Consumption and Portfolio Selection with Labor Income: A Continuous Time Approach

This paper studies the consumption and portfolio selection problem of an agent who is liquidity constrained and has uninsurable income risk. The paper investigates how the optimal consumption and asset allocation policies deviate from the case where the financial market is perfect, i.e., the case where there are no liquidity constraints and uninsurable income risk. In particular, the paper shows that, for a given level of financial wealth and labor income, optimal consumption is smaller and the optimal level of risk taking is lower in the case where the agent is liquidity constrained and has uninsurable income risk than in the case where the financial market is perfect. The paper also discusses how the agent assesses the value of lifetime labor income and relates this evaluation to optimal consumption and asset allocation policies.     

中国城市水业改革的战略方向

中国城市水业改革的实质是通过重新构建制度安排,强化水业服务供给链上各角色之间的责任关系,以获得整个行业上的治理创新。中国城市水业改革的战略方向应当是分开政府目前同时作为政策制定者、监管者和服务提供者的角色,增加服务受益者的声音,并增强四角色之间的责任关系。     

证监会法律地位的明确及监管职能优化

我国选择集中统一的证券监督管理模式有其历史的必然性与合理性。中国证监会法律地位不明确，因此可考虑将证监会改造为独立于国务院而对全国人大直接负责的准司法行政机关。另外，证监会肩负发展与执法双重职能存在内在冲突，应当将发展的职能逐渐让渡给市场；同时发挥市场自律组织的作用，以克服政府监管的先天不足。     

Internal Capital Markets, Bank Borrowing, and Financing Constraints: Evidence from Belgian Firms

In Belgium, financial and industrial groupings play a crucial role in the accumulation and allocation of capital in the economy. In this paper, it is hypothesized that Belgian firms for which investment is partly financed on an internal capital market, will not be subject to financing constraints to the same extent as firms which have to borrow from banks. Moreover, it is hypothesized that firms belonging to a group, transfer internal surpluses of funds to other group members by investing in financial assets. An empirical analysis confirms the first hypothesis, but rejects the second hypothesis.     

粮食安全、收入约束与生物燃料替代--基于跨国面板数据的实证研究

根据2000_2010年跨国面板数据,利用随机效应tobit模型研究粮食、环境和能源对全球生物燃料替代化石燃料使用的影响。研究发现：粮食安全程度高的国家生物燃料替代程度较高,而生物燃料的过度发展有可能导致“与粮争地”和国际粮食市场价格上涨,从而危及粮食安全;碳排放强度能促进生物燃料替代水平的提高,但前提是该国具有较高的国民收入水平;能源安全考虑仅仅在发达国家内能影响生物燃料替代。相关结论为各国制定适合本国粮食安全状况和经济发展水平的生物燃料替代目标提供参考依据。     

Failures to Deliver,Short Sale Constraints,and Stock Overvaluation

Studying a large sample of publicly available data on failures to deliver, we find that stocks reaching threshold levels of failures become significantly overvalued. Where short sale constraints are especially binding, we report extreme overpricing and subsequent reversals. These findings support the overvaluation hypothesis, although the mispricing is likely to be difficult to arbitrage because of extreme shorting costs. In addition, threshold stocks with low short interest become more overvalued than threshold stocks with high short interest. This suggests that the level of short interest reflects supply‐side effects when the examination conditions on the difficulty of borrowing shares.     

Negligence,capture, and dependence: safety regulation of the design of India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor

This article contributes a case study of regulation of the design of India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). This reactor is the first of its kind in India, and perceived by the nuclear establishment as critical to its future ambitions. Because fast breeder reactors can experience explosive accidents called core disruptive accidents whose maximum severity is difficult to contain, it is difficult to assure the safety of the reactor’s design. Despite the regulatory agency’s apparent misgivings about the adequacy of the PFBR’s design, it eventually came to approve construction of the reactor. We argue that the approval process should be considered a case of regulatory failure, and examine three potential factors that contributed to this failure: institutional negligence, regulatory capture, and dependence on developers and proponents for esoteric knowledge. This case holds lessons for nuclear safety regulation and more generally in situations where specialized, highly technical, knowledge essential for ensuring safety is narrowly held.     

Financing obstacles and growth: an analysis for euro area non-financial firms

This paper investigates the determinants of financing obstacles (FOs) and their impact on firm growth. For this purpose, we rely on both balance sheet data and survey data for a sample of non-financial firms in the euro area. The latter allows us to devise a direct measure of the firms’ probability of facing FOs. First, our results indicate that FOs are linked to characteristics such as the age of the firm, its size, its sales level or the sector in which it operates. Second, we find that, though based on few variables, our measure of FOs appears to be relevant in explaining firm growth in four out of the five countries considered; likewise, growth is found to be positively linked to cash flow.     

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT WITH CONSTRAINTS

The traditional portfolio selection problem concerns an agent whose objective is to maximize the expected utility of terminal wealth over some horizon. This basic problem can be modified by adding constraints. In this paper we investigate the portfolio selection problem for an investor who desires to outperform some benchmark index with a certain confidence level. The benchmark is chosen to reflect some particular investment objective and it can be either deterministic or stochastic. The optimal strategy for this class of problems can lead to nonconvex constraints raising issues of existence and uniqueness. We solve this optimal portfolio selection problem and investigate the procedure for both deterministic and stochastic benchmarks.     

煤矿安全规制的纵向和横向配置：国际比较与启示

中国煤矿安全事故频发,事故数量、死亡人数、百万吨死亡率远远高于其他国家,一个重要的原因在于中国煤矿安全规制体制存在一些弊端,规制权力配置失当.本文通过对美国、南非、印度煤矿安全规制体制的分析比较,试图寻求一条中国煤矿安全规制体制变革的理想道路.