经济复苏走势、经济刺激政策及其退出计划有关问题的国内外综述

为应对本轮经济危机,各国政府纷纷出台经济刺激计划及相应配套政策,以遏制经济增长显著下滑的态势。随着经济危机渐行渐远,如何实现经济刺激计划的平稳退出,成为各国政府亟需面对的首要问题,理论界也对此展开了激烈的探讨。本文以判断经济复苏走势为切入点,选择经济刺激计划退出过程中面临的相关问题为研究对象,对国内外学者的研究成果进行综述,并在此基础上展望了未来我国宏观经济政策走向。     

Nanotechnology Risk Communication Past and Prologue

Nanotechnologies operate at atomic, molecular, and macromolecular scales, at scales where matter behaves differently than at larger scales and quantum effects can dominate. Nanotechnologies have captured the imagination of science fiction writers as science, engineering, and industry have leapt to the challenge of harnessing them. Applications are proliferating. In contrast, despite recent progress the regulatory landscape is not yet coherent, and public awareness of nanotechnology remains low. This has led risk researchers and critics of current nanotechnology risk communication efforts to call for proactive strategies that do more than address facts, that include and go beyond the public participation stipulated by some government acts. A redoubling of nanotechnology risk communication efforts could enable consumer choice and informed public discourse about regulation and public investments in science and safety.     

论投资组合与金融优化 ———对理论研究和实践的分析与反思

经过50 多年的发展,投资组合选择的理论研究和实践已经取得了相当丰富的成果. 随 着全球经济一体化进程的加快和我国金融市场的发展与完善,我国金融机构对投资组合理论 的应用实践提出了具体要求. 按照投资组合选择理论的发展脉络,简述并分析了现代投资组合 选择的各种主要理论、模型与方法以及它们之间的内在关系,并对一些最新进展作了重点介 绍. 在此基础上,对投资组合选择(或广义意义下的金融优化) 的理论研究和在我国的应用实践 问题,提出了若干值得关注的发展方向与建议.     

论投资组合与金融优化 ———对理论研究和实践的分析与反思

经过50多年的发展,投资组合选择的理论研究和实践已经取得了相当丰富的成果.随着全球经济一体化进程的加快和我国金融市场的发展与完善,我国金融机构对投资组合理论的应用实践提出了具体要求.按照投资组合选择理论的发展脉络,简述并分析了现代投资组合选择的各种主要理论、模型与方法以及它们之间的内在关系,并对一些最新进展作了重点介绍.在此基础上,对投资组合选择(或广义意义下的金融优化)的理论研究和在我国的应用实践问题,提出了若干值得关注的发展方向与建议.     

资产负债管理多阶段模型研究

综述了资产负债管理多阶段模型及应用的研究状况,评述了相关的研究文献。分别从资产负债管理多阶段模型、银行资产负债管理、养老金与保险公司、金融计划、动态的资产配置以及情景生成几个方面进行了探讨。最后结合我国有关的研究与应用现状,提出一些待研究的方向。     

Policy Goals for Health and Safety

Health management and safety regulation are separate disciplines but share the aim to extend expectancy of life in good health. The need to improve cost-effectiveness calls for their co-ordinated management according to a unified rationale. Three guiding principles of accountability, demonstrable net benefit and a uniform measure of performance, have been laid out in Canada by the Joint Committee on Health and Safety. They call for open accounting in terms of (health-related quality-adjusted) life expectancy. The principles are utilitarian in format but, it is argued, inequity is naturally diminished in the process of optimizing cost-effectiveness through maximum marginal returns. Comments are made on practical implementation. The need for public consent in practice calls for two additional principles reflecting fair procedure and sovereignty of the citizens. It is concluded that public health and safety measures should be surveyed, documented for cost-effectiveness and prioritized for improvement.     

Why Study Risk Perception?

Studies of risk perception examine the opinions people express when they are asked, in various ways, to characterize and evaluate hazardous activities and technologies. This research aims to aid risk analysis and societal decision making by (i) improving methods for eliciting opinions about risk, (ii) providing a basis for understanding and anticipating public responses to hazards, and (iii) improving the communication of risk information among laypeople, technical experts, and policy makers.     

Defining Susceptibility for Microbial Risk Assessment: Results of a Workshop

An interdisciplinary workshop was convened by the George Washington University in June 2001 to discuss how to incorporate new knowledge about susceptibility to microbial pathogens into risk assessment and management strategies. Experts from government, academic, and private sector organizations discussed definitions, methods, data needs, and issues related to susceptibility in microbial risk assessment. The participants agreed that modeling approaches need to account for the highly specific nature of host-pathogen relationships, and the wide variability of infectivity, immunity, disease transmission, and outcome rates within microbial species and strains. Concerns were raised about distinguishing between exposure and dose more clearly, interpreting experimental and outbreak data correctly, and using thresholds and possibly linearity at low doses. Recommendations were made to advance microbial risk assessment by defining specific terms and concepts more precisely, designing explicit conceptual frameworks to guide development of more complex models and data collection, addressing susceptibility in all steps of the model, measuring components of immunity to characterize susceptibility, reexamining underlying assumptions, applying default methods appropriately, obtaining more mechanistic data to improve default methods, and developing more biologically relevant and continuous risk estimators. The interrelated impacts of selecting specific subpopulations and health outcomes, and of increasing model complexity and data demands, were considered in the contexts of public policy goals and resources required. The participants stated that zero risk is unattainable, so targeted and effective risk reduction and communication strategies are essential not only to raise pubic awareness about water quality but also to protect the most susceptible members of the population.     

基于实物期权的基础设施投资担保负担测度及其风险管理研究

从项目筹资模式、基础设施投资担保现状及其运营模式视角出发,研究我国基础设施投资担保负担测度及其风险管理的问题。利用或有负债思想,分析了下限式担保、上下限式担保、比例上下限式担保三类担保的期权特性及其影响因素;运用实物期权方法,在不同担保方式下构建了担保负担评估模型,并对相应的项目投资担保负担进行了评估,结果显示,投资收益担保是担保负担最直接、最主要的来源,也是政府方的或有负债,基于此,在融资谈判中,政府方可以通过调整项目投资担保水平和项目投资担保方式来控制担保负担和锁定担保风险。     

Roy’s Safety‐First Portfolio Principle in Financial Risk Management of Disastrous Events

Roy pioneers the concept and practice of risk management of disastrous events via his safety‐first principle for portfolio selection. More specifically, his safety‐first principle advocates an optimal portfolio strategy generated from minimizing the disaster probability, while subject to the budget constraint and the mean constraint that the expected final wealth is not less than a preselected disaster level. This article studies the dynamic safety‐first principle in continuous time and its application in asset and liability management. We reveal that the distortion resulting from dropping the mean constraint, as a common practice to approximate the original Roy’s setting, either leads to a trivial case or changes the problem nature completely to a target‐reaching problem, which produces a highly leveraged trading strategy. Recognizing the ill‐posed nature of the corresponding Lagrangian method when retaining the mean constraint, we invoke a wisdom observed from a limited funding‐level regulation of pension funds and modify the original safety‐first formulation accordingly by imposing an upper bound on the funding level. This model revision enables us to solve completely the safety‐first asset‐liability problem by a martingale approach and to derive an optimal policy that follows faithfully the spirit of the safety‐first principle and demonstrates a prominent nature of fighting for the best and preventing disaster from happening.     

Interpreting MSHA Citations Through the Lens of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems: Investigating Their Impact on Mine Injuries and Illnesses 2003–2010

Since the late 1980s, the U.S. Department of Labor has considered regulating a systems approach to occupational health and safety management. Recently, a health and safety management systems (HSMS) standard has returned to the regulatory agenda of both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Because a mandated standard has implications for both industry and regulating bodies alike, it is imperative to gain a greater understanding of the potential effects that an HSMS regulatory approach can have on establishment‐level injuries and illnesses. Through the lens of MSHA's regulatory framework, we first explore how current enforcement activities align with HSMS elements. Using MSHA data for the years 2003–2010, we then analyze the relationship between various types of enforcement activities (e.g., total number of citations, total penalty amount, and HSMS‐aligned citations) and mine reportable injuries. Our findings show that the reduction in mine reportable injuries predicted by increases in MSHA enforcement ranges from negligible to 18%. The results suggest that the type and focus of the enforcement activity may be more important for accident reduction than the total number of citations issued and the associated penalty amount.     

In Search of Perfect Foresight? Policy Bias,Management of Unknowns,and What Has Changed in Science Policy Since the Tohoku Disaster

The failure to foresee the catastrophic earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear accident of 2011 has been perceived by many in Japan as a fundamental shortcoming of modern disaster risk science. Hampered by a variety of cognitive and institutional biases, the conventional disaster risk management planning based on the “known risks” led to the cascading failures of the interlinked disaster risk management (DRM) apparatus. This realization led to a major rethinking in the use of science for policy and the incorporations of lessons learned in the country's new DRM policy. This study reviews publicly available documents on expert committee discussions and scientific articles to identify what continuities and changes have been made in the use of scientific knowledge in Japanese risk management. In general, the prior influence of cognitive bias (e.g., overreliance on documented hazard risks) has been largely recognized, and increased attention is now being paid to the incorporation of less documented but known risks. This has led to upward adjustments in estimated damages from future risks and recognition of the need for further strengthening of DRM policy. At the same time, there remains significant continuity in the way scientific knowledge is perceived to provide sufficient and justifiable grounds for the development and implementation of DRM policy. The emphasis on “evidence‐based policy” in earthquake and tsunami risk reduction measures continues, despite the critical reflections of a group of scientists who advocate for a major rethinking of the country's science‐policy institution respecting the limitations of the current state science.     

Vulnerability and Risk: Some Thoughts from a Political and Policy Perspective

Public policies to mitigate the impacts of extreme events such as hurricanes or terrorist attacks will differ depending on whether they focus on reducing risk or reducing vulnerability. Here we present and defend six assertions aimed at exploring the benefits of vulnerability-based policies. (1) Risk-based approaches to covering the costs of extreme events do not depend for their success on reduction of vulnerability. (2) Risk-based approaches to preparing for extreme events are focused on acquiring accurate probabilistic information about the events themselves. (3) Understanding and reducing vulnerability does not demand accurate predictions of the incidence of extreme events. (4) Extreme events are created by context. (5) It is politically difficult to justify vulnerability reduction on economic grounds. (6) Vulnerability reduction is a human rights issue; risk reduction is not.     

Perception of Risk and the Attribution of Responsibility for Accidents

Accidents, one often hears, “happen”; we accept, and even expect, that they will be part of daily life. But in situations in which injury or death result, judgments of responsibility become critical. How might our perceptions of risk influence the ways in which we allocate responsibility for an accident? Drawing from attribution and risk perception theory, this study investigates how perceived controllability and desirability of risk, in addition to perceived danger and recreational risk‐taking, relate to attributions of responsibility for the cause of unintentional injury in a unique setting: U.S. national parks. Three parks, Mount Rainier, Olympic, and Delaware Water Gap, provide the setting for this survey‐based study, which considers how park visitors (N = 447) attribute responsibility for the cause of a hypothetical visitor accident. Results suggest that respondents tended to make more internal (i.e., related to characteristics of the victim), rather than external (i.e., related to characteristics of the park, or park management) attributions. As respondents viewed park‐related risk as controllable, they were more likely to attribute the cause of the accident to the victim. Moreover, among other significant variables, having experienced a similar accident predicted lower internal causal attribution. Opportunities for future research linking risk perception and attribution variables, as well as practical implications for the management of public outdoor settings, are presented.     

竞争视角下的剩余收益来源分析

利用剩余收益估价模型能提高股票价格的解释能力和预测价值的准确性,因此剩余收益的来源显得至关重要.以2001年～2005年中国A股制造业上市公司为研究对象,采用Panel Data和OLS回归方法,从竞争的视角对公司剩余收益的来源进行检验.研究结果表明,剩余收益确实来源于企业的经活动,并随着产品市场竞争程度的增强而降低;公司不同性质的负债杠杆对剩余收益产生截然不同的影响,经营负债杠杆产生正面影响,金融负债杠杆产生负面影响,这种影响随着竞争程度的减弱而增强;同时剩余收益随着公司规模的扩大、市场份额的拓展、产品差异化和资产专用性程度的提高而提升.     

Large Risks,Limited Liability,and Dynamic Moral Hazard

We study a continuous‐time principal–agent model in which a risk‐neutral agent with limited liability must exert unobservable effort to reduce the likelihood of large but relatively infrequent losses. Firm size can be decreased at no cost or increased subject to adjustment costs. In the optimal contract, investment takes place only if a long enough period of time elapses with no losses occurring. Then, if good performance continues, the agent is paid. As soon as a loss occurs, payments to the agent are suspended, and so is investment if further losses occur. Accumulated bad performance leads to downsizing. We derive explicit formulae for the dynamics of firm size and its asymptotic growth rate, and we provide conditions under which firm size eventually goes to zero or grows without bounds.     

Broadband Network Management and the Net Neutrality Debate

The debate of net neutrality and the potential regulation of net neutrality may fundamentally change the dynamics of data consumption and transmission through the Internet. The existing literature on economics of net neutrality focuses only on the supply side of the market, that is, a broadband service provider (BSP) may charge content providers for priority delivery of their content to consumers. In this article, we explore a complete spectrum of broadband network management options based on both the supply and demand sides of the market. We find that although the BSP always prefers the non‐neutral network management options, it does not always discriminate both sides of the market. From the social planner's perspective, we find that some network management options maximize the social welfare under certain market conditions while other options reduce the social welfare. Using the terminology from a recent Federal Communications Commission report and order, we categorize the social welfare maximizing options as “reasonable network management” and the social welfare reducing options as “unreasonable discrimination.” We also identify conditions under which the BSP's network management choices deviate from the social optimum. These conditions help establish the criteria under which the social planner might wish to regulate the BSP's actions.     

A Multifactorial Risk Prioritization Framework for Foodborne Pathogens

We develop a prioritization framework for foodborne risks that considers public health impact as well as three other factors (market impact, consumer risk acceptance and perception, and social sensitivity). Canadian case studies are presented for six pathogen‐food combinations: Campylobacter spp. in chicken; Salmonella spp. in chicken and spinach; Escherichia coli O157 in spinach and beef; and Listeria monocytogenes in ready‐to‐eat meats. Public health impact is measured by disability‐adjusted life years and the cost of illness. Market impact is quantified by the economic importance of the domestic market. Likert‐type scales are used to capture consumer perception and acceptance of risk and social sensitivity to impacts on vulnerable consumer groups and industries. Risk ranking is facilitated through the development of a knowledge database presented in the format of info cards and the use of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to aggregate the four factors. Three scenarios representing different stakeholders illustrate the use of MCDA to arrive at rankings of pathogen‐food combinations that reflect different criteria weights. The framework provides a flexible instrument to support policymakers in complex risk prioritization decision making when different stakeholder groups are involved and when multiple pathogen‐food combinations are compared.