The impact of Nepal's earthquake on the health status of rural children

We study the impact of Nepal's 2015 earthquake on the health status of children aged 0–5 years. Using a difference-in-differences approach we find that the earthquake decreased height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) and that this effect is largely driven by females, who experienced an average decline of −0.763 standard deviations in their HAZ. Further, we find that females in the 0–3 years age group and in the least wealthy households are the most vulnerable. This is particularly unfortunate, as the first 3 years of life can impact long-term health and well-being, and female undernutrition contributes to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and ill health.     

Robust state-dependent mean–variance portfolio selection: a closed-loop approach

Finance and Stochastics - This paper studies a class of robust mean–variance portfolio selection problems with state-dependent risk aversion. Model uncertainty, in the sense of considering...     

中国非正规经济(上)

第八届开放时代论坛于2010年10月16日至17日在北京大学召开。本届论坛由北京大学中国社会与发展研究中心、开放时代杂志社和北京大学社会学系联合举办,主题为"中国非正规经济"。规模庞大的"非正规经济"本为发展中国家的普遍现象,然而在中国这一作为世界上最大的发展中国家的发展经验广为世人瞩目之际,中国的"非正规经济"却并未得到相应的重视与研究。摆脱主流经济理论和"现代化"模式的误导,摒弃意识形态的争执,正视中国非正规经济的现实,从"社会保护"和"人本发展"的角度,探讨人道、经济、可持续的中国发展之路,乃为本届论坛主题设立的缘起与主旨。本届论坛涉及的议题包括:中国发展与非正规经济实践、非正规经济与非正规就业、非正规经济与社会流动、非正规经济与社会发展等。以下专题根据现场录音整理,并经发言者阅校和编辑删节,小标题为编者所拟。由于篇幅所限,本刊将分两期发表本届论坛的研讨内容。     

The Kornai Effect and Soft Budget Constraints

The Kornai effect refers to situations where soft budget constraints lead to higher input demands. This paper studies the Kornai effect under different scenarios: nonrandom subsidy rate, random subsidy rate, and random and endogenous subsidy rate; and gives sufficient, sometimes necessary and sufficient, conditions for the Kornai effect to exist.     

Organizational Learning and New Product Introductions

Organizational learning widely is believed to be important to competitive performance of companies. The purpose of this article is to examine how organizations learn from their experiences in new product introductions. Theory suggests that organizations will display a “competency trap” that reduces their ability to learn from organizational experience. Often initial success can cause a firm to rely on a single or a few experiences to develop routines, discounting later experiences. Therefore it is expected that organizations will have trouble learning from experience. The theory was tested by examining all new product introductions in the U.S. shampoo industry from 1974–1987. The dynamic nature of the business—the average brand survives about two years—made this an attractive research venue. Using the econometric technique of survival time modeling, a model was fitted of survival of brands as a function of organizational experience and organizational experience squared. The model also included controls for financial resources available to the firm and the level of first year's advertising. The model confirmed the general hypothesis that firms' brands are less successful the more experience they have. This study interprets this as evidence of a competency trap in new product introductions. The results broadly are supportive of the hypothesis that organizations find it harder to learn from experience as experience grows. Untangling the source of this problem is a goal of further research. For practice, the article suggests caution to brand managers in experienced companies. There is no guarantee that firms grow in their ability to build brands; results here suggest the opposite. Formal reviews of the new product, its process, and its performance by senior managers for lessons learned is desirable. Management of individuals and organizations may facilitate learning from experience. For managing individuals, often product success brings about a reassignment of successful personnel; care should be taken to insure that individuals' learning is captured by the new product organization before reassignment. On the organizational level, formal brand management may be a highly effective method for managing an ongoing stable of long‐lived brands but may be a poor choice in a dynamic market like shampoo. Companies may explore new organizational structures and departments to conceive and to develop new products since the skills required for managing ongoing brands may be different from creating new ones.     

农民工：未完成的无产阶级化

农民工是改革的产物,也是改革的创造者。30年改革尘埃未定,中国俨然已经成为“世界工厂”,农民工是这一历史过程的新兴主体,它承栽了中国走向全球化伴生的所有矛盾与苦难,也必然承担着书写中国社会转型历史的伟大使命。中国未来与这一多达两亿的打工阶级息息相关,农村问题、城市发展、城乡关系、改革走向,几乎一切有关中国现状和未来的重要探讨都离不开对这一新兴阶级的认识。在改革开放30年之际,为更全面、更深刻地思考农民工以及农民工所承载的历史,2009年1月11日至18日,中山大学华南农村研究中心与香港理工大学—北京大学中国社会工作研究中心联合主办了第一期“中国城乡协调发展研究高级讲习班”,此次主题为“农民工与农民工社区”。来自中山大学、香港理工大学、香港科技大学、香港中文大学、香港大学、北京大学、中国社会科学院、北京师范大学、云南大学、上海大学、西南大学、西北工业大学、中国青年政治学院、南京师范大学、江汉大学、汕头大学、澳大利亚国立大学、广东工业大学、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学洛杉矾分校、香港“女工关怀”志愿者组织、云南连心社区照顾服务中心等单位的师生逾60人在中山大学华南农村研究中心就此主题展开热烈讨论。本刊作为此次讲习班的协办单位,将分两期刊发部分发言者的发言内容。以下文字根据录音整理,部分标题为编者另拟。     

A pricing‐error rule on share distribution in equity joint ventures: The Bayesian approach

Equity joint ventures (EJVs) are a popular governance mode of inter‐firm cooperation that has attracted substantial research attention. The literature, however, still lacks a precise rule for the parents to follow in splitting the equity shares of an EJV, although share distribution is critical to almost all aspects of the co‐ownership relationship. In this study, we fill this literature gap by taking the Bayesian approach to draw a pricing‐error rule on share distribution in EJVs. More specifically, we contend that equity participation by two firms in an EJV allows profit sharing to correct for the errors that they might commit in pricing their inputs to the EJV. For profit sharing to fully nullify such pricing errors, the shares of an EJV must be split between the parent firms in a percentage combination that matches the relative sizes of their pricing errors. Because pricing errors are observable only afterward, share distribution in EJVs resembles a Bayesian process, in which the partners keep updating their estimates on pricing errors to adjust share distribution to a percentage combination that could best nullify their pricing errors. Thus, the eventual outcome of share adjustment is EJV buyout, in that the partner whose pricing errors remain substantial buys out the shares of the other whose pricing errors have become tolerable.     

The politics of global production: Apple,Foxconn and China's new working class

Apple's commercial triumph rests in part on the outsourcing of its consumer electronics production to Asia. Drawing on extensive fieldwork at China's leading exporter—the Taiwanese‐owned Foxconn—the power dynamics of the buyer‐driven supply chain are analysed in the context of the national terrains that mediate or even accentuate global pressures. Power asymmetries assure the dominance of Apple in price setting and the timing of product delivery, resulting in intense pressures and illegal overtime for workers. Responding to the high‐pressure production regime, the young generation of Chinese rural migrant workers engages in a crescendo of individual and collective struggles to define their rights and defend their dignity in the face of combined corporate and state power.     

中国海外研究（下）

首先，谈谈“海外民族志”的概念与话题。我想说，在国际社会，中国的社会科学和知识生产方式一直是对文字感兴趣，即使学者人在国外了，也只是在国外收集现成的文字，不会自己去做实地调查。这是一种很“中国特色”的国际现象。这是我们知识生产的大问题之所在，尤其是在人类学这个框架里面。