The equity impacts of bus rapid transit: A review of the evidence and implications for sustainable transport

The paper offers an analysis of empirical evidence on the equity impacts of operational Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the Global South. The focus is on vertical equity, i.e. whether BRT systems achieve progressive benefits for poorer segments of the population. Findings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America all suggest that BRT does offer significant benefits to low-income groups, in terms of travel time and cost savings, access enhancement, and safety and health benefits. However benefits are often skewed toward medium-income users and thus less progressive than they might be. Two primary reasons for this are insufficient spatial coverage and inappropriate fare policies. While many features of BRT potentially allow it to deliver pro-poor outcomes, such outcomes only materialize if BRT implementers pay specific and sustained attention to equity. The paper identifies key issues that need to be addressed to steer BRT implementation toward more socially sustainable outcomes—including better integration with other transit, paratransit, and nonmotorized transport services, and with the housing sector.     

浅议“人才退出”机制

在经济全球化的今天,市场经济理念深入人心,人们逐渐接受了竞争意识、企业裁员已成为常有的事,但裁员的负面效应往往为人们所忽略,建立完善的人才退出机制任重而道远。     

有关台湾"大陆货品特殊防御机制"的法律思考

两岸入世后，台湾当局的大陆经贸政策与世界贸易组织的要求是有一定距离的，特别是台湾当局为大陆度身设置的“大陆货品特殊防御机制”，似乎是为了利用中国大陆在其《入世议定书》中对世贸组织成员的特别的承诺条款，但从法律角度而言，这是有违台湾在世贸组织《保障措施协议》项下的义务的，极易成为两岸之间有限的经贸互动中争端的导火绳。     

Effectiveness and Effects of China’s Capital Controls

I. IntroductionNations at every stage of development and in every region of the world are more closelylinked through trade in goods and services, through flows of funds and investments ineach others’ economies than ever before. But in sharp contrast to more and more nationsloosening restrictions on international trade, controls over capital flows are still substantialnearly everywhere except in the most developed economies. This is certainly the case inChina, where restrictions on movements …     

我国市场经济的历史起点与发展阶段的选择

国际上市场经济经历了萌芽阶段、初级阶段、发展阶段、发达阶段,各阶段的依据是不同生产力性质、不同生产关系形式以及商品生产和商品交换的不同水平.我国市场经济的历史起点应是三个:一是从计划经济开始向市场经济转化,二是从自然经济向商品经济转化,三是从小商品经济(或简单商品经济)向大商品经济或市场经济转化.我国市场经济发展阶段的战略选择,应该是分类定位和分类发展,采取多层次多样化的市场经济的发展阶段.     

Intertemporal substitution and the liquidity effect in a sticky price model

The liquidity effect, defined as a decrease in nominal interest rates in response to a monetary expansion, is a major stylized fact of the business cycle. This paper first confirms that, with separable preferences, a low degree of intertemporal substitution in consumption is a necessary condition for the existence of the liquidity effect. In contrast to this result, in a model with non-separable preferences and capital accumulation it takes an implausibly high elasticity of intertemporal substitution to produce a liquidity effect. The robustness of these results to alternative degrees of nominal rigidities, capital adjustment costs and stochastic monetary processes is also analysed. We conclude that price stickiness, by itself, does not guarantee the existence of a liquidity effect.     

Compensation Dispersion Between and Within Hierarchical Levels

This paper studies the dispersion around the expected compensation of workers before and after controlling for hierarchical positions in cross-section data samples. From data for Spanish managers, we find that this dispersion decreases with education and work experience before entering the current job and increases with job tenure. This finding contrasts with previous research that finds a positive association between compensation dispersion and education and work experience. We explain the new finding through a model of learning that separates compensation dispersion between jobs and within jobs (hierarchical positions). The model takes advantage of the information revealed when workers are promoted to their current hierarchical positions and allows for more robust tests of learning theories.