On the usefulness of government spending in the EU area

This paper investigates the effects of government spending on private consumption and investment in the European Union (EU). A certain consensus has been reached on the expansionary Keynesian effects of fiscal impulses on the economic activity. However, the existing empirical literature has concentrated on few countries, mostly outside the EU. We check the validity of this result for the EU area using annual data and a panel vector auto-regression approach, with particular attention being paid to robustness across alternative identification assumptions based on Cholesky orderings. Our results show that shocks to public spending positively affect private consumption and investment. According to our baseline estimate, a 1% increase in public current expenditure produces a 0.24% impact rise in private consumption, and a 0.41% impact rise in private investment. The effects are substantial, and die out slowly in the case of private consumption (the cumulative impact amounts to +0.56% after 3 years), but much faster in the case of private investment. A further disaggregation between wage and non-wage components reveals that public salaries have a relatively stronger stimulating role. This is not due to the different weights on GDP of the two components, which have comparable values in our sample.     

金融特区：上海国际金融中心建设制度创新

上海要建设国际金融中心,必须破解制度—技术约束。上海国际金融中心建设可以借鉴中国经济特区建设经验,实施＂金融特区＂制度创新。这一制度创新对上海国际金融中心建设具有决定性意义,并对全国金融体制改革具有引领作用。上海金融特区可实施资本—金融项目管制改革、浮动汇率制度改革、人民币国际化改革等试验,目标是人民币全面国际化,并成为除美元、欧元之外的第三种主要国际货币。不仅在国际贸易中广泛使用人民币计价和结算,还要使人民币成为国际储备货币。同时,相应提出建设金融特区的技术可行性和路径选择。     

大学英语听、说教学精英战略的可行性研究——培养三表学生从恐讲到自由交流

随着我国高校扩招的浪潮进一步推进,大学教育也已从精英教育阶段步入了大众化教育阶段,许多专家和学者也随之把注意力转移到高等教育大众化的研究和探索方面,从而疏忽了对新形势下精英教育的价值和发展前景的关注。针对三表院校学生听、说能力和教师教学现状,本文探讨大学英语听、说教学精英战略。黑龙江科技学院50名非英语专业二年级学生被选取作为受试,经过从恐讲到模仿再到自由交流的过程性培养,大部分学生的英语听、说能力得到提高。这种大学英语听、说教学精英战略对三表学生英语听、说能力的提高有一定帮助。     

LABOR‐MARKET HETEROGENEITY,AGGREGATION, AND POLICY (IN)VARIANCE OF DSGE MODEL PARAMETERS

Data from a heterogeneous‐agents economy with incomplete asset markets and indivisible labor supply are simulated under various fiscal policy regimes and an approximating representative‐agent model is estimated. Preference and technology parameter estimates of the representative‐agent model are not invariant to policy changes and the bias in the representative‐agent model’s policy predictions is large compared to predictive intervals that reflect parameter uncertainty. Since it is not always feasible to account for heterogeneity explicitly, it is important to recognize the possibility that the parameters of a highly aggregated model may not be invariant with respect to policy changes.     

PROXYING FOR UNOBSERVABLE VARIABLES WITH INTERNET DOCUMENT‐FREQUENCY

The internet contains billions of documents. We show that document frequencies in large decentralized textual databases can capture the cross‐sectional variation in the occurrence frequencies of social phenomena. We characterize the econometric conditions under which such proxying is likely. We also propose using recently‐introduced internet search volume indexes as proxies for fundamental locational traits, and discuss their advantages and limitations. We then successfully proxy for a number of economic and demographic variables in US cities and states. We further obtain document‐frequency measures of corruption by country and US state and replicate the econometric results of previous research studying its covariates. Finally, we provide the first measure of corruption in American cities. Poverty, population size, service‐sector orientation, and ethnic fragmentation are shown to predict higher levels of corruption in urban America.     

Gender bias in performance evaluations: The impact of gender quotas

The intention behind imposing quotas for women on corporate boards is to close the gender gap in economic participation and help women to be promoted within organizations. However, the broader social psychological literature lends support to ideas that affirmative action policies, such as quotas, may do more harm than good for the beneficiaries. We extend this idea beyond the affected beneficiaries and ask whether this unintended negative effect spills over to women who are not immediate targets of the quota, by signaling incompetence. We develop an experimental design to investigate whether the announcement (study 1) and the implementation (study 2) of a quota for women have a direct negative effect on performance evaluations and hence reinforce the existing gender bias in evaluation. We observed that the performance of women was evaluated significantly lower than that of men. However, this gender bias was limited to sequential (rating) evaluations and was not evident in joint (ranking) evaluations. The quota did not significantly influence the amount of this bias. In addition, we observed more pronounced sexism in males compared to females. Results of study 2 gave a hint to an association between higher sexism and lower evaluations of women’s performance. We also found some evidence for a stronger evaluation bias in females when controlling for sexist attitudes. Hence, our results imply that the bias, which is overall quite robust and strongly pronounced, is still affected by individual gender-related characteristics.     

Reciprocity and uncertainty: When do people forgive?

A sizable proportion of individuals act reciprocally. They punish and reward depending on the (un)kindness of those with whom they interact. In this paper, I explore whether individuals still reciprocate intentions when others lack full control over the consequences of their actions. By means of a dictator game with punishment opportunities, I show that unkind intentions are enough to trigger punishments, irrespectively of the outcome. By contrast, accidents are forgiven. To isolate how uncertainty over the result of an action affects the assessment of intentions, I control for other possible departures from self-profit maximization, such as distributional concerns or efficiency maximization. I find that the former also plays a role in respondents’ behavior.     

浅论体育运动与维生素C

维生素C在运动过程中不但担负机体免疫的重任,而且是我们健康生活所必需的微量元素之一。但我们身体的一切代谢(日常的一般活动和细胞间的活动等)都需要微量元素的支持。人体在运动时,随着运动强度的增大,时间的延长,氧耗增多,自由基产生增加,而自由基产生的增加可造成肌肉损伤和运动性疲劳的发生。     

基于淘宝网C2C平台的大学生网上创业问题研究

随着就业压力的增加,鼓励大学生创业成为解决就业压力的重要举措之一。针对大学生网络创业属于粗放式经营、大学生创业非主流,试水性质比较多等现状,高校可以从努力营造支持创业的良好氛围;积极发挥课堂教学的作用,开设相关系列创业课程;打造创业教育师资队伍,逐步完善创业导师制度;鼓励有特长的学生通过先创业、后就业的途径加强对大学生网络创业教育。     

A SCORE TEST FOR SEASONAL FRACTIONAL INTEGRATION AND COINTEGRATION

This paper develops a time domain score statistic for testing fractional integration at zero and seasonal frequencies in quarterly time series models. Further, it introduces the notion of fractional cointegration at different frequencies between two seasonally integrated, I(1) series. In testing problems involving seasonal fractional cointegration, it is argued that the alternative hypothesis is one-sided for which the usual score test may not be appropriate. Therefore, based on ideas in Silvapulle and Silvapulle (1995), a one-sided score statistic is constructed. A simulation study finds that the score statistic generally has desirable size and power properties in moderately sized samples. The score test is applied to the quarterly Australian consumption function. The income and consumption series are found to be I(1) at zero and seasonal frequencies and these two series are not cointegrated at any frequency.