Changes in food provision in Russian households experiencing perestroika

The purpose of this article is to describe how households in Novgorod the Great, Russia, deal with food provision in everyday life. The study focuses on changes experienced in food provision and consumption in Russian society, in order to illustrate how households respond to the transformation towards a market economy. The study reflects women's perspective on food provision. Students from Novgorod the Great visited 105 households and asked the women in the household to answer a questionnaire. Results from the study show that in order to cope with changes in society related to economic reforms, Russian households had changed both their food consumption and food production patterns. There was no big difference between urban and rural households. Nearly all of the households were self‐sufficient in the provision of vegetables and potatoes. Many households had a ‘dacha’ (plot), where they produced most of what they needed. Among the changes experienced during recent years (i.e. during the end of the 1990s), a decade after perestroika was initiated, households mentioned the rise in food prices and the decrease of income. Households reported that they consumed less fruit and/or meat. Some households also mentioned that the quality of nourishment had decreased, thereby indicating lower general quality, lower nutrition value, or less healthy foodstuffs.     

我国国债的风险评估与防范

从国债的可持续性、国债的货币扩张效应、国债对经济增长的影响三个层面评估了我国当前的国债风险，并针对我国的国债特点，提出了防范国债风险的措施。     

国债规模的均衡数量及优化

笔者基于世代交叠模型,假定政府执行赤字预算体制,在市场结清的均衡状态下得到了确定国债规模与私人资本规模之比值的解析式。通过模拟发现税率、基本财政支出率、产出关于私人资本的弹性等是决定该比值大小的主要因素。     

Factors affecting households’ seafood purchasing decisions in Auckland,New Zealand: an empirical analysis

This paper uses the binary choice model to identify the factors that are significantly influencing the household purchase decisions of seafood products for home consumption in Auckland, New Zealand. It is found that ‘quality’ and ‘cooking easiness’ are the main product attributes that significantly influence households’ choices of seafood in Auckland. Also, the representative household has shown a strong preference for fresh and other alternative seafood products, including processed, smoked and canned, over frozen products. Retail outlets are found to be more attractive to the household purchasing seafood for home consumption. The New Zealand seafood industry may find this baseline study useful as a guide to developing future research structure on the domestic market.     

Foreign debt and economic growth

This paper empirically examines the relationship between government foreign debt and the growth rate of per capita GDP based on a total sample of 77 countries, as well as sub‐samples of various regions. Cross‐sectional estimates of the coefficient of foreign debt based on the total sample have a negative sign, but are not always statistically significant. Available data from African countries indicate that foreign debt and the growth rate of per capita GDP were negatively related at a high level of significance. For industrialized and Latin American sub‐samples, this relationship is negative but statistically insignificant. The sub‐sample Asian and other developing countries show a positive but insignificant relationship. JEL classification: F34, H6, O23.     

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”.     

户籍歧视对劳动报酬差异的影响

在我国，户籍歧视是形成劳动力市场分割的重要原因，它不但通过阻碍劳动力流动造成城乡收入差异，也会促成农民工和城镇工人之间劳动报酬的差异。本文利用中国健康与营养调查（CHNS）多年的数据，对我国户籍歧视影响劳动报酬差异的程度进行计算和分析。结论表明，近几年户籍歧视现象并没有明显改观，政府在制定相应政策时，仍需关注这方面的问题。     

Credit risk and sustainable debt: a model and estimations of why the Euro is stable in the long-run

Sustainable debt has become the key issue in rating of private as well as sovereign debtors. The problem of how to estimate sustainable debt has also been at the center of the debate over the Asian 1997–1998 financial crisis. If the external value of the currency depends on the external debt of a country, it is necessary to estimate the creditworthiness of the country. This paper studies credit risk and sustainable debt in the context of a dynamic model. For a dynamic growth model with an additional equation for the evolution of debt, we demonstrate of how to compute sustainable debt and creditworthiness. The model is estimated by employing time series data for the core countries of the Euro-area. The computations show that the Euro-area has large external assets. Using time series methods, the sustainability of external debt (assets) is estimated for those core countries of the Euro-area. Those estimations show that the Euro will be a stable currency in the long-run.     

中美证券公司资本配置差异分析

中国证券行业发展速度很快,但是效益普遍不好,亏损面很大,除外部环境制约外,内部资本运营水平不高仍是关键因素.本文选择有代表性的美国若干证券公司,解析其资产负债结构、收入结构等资本配置和运营形式,从而为我国证券公司找到差距和提供可借鉴之处,以改善中国证券行业经营状况,增强其抵抗与日俱增的各种风险之能力.