Social Security, Poverty and Economic Transition: An Analysis for Bulgaria 1992–96

The paper addresses the issues of poverty and social security in a transitional environment on the basis of recent economic developments in Bulgaria. Special emphasis is placed on the need for a new type of social safety net stemming from the radical changes in the political and economic system. The evolution of the social security system in Bulgaria during the transition is analysed focusing on such elements as the pension system, unemployment benefits, child allowances, etc. The empirical analysis is based on extensive use of data from the Bulgarian Household Budget Surveys during the period 1992–1996. Poverty in Bulgaria is measured using different poverty measurements and some quantitative results showing the changing dimensions of poverty in the transition period are presented and discussed in the paper.EES or e-mail at Corresponding author. E-mail:     

人民币走向自由兑换的时机选择

汇率制度的选择是一个动态的转换过程。我国目前采用的是钉住美元的汇率制度,这一汇率制度存在着明显弊端,已不适应我国市场经济发展的需要,我国经济的发展迫切需要人民币汇率由钉住汇率转向真正的管理浮动汇率。从现在起到未来的一两年内,是人民币走向浮动,实行人民币自由兑换的最佳时机。     

资本形成、工业化与经济增长:中国的转轨特征

把中国的经济转轨、增长与工业化联系起来是本文的一个尝试。作者认为 ,中国的经济增长在近年来越来越表现出静态的特征 ,至今尚不具备持续的动态改进的力量 ,而中国在 2 0世纪 80年代以后的转轨过程则又典型地表现为以新兴工业部门的进入和扩张为特征的持续的工业化过程。本文给出了一个帮助理解转轨后中国经济增长可持续性的概念框架和经验描述。在这个框架里 ,中国的经济增长在过去 1 0年来所表现出的下降趋势可以由过度的工业化进程来解释。     

转轨中国公共品导出机制中的政府行为分析

本文从政府角度出发,对公益品和私益品的特性进行了重新思考,从偏好、福利二分、绩效衡量难易、制度环境、意识形态等角度考察政府行为的独特性.并以我国体制转轨的特殊时期为背景,分析了不同于西方代议制的政体下,在公共品导出机制中政府行为的复杂性,指出了制度上的缺陷和由此导致的一系列现实问题.     

Contingencies influencing the management accounting practices of Estonian manufacturing companies

Having regained independence in 1991, Estonia has undergone fundamental political and structural changes over the last decade, which have also affected the operation of its companies. This paper examines the management accounting practices of Estonian manufacturing companies, exploring the main impacts on them within a contingency theory framework. The methodology comprises an analysis of 62 responses to a postal questionnaire survey carried out among the largest Estonian manufacturing companies. It is comparatively infrequently that Estonian manufacturing companies have made improvements in their cost accounting methods, although the majority of respondents appear to acknowledge the importance of these practices in finding and lowering real product costs and modernizing the cost accounting systems. The effectiveness of an accounting systems’ design depends on its ability to adapt to changes both in external circumstances and internal factors. We have found some evidence that changes in cost and management accounting practices are associated with shifts in the business and accounting environment as external contingencies, and with those in technology and organizational aspects as internal contingencies. This research aims on the one hand to confirm earlier findings related to the ‘contingent factors’ that influence management accounting and on the other, to identify possible new factors, such as, for example, the legal accounting environment and shortage of properly qualified accountants.     

Environment–strategy co‐evolution and co‐alignment: a staged model of Chinese SOEs under transition

Economic reform in China has attracted growing attention from around the world owing to its significance for theory and practice. What has been largely missing in the literature is the temporal dimension, i.e., the changes over time in key variables such as organizational environment, firm strategic adaptations, and the performance implications. In this study, we investigate environment and strategic adaptations 12 years after Tan and Litschert examined these issues in 1990. Following a staged model, the study found that (1) organizational environment and firm strategic adaptations have co‐evolved over time, (2) a new configuration has emerged and is related to improved performance, and (3) such a relationship is moderated by the stage during transition in which firms were founded. Specifically, firms founded since 1990 are more proactive and innovative than firms that had existed in the previous stage. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financial Stress Regimes and the Macroeconomy

Some financial stress events lead to macroeconomic downturns, while others appear to be isolated to financial markets. We identify financial stress regimes using a model that explicitly links financial variables to macro‐economic outcomes. The stress regimes are identified using an unbalanced panel of financial variables with an embedded method for variable selection. Our identified stress regimes are associated with corporate credit tightening and with NBER recessions. An exogenous deterioration in our financial conditions index has strong negative effects in economic activity, and negative amplification effects on inflation in the stress regime. These results are obtained with a novel factor‐augmented vector autoregressive model with smooth‐transition regimes (FASTVAR).     

Population,pensions, and endogenous economic growth

We study the effect of a declining labor force on the incentives to engage in labor-saving technical change and ask how this effect is influenced by institutional characteristics of the pension scheme. When labor is scarcer it becomes more expensive and innovation investments that increase labor productivity are more profitable. We incorporate this channel in a new dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous economic growth and heterogeneous overlapping generations. We calibrate the model for the US economy and obtain the following results. First, the effect of a decline in population growth on labor productivity growth is positive and quantitatively significant. In our benchmark, it is predicted to increase from an average annual growth rate of 1.74% over 1990–2000 to 2.41% in 2100. Second, institutional characteristics of the pension system matter both for the growth performance and for individual welfare. Third, the assessment of pension reform proposals may depend on whether economic growth is endogenous or exogenous.     

Electricity supply preferences in Europe: Evidence from subjective well-being data

We use survey data for 139,517 individuals in 25 European countries, 2002–2011, to estimate the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and production shares of various electricity generation technologies. The estimated relationships are taken to represent preference relationships over attributes of electricity supply systems (costs, safety, environmental friendliness, etc.). Controlling for a variety of individual and macro-level factors, we find that individuals’ SWB varies systematically and significantly with differences in the electricity mix across countries and across time. Among other results, we find that a greater share of solar & wind power relative to nuclear power and electricity from coal and oil is associated with greater SWB at all levels of income and that the implied preference for solar & wind power over nuclear power has risen drastically after the Fukushima nuclear accident.