Job growth in early transition: Comparing two paths*

Small start‐up firms are the engine of job creation in early transition. We ask about differences in their growth across two different transition economies: Estonia, which experienced rapid destruction of pre‐existing firms, and the Czech Republic, which reduced the old sector gradually. We find that the majority of job growth corresponds to within‐industry reallocation. The within‐industry growth of small start‐up firms is similar in the two countries, in line with the convergence to Western industry firm‐size distributions. We also find similar patterns in the evolution of wage differentials between start‐ups and old firms and small differences in the extent of low‐wage employment in start‐ups across the two transition paths. JEL Classifications: J2, J3, J4, L1, O1, P2.     

对我国生态环境保护的初步探讨

中国是世界上最大的发展中国家,由于现代工农业生产而造成了严重的环境污染,尤其是大量使用农用化学品所导致的生态失调与环境破坏,已严重威胁到人类生存环境及生活健康。今后社会发展必须大力提倡与推广无公害、无污染的清洁生产,全面实现生产的"零污染"与废物的"零排放"、保护环境与追求生态和谐的发展目标。     

商誉会计主要争论综述及启示

近百年来 ,会计理论界对商誉会计问题研究成果丰硕。本文对商誉的本质、自创商誉的会计确认、外购商誉的会计处理、负商誉性质等问题的主要争论进行了综述。     

哲学思维方法与创新思维能力的培养

哲学思维其本质为辩证思维.哲学思维方法也集中地表现为以在对立统一中把握对立面为核心的一系列辩证思维基本方法.辩证思维是逻辑思维的最高层次,是创新思维的核心,它通过思维而介入创新活动,对创新思维能力的培养起着指导性作用.     

财务会计专业大学生创新能力模糊评价模型研究

创新教育是现代教育的核心,正确评价学生的创新能力是检验教育成果,发现并改进教育薄弱环节,建立创新教育模式的基本要求。本文运用模糊评价的方法,以财务会计专业大学生为研究对象,设计创新能力评价指标体系,探讨如何通过建立模糊评价模型,综合评价学生的创新能力,并提出了对于评价结果的分析思路。     

关于我国高等院校培养创造性人才的思考

在科技进步与创新的21世纪，我国高等院校担负着培养创造性人才的重任。培养创造性人才，要优化人才培养模式，改革传统教学方法，增强创新教育的基本理念。     

Creating narrative scenarios: Science fiction prototyping at Emerge

Scenarios are stories. In the diverse field of scenario planning, this is perhaps the single point of universal agreement. Yet if scenarios are stories, their literary qualities are often underdeveloped. Scenarios used in business and government frequently do not contain a relatable protagonist, move a plot toward resolution, or compellingly use metaphor, imagery, or other emotionally persuasive techniques of literature. In these cases, narrative is relegated to an adjunct role of summarizing the final results of the workshop. While this neglect of narrative may be reasonable in some contexts, the power of narrative should not be underestimated. Scenario planning methodologies can benefit from using diverse narrative techniques to craft compelling and infectious visions of the future. This article explores the relationship between science fiction and scenarios as story genres and investigates a creative story-telling technique, “Science Fiction Prototyping” (Johnson, 2011). While the method is promising, it is an ultimately problematic means to incorporating narrative into scenario planning.     

Does personal background influence a finance minister to cook the books? An investigation of creative accounting in Swiss cantons

This article aims to identify the factors influencing the use of creative accounting in the public sector. Its distinctive feature is that it sheds light on creative accounting when used, not to hide public deficits, but to conceal surpluses. It especially explores the impact of the finance minister’s (FM)’s background on the phenomenon. We take advantage of the quasi-experimental settings of the Swiss cantons in which the financial management act sets out the possibility of implementing certain accounting gimmicks, including mainly additional ‘depreciation’ charges. These charges, which are depreciations in name only, enable the FM to artificially inflate expenses, thus increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus. Our panel data set of the 26 cantons over the period 1980–2012 includes a new data set of creative accounting and of 116 cantonal FMs. Our results indicate that the FMs cook the books irrespective of their personal or ideological background with the exception that trained economists tend to apply creative accounting more. Additionally, stringent fiscal rules urge FMs towards more surplus-hiding accounting.     

The shared environmental responsibility principle: new developments applied to the case of marine ecosystems

Estuaries provide advantageous sites for both harbors and fish habitats. In many countries, harbor expansion in estuaries contributed to the decline of fish populations with impacts at the global scale. Restoring these habitats is important to prevent a global biodiversity crisis but is costly and potentially unaffordable for polluters under the Polluter Pays Principle. Such affordability issues prompt decision-makers to reduce environmental targets of restoration programs. Harbor infrastructures destroy fish habitats but generate benefits for society and contribute to the public interest, raising some questions on who is responsible for environmental degradations and who can afford environmental restoration costs? One way to allocate restoration costs is to analyze the amount of harbor services consumed by economic sectors. This paper addresses these questions by computing burden sharing scenarios with an input–output matrix. These scenarios are simulated under the shared responsibility principle to distribute restoration costs among stakeholders in the Seine estuary, France.     

Effect of religious priming in prosocial and destructive behaviour

In this paper, we study the behavioural impact of religious priming by showing participants religious words in a scrambled sentence task before a dictator game and a joy‐of‐destruction game. We also elicited data on individual religiosity and religious affiliation using a questionnaire. Priming religious words significantly increased prosocial behaviour in the dictator game, and the effect was especially striking among those reporting no religion, atheists and agnostics. The religious prime has no significant effect in mitigating destructive behaviour or own expectations of the other's destruction choice, but both destructive behaviour and expectations correlate positively with the multi‐dimensional religiosity measure.