Environmental taxes with heterogeneous consumers: an application to energy consumption in France

This paper constructs a model with four groups of households who have preferences over labor supply, consumption of polluting (energy related) and non-polluting (non-energy) goods, and emissions. It quantifies the model for the French economy and computes its optimal tax equilibria under nine second-best tax regimes. We find that the redistributive role of environmental taxes requires the polluting goods to be taxed at a rate much below their marginal social damage. These goods may even require an outright subsidy if the society values equality ‘a lot’. Secondly, if environmental taxes that have an exclusively externality-correcting role, they benefit all types—although the gains are rather modest. The gains and losses become more substantial when environmental taxes have a redistributive role as well. Third, setting the environmental tax at its Pigouvian level, rather than its optimal externality-correcting-cum-redistributive level, benefits the high-income group at the expense of the low-income groups. Fourth, nonlinear taxation of polluting goods, and nonlinear commodity taxation in general, is a powerful redistributive mechanism. Fifth, introducing environmental taxes in the current French tax system, with its suboptimal income taxes, results in substantial welfare gains for the highest income group and a sizable loss for the least well-off persons.     

Migration consequences of welfare reform

We investigate whether recent changes in welfare policy affect the migration of low-educated unmarried mothers. Estimates indicate that welfare reform is associated with an increase in employment-related intrastate migration, and a decrease in non-employment related migration, both within and between states. The net effect was a small increase in intrastate migration and a small decrease in interstate migration. The close link between migration and employment suggests that welfare reform has motivated low-income women to move for economic reasons. In general, welfare policy appears to have a much larger effect on residential location because of its relationship to employment than because of benefit differences between states.     

浅析院所企业存在的几个突出问题及对策

科研院所为适应科技体制改革，参与市场竞争兴办了各类型的企业，但是目前出现了大面积的亏损，本分析了造成院所企业经营亏损的几个突出问题，提出了解决这些问题的对策。     

Monopoly, competition and information acquisition

An incumbent monopolist is uncertain about its linear demand, but can acquire public information at a cost. We determine how an entry threat affects the firm's information acquisition. If returns to scale are constant and the state-contingent demands become more dispersed as output increases, then entry reduces information acquisition. If, however, either the incumbent or entrant has increasing returns; or if the state-contingent demands are nonlinear or fail increasing dispersion, then entry can increase information. Finally, entry can hurt consumers. Although entry always increases output, it can decrease information. Consumers sometimes prefer a better informed monopoly to a duopoly.     

Who's in charge of the central city? The conflict between efficiency and equity in the design of a metropolitan area

A circular metropolitan area consists of a central city surrounded by a suburb. Households sort over the two jurisdictions based on public service levels and their costs of commuting to the metropolitan center. Using numerical simulations, we show that (1) there typically exist two equilibria: one in which the poor form the voting majority in the central city and the other in which the rich form the majority in the central city; (2) there is an efficiency vs. equity trade-off as to which equilibrium is preferred; and (3) if the central city contains only poor households, equity favors expanding the central city to include rich households. The third result arises not because of a fiscal subsidy from rich to poor households induced by a property tax but rather because of a change in house price capitalization.     

银行不良贷款违约损失率结构特征研究

本文对中国银行业面临的信用风险违约损失率(LGD)展开研究,以温州某商业银行不良贷款数据为样本,通过描述性统计,对LGD的结构特征:信用风险暴露规模特征、期限特征、地域特征以及担保特征等进行了详细分析。结果表明LGD与风险暴露规模呈负相关,LGD与贷款期限呈正相关,不同地域、不同担保方式的违约贷款其LGD差异性显著。以上这些结论可为商业银行信用风险管理、信贷投放导向以及信用风险监管提供现实帮助。     

Forecasting recovery rates on non-performing loans with machine learning

We compare the performance of a wide set of regression techniques and machine-learning algorithms for predicting recovery rates on non-performing loans, using a private database from a European debt collection agency. We find that rule-based algorithms such as Cubist, boosted trees, and random forests perform significantly better than other approaches. In addition to loan contract specificities, predictors that refer to the bank recovery process — prior to the portfolio’s sale to a debt collector — are also shown to enhance forecasting performance. These variables, derived from the time series of contacts to defaulted clients and client reimbursements to the bank, help all algorithms better identify debtors with different repayment ability and/or commitment, and in general those with different recovery potential.     

转基因标签的消费者维度思考

本文从消费者角度分析了现行转基因标签政策实施过程中存在的成本转移、道德风险等等被忽视的问题．并以我国包装大豆色拉油市场为例，利用垂直差别化模型对加贴转基因标签前后消费者经济福利进行了比较。     

现代企业员工流失的影响及对策

员工流失是现代企业管理方面一个影响很大的问题，并且正越来越成为国家、企业倍感关注的话题。作者认为可以通过对员工流失的科学规范管理把员工流失的损失减到最小，并能够为企业带来益处。本文首先分析了员工流失给企业带来的各种影响，既而提出了相应的对策，以期企业有所借鉴。     

从福利经济学的角度看生态系统服务功能

生态系统服务功能与人类福利之间存在着密切的联系。深入认识生态系统服务功能与人类福利之间的相互联系与相互作用,对于保护和持续利用生态系统服务功能,提高人类的福利,促进经济社会的可持续发展具有重要的意义。本文基于联合国“新千年生态系统评估”(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,MEA)项目的最新成果．系统分析了生态系统服务的内涵,从福利经济学的角度分析了生态系统服务与人类福利之间的关系,探讨了恢复和提高生态系统服务功能的主要措施。