Socio-demographics,political attitudes and informal sector employment: A cross-country analysis

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between informal sector employment and micro-level socio-demographic characteristics, political acts and attitudes, and individual norms. Using self-reported individual micro-level data from the World Values Survey for seven developing countries (China, Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Yemen), our cross-country regressions and principal component analysis reveal that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals are strong predictors of their informal sector employment. Our estimations further document that individual preferences for an economically strong, interventionist and egalitarian state and confidence in state and political institutions are positively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment, whereas variables associated with confidence in free market institutions and support for competition are negatively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment. We also show that individuals who participate either actively or inactively in peaceful and lawful political processes are significantly less likely to work in the informal sector. Finally, we document that individual norms, such as religiosity and tax morale, are negatively correlated with informal sector employment. Throughout our analysis, instead of having to rely on ad-hoc informality categorizations of third parties, we base our measurement of informal sector employment directly on the self-evaluation of individuals, who have the best information on the degree of their informality.     

“问题富豪”如何凸现中国银行业信贷管理缺陷？

福布斯在中国内地的出名，更多是因其著名的“富豪榜”，但最近的内地富豪中有几位却遇到了不小的“麻烦”。今年在上海举办的《福布斯》论坛中诸多议题之一的中国银行业也备受关注，而这几位遇到不小“麻烦”的富豪给中国的银行业起到了什么警惕作用呢？“问题富豪”反映出中国银行业信贷管理缺陷有哪些？就此，国务院发展研究中心经济研究副所长巴曙松博士特撰此稿。     

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.     

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.     

Looking for contagion in currency futures markets

This article tests whether there are pure contagion effects in both conditional means and volatilities among British pound, Canadian dollar, Deutsche mark, and Swiss franc futures markets during the 1992 ERM crisis. A conditional version of international capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) in the absence of purchasing power parity (PPP) is used to control for economic fundamentals. The empirical results indicate that overall there are no mean spillovers among those futures markets, but they are detected during the crisis period. That is, past return shocks originating in any one of the four markets have no impact on the other three markets during the entire sample period, suggesting that these markets are weak‐form efficient. However, this weak‐form market efficiency fails to hold during the market turmoil, especially for British pound and Swiss franc, and the sources of contagion‐in‐mean effects are mainly due to the return shocks originating in three European currency futures markets. As for the contagion‐in‐volatility, it is detected for British pound only because its conditional volatility is influenced by the negative volatility shocks from Canadian dollar, Deutsche mark, and Swiss franc, with Deutsche mark playing the dominant role in generating these shocks. JEL Classifications: C32; F31; G12. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:957–988, 2003     

北京市基本养老保险基金现状与对策研究

基本养老保险基金是国家为保障法定范围内的退休人员的基本生活所筹集的资金，充足的基本养老保险基金是确保基本养老保险制度顺利运行的物质基础，加强基本养老保险基金在征缴、营运和给付方面的管理具有重要意义。由于北京市基本养老基金不够充足，使基本养老保险制度存在一定风险，亟待采取措施加以解决。     

DETERMINANTS OF A FIRM'S ISO 14001 CERTIFICATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF TAIWAN

Abstract.   Only rarely have empirical studies analysed the responses of Taiwanese manufacturing firms to ISO 14001, despite firm responses to environmental issues being an important aspect of environmental management. This study empirically examines the determinants of firms' environmental self-governance. Export oriented Taiwanese firms, which face environmental concerns from foreign consumers, are found to be more likely than domestic focused firms to adopt ISO 14001. This study also finds that several firm attributes are decisive for firm adoption of ISO 14001. However, this study does not find any significant impact of local governors' political party affiliation on firms' ISO 14001 certifications.