金沙江中游水电站工程水土保持中存在的问题及对策

本文阐述了金沙江中游水电站建设中水土保持工作的重要性,分析了该区域电站水土保持工作中存在的问题,提出了解决问题的对策措施。     

浅析西安地铁项目工程变更管理

地铁项目工程在施工过程易受地形地貌以及水文等自然条件的制约,因此会经常出现工程变更的情况,会直接影响工程造价的变迁。基于这种情况,结合地铁三号线的相关做法和经验,分析地铁项目工程变更管理中存在的问题与相应的完善措施。希望对地铁项目工程的变更管理起到一些借鉴。     

Drivers of adoption of agroecological practices for winegrowers and influence from policies in the province of Trento,Italy

Many agricultural practices are negatively impacting the environment and threatening the ecological foundations of the global food system. Therefore, agroecological practices are being proposed as viable and desirable alternatives. Biophysical, economic, social, and political factors, matched with farmers’ psychological attributes, may all be governing the choice of agricultural practices. Public policies can play a significant role as they can stimulate the adoption of innovative farming practices. The main objective of this research was the evaluation of farmers’ motivations for the adoption of agroecological practices in the viticulture sector in the province of Trento, Italy. A specific focus was laid on the influences from the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) measures. For the evaluation of farmers’ perceptions of their systems of practices, the Cognitive Mapping Approach for Analysing Actors’ Systems Of Practices (CMASOP) was applied. Based on information collected during in-depth interviews, Individual and Social Cognitive Maps were generated, representing the most frequently adopted agroecological practices and the major drivers of adoption of such practices, as mentioned by farmers. Drivers of adoption were categorized according to the self-determination theory of human motivations. Farmers reported that adoption of agroecological practices was mainly driven by existence of site-specific pedoclimatic conditions, followed with decreasing importance by requirements from wineries, availability of material, appreciation for aesthetics, health concerns, influence from irrigation consortia, and legal requirements, among which a local legislation for integrated pest management based on a CAP measure. Overall, results show that farmers reported to adopt agroecological practices mainly because of autonomous choices rather than coercion. Therefore, wineries and local policy-makers might incentivize the adoption of agroecological practices by promoting autonomy-supportive policies that foster farmers’ identified and intrinsic motivations.     

浅谈如何做好事业单位岗位设置管理工作

事业单位实施岗位设置管理工作,是事业单位人事制度改革的重大创新,涉及到单位职工的切身利益,对单位发展起到至关重要的作用。通过组织实施岗位设置管理工作的实践活动,从岗位设置管理的三个主要环节入手,对事业单位岗位设置管理工作中主要做法和需要注意的问题进行了概述,为其他事业单位的岗位设置管理工作提供借鉴。     

Using common features to understand the behavior of metal-commodity prices and forecast them at different horizons

The objective of this article is to study (understand and forecast) spot metal price levels and changes at monthly, quarterly, and annual frequencies. Data consists of metal-commodity prices at a monthly and quarterly frequencies from 1957 to 2012, extracted from the IFS, and annual data, provided from 1900 to 2010 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). We also employ the (relatively large) list of co-variates used in Welch and Goyal (2008) and in Hong and Yogo (2009).We investigate short- and long-run comovement by applying the techniques and the tests proposed in the common-feature literature. One of the main contributions of this paper is to understand the short-run dynamics of metal prices. We show theoretically that there must be a positive correlation between metal-price variation and industrial-production variation if metal supply is held fixed in the short run when demand is optimally chosen taking into account optimal production for the industrial sector. This is simply a consequence of the derived-demand model for cost-minimizing firms. Our empirical evidence fully supports this theoretical result, with overwhelming evidence that cycles in metal prices are synchronized with those in industrial production. This evidence is stronger regarding the global economy but holds as well for the U.S. economy to a lesser degree.Regarding out-of-sample forecasts, our main contribution is to show the benefits of forecast-combination techniques, which outperform individual-model forecasts – including the random-walk model. We use a variety of models (linear and non-linear, single equation and multivariate) and a variety of co-variates and functional forms to forecast the returns and prices of metal commodities. Using a large number of models (N large) and a large number of time periods (T large), we apply the techniques put forth by the common-feature literature on forecast combinations. Empirically, we show that models incorporating (short-run) common-cycle restrictions perform better than unrestricted models, with an important role for industrial production as a predictor for metal-price variation.     

宁波人口老龄化问题及其对策分析

本文以东部宁波地区的人口老龄化情况为例进行了调查,同时对调查数据进行了一定的分析,并提出了合理化建议。     

Coordination,timing and common knowledge

There is tight link between coordination and common knowledge. The role of higher order beliefs in static incomplete information games has been widely studied. In particular, information frictions break down common knowledge. A large body of literature in economics examine dynamic coordination problems when there are timing frictions, in the sense that players do not all move at once. Timing frictions in dynamic coordination games play a role that is closely analogous to information frictions in static coordination games.This paper makes explicit the role of higher order beliefs about timing in dynamic coordination games with timing frictions. An event is said to be effectively known if a player knew the event when he last had an option to change his behavior. The lack of effective common knowledge of the time drives results of dynamic coordination games.     

我国新型农村金融机构存在的问题及对策分析

我国的新型农村金融机构自成立和运行以来,取得了一定的成绩,但也存在着若干问题亟待解决。本文分析了新型农村金融机构运行中存在的问题,并提出改进现状的相关建议,以更好地发挥新型农村金融机构在新农村建设中的作用。     

浅谈小组合作学习在《科学思维训练》课程的运用

本文在结合《科学思维训练》课程中运用小组合作学习教学法的实际,阐述了小组合作学习教学法的内涵和模式,以及应用小组合作学习教学法应注意的问题。     

Raising the bar (4)

This editorial summarizes and comments on the papers published in issue 11(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper deals with common factors and spatial dependence in the error term specification of a production function model. The second paper sets forth a New Economic Geography (NEG) model with production activities that vary in their complexity, so as to analyse the impact on specialization patterns across different regions. The third paper measures the efficiency of local public investments using a relatively unknown econometric technique in which the time span over which the variables in the regression equation are measured is increased by one time period every run. The fourth paper adopts a conditional quantile regression approach to determine the impact of people employed in informal jobs on the wage distribution in Colombia and five of its regions. Finally, the last paper proposes and tests two new Bayesian variable selection approaches for spatial econometric models.