Aggregate Dividend Behavior and Permanent Earnings Hypothesis

The study examines the aggregate dividend behavior of U.S. corporations based on the permanent earnings hypothesis. Using annual data of aggregate earnings and dividends from 1871–1993, I find that although managers change dividends proportional to permanent earnings changes, they make revisions with a larger percentage change in dividends than in permanent earnings. The results from the post‐war data show that firms follow a partial adjustment policy with a long‐term dividend payout target in mind and make revisions with a delay. The quarterly data analysis yields results similar to those of the post‐war annual data.     

区分不同收入层次,启动农村消费

目前,消费不足是制约内需扩大和经济高效增长的关键因素。而在消费中,与城镇消费相比,农村消费严重滞后,因此刺激消费的重点在于启动农村消费。制约农村消费需求增长的因素有很多,然而针对不同收入层次的农民,影响其消费的各主要因素存在明显差异。因此,应区分不同收入层次,施以不同对策措施,启动农村消费。     

国家规模对贸易投资便利化的影响——基于“一带一路”沿线国家数据的实证分析

以"一带一路"53个沿线国家为研究对象测算贸易投资便利化水平，并运用面板数据模型分析国家规模对贸易投资便利化的影响。研究发现：第一，2013年后，"一带一路"沿线国家的贸易投资便利化水平呈上升趋势。第二，在总样本和分时段样本中，国土规模对"一带一路"沿线国家的贸易投资便利化均具有显著的负向影响。第三，在分时段样本中，"一带一路"倡议提出前，居民收入规模是贸易投资便利化的重要影响因素，而倡议的实施使得贸易投资便利化不再受居民收入规模的影响。第四，在分区域样本中，各变量对贸易投资便利化的影响存在较大差异。基于此，本研究从国家规模的角度为"一带一路"沿线国家贸易投资便利化条件的改善以及中国在"一带一路"沿线国家的直接投资和双边贸易提出建议。     

重庆市城镇居民消费结构变动特点与趋势

重庆市城镇居民家庭恩格尔系数不断下降,表现出食品和衣着消费支出比重平稳下降、交通通讯支出比重持续增长、居住和医疗及娱乐教育文化消费比重升幅较大、家庭设备用品支出比重下降的四大特点;同时,具有住房是消费结构升级的重点、汽车消费增长空间较大、教育消费成为长期的消费热点和旅游消费成为主要的休闲消费方式的四大趋势.     

Who Receives Medicaid in Old Age? Rules and Reality

Medicaid is a government programme that also provides health insurance to the elderly who have few assets and either low income or catastrophic health care expenses. We ask how the Medicaid rules map into the reality of Medicaid recipiency, and we ask what other observable characteristics are important to determine who ends up on Medicaid. The data show that both singles and couples with high retirement income can end up on Medicaid at very advanced ages. We find that, conditioning on a large number of observable characteristics, including those that directly relate to Medicaid eligibility criteria, single women are more likely to end up on Medicaid – so are non‐white people, but, surprisingly, their higher recipiency is concentrated in the higher income percentiles. We also find that people with low incomes who have a high‐school diploma or higher degree are much less likely to end up receiving Medicaid than their less‐educated counterparts. All of these effects are large and depend on retirement income in a very non‐linear way.     

Investigating the Impact of Income on Savings Using a Chinese Household Level Dataset

This article uses the China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) to examine the savings behavior of Chinese Households. Using a standard cross-sectional empirical approach to modeling permanent and transitory income, we show that one way of explaining the relative high savings rate in China is by recognizing that in fast growing economies, individuals may have higher transitory income from which they save a large proportion. The estimation also contains a range of household specific variables which can be used to understand the impact of socio-economic characteristics such as urban vs rural dwelling, age, and the educational level.     

The determinants of employers’ use of temporary contracts in the frictional labor market

This paper focuses on the following two primary reasons that employers use temporary contracts: to flexibly adjust employment and to screen workers. A search-matching framework is used to not only address employers’ endogenous choices in using temporary contracts, but also numerically identify the situations in which these contracts are likely to be used as a screening tool for permanent positions. This numerical exercise demonstrates that reducing employment protections in permanent jobs, reducing benefits for unemployed workers and raising the conversion probability from temporary to permanent employment will increase the relative proportion of employers who use temporary contracts as a screening device.     

Earnings Instability and Tenure

We study the effect of tenure on earnings instability in Italy using the reforms of temporary employment contracts, which affected the average tenure of workers differentially across cohorts. We develop a model of earnings dynamics, and we exploit the variation of tenure and instability over time and across birth cohorts to estimate policy‐relevant parameters. Our results indicate that each year of tenure on the job reduces earnings instability by 11 percent; the drop is faster in the first three years of the match. Workers on a temporary contract have an earnings instability up to 100 percent higher than workers on a permanent contract.     

Mobile technology & resident attitude research

This research note highlights the novelty of integrating location-based services (LBS) available on Smart Phones and Tablets into traditional resident attitude survey methodologies such as door-to-door data collection. It specifically reviews how the LBS technology available on mobile devices can be used to systematically capture GPS coordinates of one's residence and integrate this captured spatial information into software such as ArcGIS and SPSS for further analysis. By having GPS coordinates associated with respondents' answers, researchers have an additional layer of information available for conducting a multitude of tests previously not possible with subjective categorical spatial data. Two research applications using the spatial location of residences are provided as examples of how LBS available on mobile devices can be integrated within resident attitude projects. The use of LBS technology can help researchers better understand how the distance residents live from major tourist attractions influences their attitudes towards tourism.     

后危机时代扩大居民消费的路径

后危机时代,中国扩大内需的重点在于增加消费,而增加消费的重点在于增加城乡中低收入群体的消费。为此,必须增加居民的收入尤其是城乡中低收入群体的收入,并优化其收入结构。