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.     

Testing symmetry under a skew Laplace model

We develop tests of hypothesis about symmetry based on samples from possibly asymmetric Laplace distributions and present exact and limiting distribution of the test statistics. We postulate that the test statistic derived under the Laplace model is a rational choice as a measure of skewness and can be used in testing symmetry for other, quite general classes of skew distributions. Our results are applied to foreign exchange rates for 15 currencies.     

Educational Issues for Children and Young People in Families Living in Emergency Accommodation—An Irish Perspective

The article explores how homelessness may impact on the educational participation of children and young people in families living in emergency accommodation in Dublin. Many difficulties arise in terms of maintaining consistent schooling for children when they are part of a homeless family, including problems getting to and from school if living at a distance from their original schools, frequent changes in school and inadequate facilities and overcrowding in their temporary accommodation. Despite the many difficulties involved in maintaining children's regular school attendance, it is evident that school may represent the only stability for a child in an otherwise insecure and changing routine. Copyright © 2006 Children's Research Centre.     

A Review of Kyoto Protocol Adoption in Russia: Joint Implementation in Focus

Russia’s role in ‘animation’ of the Kyoto Protocol was crucial. Its initial vacillation on ratification was predominantly due to political bargaining with the EU. Domestic economic rationales [i.e. impacts of emission trading and Joint Implementation (JI) projects] were important to a much lesser extent and environmental motives did not seem to play any role in the decision. Since the Protocol entered into force, there have been significant delays in complete establishment of policy implementation frameworks, which are necessary for Russia to start benefiting from JI and emission trading. Only recently, in 2007, have GHG inventories and a national registry been established and the responsibilities for implementation of the Protocol and JI among the government departments have been distributed only to a certain extent. Some constraints hindering JI projects, such as vague legislation, an unfavourable economic climate, lack of commitment to JI projects, corruption, xenophobia, state and agency ‘capture’ still remain.      

A Bayesian Hierarchical Model for the Evaluation of a Website

Consider a website and the surfers visiting its pages. A typical issue of interest, for example while monitoring an advertising campaign, concerns whether a specific page has been designed successfully, i.e. is able to attract surfers or address them to other pages within the site. We assume that the surfing behaviour is fully described by the transition probabilities from one page to another, so that a clickstream (sequence of consecutively visited pages) can be viewed as a finite-state-space Markov chain. We then implement a variety of hierarchical prior distributions on the multivariate logits of the transition probabilities and define, for each page, a content effect and a link effect. The former measures the attractiveness of the page due to its contents, while the latter signals its ability to suggest further interesting links within the site. Moreover, we define an additional effect, representing overall page success, which incorporates both effects previously described. Using WinBUGS, we provide estimates and credible intervals for each of the above effects and rank pages accordingly.     

An experimental investigation of the impact of ambiguity on the valuationof self-insurance and self-protection

We build two experimental markets to examine individual valuations of risk reductions with two risk-management tools: self-insurance and self-protection. We find no positive evidence that the risk-reducing mechanisms constitute a “frame.” Ambiguity in the probability on average affects valuation only weakly, and changes in the representation of ambiguity do not alter valuation. Finally, unlike the results obtained by Hogarth and Kunreuther for the case of market insurance, our findings do not provide a strong support for the “Anchoring and Adjustment” ambiguity model.     

不同权力结构下碳税对供应链减排水平的影响

随着我国生态文明建设的不断推进,促进供应链协同减排成为生产和消费领域落实绿色发展理念的重要举措。在绿色供应链的管理实践中,不同类型的供应链核心企业在进行减排决策时会有不同的侧重点,因此供应链权力的结构成为影响供应链减排水平的关键因素。本文在一个由两个制造商和一个零售商组成的两级供应链中研究了不同权力结构下的供应链最优减排和定价决策问题,分别给出了零售商主导和制造商主导的Stackelberg-Nash博弈均衡解,并分析了产品的单位生产成本、单位批发价格、碳税税率等参数对供应链最优决策的影响。本文的研究结果表明：（1）在两种供应链权力结构下,当产品的单位批发价格固定时,降低产品的生产成本都可以促使制造商提高减排水平;但是当产品的单位生产成本固定时,提高产品的批发价格却不一定总是能够激励制造商提高减排水平;（2）在两种供应链权力结构下,对于低排放行业的制造商来说,提高碳税税率可以增加产品的减排水平,但是对于高排放行业的制造商来说,提高碳税税率反而会降低产品的减排水平;（3）一般来说,零售商占主导地位的供应链中产品减排水平和供应链总利润相对较高,供应链碳排放总量相对较低。最后,与供应链集中决策模式相比,随着产品批发价格的增加,两种分散决策模式下的供应链双重边际效应逐渐增强。数值实验结果显示：在碳税税率的一定取值范围内,这种双重边际效应会使得两种分散决策模式下的产品最优减排水平和供应链碳排放总量均优于集中决策模式。本文的研究可为碳税政策下供应链的协同减排提供有益的管理启示。     

跨界搜寻对新创科技企业绩效的影响

跨界搜寻是新创科技企业突破资源短缺和技术匮乏双重束缚的重要途径,然而其内在作用机理尚待挖掘剖析。基于资源拼凑理论视角,构建了跨界搜寻影响新创科技企业绩效的中介模型,进而采用多元回归分析和Bootstrap等方法,对201份企业样本数据进行了实证分析。研究结果表明:（1）前瞻型搜寻与反应型搜寻对新创科技企业绩效均具有显著正向影响;（2）前瞻型搜寻与反应型搜寻之间存在互补效应,该互补效应显著正向影响新创科技企业绩效;（3）在作用机制方面,资源拼凑在前瞻型搜寻与新创科技企业绩效之间起到部分中介作用,而在反应型搜寻与新创科技企业绩效之间发挥完全中介作用。     

Governance Structures,Coordination Mechanisms and Cognitive Models

This paper criticizes the current prevailing ways ofmodelling governance alternatives, and advocates theopportunity and feasibility of a reconceptualizationof governance forms as mixes or configurations ofsimpler and potentially disentangleablecomponents. These components are constituted by abundle of property rights and by a set of coordinationmechanisms. The paper draws on a previous effort atintegrating economic, organizational and sociologicaltheories of governance in a cognitive perspective(Grandori 1995a) and explicitates how some cognitivefoundations of organization theory can be revised tosustain a more fine-grained view of governance. Theimplications for organization design are illustratedin the final section through the solution of someempirical design problems, as well as through areinterpretation of known hybrid arrangements.