From pension funds to piggy banks: (Perverse) consequences of the Stability and Growth Pact since the crisis

As part of their strategy for economic and monetary union, European governments committed themselves to fiscal discipline – particularly by placing limits on annual deficits and on public debt. Subsequently, and as they sought to respond to the “current crisis”, they embraced the view that only if public finances were kept under control would sustainable recovery be possible. Rules of fiscal governance were strengthened. To help them meet these rules, the governments of many member States of the European Union made changes to their pension systems or to funds they had established specifically to pay the costs of population ageing. The intention was not to cut retirement benefits or to improve the efficiency of the relevant pension schemes and institutions. Rather, it was to free up resources immediately. Funded pension schemes and pension funds were treated like “piggy banks” that were raided when times became hard. Moreover, the policies pursued succeeded in meeting their objectives only because the system of national accounts according to which outcomes are judged does not recognize the way in which most of the fiscal gains are matched by future fiscal liabilities.     

Behavioral responses and the distributional effects of the Russian ‘flat’ tax

This paper simulates the distributional impact of the Russian personal income tax (PIT) following the flat tax reform of 2001 using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. I decompose the change in the distribution of net income into a direct (tax) effect and an indirect effect. The indirect effect is further decomposed into evasion and productivity effects using existing estimates of these respective elasticities. As expected, the direct tax effect increased net income inequality. Changes in the pre-tax distribution (indirect effect), on the other hand, had a large negative impact on inequality thus leading to an overall decline in net income inequality. I also find that the tax-induced evasion response increased reported net income inequality while reducing consumption inequality. To the extent that consumption approximates actual income, these results demonstrate that the flat tax reform had a much smaller effect on actual income inequality than on reported income inequality. More importantly, relative to non-tax factor, the reform had little overall effect on income inequality. This suggests that objection to flatter tax schedules on the grounds of income inequality is mostly misguided, especially in transitional countries with high levels of evasion.     

Does inflation targeting lower inflation and spur growth?

Over the last few decades several countries have turned to inflation targeting as a policy choice for instilling stability into their economies. Prior studies have shown that inflation targeting has reduced inflation in those countries without significantly impacting GDP. This study seeks to improve upon these results by identifying the impact of timing on the policy decision as well as its impact as related to specific regions of the world. The focus is on developing countries across six regions. We find significant regional variation in developing countries in our sample in terms of the direction of changes in inflation following a switch to the inflation targeting policy. Moreover, although the impact of inflation targeting on real GDP is minimal overall, there is a statistically significant increase in real GDP among developing countries in certain regions only, namely, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.     

Half a century of empirical evidence of business cycles in OECD countries

This paper presents evidence regarding the existence of common business cycles in OECD countries. More specifically, the paper examines the extent to which these cycles relate to each other over time. Business cycle components of output are extracted by adopting the Hodrick–Prescott, Baxter–King and the Christiano–Fitzgerald filters. The degree of business cycle co-movements is determined by evaluating the cross-correlation of the cyclical components of output in selected countries. We also implement the bound-testing approach proposed by Pesaran, Shin and Smith (2001) to investigate the long-run and short-run relations among the business cycle components of output. The study covers the period from 1960 to 2010. The empirical results suggest that there are two distinct cycles in the OECD countries: the Euro-area cycle, which includes the business cycles of Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Austria and Belgium, and the world cycle, which consists of the business cycles of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.     

汉英平行语料库双语语义对应空位研究

双语词语语义对应空位现象是英汉互译的常见障碍。在建立英汉平行语料库的过程中,这也是无法回避的问题。本文拟总结目前已建成的一些语料库处理这一问题的习惯方式,并在此基础上借鉴机器翻译研究领域的理论成果,试图做出更加细致的分析并提出更加可行的解决方案。     

On the performance of L2E estimation in modelling heterogeneous count responses with extreme values

In healthcare studies, count data sets measured with covariates often exhibit heterogeneity and contain extreme values. To analyse such count data sets, we use a finite mixture of regression model framework and investigate a robust estimation approach, called the L₂E [D.W. Scott, On fitting and adapting of density estimates, Comput. Sci. Stat. 30 (1998), pp. 124–133], to estimate the parameters. The L₂E is based on an integrated L₂ distance between parametric conditional and true conditional mass functions. In addition to studying the theoretical properties of the L₂E estimator, we compare the performance of L₂E with the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator and a minimum Hellinger distance (MHD) estimator via Monte Carlo simulations for correctly specified and gross-error contaminated mixture of Poisson regression models. These show that the L₂E is a viable robust alternative to the ML and MHD estimators. More importantly, we use the L₂E to perform a comprehensive analysis of a Western Australia hospital inpatient obstetrical length of stay (LOS) (in days) data that contains extreme values. It is shown that the L₂E provides a two-component Poisson mixture regression fit to the LOS data which is better than those based on the ML and MHD estimators. The L₂E fit identifies admission type as a significant covariate that profiles the predominant subpopulation of normal-stayers as planned patients and the small subpopulation of long-stayers as emergency patients.     

对基于校企合作的“2+6”专业实践教学改革的探索与实践——以湖南工程学院与德力西电气联合培养电气工程专业应用型本科人才为例

在对比欧美"CDIO工程教育"模式和德国"FH"模式的基础上,结合基于校企合作的"2+6"实践教学改革,以湖南工程学院与德力西电气"企业+学校+学生"开展的联合培养"选择性+创新型"应用型人才为例,对基于校企合作的"3+1"联合培养"卓越工程师"的教学改革进行探索与研究。     

体育院系高校健美操课程内容的改革探微

健美操是一项正在蓬勃发展而又更新很快的体育运动项目,若是仅滞留于对健美操这一项目的基本了解层面,已不能满足当前学生对其学习的欲望和需求。我们根据当前社会体育发展对健美操运动项目的新动向及其对健美操专项人才的需求,考虑学科建设发展的需要和学生自身发展的需求,重视其教学内容改革的新颖性和丰富性,拓宽学生编排能力、思维能力和创新能力,倡导健美操任课教师积极运用现代化辅助教学方式和手段,激发和拓宽学生的知识和能力结构,促进其多种思维能力协和发展,从而使培养出的健美操专业人才更好地投身和服务于社会。     

从信息释义角度谈外宣词汇翻译策略——以新词为例

本文结合相关翻译理论,特别是从现代信息论原理入手,从释义角度分析了对外宣传翻译中词汇的解读问题,探讨了其分类及特征,并以新词为例,总结了外宣词汇英译的原则与几种方法,并结合具体词汇实例加以说明。     

3G数字图书馆信息服务模式的构建

随着3G的普遍应用,3G数字图书馆信息服务越来越引起人们的重视。3G网络下的数字图书馆将在服务内容、服务理念以及服务模式等方面做出突破以往的重大变革,图书馆服务也将向更高质、更高效、更个性化和更人性化方向发展。随着3G技术日臻完善以及网络建设的规模化的提高,3G手机用户也与日俱增,加之我们不断改良其带宽性能,无线网络大有替代传统网络的趋势,因此现代的数字图书馆开展3G服务具有广阔的发展前景。