Socio-political control in urban China: changes and crisis

This paper examines urban China's socio-political control crisis under the impact of economic reforms as an epitome of a more general social crisis. The traditional urban institutional form of socio-political control in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the work unit form of control, is a variant of age-old forms. The latter's reproduction in variant form in the former was premised upon the fact that the PRC's industrialization was carried out by a peasant-based party creating a new working class of rural migrants engaged in non-market production and exchange. The persistence of non-market economic relations ensured this form of control's continued reproduction. Post-1978 market-oriented reforms have undermined this form. As the emergence of new forms has been slow, a socio-political control crisis has arisen, at a time when millions of urban employees are being thrown out of work. In dealing with the crisis, the official trade union, an organic constituent institution of the work unit form of control, plays a prominent part, in being given the tasks of sustaining this decaying form, and preventing and defusing potential social explosion. Yet, the very economic reform programme that has undermined the work unit form of control, is also gravely weakening the union.     

The influence of interviewer characteristics on support for democracy and political engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa*

This study investigates how an interviewer’s characteristics affect how respondents answer survey questions about democracy and political engagement. I analyze data from the 2008 Afrobarometer surveys, in which 810 interviewers surveyed 27,713 respondents across 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Using these data, I study how interviewer education, age, and gender affect two outcomes: (1) response distributions to attitudinal and behavioral survey questions and (2) the likelihood of respondents saying ‘don’t know’ to a survey question. The analysis also investigates how the respondent’s perception of who sponsored the survey (NGO, private sector, government) affects attitudes. The results show that these interviewer characteristics affect the quality of survey data on political attitudes and behaviors. In the discussion, I consider the implications for research based on public opinion data about democracy and political engagement.     

‘Mind the Gap’: An Analysis of Gender Wage Differentials in Russia

This paper provides new estimates for male-female earnings differentials in Russia, incorporating the use of the Heckman (Econometrica 47: 153–161, 1979) two-step procedure for sample selection bias. This is a necessary adjustment in the case of female earnings because women who participate in the labour market may be a non-random sub-set of those who could work. This is a technique that enables the participation decision of women to be modelled and their earnings corrected for self-selection. The gender gap is then calculated using Oaxaca (International Economic Review 14: 693–709, 1973) and Reimers’ (Review of Economics and Statistics 65: 570–579, 1983) methods. The results indicate that the unexplained part of the earnings differential is smaller than in other studies that did not correct for sample selection.     

A Monte Carlo Markov chain algorithm for a class of mixture time series models

This article generalizes the Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) algorithm, based on the Gibbs weighted Chinese restaurant (gWCR) process algorithm, for a class of kernel mixture of time series models over the Dirichlet process. This class of models is an extension of Lo’s (Ann. Stat. 12:351–357, 1984) kernel mixture model for independent observations. The kernel represents a known distribution of time series conditional on past time series and both present and past latent variables. The latent variables are independent samples from a Dirichlet process, which is a random discrete (almost surely) distribution. This class of models includes an infinite mixture of autoregressive processes and an infinite mixture of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) processes.     

王茂荫纸币思想新论

作为咸丰货币改革中的重要一员,王茂荫的货币思想一直为国内外学界所关注。中国学界长期认为他是一位反对名目论传统的理论金属论者,但实际却不然。王茂荫货币思想的核心理念是以实运虚,主要体现在两个方面:实际运作中政府需要一定比率的商品货币储备支持纸币;根据预定的货币法则,纸币和商品货币在一定比率下同时流通。他提倡保持商品储备以坚定纸币持有者对纸币的信心,主张权力机构制定纸币的价值,并需要持币者的信任去支持。而货币信用理论认为虽然货币的价值由货币发行机构(通常是政府)所制定,但需要获得持币者的信任才能成功。实用金属论认为在某一历史情况下,纸币的发行需要商品储备的支持。这些恰恰表明了王茂荫是持货币信用理论的实用金属论者。在未受到西方影响的中国货币思想传统中,王茂荫是最富于创见的一位思想者。他提倡的将公共货币和私票相结合的规则如被采纳和认真执行,将会使咸丰货币改革在更大程度上获得成功,很可能会改写历史进程。     

A hybrid solution to collaborative decision-making in a decentralized supply-chain

This paper considers a decentralized supply chain, where multiple independent manufacturing facilities manage some capital-intensive equipments or resources shared among them. In particular, these manufacturing facilities operate somewhat in isolation to serve their own customers, but coordinate closely with each other to ensure the shared resources are effectively utilized. Such cross-facility capacity management problems are common in high-tech industries, they are typical examples of collaborative decision-making in supply chain integration, and are critical to create a competitive edge in a more interconnected business environment. In this paper, a hybrid algorithm that integrates Lagrangian relaxation and immunity-inspired coordination scheme, known as LR-ICI, is proposed and investigated by extensive numerical experiments, and is shown to be competitive compared to similar algorithms.     

Trends in Child Poverty in Hong Kong Immigrant Families

In Hong Kong, child poverty is a serious social problem which may lead to intergenerational poverty, but nevertheless only a few studies have examined this issue, particularly for immigrant families. Using Census data (5 %) from 1981, 1991, 2001, and 2011, we assessed child poverty rates in the past three decades and identified key variables contributing to changes in the risk of child poverty for both immigrant and local families. Our results indicate that child poverty rates in Hong Kong-born families have fluctuated between 14.3 and 15.8 % over the past three decades, while for immigrant families they have increased steadily and substantially from 18.1 % in 1981 to 36.5 % in 2001 and then to 37.5 % in 2011. We show that the increase in immigrant child poverty is associated with changes in the Hong Kong economy that have made it more difficult for such families to adapt to the host society, especially in the 1990s and that this negative effect offset the positive influence of compositional changes among this group of immigrant families in terms of parental education levels and family size. The gap between immigrant and local families in terms of child poverty risk is mainly due to the fact that during the 1990s the negative effect of contextual changes in Hong Kong was cancelled out by the beneficial impact of compositional changes for local families, but not for immigrant families where the latter effect was minimal.     

The microeconomics of distribution: A simulation of the farm economy

A simulation model that incorporates both production and consumption behavior of farm households in Taiwan is presented. The model is used to analyze the effects of policy instruments (price supports, minimum wages, taxes, subsidies, demographic policies, and land and capital redistribution) on the aggregate values of the endogenous variables of the system—the supplies of output and labor, the demands of factors and consumption, income and expenditure—and their distribution among households. The model differs from other simulation models in that it is based on microsimulation, in which the joint distribution of individual household characteristics such as farm-specific prices, initial endowments of land and capital, and numbers of workers and dependents, is explicitly taken into account. As a result, the model is capable of capturing the distributional as well as aggregate impacts of policy changes.     

Optimal control of an accelerated drifting process

This paper considers a production process in which product quality follows a stochastic drifting process during production. The drift time is assumed to be dependent on the process state and the deterioration rate increases when the process state deviates from its target. The discrete geometric jump model is studied first and then continuous approximation is examined for the drifting process. Optimal adjustment level is derived from a cost model.     

The Stability of Same‐Sex Cohabitation,Different‐Sex Cohabitation,and Marriage

This study contributes to the emerging demographic literature on same‐sex couples by comparing the level and correlates of union stability among 4 types of couples: (a) male same‐sex cohabitation, (b) female same‐sex cohabitation, (c) different‐sex cohabitation, and (d) different‐sex marriage. The author analyzed data from 2 British birth cohort studies: the National Child Development Study (N = 11,469) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (N = 11,924). These data contain retrospective histories of same‐sex and different‐sex unions throughout young adulthood (age 16–34) from 1974 through 2004. Event‐history analyses showed that same‐sex cohabitations have higher rates of dissolution than do different‐sex cohabiting and marital unions. Among same‐sex couples, male couples had slightly higher dissolution rates than did female couples. In addition, same‐sex couples from the 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts had similar levels of union stability. The demographic correlates of union stability are generally similar for same‐sex and different‐sex unions.