Does corruption slow down innovation? Evidence from a cointegrated panel of U.S. states

I investigate the long-run relationship between corruption and innovative activity using annual data from 48 contiguous U.S. states between 1977 and 2006. Using U.S. data allows me to work with a panel long enough to exploit time series properties of the data. I use two different measures of innovative activity: one measuring the quantity and the other measuring the quality of the patents granted. I also use two different measures of corruption: one based on the number of corruption convictions, the other based on number of corruption stories covered in Associated Press news wires. Following Pedroni (1999, 2000), I estimate the cointegrating relationship between corruption and innovative activity with Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS). The results indicate that corruption indeed slows down innovation in the long-run.     

The distributional impact of unification and the 1992–93 recession on West German households

The 1992–93 recession in the western states of Germany has been attributed, in substantial measure, to the macroeconomic consequences of policies to finance unification. Studies of the costs of unification have not attempted to measure the burden of the recession. We estimate a dynamic, panel model of household incomes using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and use it to forecast what these incomes would have been in 1992–94 without a recession. Using a ratio of actual to forecast incomes, we compare the relative burden of the recession across households. Our findings suggest that western households below the median income bore the brunt of the combined impact of unification and the recession of 1992–93.
JEL classification: P3, D3, E3.     

基于遗传算法的土钉支护结构优化设计研究

通过建立三维有限元模型,对土钉支护的变形和受力性能进行分析,得出土钉力的合理分布。在此基础上,考虑土钉支护的水平位移,采用遗传算法,对土钉支护的结构优化设计进行研究,建立了土钉支护结构的优化设计数学模型,并编制了相应的计算程序。通过算例分析,并与基于极限平衡分析的优化结果相比较,得出合理的土钉支护结构设计的参考结论。     

Multiple Species Boreal Forests – What Faustmann Missed

Recent research in natural sciences shows that the dynamics in boreal forests are much more complex than what many models traditionally used in forestry economics reflect. This essay analyzes some challenges of accounting for such complexity. It shows that the optimal harvesting strategy for forest owners is history dependent and for some states of the forest, more than one strategy may be optimal.This paper confirms earlier literature on shallow lakes and coral reefs and shows that this kind of phenomena seem much more common than previously thought. They are valid for a wide range of ecosystems that cover large surfaces and they do not depend on the choice of some specific function to model the non-linearity. There are also indications that theses results could be obtained even for resources with concave growth if at least one species with non-linear growth affects their dynamics.     

Completing the State Space with Subjective States

We define an opportunity act as a mapping from an exogenously given objective state space to a set of lotteries over prizes, and consider preferences over opportunity acts. We allow the preferences to be possibly uncertainty averse. Our main theorem provides an axiomatization of the maxmin expected utility model. In the theorem we construct subjective states to complete the objective state space. As in E. Dekel et al. (Econometrica, in press), we obtain a unique subjective state space. We also allow for preference for flexibility in some of the subjective states and commitment in others. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: D81.     

中国GDP最终消费的长期均衡与短期波动的协整分析

本文依据协整理论和误差修正模型 ,测定了我国GDP最终消费与国内生产总值、价格水平及利率之间的长期均衡关系和短期波动效应 ,并对当前消费需求疲软做出了新的解释     

农民增收的极限约束与跨跃路径

从长期看,农民增收有两个极限性约束条件:一是收入增长速度不能高于或者相当于城市居民收入增长速度;二是农民收入增幅不能高于农村财富的增幅。但是农民收入又不能不维持大幅度的增长,否则会影响国民经济的增长,影响政治社会的稳定。要解决这对矛盾,必须通过农村内部挖潜,拓宽内源性增收空间;调整束缚增收的制度;寻找和扩大外源性增收渠道。     

Absorbing Team Games

A team is a group of people having the same motives but possibly different available actions. A team game is a game where two teams face each other. An absorbing game is a repeated game where some of the entries are absorbing, in the sense that once they are chosen the play terminates, and all future payoffs are equal to the payoff at the stage of termination. We prove that every absorbing team game has an equilibrium payoff and that there are -equilibrium profiles with cyclic structure. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C73.     

静压桩终压力与极限承载力的差异分析

目前在上海及华东地区,对预制桩大都采用静力压桩方式将桩沉入地基中。将桩压入设计桩底标高时的最终压力值,一般认为即是该桩的极限承载力。其实这种看法是错误的。本文以实际工程为例,对＂终压力＂与＂桩极限承载力＂之间的差异,及其原因进行了分析。