Mr. Market's Mind: Finance's Hard Problem

The market as a mind is the implicit premise in any discussion on whether the market is rational or not. Still, its implications, in terms of ontology and epistemology, are hardly understood. In particular, this paper defines the market's version of the mind-body problem and labels it as finance's “hard” problem. Its denial by modern finance causes this dominant paradigm to fail in dealing with reality in general and to produce incomplete investment knowledge in particular. Finally, as part of facing up to this problem, this paper offers a glimpse at a practical approach which may enrich investment research.     

陕西省南郑县户用沼气池经济效益分析

本文通过对陕西省南郑县产用沼气泡成本、收益和经济效益的分析评价，希冀以效益促进户用沼气池的推广。通过投入要土的企敏度分析，指出户用沼气池推广的关键因土，并提出对策性建议。     

Islamist terrorism and the status of women

We investigate the effect of Islamist terrorist activity on women's legal position in society, using data for 171 countries between 1970 and 2016. To identify causal effects, we exploit the prevalence of Islamist terrorism in neighboring countries as an exogenous source of variation, arguing that regional terrorism affects local terrorism through contagion effects. We show that increased activity by Islamist terrorist groups is linked to lower legal status of women. By contrast, we find that neither Islam per se nor other types of terrorism have comparable effects. This reinforces the notion that Islamist terrorism is singularly interested and effective in weakening women's rights. Our results are consistent with a rational-economic model of terrorism, where Islamist terrorists purposefully use violence to maximize political utility, while governments make concessions that constrain the role of women because the costs of compliance are lower than the harm from continued Islamist terrorism.     

预测与对策:未来中国房地产价格走势分析——以成都市为例

全球金融危机对中国房地产价格影响很大,通过对一系列影响因素的分析,发现这一时期人们的心理预期是所有影响因素中最为敏感的因素,能严重影响中国房地产价格。研究表明,四川省成都市的房地产价格走势与全国房地产价格走势接近,因而能够以该城市的房地产价格作为研究样本,在各种心理预期量化的基础上,预测出未来三年中国房地产价格并提出了相应的政策建议。     

Wealth effects and agency costs

We analyze how the agent's initial wealth affects the principal's expected profits in the standard principal–agent model with moral hazard.We show that if the principal prefers a poorer agent for all specifications of action sets, probability distributions, and disutility of effort, then the agent's utility of income must exhibit a coefficient of absolute prudence less than three times the coefficient of absolute risk aversion for all levels of income, thus strengthening the sufficiency result of Thiele and Wambach (1999). Also, we prove that there is no condition on the agent's utility of income alone that will make the principal prefer richer agents. Moreover, we show that, for an interesting class of problems, the principal prefers a relatively poorer agent if agent's wealth is sufficiently large. Finally, we discuss how alternative ways of modeling the agent's outside option affects the principal's preferences for agent's wealth.     

Evaluating drug cost per responder and number needed to treat associated with lixisenatide on top of glargine when compared to rapid-acting insulin intensification regimens on top of glargine,in patients with type 2 diabetes in the UK,Italy, and Spain

Objectives: This study investigated the cost per responder and number needed to treat (NNT) in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients for lixisenatide compared to insulin intensification regimens using composite endpoints in the UK, Italy, and Spain.

Methods: Efficacy and safety outcomes were obtained from GetGoal Duo-2, a 26-week phase 3 trial comparing lixisenatide vs insulin glulisine (IG) once daily (QD) and three times daily (TID). Response at week 26 was extrapolated to 52 weeks, assuming a maintained treatment effect, based on long-term evidence in other T2DM populations. Responders were defined using composite end-points, based on an HbA1c threshold and/or no weight gain and/or no hypoglycemia. The HbA1c threshold was varied in sensitivity analyses. Annual treatment costs were estimated in euros (1 GBP?=?1.26 EUR), including drug acquisition and resource use costs. Cost per responder was computed by dividing annual treatment costs per patient by the proportion of responders.

Results: Lixisenatide was associated with the lowest cost per responder for all composite end-points that included a weight-related component. For the main composite end-point of HbA1c ≤7.5% AND no weight gain AND no symptomatic hypoglycemia, cost per responder results were: UK: 6,867€, 8,746€, and 12,410€; Italy: 7,057€, 9,160€, and 12,844€; Spain: 8,370€, 11,365€, and 17,038€, for lixisenatide, IG QD, and TID, respectively. The NNT analysis showed that, for every 6.85 and 5.86 patients treated with lixisenatide, there was approximately one additional responder compared to IG QD and TID, respectively.

Limitations: A limitation of the clinical inputs is the lack of 52-week trial data from GetGoal Duo-2, which led to the assumption of a maintained treatment effect from week 26 to 52.

Conclusions: This analysis suggests lixisenatide is an efficient economic resource allocation in the UK, Italy, and Spain.     

税务管理现代化国际比较及对我国的启示

随着中国经济的快速增长,提高税务管理水平,实现税务管理现代化日益受到关注。本文分析了澳大利亚、美国和日本等先进国家的税务管理特点,论述了世界各个国家税务管理的改革趋势。在此基础上提出了我国税务管理存在的问题,分析国外税务管理给我国带来的启示及我国税务管理现代化的具体举措。     

民营经济发展中的深层阻滞因素辨析

民营经济的快速发展已经像其成为中国经济增长的重要引擎。但从运行层面看,民营经济仍然面对各种体制与非体制、人为和非人为的制约因素。目前民营企业普遍反映影响其可能持续发展的主要因素集中在政府政策、融资及资金、人才、创新与技术进步以及管理问题等方面。     

The Role of Water in Manufacturing

Water's role in manufacturing technologies has received limited attention. A KLEM model of the sector's technology is extended to include two facets of water use: intake and recirculation. Three annual cross-sectional surveys on plant-level water use are pooled and combined with census data to estimate this extended model for the Canadian manufacturing sector over the period 1981–1991. While Canada's water allocation regulations influence private water withdrawals, statistical tests support representing water intake as a variable input. Water intake is found to be a substitute for water recirculation, energy, labour and capital. The relationship between water intake and recirculation is stronger when water intake is process-related rather than related to cooling and steam production. Technological change has been biased in the direction of increased water intake and decreased water recirculation.     

Assessing market dominance

We propose a new measure to assess market dominance. Contrary to concentration measures such as the Herfindahl–Hirschman index that characterizes the concentration of an industry, our dominance measure suggests an approach that classifies when an individual firm has a dominant position. In our measure, the criterion for dominance is relaxed as the intensity of existing competition increases or as entry barriers are lowered. We apply the dominance measure to a number of well-known competition cases.