Causal structure among US corn futures and regional cash prices in the time and frequency domain

This study investigates causal structure among daily Chicago Board of Trade corn futures prices and seven regional cash series from Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas for January 2006–March 2011. Their wavelet transformed series are further analyzed for causal relationships at different time scales. Empirical results indicate no causality among states or between the futures and a cash series for time scales shorter than one month. As scales increase but do not exceed a year, bidirectional causal flows are determined among all prices. The information leadership role of the futures against a cash price is identified for the scale longer than one year and raw series, at which no interstate causality is found.     

Micro‐investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income

The article evaluates prospects of the Basic Income (BI) as a development policy tool. While BI is a relatively new initiative within development policy, the article argues that it should be seen as a serious option in the future, given the changing geography of poverty and the findings from existing cash transfer schemes. The analysis is carried out as a synthesis of existing findings on BI pilot programmes, along with cash transfer instruments more generally. While not including new empirical data, the synthesis allows preliminary estimates on the likely impacts of abolishing conditioning and targeting in cash transfer schemes. Particular attention is paid to the notion of micro‐investment and the psychological conditions of micro‐investment.     

Optimal control strategies for dividend payments and capital injections in compound Markov binomial risk model with penalties for deficits

We consider the compound Markov binomial risk model. The company controls the amount of dividends paid to the shareholders as well as the capital injections in order to maximize the cumulative expected discounted dividends minus the discounted capital injections and the discounted penalties for deficits prior to ruin. We show that the optimal value function is the unique solution of an HJB equation, and the optimal control strategy is a two-barriers strategy given the current state of the Markov chain. We obtain some properties of the optimal strategy and the optimal condition for ruining the company. We offer a high-efficiency algorithm for obtaining the optimal strategy and the optimal value function. In addition, we also discuss the optimal control problem under a restriction of bounded dividend rates. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the algorithm and the impact of the penalties.     

Can the minimum living standard guarantee scheme enable the poor to escape the poverty trap in rural China?

The rural Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (Dibao) Scheme is the most important social assistance programme in rural China. However, how the rural Dibao programme affects household expenditures and whether it can enable the poor to escape the poverty trap are questions that remain largely unexplored. This study used data from the 2012 Rural Household Survey in China to investigate the impact of the rural Dibao programme on household expenditures. We found that the programme significantly improved the well‐being of low‐income households. Particularly, the programme significantly increased household expenditures on housing, education and health; furthermore, the impact was greater for households with educated household heads. However, the programme did not significantly affect household expenditures on food, transportation or farming inputs. The results imply that participation in the rural Dibao programme induces household investment in human capital, which could help to break the inter‐generational transmission of poverty and raise long‐run welfare.     

The turn to optional familialism through the market: Long‐term care,cash‐for‐care,and caregiving policies in Europe

Cash‐for‐care (CfC) schemes are monetary transfers to people in need of care who can use them to organize their own care arrangements. Mostly introduced in the 1990s, these schemes combine different policy objectives, as they can aim at (implicitly or explicitly) supporting informal caregivers as well as increasing user choice in long‐term care or even foster the formalization of care relations and the creation of care markets. This article explores from a comparative perspective, how CfC schemes, within broader long‐term care policies, envision, frame, and aim to condition informal care, if different models of relationships between CfC and informal care exist and how these have persisted or changed over time and into which directions. Building on the scholarly debate on familialization vs. defamilialization policies, the paper proposes an analytical framework to investigate the trajectories of seven European countries over a period of 20 years. The results show that, far from being simply instruments of supported familialism, CfC schemes have contributed to a turn towards “optional familialism through the market,” according to which families are encouraged to provide family care and are (directly or indirectly) given alternatives through the provision of market care.     

From the Digital Divide to the Connectivity Dividend Difference: A Connectivity Capital Perspective*

The access divide was once the basic form of the digital divide. The development of Internet infrastructure has narrowed the access divide and increased application coverage, but it has also touched off a connectivity dividend difference. Taking the online market as an example, we examine the sources of the dividend difference and the factors influencing it with in a connectivity framework. We found that the narrowing of the access divide has resulted in enhanced connectivity and platform development, giving people the chance to benefit from transforming the various assets in which they have previously invested into differentiated compound connectivity capital. In the course, the scale and rate of the conversion are affected by two multiplier effects and especially by online platforms. The process is ultimately expressed in the dividend difference.     

生产还是消费——中国股市生产资本资产定价模型实证检验

生产资本资产定价模型从企业利润最大化角度出发,推出资产的均衡价格.相较于消费资本资产定价模型,生产资本资产定价模型能更好的满足信息完全和决策者理性的假设条件.本文从生产资本资产定价模型出发,利用现值模型将生产的系统性风险因子,即生产的贝塔因子分解为现金流贝塔和折现率贝塔,并采用社会总投资和股市数据进行实证检验.本文发现生产-现金流贝塔是中国股市的重要定价因子,可较好地解释股权溢价的截面差异.相比之下,消费资本资产定价模型对不同资产之间风险溢价的解释能力较弱.     

Optimal financing and dividend policy with Markovian switching regimes

This work investigates an optimal financing and dividend problem for an insurer whose surplus process is modulated by an observable continuous-time and finite-state Markov chain. We assume that the insurer should never go bankrupt by issuing new equity. The goal of the insurer is to maximize the expected present value of the dividends payout minus the discounted cost of equity issuance. We obtain the optimal policies and explicit expressions for the value functions when the risk reserve process is modeled by both upward jump model and its diffusion approximation. Numerical illustrations of the sensitivities of the model parameters are provided.     

Dividend barrier and ruin problems for a risk model with delayed claims

In this paper, a compound Poisson risk model in the presence of a constant dividend barrier is considered. Two types of individual claims, main claims and by-claims, are defined, where every by-claim is induced by the main claim and and the time of delay for the claim is assumed to be random. A system of integro-differential equations with certain boundary conditions for the expected discounted penalty function is derived. We show that its solution can be expressed as the solution to the expected discounted penalty function in the same risk model with the absence of a barrier plus a linear combination of two linearly independent solutions to the associated homogeneous integro-differential equation. Using systems of integro-differential equations for the moment-generating function as well as for the arbitrary moments of the sum of discounted dividend payments until ruin, a matrix version of the dividends–penalty type relationship is derived. We also prove that ruin is certain under constant dividend barrier strategy. The closed form expressions are given when the claim amounts from both classes are exponentially distributed. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the solution procedure.