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.     

Privatization of refuse removal and labor costs

We examine the labor-cost savings associated with privatization by comparing earnings and employment trends of public and private sector refuse workers. Findings suggest that high union earnings for workers in the public sector are a source of labor-cost savings in the refuse industry. Evidence on job changers does not indicate that earnings for this group of workers are a compensating differential. Metropolitan area employment findings suggest that municipalities are less likely to use union refuse workers in the public sector when a relatively small percentage of area residents belong to a union. The authors thank Jacqueline Agesa, Keith Bender, Maria Crawford, and Richard Perlman for valuable suggestions. Research assistance from Eric Blackburn is greatly appreciated.     

努力建设社会主义政治文明

发展社会主义民主政治 ,建设社会主义政治文明 ,是全面建设小康社会的重要目标。坚持党的领导、人民民主、依法治国 ,是具有中国特色社会主义政治文明的三大支点和三大基本特征。社会主义政治文明建设的现实取向主要是推进党的建设、发展人民民主、落实依法治国、加强制度创新。     

Deposit Insurance,Institutions, and Bank Interest Rates

Many recent institutional reforms of the financial system have relied on the introduction of an explicit scheme of deposit insurance. This instrument aims at two main targets, contributing to systemic stability and protecting depositors. However, it may also affect the interest rate spread in the banking system, which can be viewed as an indicator of either inefficiency or market power in this financial segment. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the effect of deposit insurance and other institutional and economic variables on bank interest rates across countries. We find that deposit insurance increases the lending–deposit spread in banking. The main effect seems to arise not from the deposit side though, but from an increase in the lending rate. We interpret this result as evidence of the presence of moral hazard problems related to this instrument. We also find that higher quality of institutions is associated with lower spreads, thus contributing to eroding sources of market power in the banking sector.     

The current state of the labor queue: National and regional Evidence

We employ vector autoregressive techniques to determine the current state of the labor queue. Unemployment rate differentials have narrowed in recent years, potentially due to a change in the queue ordering, though a tight labor market and a stable queue would yield similar results. We find no evidence that the queue ordering has changed, which brings into question the resiliency of gains made by minority groups. We employ the same techniques to reveal the state of the queue across geographic regions and find that substantial differences exist across regions, implying variation in the relative labor force status of demographic groups.     

当代印度南部婆罗门状况的个案分析——以奈保尔《印度:百万叛变的今天》为例

当代印度社会正发生着极大的变动,社会各阶层都在极力维护固有地位和宗教传统的稳定,并极力在这种变动中争取着自身社会利益的最大化。其中,南印度婆罗门种姓在逐步丧失传统的各项特权和优势地位的同时,也在努力适应、应对当代社会的新变化和新挑战。英国作家V.S.奈保尔的《印度:百万叛变的今天》一书提供了较为翔实、客观的口述史资料。以书中生活在孟买、班加罗尔、马德拉斯、加尔各达等南印度城市中的当代婆罗门阶层作为个案,可探究出其面对传统社会生活中的各个层面发生变动时的态度与应对及个体内在的深层原因,并在一定程度上考察社会变动与文化传统之间的互动关系。     

Bayesian analysis of a marked point process: Application in seismic hazard assessment

Point processes are the stochastic models most suitable for describing physical phenomena that appear at irregularly spaced times, such as the earthquakes. These processes are uniquely characterized by their conditional intensity, that is, by the probability that an event will occur in the infinitesimal interval (t, t+Δt), given the history of the process up tot. The seismic phenomenon displays different behaviours on different time and size scales; in particular, the occurrence of destructive shocks over some centuries in a seismogenic region may be explained by the elastic rebound theory. This theory has inspired the so-called stress release models: their conditional intensity translates the idea that an earthquake produces a sudden decrease in the amount of strain accumulated gradually over time along a fault, and the subsequent event occurs when the stress exceeds the strength of the medium. This study has a double objective: the formulation of these models in the Bayesian framework, and the assignment to each event of a mark, that is its magnitude, modelled through a distribution that depends at timet on the stress level accumulated up to that instant. The resulting parameter space is constrained and dependent on the data, complicating Bayesian computation and analysis. We have resorted to Monte Carlo methods to solve these problems.