Thomas Hodgskin,Rational Optimist

Long considered a ‘Ricardian socialist’, Thomas Hodgskin is rarely read as the perceptive observer of the Industrial Revolution that he was. His most famous pamphlet, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital, has been interpreted as anticipating some central tenets of Marxism. If we abandon this well‐established interpretation, however, we can better appreciate Hodgskin's acute reading of the process of industrialisation unfolding before his eyes. Unlike most socialists, Hodgskin had no sympathy for machine breakers and actually understood the importance of the entrepreneurial function. Moreover, he thought mechanisation and improvement in the tools available for workers would not dispossess them but, on the contrary, would raise their living standards. Hodgskin's ‘optimism’ shows that in the 1820s someone who was deeply concerned with the future of the working classes could nonetheless develop a reasoned sympathy for industrialisation — rather than merely oppose technological innovation and long for a mythical past.     

Financial development and economic growth: long‐run equilibrium and transitional dynamics

We analyze the impact of financial development on economic growth. Differently from previous studies that focus mainly on balanced growth path outcomes, we also analyze the transitional dynamics of our model economy by using a finance‐extended Uzawa–Lucas framework where financial intermediation affects both human and physical capital accumulation. We show that, under certain rather general conditions, economic growth may turn out to be non‐monotonically related to financial development (as suggested by the most recent empirical evidence) and that too much finance may be detrimental to growth. We also show that the degree of financial development may affect the speed of convergence, which suggests that finance may play a crucial role in determining the length of the recovery process associated with exogenous shocks. Moreover, in a special case of the model, we observe that, under a realistic set of parameters, social welfare decreases with financial development, meaning that even when finance positively affects economic growth the short‐term costs associated with financial activities more than compensate their long‐run benefits.     

Hispanic Ethnicity,English‐Skill Investments,and Earnings

Analyzing synthetic cohorts in the 1980 and 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples, we find that Mexican‐Americans and other Hispanics acquired English fluency at a faster pace than Puerto Ricans and Cuban‐Americans during the 1980s. Additional results indicate that English‐skill investments differently influenced the earnings distributions of these ethnic groups.     

Output-inflation tradeoffs in 34 countries

This article examines the responsiveness of real output to the variability of inflation and aggregate demand. In the manner of Lucas (1973), estimates of the output-inflation tradeoff are computed for a large sample of countries. This measure is then correlated with the variances of the inflation rate and the growth rate in nominal income. Because differences in inflation variance (and hence the tradeoff) are viewed as the outcomes of differences in demand variance, correlations between these two variables are also reported. Cross-time and cross-country results provide a good measure of support for Lucas and the notion that attempts to exploit the tradeoff weaken it.     

江泽民对邓小平科技思想的继承与发展

以江泽民为核心的第三代中央领导集体在坚持和继承邓小平科学技术是第一生产力的思想的基础上,与建设有中国特色社会主义的伟大实践相结合,积极探索,勇于创新,极大丰富和发展了邓小平的科学思想.     

WebGIS技术在物流配送系统中的应用

万维网地理信息系统（WebGIS)是Internet技术和地理信息系统技术相结合的产物。在分析WebGIS实现技术的基础上，探讨了基于WebGIS的物流配送系统设计，提出了一个以SuperMap IS平台为基础，基于组件和Java Applet技术，利用ASP来实现界面的显示和交互，体现Brower/Serser三层体系结构的系统解决方案。     

The Effects of Participation and Job-Relevant Information on the Relationship Between Evaluative Style and Job Satisfaction

This study investigates the intervening effects of budgetary participation and job-relevant information on the relationship between budget emphasis and job satisfaction. It proposes that budgetary participation and job-relevant information are endogenous to budget emphasis. Using the path analytical technique and based on a sample of 152 senior managers, the study found that budget emphasis has an insignificant direct effect on job satisfaction, but a strong indirect effect through job-relevant information and budgetary participation. The results also indicate that job-relevant information has an intervening effect on the relationship between participation and job satisfaction.     

Money, endogenous fertility and economic growth

This paper analyzes the issue of money superneutrality through an intertemporal optimizing model of capital accumulation with endogenous fertility, i.e. endogenous population growth. Two elements of this setup invalidate money superneutrality: (i) a demand for fertility that depends on real money balances, and (ii) an inverse relation between capital–labor ratio and population growth. Higher monetary growth increases fertility, since it reduces its opportunity cost, and hence diminishes capital intensity, and per capita output. This reverse Tobin effect is matched by an increase in aggregate capital and output growth rates. In this framework, the optimal monetary growth rule is a “distorted Friedman rule”.     

Public-Private Partnerships and Prices: Evidence from Water Distribution in France

We use an original database of 5000 French local public authorities to explore the impact of organizational choice and performance as measured by consumer prices. In quantifying the impact of the choice of public-private partnerships (PPPs) on performance, we consider the related issue of the determinants of organizational choice. We estimate a switching regressions model to account for the endogeneity of organizational choice, and find that in our sample, (i) the choice by local public authorities to engage in a PPP is not random, and (ii) conditional on the choice of a PPP, consumer prices are significantly higher on average.     

HEDONIC PRICING MODELS FOR VEHICLE REGISTRATION MARKS

Abstract.  This paper attempts to link Chinese numerology to the determination of vehicle registration mark (VRM) prices in Hong Kong through the hedonic pricing analysis. The values of different patterns of the numbers and Roman alphabet letters are examined. We find that there is a very strong preference for the number '8', that visually appealing patterns add great values to a VRM and that the non-transferable VRMs are more expensive than transferable ones. We also show that their prices move in tandem with the Hang Seng Index. The findings suggest that the government can raise revenue by auctioning off intangible assets containing alphanumerical identification marks.