Demographic Shifts in the Czech Republic after 1989: A Second Demographic Transition View

A dramatic change in fertility,family formation and living arrangements tookplace in the Czech Republic over the 1990s. Theestablishment of democracy, profound socialtransformation and transition to the marketeconomy affected the values and demographicbehaviour of the young Czech generation. Thispaper examines whether these demographic shiftscan be interpreted within the framework of thesecond demographic transition. The theoreticalpart discusses the idea of the transition,outlining three distinctive conceptualisations.Two of them – the view of the transition as aprogression of characteristic interrelateddemographic changes and a broader viewstressing the importance of underlyingideational factors – fit the Czech situationvery well. A comparison with the Netherlandsreveals that the onset of the transition in theCzech Republic may be clearly located in thefirst half of the 1990s, lagging two decadesbehind the Netherlands.     

股票股利变化市场反应的实证研究

对公司分配方案中股票股利发生变化时股票收益率的研究,显示证券市场对股票股利分配方案发生变化时有一定反应,但与国外成熟资本市场的反应并不一致,说明我国证券市场距离国外成熟资本市场还有一定差距,证券市场信息披露制度尚不规范。     

土地红利公共利益属性的现实基础与保障机制

中国土地红利是经济红利和政策红利共同缔造的特殊红利形式,彰显土地红利公共利益属性是社会公平正义的内在要求。从逻辑上分析,我国土地红利源于土地公有制基础上的一系列制度安排,城镇化和工业化、土地用途管制、土地区位优势、公共投资等因素共同推高了土地价格,奠定了土地红利公共利益属性的坚实基础。为维护土地红利的公共利益属性,国家一方面将其纳入公共财政范畴,以规范公共财政收支的方式实现土地收益“全民共享”,防止土地红利被少数人垄断。另一方面,通过完善相关制度,改进土地收益的税法体系,科学界定房地产开发相关税收的税基和税额;健全土地征收制度,确保征地的目的、程序、收益合法且符合公益;推进土地红利城乡间公平分配,协调公共利益与个人利益的关系,实现土地红利共享。     

数字普惠金融与农户相对贫困脆弱性*

测度不同贫困线标准下数字普惠金融对农户相对贫困脆弱性的作用效果及其最优指数区间,揭示数字普惠金融对不同农户相对贫困脆弱性影响的结构性差异和作用机制。研究发现:数字普惠金融对农户相对贫困脆弱性的影响既存在"数字红利"效应也存在"数字鸿沟"效应,二者呈现出倒"U"型关系,降低农户相对贫困脆弱性的最优数字普惠金融指数区间位于108~160之间。分结构看,较低贫困线标准下数字金融覆盖广度对农户相对贫困脆弱性的减缓程度更加明显,但较高贫困线标准下数字金融使用深度对农户相对贫困脆弱性的减缓程度更大,且呈小幅递增趋势。在作用机制层面,数字普惠金融主要通过提高农户数字技能和风险管理能力,降低居民收入差距来发挥中介作用,减缓农户相对贫困脆弱性。     

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.     

Global employment and decent jobs, 2010–2030: The forces of demography and automation

Globally, an estimated 734 million jobs will be required between 2010 and 2030 to accommodate recent and ongoing demographic shifts, account for plausible changes in labour force participation rates, and achieve target unemployment rates of at or below 4 per cent for adults and at or below 8 per cent for youth. The facts that most new jobs will be required in countries where “decent” jobs are less prevalent and workers in many occupations are increasingly subject to risks of automation further compound the challenge of job creation, which is already quite sizable in historical perspective. Failure to create the jobs that are needed through 2030 would put currently operative social security systems under pressure and undermine efforts to guarantee the national social protection floors enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).     

Early-life mortality clustering in families: A literature review

Research on early-life mortality in contemporary and historical populations has shown that infant and child mortality tend to cluster in a limited number of high-mortality families, a phenomenon known as ‘mortality clustering’. This paper is the first to review the literature on the role of the family in early-life mortality. Contemporary results, methodological and theoretical shortfalls, recent developments, and opportunities for future research are all discussed in this review. Four methodological approaches are distinguished: those based on sibling deaths, mother heterogeneity, thresholds, and excess deaths in populations. It has become clear from research to date that the death of an older child harms the survival chances of younger children in that family, and that fertility behaviour, earlier stillbirths, remarriages, and socio-economic status all explain mortality clustering to some extent.     

Heterogeneity in treatment effects across diverse populations

Differences in patient characteristics, including age, sex, and race influence the safety and effectiveness of drugs, biologic products, and medical devices. Here we provide a summary of the topics discussed during the opening panel at the 2018 Johns Hopkins Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation symposium on Assessing and Communicating Heterogeneity of Treatment Effects for Patient Subpopulations: Challenges and Opportunities. The goal of this session was to provide a brief overview of FDA-regulated therapeutics, including drugs, biologics and medical devices, and some of the major sources of heterogeneity of treatment effects (HTE) related to patient demographics, such as age, sex and race. The panel discussed the US Food and Drug Administration's role in reviewing and regulating drugs, devices, and biologic products and the challenges associated with ensuring that diverse patient populations benefit from these therapeutics. Ultimately, ensuring diverse demographic inclusion in clinical trials, and designing basic and clinical research studies to account for the intended patient population's age, sex, race, and genetic factors among other characteristics, will lead to better, safer therapies for diverse patient populations.     

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.     

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.