The socio-economic determinants of COVID-19: A spatial analysis of German county level data

The study explores the association of socioeconomic, demographic, and health-related variables at the regional level with COVID-19 related cases and deaths in Germany during the so-called first wave through mid-June 2020. Multivariate spatial models include the 401 counties in Germany to account for regional interrelations and possible spillover effects. The case and death numbers are, for example, significantly positively associated with early cases from the beginning of the epidemic, the average age, the population density and the share of people employed in elderly care. By contrast, they are significantly negatively associated with the share of schoolchildren and children in day care as well as physician density. In addition, significant spillover effects on the case numbers of neighbouring regions were identified for certain variables, with a different sign than the overall effects, giving rise to further future analyses of the regional mechanisms of action of COVID-19 infection. The results complement the knowledge about COVID-19 infection beyond the clinical risk factors discussed so far by a socio-economic perspective at the ecological level.     

Unfolding Patterns of Unpaid Household Work in Latin America

Although Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay show similar empirical patterns in terms of time women devote to unpaid work, they also present important variations in how unpaid work is distributed between men and women. Using time-use surveys for the 2007–10 period, this study finds a uniform pattern across the four countries regarding the main individual-level variables related to the allocation of unpaid work. When decomposing the gender gap in hours devoted to unpaid work, most of the difference cannot be attributed to variations in observable characteristics of men and women: the unexplained part of the gap is the dominant part. Results suggest that both the strength of traditional gender roles and existing welfare architecture are relevant factors in understanding variations in how unpaid work is distributed between men and women in these four countries. The results reaffirm that powerful interventions are needed to shift gender norms about unpaid work.     

Income and substitution effects of fiscal policy on work effort

The focus of this paper is twofold. First, it examines the impact on work effort of changes in government purchases financed with lump‐sum taxes, in a neoclassical framework, with respect to four industrialised countries. Second, it reconsiders the expenditure–work effort relationship in a broader conceptual context that allows for distortionary taxation and a disaggregation of the income and substitution effects. Our findings are shown to cast doubt on the empirical plausibility of the prevailing (neoclassical and New Keynesian) models which seem to rely heavily on the lump‐sum tax notion, thus ignoring the substitution effects of distortionary taxation.     

Optimal investment with fixed financing costs

Models with a premium on external finance produce counterfactual predictions about liquidity management. We address this shortcoming by introducing a fixed cost of increasing external finance into an otherwise standard investment/financing problem. This additional financial friction is well-motivated by case studies and our analysis shows that it generates more realistic predictions about liquidity management: firms hold external finance and idle cash simultaneously, and may invest an additional dollar of cash flow in liquidity rather than repaying external funds or investing in productive capital. In addition to better fitting the stylized facts about the time-series and cross-sectional pattern of liquidity holding, these results may help shed light on the fragility of estimates of investment–cash flow sensitivities.     

The liquidity effects of foreign exchange intervention

This paper examines the effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention in a two-country, two-currency, general equilibrium model that allows for liquidity effects. Both sterilized and non-sterilized intervention operations have significant impacts on the allocation of liquidity in international financial markets. Whether intervention is successful in moving the exchange rate in the desirable direction depends upon the degree of sterilization of intervention and the intratemporal elasticity of substitution of the consumption goods. The model shows that there exist circumstances in which the response of exchange rate to intervention is ‘perverse’ as documented in the empirical literature.     

Spatial determinants of Japanese FDI in China

Research on foreign direct investment in China has spawned an increasingly large literature. Whilst regional cleavages with respect to the distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) are acknowledged, empirical research on the spatial determinants of FDI in China has been limited. Furthermore, research on the spatial determinants of home country FDI in China has thus far been neglected due to difficulties in accessing the appropriate data. The objective of this paper is to examine the spatial determinants of Japanese direct investment in China by using an econometric model. To that purpose, a dataset is created from the Toyo Keizai directory on the overseas activities of Japanese companies. The results show that tertiary education, inland waterways, as well as coastal location are positive and significant determinants of Japanese investment in China.     

移动支付对中国家庭储蓄率的影响

中国的高储蓄问题由来已久,降低家庭储蓄率、提高消费有助于形成以国内大循环为主体、国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局。本文基于2017年和2019年中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据,实证研究了移动支付对中国家庭储蓄率的影响。结果表明,移动支付显著降低了家庭储蓄率。进一步研究发现,缓解流动性约束、信贷约束和扩大社会网络是移动支付降低家庭储蓄率的主要途径。此外,移动支付显著降低家庭为应对健康风险、医疗风险、失业风险、收入风险等不确定性而进行的预防性储蓄。地区异质性分析显示,移动支付对家庭储蓄率的影响在西部地区、四五线城市、农村地区更大。家庭特征异质性分析显示,移动支付对家庭储蓄率的影响在农业户口家庭、中低收入家庭、低受教育水平家庭中效果更加突出。本文研究为理解中国高储蓄问题提供了新的视角,可为制定相关政策提供参考依据。     

韩国企业对中国直接投资的实情分析和决定因素

文章通过对韩国企业对中国直接投资的实情分析,考察不同规模企业的特征,并依 据投资国的国内因素分析了对中国直接投资的决定因素。     

审计费用的决定因素——来自我国B股上市公司的数据分析

审计费用的决定因素一直是国外会计审计学界关注的热点问题之一。基于我国B股上市公司数据，以2001年～2003年我国B股的上市公司为样本，对境外审计师的审计收费展开研究可发现：2001年度审计费用的决定因素并不明显，且与事务所规模的关系不显性；在2002年和2003年，审计费用与总资产和事务所规模成显性相关。究其原因，主要是声誉机制、信息披露制度和我国审计市场竞争激烈等因素所致。     

人力资源管理实践的影响因泰

本文以战略人力资源管理理论和制度主义理论为基础．研究了战略、所有权、规模与企业年龄对企业人力资源管理实践的影响。结果显示．在转轨时期的我国企业．所有权对内部型人力资源管理实践有显著的正面影响，战略、规模与企业年龄能够部分预测企业的人力资源管理实践。在此基础上．本文提出了相关管理建议，指出了未来的研究方向。