chain model for multiple-markets with different selling seasons. Here, two suppliers are involved to supply the raw materials to the manufacturer where the main supplier may face supply disruption after a random time and the secondary supplier is perfectly reliable but more expensive than the main supplier. In this article, the manufacturer produces a random proportion of defective items which are reworked after regular production and are sold in a lot to another market just after completion of rework. The retailer sells the finished products in different markets according to seasons. Finally, an integrated expected cost per unit product of the chain is minimized analytically by considering the lot-size ordered as a decision variable. An appropriate numerical example is also provided to justify the proposed model.     

金融业技术效率的参数法估计

本文基于1995～2010年金融业投入和产出的数据,利用参数法中的随机前沿方法,估计金融业的技术效率变化情况。这些官方发布的数据要比在假设下估计的数据更加有说服力,估计结果更加可信。研究发现我国金融业的平均效率很高,约为0.95,在2003年和2008年两年有两个下降的过程。研究还发现,市场化程度与财政支出对金融业的效率有促进作用。