The Impact of Survey Methodology and Context on Central Tendency,Nonresponse and Associations of Subjective Indicators of Government Performance

A comparison is given of (ordinal) measures of trust in government institutions that were collected with the aim of facilitating comparisons between different modes and contexts of data collection. Statistical analyses reveal that the mode effect could amount upto a 10% change of item nonresponse and a 9% change of the level of trust, whereas the context effect could lead upto a 19% change of the bivariate associations of trust. The observed changes of both measures of central tendency and of associations affect conclusions of social scientific research in isolated studies, which implies that comparative studies are seriously hampered by bias related to mode and context, two sources of obscurity adding to the two other threats which are differences of sample source and differences of question phrasing.     

新租赁准则对快递业上市公司财务指标的影响研究

随着全球经济的不断发展和进步,现如今租赁已经成为很多企业和公司进行融资的一种重要方法和手段,在市场经济中发挥着非常重要的作用.与此同时,租赁准则也在不断发生改变,能够更加真实地反映相应的市场经济活动.文章通过探讨和研究新租赁准则对快递业上市公司财务指标的影响,提出了相关的建议和对策,希望能够起到参考和借鉴的作用.     

天山北坡经济带绿洲生态经济脱钩分析

本文根据脱钩理论与模型的基本思想,引入转移投入概念,建立了绿洲脱钩分析模型,对"七五"以来四个五年计划期间GDP快速增长的天山北坡绿洲经济带的生态—经济关系进行了分析,提出了经济带脱钩关系特点,进一步提出了绿洲经济优化调控的建议。     

Biological Adaptation in Human Societies: a ‘Basic Needs’ Approach

The groundzero premise (so to speak) of the biological sciences is that survival and reproduction is the basic, continuing, inescapable problem for all living organisms; life is at bottom a survival enterprise. It follows that survival is the paradigmatic problem for human societies as well; it is a prerequisite for any other, more exalted objectives. Although the term adaptation is also familiar to social scientists, until recently it has been used only selectively, and often very imprecisely. Here a more rigorous and systematic approach to the concept of adaptation is proposed in terms of basic needs. The concept of basic human needs has a venerable history – tracing back at least to Plato and Aristotle. Yet the development of a formal theory of basic needs has lagged far behind. The reason is that the concept of objective, measurable needs is inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions that have dominated economic and social theory for most of this century, namely, valuerelativism and cultural determinism. Nevertheless, there have been a number of efforts over the past 30 years to develop more universalistic criteria for basic needs, both for use in monitoring social wellbeing (social indicators) and for public policy formulation. Here I will advance a strictly biological approach to perationalizing the concept of basic needs. It is argued that much of our economic and social life (and the motivations behind our revealed preferences and subjective utility assessments), not to mention the actions of modern governments, are either directly or indirectly related to the meeting of our basic survival needs. Furthermore, these needs can be specified to a first approximation and supported empirically to varying degrees, with the obvious caveat that there are major individual and contextual variations in their application. Equally important, complex human societies generate an array of instrumental needs which, as the term implies, serve as intermediaries between our primary needs and the specific economic, cultural and political contexts within which these needs must be satisfied. An explicit framework of Survival Indicators, including a profile of Personal Fitness and an aggregate index of Population Fitness, is briefly elucidated. Finally, it is suggested that a basic needs paradigm could provide an analytical tool (a biologic) for examining more closely the relationship between our social, economic and political behaviors and institutions and their survival consequences, as well as providing a predictive tool of some value.     

企业生态效率指标研究

环境会计管理的目的是使环境成本投入所达到的环保效果与环保经济效益最大化,以实现可持续经营。选择适当的环境业绩指标和财务业绩指标,并把它们很好地结合起来,能够充分反映和恰当评价企业的财务和环境效益,有利于使企业业绩评价更加全面、合理。本文根据国内外生态效率指标的研究状况,结合环境业绩指标和财务指标,探讨生态效率指标的重要作用,并试图构建出更为合理和有效的生态效率指标。     

物流产业评价指标与方法的探讨

本文首先对物流产业的概念进行界定,提出物流产业的判断基准;然后根据物流产业的内涵进行评价指标的设计,主要包括物流产业规模、效益、结构、资源、市场潜力等五个大类指标;最后运用主成分分析法建立物流产业的评价模型.     

The effectiveness of government spending on education and health care in developing and transition economies

Recent studies show that corruption is associated with higher military spending [Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 17 (2001) 794] and lower government spending on education and health care [J. Publ. Econ. 69 (1998) 263]. This suggests that policies aimed at reducing corruption may lead to changes in the composition of government outlays toward more productive spending. However, little empirical evidence has been presented to support the claim that public spending improves education and health indicators in developing and transition countries. This paper uses cross-sectional data for 50 such countries to show that increased public expenditure on education and health care is associated with improvements in both access to and attainment in schools, and reduces mortality rates for infants and children. The education regressions are robust to different specifications, but the relationship between health care spending and mortality rates is weaker.     

Environmental quality indicators: Background,principles and examples from Norway

The need for a simple and general overview of the development in the state of the environment has led to work on environmental indicators in several countries and international organizations. Except for the basic common requirement of providing an overview, the works vary a great deal with regard to final aim, target groups, classification and, hence, choice of indicators. This paper gives an overview of the work carried out in the Central Bureau of Statistics of Norway within this field, with emphasis on the basic principles behind the choice of indicators. A hierarchical system of indicator sets is proposed, and examples of indicators are presented. Also, a brief overview of work carried out elsewhere is included.     

企业价值创新能力评价指标体系研究

从企业价值创新的全新经营理念和战略思维出发,探究了企业价值创新能力评价定位与评价指标体系设立的原则,最后从提供新产品和服务的能力、技术与管理创新能力、开拓市场与创新产品能力、产品功能创新能力以及突破现有市场边界能力等五个方面来构建企业价值创新能力评价的指标体系。     

Systemic event prediction by an aggregate early warning system: An application to the Czech Republic

This work develops an early warning framework for assessing systemic risks and predicting systemic events over a short horizon of six quarters and a long horizon of 12 quarters on a panel of 14 countries, both advanced and developing. First, we build a financial stress index to identify the starting dates of systemic financial crises for each country in the panel. Second, early warning indicators for the assessment and prediction of systemic risk are selected in a two-step approach; we find relevant prediction horizons for each indicator by a univariate logit model followed by the application of Bayesian model averaging to identify the most useful indicators. Finally, we observe the performance of the constructed EWS over both horizons on the Czech data and find that the model over the long horizon outperforms the EWS over the short horizon. For both horizons, out-of-sample probability estimates do not deviate substantially from their in-sample estimates, indicating a good out-of-sample performance for the Czech Republic.