Finding the vulnerable among China’s elderly: identifying measures for effective policy targeting

Facing a rapidly aging population, China has recently started to formulate and implement policies with the aim to provide old-age care. While well-developed old-age care policies commonly include a built-in component that assesses eligibility based on vulnerability, no such process is established in the context of China. Here, based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study collected in both 2011 and 2013, we (a) developed a simple and effective strategy for identifying vulnerable Chinese elderly, which can serve as a basis for policy targeting, and (b) improved the policy relevance and targeting efficiency of this vulnerability measure by including additional health indicators. Our vulnerability measures identify 35% to 46% of Chinese elderly as vulnerable, covering up to 67% of elderly at high risk of death or functional decline. They can serve as an initial screening step for more comprehensive geriatric assessments and enable policy makers to effectively target vulnerable elderly persons in China.     

Credibility and Inflation Expectations: What we can tell from seven emerging economies?

This study is a contribution to the literature concerning credibility and its effect on the distribution between forward-looking behavior and backward-looking behavior for formation of inflation expectations in the case of emerging economies. Based on data gathered from seven inflation targeting emerging economies (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey), this paper analyzes how much the credibility associated with the inflation target contributes to anchoring expectations. The findings denote that although credibility is relevant to reduce inflation expectations, these countries present low monetary credibility and thus the backward-looking behavior is predominant for the formation of inflation expectations. Therefore, in order to improve the expectations channel of monetary policy in emerging economies, a policy of increasing transparency regarding inflation expectations is mandatory to the central banks’ task of anchoring inflation expectations.     

Macroeconomic performance of inflation targeting in European and Asian emerging economies

The macroeconomic performance resulting from adopting an inflation targeting policy in emerging economies of Europe and Central Asia are examined. The research includes 26 countries in the period 1997–2019, with a special focus on the period 2008–2019. Our econometric analysis consists of two approaches: dynamic panel modeling and propensity score matching. The results suggest that macroeconomic performance has improved due to the inflation targeting monetary framework. We find that a policy of inflation targeting has been effective in reducing the inflation rate, inflation volatility, and GDP volatility. The results are particularly robust for the subperiod that started in 2008. Econometric results suggest that inflation targeting policy did not affect inflation persistence or GDP growth. Our results suggest that inflation targeting improves the macroeconomic performance of developing countries even when they only partially meet the standard requirements for its implementation.     

跨文化情景下的文化认同与和谐相处——以在美国阿肯色大学的学习生活经历为例

以美国阿肯色大学跨文化交流的经历为背景,以具体文化情景下的不同感受和体验为基础,揭示了在跨文化交流的情景下文化认同的两种表现:既表现为因语言相同或相近、宗教信仰相同、地域相近或相邻而产生的亲近感和归属感;也表现为因文化差异而产生的吸引或冲突。而在这种跨文化交流的情景下要实现和谐相处,就要做到"我"与"他者"之间文化上的"欣赏"与"分享",即"文化的互为主体性",而这种和谐的实现源于人类本性的相通,即"人类心灵的共同点"。     

"指标困局":农村贫困治理的实践与反思

在国家的扶贫实践中，地方政府的行为策略是影响扶贫绩效的关键变量。通过对精准扶贫政策实践的调研发现，中央政府不断升级的治理手段为重构央地关系创造了条件，地方政府对国家扶贫理念转型认知的偏差以及在形成路径依赖之后的策略行为不仅容易产生对总体局势的误判，还为后期的政策困局埋下了伏笔。在此背景下，地方扶贫工作遭遇“指标困局”，即地方政府很难实事求是去识别贫困户，只能在既有的指标约束下进行精准识别，扶贫工作陷入了反复识别，却仍难实现精准的怪圈。     

Robust bootstrap forecast densities for GARCH returns and volatilities

Bootstrap procedures are useful to obtain forecast densities for both returns and volatilities in the context of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models. In this paper, we analyse the effect of additive outliers on the finite sample properties of these bootstrap densities and show that, when obtained using maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters and standard filters for the volatilities, they are badly affected with dramatic consequences on the estimation of Value-at-Risk. We propose constructing bootstrap densities for returns and volatilities using a robust parameter estimator based on variance targeting implemented together with an adequate modification of the volatility filter. We show that the performance of the proposed procedure is adequate when compared with available robust alternatives. The results are illustrated with both simulated and real data.     

从集合论看商品的市场赋价——调研宣传以及生产的逻辑

经济不断为数学“立法”的同时,数学也不断为经济提供非直觉现象的研究工具。在数学和经济不断渗透的背景下,跳过传统商品赋价理论,从集合角度重新审视了商品的赋价问题,得出商品的价格包括在消费者正确识别的商品功能集合中被赋的价格,在识别错位的功能集合中被赋的价格以及在扩充的功能集合中被消费者赋的价格三部分;同时顺便考察了厂商的宣传调研以及生产的逻辑,给出为什么商品的生产价格并不总是和市场价格相切合的解释。     

如何科学合理地做好家庭经济困难学生认定工作

本文指出了我国高校现行的对家庭经济困难学生认定工作的现状和存在的一些问题,并针对这些问题提出了一些合理的建议：了解我国大学生资助政策,受资助学生作诚信承诺以及辅导员深入家访等;旨在增强国家对大学生的资助力度,使我国大学生资助体系变得更加合理和完善。     

储层建筑结构要素分析及在剩余油挖潜中应用

储层非均质性研究是油田开发后期剩余油挖潜、提高采收率的关键。以河流沉积学理论为指导、以现代沉积、露头调查为依据，利用密井网条件下丰富的测井资料和储层建筑结构层次分析方法对孤岛油田馆陶组上段储层进行了研究。研究认为，孤岛油田馆陶组上段储层可划分为十个层次，并将储层精细解剖到第七层次，识别出主河道、废弃河道、决口水道等七种建筑结构要素。在储层精细对比的基础上，总结出以单一河道砂体追溯为核心建立单砂体建筑结构模型的方法，并探讨了这种地质结构模型对于油田开发挖潜的重要意义。     

A New Model of Trend Inflation

This article introduces a new model of trend inflation. In contrast to many earlier approaches, which allow for trend inflation to evolve according to a random walk, ours is a bounded model which ensures that trend inflation is constrained to lie in an interval. The bounds of this interval can either be fixed or estimated from the data. Our model also allows for a time-varying degree of persistence in the transitory component of inflation. In an empirical exercise with CPI inflation, we find the model to work well, yielding more sensible measures of trend inflation and forecasting better than popular alternatives such as the unobserved components stochastic volatility model. This article has supplementary materials online.