Restricted electricity use among poor urban households

For a variety of reasons, this article argues, electricity must be seen by policy‐makers in South Africa not as the sole provider of all future household energy needs, but rather as one component of an energy mix which includes such ‘transitional’ fuels as coal, gas and paraffin. The reasons for this are that electricity is expensive for poor households; it is subject to power failures and disconnections for non‐payment; the poor find it difficult to monitor and to control their consumption; appliances are expensive and several are required to make best use of electricity; people prefer other fuels because they are familiar and have strong personal and cultural associations, and because Eskom is not trusted owing to its past ties to illegitimate local authorities and misunderstanding of electricity and how its use is monitored and charged for. Further, it is mistaken to equate ‘development’ with total electrification: most developed countries have fuel mixes which include gas and coal, particularly for cooking and heating. Accepting an affordable fuel mix for the poor in particular would focus attention on the problems currently associated with paraffin, gas and coal, namely fires, poisoning and air pollution.     

快速响应对物流企业运作影响的思考

在经济全球化和信息技术革命的带动下，以网络、通讯、计算机等为载体的物流发展欣欣向荣。互联网发展到今天，已在相当程度上对经济起了催化剂的作用，速度和效率作为新经济最引以为豪的特点，其深层含义是使企业在经营结构上改变了过去的经营方式。并且造就了“垂直营销”，使产品和服务能够直接面对最终用户。     

Forecasting Emerging Market Exchange Rates from Foreign Equity Options

The use of derivatives to infer future exchange rates has long been a subject of interest in the international finance literature. With the recent currency crises in Mexico, Southeast Asia, and Brazil, work on exchange rate expectations in emerging markets is of particular interest. For some emerging markets, foreign equity options are the only liquid exchange‐traded derivatives with currency information embedded in their prices. Given that emerging markets sometimes undergo currency realignment with discrete jumps in their exchange rate, estimation of risk‐neutral probability density functions from foreign equity option data provides valuable evidence concerning market expectations. To illustrate the use of foreign equity options in estimating market beliefs, we consider Telmex options around the 1994 peso devaluation and find evidence that markets anticipated the change in the Mexican government's foreign exchange policy.     

Demarketing as a differentiation strategy

Demarketing discourages consumers from buying. This paper shows that demarketing can be a profitable alternative when differentiation through product improvements is not cost effective. The impact of differentiating demarketing on profit, market share, consumers, and total welfare is investigated.This research began while Hess was visiting MIT's Sloan School of Management and was finished while visiting University of Haifa; he thanks both for their support.     

Asymmetric Adjustment Costs, Asymmetric Pricing and Employment: Evidence from the UK

This paper uses an asymmetric multivariate model to investigate asymmetries in employment and pricing behaviour by firms. This generalises the approach of Granger and Lee (1989) and also exploits the cross equation restrictions on the equations for prices and employment implied by a restricted cost function—the dual to a Cobb‐Douglas production function. Our results suggest that both prices and employment respond asymmetrically to shocks to costs and demand.     

WTO对中国会计行业产生的影响及对策

中国加入WTO后，我国会计行业将面临许多新问题。从理论到实践，都需要进行调整改进，本主要讨论了WTO对会计环境、会计理论与实务的影响，并提出了相应的解决办法，如尽快统一我国会计规范体系、尽快建立起以会计管理为核心的会计模式、在会计业和内容上进行创新拓展，对一些会计核算方法进行变革。     

Spanish and American Business Professionals' Ethical Evaluations in Global Situations

More ethics research needs to explore the global differences in ethical evaluations. This study explored the relationships among nationality, teleological evaluations, ethical judgments, and ethical intentions using a sample of 222 American and Spanish business professionals. The path analysis indicated that teleological evaluations were related to ethical judgments and that both ethical judgments and teleological evaluations were related to ethical intentions. Executive nationality was related to teleological evaluations and ethical intentions with American individuals having higher teleological assessments and intentions to act ethically than the Spanish individuals. These findings have implications for global companies, which are presented along with the study's limitations and future research suggestions.     

货币政策传导机制效率的条件分析

货币政策的传导主要是通过微观主体的行为选择影响相关的经济变量来实现的.就我国货币政策的传导而言,不完善的金融市场、管制利率、包括居民和企业在内的市场主体的不成熟性等因素构成我国货币政策传导机制效率的制约.要提高货币政策效率,首先必须创造条件,疏导传导渠道.     

从中国—东盟自由贸易区进程看加快粤港澳更紧密经贸合作的紧迫性

粤港经济的优势互补,曾为大珠三角的经济腾飞作出了积极的贡献.在中国加入WTO以后,如何在WTO的框架内,促使粤港经济在更深更广的层次上合作就成了粤港经济发展的迫切需求.加入WTO后中国内地进一步提升对外开放水平,港澳对此更加关注提高与广东合作层次的问题.     

Towards collective business action and cross-sector collaboration in responsible competitiveness clusters in southern Africa

Responsible competitiveness clusters are cross-sector collaboration initiatives focused on identifying and acting upon synergies between sustainable development and economic competitiveness objectives. By means of three case studies in southern Africa this paper investigates the incentives, opportunities and challenges encountered in the emergence of such clusters. The first case study focuses on a regional response to the development challenges encountered in a South African mining area, the second describes efforts to make the Malawian agriculture sector more inclusive and competitive and the third discusses options for enhancing the competitiveness of the Lesotho textile sector. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of international trade networks, the institutional framework, public sector support and internal governance processes as key factors influencing the initial level of success of these initiatives.