地方政府行为模式多样性的经济学分析

中国的市场化改革带来了经济领域的分权,导致各地方政府成为具有独立地位的利益主体,分别在特定的约束条件下追求自身的最大化利益。可以将地方政府界定为以地方党委主要领导为首的在地方事务中发挥核心作用的领导层,其在特定的约束条件下追求特定的利益目标。通过地方政府效能分配模型可以说明,不同地方政府由于面临约束条件的差别,产生了利益目标、追求目标方式等方面的差别,因而产生了多样化的地方政府行为模式。     

我国地方人大常委会荣誉职权及荣誉制度的完善

地方人大常委会是特定共同体内最高权威机构,是民主代议组织,承担着道德建设职责,这种特殊地位决定了其行使荣誉职权的正当性。《地方组织法》第44条作为荣誉职权的授权性条款,明确了其行使主体、具体内容,但相对于具体实践来看,该条款属于原则规定,留下了巨大的自由操作空间。实践中存在着职权主体僭越、表彰对象不均衡、表彰条件要求偏低等问题。鉴于此,地方各级人大常委会需要在保障荣誉职权行使的独立性、设置专门组织、规范荣誉称号等方面完善地方人大荣誉制度。     

城市经营误入歧途之机制浅析

城市经营是近几年来城市管理和学术研究中的热点问题,但众多学者和城市管理者在城市经营的现实基础、内涵本质、所遵循的基础理论和所面临的问题等方面并没有取得一致的意见。虽然城市经营表现出的形式多种多样,但其内涵和本质是以提高城市竞争力为目标;城市经营的理论基础可以从蒂伯特模型、政府再造运动和布雷顿竞争性政府的概念中去寻找;片面理解城市经营不但会造成土地等城市资源枯竭、加重企业和群众负担以及城市负债过度,而且极易诱发金融风险;要防止城市经营走入歧途,不仅需要彻底解决地方政府财权事权不对等的问题,完善城市管理的立法工作,还需要全面反思城市的土地经营思路,规范政府行为和市场秩序的重建。     

Strategic Planning for Support Services for Children with a Parent or Close Relative in Prison

It has long been recognized that children with a parent or close relative in prison are more likely to experience educational difficulties, emotional distress, family breakdown and a substantial reduction in family income (Boswell 2002; Smith et al. 2007; Morgan et al. 2013b; Morgan and Gill 2013). Consequently, children with a parent in prison are more likely to require support from statutory services, especially education and social care. However, statutory support for this group of children is sparse, and children of prisoners tend not to be identified as a priority group. The demand on local authorities to spend their limited budgets wisely means tough decisions have to be made. These decisions are not taken in a vacuum: they are taken in a context of local need, consumer representation, central and local politics; underpinned by the values and attitudes of individual members as well as by the ethos or culture of the local authority itself. In this article we apply Axford's typology (2009) of the different cultures which underpin local authority service provision to data from a research study carried out in 2011 in one local authority which explored support provision in schools for children of prisoners. We examine the contradictions and gaps within the local authority's attempts to synergize the different modules of service delivery into a coherent pattern of provision, and we explore how changes in strategic culture might lead to improvements being made in terms of service delivery to this group of ‘vulnerable’ children.     

空间城市化机制和人口城市化目标——对中国当代城市化发展的一项研究

无论从城市人口变化还是城市空间变化角度观察,以上个世纪90年代中期为界,中国的城市化都经历了两个不同的阶段。90年代中期以来的城市化是以地方政府经营土地使用权为内在动力的空间城市化过程,这一机制是由一系列土地法规催生形成的。这一城市化机制的主要问题在于:它无意于解决人口城市化中跨省市流动人口的异地城市化问题;它造成空间意义上低效率的假性城市化;更为重要的是,它造成了具有宏观影响的土地金融风险。本文基此认为,应该制定相关政策调整和规范地方政府策动的空间城市化机制,规避其产生的问题,通过激励设计促进城市化在机制与目标方面的协调。     

Smoothing for discrete-valued time series

We deal with smoothed estimators for conditional probability functions of discrete-valued time series { Y_t } under two different settings. When the conditional distribution of Y_t given its lagged values falls in a parametric family and depends on exogenous random variables, a smoothed maximum (partial) likelihood estimator for the unknown parameter is proposed. While there is no prior information on the distribution, various nonparametric estimation methods have been compared and the adjusted Nadaraya–Watson estimator stands out as it shares the advantages of both Nadaraya–Watson and local linear regression estimators. The asymptotic normality of the estimators proposed has been established in the manner of sparse asymptotics, which shows that the smoothed methods proposed outperform their conventional, unsmoothed, parametric counterparts under very mild conditions. Simulation results lend further support to this assertion. Finally, the new method is illustrated via a real data set concerning the relationship between the number of daily hospital admissions and the levels of pollutants in Hong Kong in 1994–1995. An ad hoc model selection procedure based on a local Akaike information criterion is proposed to select the significant pollutant indices.     

Building capacity for urban management in Ghana: some critical considerations

Severe capacity gaps continue to constrain effective urban management in Ghana, despite numerous donor-supported training programmes. This paper examines the nature of these capacity gaps and analyses specifically the factors contributing to the low attraction and retention of local government staff: politicisation of the bureaucracy, excessive use of external experts, excessive state intervention in skill development and low remuneration of local government staff. Against this background, the paper reviews critically a recent capacity building initiative: the establishment of the (new) Institute of Local Government Studies in Accra. Suggestions to improve capacity building for urban management in Ghana are offered. These include the need to prepare a coherent strategy to guide and co-ordinate stakeholder inputs in capacity building; to place training in the context of institutional development; and encourage the development and use of local expertise in donor assisted projects; and, promote merit-based remuneration of local government staff.     

提高民办学校教学质量的若干思考

教学质量的优劣,是民办学校兴教师队伍建设,改善办学条件,规范教学管理制度,严格教学质量评估.     

On the Distribution of Likelihood Ratio Test Statistics for Cointegration Rank

This paper analyses the likelihood ratio test for the hypothesis of reduced cointegration rank in a Gaussian vector autoregressive model. The usual asymptotic distribution typically gives rather large size distortions. This is explained by the fact that the asymptotic distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistic varies across the parameter space. A much improved distribution approximation can be obtained using local asymptotic theory. The idea is discussed for some low dimensional examples.     

Markov random-field models for estimating local labour markets

Summary. This work is motivated by data on daily travel-to-work flows observed between pairs of elemental territorial units of an Italian region. The data were collected during the 1991 population census. The aim of the analysis is to partition the region into local labour markets. We present a new method for this which is inspired by the Bayesian texture segmentation approach. We introduce a novel Markov random-field model for the distribution of the variables that label the local labour markets for each territorial unit. Inference is performed by means of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The issue of model hyperparameter estimation is also addressed. We compare the results with those obtained by applying a classical method. The methodology can be applied with minor modifications to other data sets.