Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor,c. 1670–1834

The consumer behaviour of the poor in the long eighteenth century has attracted more historical attention in recent years. Yet, we have little understanding of whether regional factors affected consumption or how the poor’s ownership of household goods was influenced by level of poverty and the life-cycle. By focusing on Kent and drawing comparisons to other counties, this article argues that the material lives of the poor were improving by the late eighteenth century, but finds that there were distinct regional differences as the poor acquired more and better goods in London and the Home Counties than in relatively remote areas. Moreover, by using pauper inventories and labourers’ probate inventories, the research finds that the poor were not a homogeneous group with similar levels of material wealth, but should be considered in terms of different subgroups which often led very different material lives to one another due to life-cycle-related problems including sickness and old age. Labourers’ probate inventories are found to represent a minority of the poor who were materially richer than most, whilst pauper inventories appear to represent a more typical subgroup of the poor that struggled to make do and owned most types of goods in smaller numbers.     

Conditional time-dependent nonparametric estimators with an application to healthcare production function

ABSTRACT

By using the probabilistic framework of production efficiency, the paper develops time-dependent conditional efficiency estimators performing a non-parametric frontier analysis. Specifically, by applying both full and quantile (robust) time-dependent conditional estimators, it models the dynamic effect of health expenditure on countries’ technological change and technological catch-up levels. The results from the application reveal that the effect of per capita health expenditure on countries’ technological change and technological catch-up is nonlinear and is subject to countries’ specific income levels.     

The 2015 welfare reform of the National Basic Livelihood Security System in South Korea: Effects on economic outcomes

In July 2015, South Korea’s National Basic Livelihood Security System (NBLSS) was reformed for the purposes of eliminating welfare blind spots and reducing poverty. The reform is expected to affect the recipients’ economic behaviours and choices. In this study, we used changes in benefits and eligibility for the NBLSS under the customised benefit system to identify the effects of the change in the NBLSS on a proposed set of economic outcomes – income, labour supply, consumption, savings, poverty reduction. To estimate the effects, we used data from the 10th–12th waves of the Korea Welfare Panel Study and employed a difference‐in‐differences framework integrated with the propensity scores. We found that the NBLSS helps the poor to reduce financial and material hardships through income and consumption increments, but that it does not provide disincentives to the recipients from participating in the labour market or from saving.     

我国消费需求不足的深层次原因及政策取向

收入决定消费。20世纪90年代中期以后我国消费需求不足的根本原因在于长期以来居民收入增长速度低于GDP增长速度。低收入和高增长构成我国经济运行的典型特征。因此,应努力改变过去那种粗放型经济增长方式,并把提高居民收入作为拉动内需的一项长期发展战略。     

评鲍德里亚的"消费社会理论"

鲍德里亚系统提出了"消费社会"的理论。他企图对唯物史观进行"颠覆"是错误的。但是不能简单地认为他是资本主义制度的辩护士。鲍德里亚不懂得马克思从根本上颠覆了国民经济学和唯心主义历史观的两种"幻象",从而奠定了生产和劳动对于人类社会存在与发展的基础性地位;不懂得消费与生产的现实辩证关系,片面地离开生产探讨消费的新特征,甚至主张用消费取代生产。消费异化是劳动异化的表现。技术救赎不可能解决当代人类面临的重大社会问题。     

质押——个人住房消费贷款的一种制度创新

文章分析了推行个人住房消费质押贷款的优势和可行性,探讨了可以用来作为住房质押贷款的质物和住房消费质押贷款的运作机制,最后指出了个人住房消费质押贷款能顺利运作所必须的支撑体系.     

治理我国新一轮通货膨胀的财税政策

我国新一轮的通货膨胀不是商品供不应求的简单经济矛盾引起的,而是开放经济条件下的国内经济结构失衡和对外经济失衡导致的输入型通货膨胀.实施紧缩性货币政策虽然能暂时起到抑制投资过热、控制流动性过剩和通货膨胀的作用,并不能解决我国结构性失衡的深层经济矛盾.治理我国新一轮通货膨胀,不仅需要采取"从紧"控制总量的货币政策,更需要从解决我国经济结构性失衡的深层矛盾入手,采取"从优"调整结构的财税政策.     

中国农村居民消费需求影响因素分析

本文依据持久收入理论,应用计量经济模型分析了影响中国农村居民消费需求的各种因素,计算了平均消费倾向和边际消费倾向以确定收入的不同部分对农村居民消费的影响程度,并分析了非收入要素对消费需求的影响,得出中国农民消费需求主要取决于收入中的持久收入而与暂时收入关系不大的结论,而其它非收入因素的影响也不容忽视.最后提出促进农村居民消费增加的建议和措施.     

农村居民看病难、看病贵原因实证分析

利用扩展的线性支出系统模型(ELES),采用最小二乘法估计计算了我国农村居民的短期医疗服务需求价格弹性。研究结果表明:农村居民的短期医疗服务需求价格缺乏弹性。由于农村居民的短期医疗服务需求价格缺乏弹性,加上我国目前医疗体制存在的以药养医和医疗机构的逐利行为以及医疗市场缺乏有效的监管等问题,导致农村居民看病难、看病贵。解决这个问题,需要国家增加对卫生领域的投入,降低农民看病时自费的比例,增强卫生市场的竞争性,适当使医疗卫生资源向农村地区倾斜,并逐渐把医疗机构办成非盈利机构。     

Consumption and Saving Behavior of Older and Younger Baby Boomers in Korea

The 1998 Korean Survey of Family Income and Expenditures was used to examine the overall consumption and saving behavior of Korean baby boomers and compared the differences in consumption and saving behavior between older and younger boomers. The t -test results indicated that the younger boomers allocated a significantly higher percentage of their expenditures on food away from home, household appliances, transportation and communication than did the older boomers, whereas the older boomers spent higher amounts and allocated larger budget shares on their children's education than did the younger boomers. The results of Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) regression analysis showed that, holding other factors constant, older boomers not only spent significantly more in the total consumption expenditures and education expenditures, but older boomers also saved significantly less than did younger boomers.