Finding the vulnerable among China’s elderly: identifying measures for effective policy targeting

Facing a rapidly aging population, China has recently started to formulate and implement policies with the aim to provide old-age care. While well-developed old-age care policies commonly include a built-in component that assesses eligibility based on vulnerability, no such process is established in the context of China. Here, based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study collected in both 2011 and 2013, we (a) developed a simple and effective strategy for identifying vulnerable Chinese elderly, which can serve as a basis for policy targeting, and (b) improved the policy relevance and targeting efficiency of this vulnerability measure by including additional health indicators. Our vulnerability measures identify 35% to 46% of Chinese elderly as vulnerable, covering up to 67% of elderly at high risk of death or functional decline. They can serve as an initial screening step for more comprehensive geriatric assessments and enable policy makers to effectively target vulnerable elderly persons in China.     

"指标困局":农村贫困治理的实践与反思

在国家的扶贫实践中,地方政府的行为策略是影响扶贫绩效的关键变量。通过对精准扶贫政策实践的调研发现,中央政府不断升级的治理手段为重构央地关系创造了条件,地方政府对国家扶贫理念转型认知的偏差以及在形成路径依赖之后的策略行为不仅容易产生对总体局势的误判,还为后期的政策困局埋下了伏笔。在此背景下,地方扶贫工作遭遇“指标困局”,即地方政府很难实事求是去识别贫困户,只能在既有的指标约束下进行精准识别,扶贫工作陷入了反复识别,却仍难实现精准的怪圈。     

Chinese Contract Law and the Economic Reform

China’s previous contract laws had many contradictions and failed to meet the needs of China’s developing market economy. Although some problems still need to be dealt with, the unified contract law is more advanced, systematic and plays an important role in fostering and encouraging transactions.

民众运动与平民政权的实现──中共在国民会议运动中对政权问题的探索

国民会议运动的意义和价值,并非在于仅仅起到了宣传和动员民众的作用。作为国民会议运动的实际主导者,中共更是把民众运动看作达成国民革命目标的新手段和新方法,期望通过召开由民众团体选举的国民会议,建设"真正民主政治"和"平民革命政权",从而推翻帝国主义和军阀在中国的反动统治。在国民会议运动的不同阶段,中共关于政权问题的具体主张也有变化,并在上海工人第三次武装起义期间进行了初步实践。虽然国民会议运动最终归于失败,但中共对政权问题的探索为尔后苏维埃政权建设提供了历史的启示。     

Robust bootstrap forecast densities for GARCH returns and volatilities

Bootstrap procedures are useful to obtain forecast densities for both returns and volatilities in the context of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models. In this paper, we analyse the effect of additive outliers on the finite sample properties of these bootstrap densities and show that, when obtained using maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters and standard filters for the volatilities, they are badly affected with dramatic consequences on the estimation of Value-at-Risk. We propose constructing bootstrap densities for returns and volatilities using a robust parameter estimator based on variance targeting implemented together with an adequate modification of the volatility filter. We show that the performance of the proposed procedure is adequate when compared with available robust alternatives. The results are illustrated with both simulated and real data.     

A New Model of Trend Inflation

This article introduces a new model of trend inflation. In contrast to many earlier approaches, which allow for trend inflation to evolve according to a random walk, ours is a bounded model which ensures that trend inflation is constrained to lie in an interval. The bounds of this interval can either be fixed or estimated from the data. Our model also allows for a time-varying degree of persistence in the transitory component of inflation. In an empirical exercise with CPI inflation, we find the model to work well, yielding more sensible measures of trend inflation and forecasting better than popular alternatives such as the unobserved components stochastic volatility model. This article has supplementary materials online.     

陶渊明在宋代被空前接受原因之探究

陶渊明在宋代被空前接受并非凭空而起 ,而是由作为享乐性文化气候之“反动”的淡泊精神、复古革新运动中产生的平民心态及高风绝尘之诗风追求、思想感情上的禅定和老大心态、诗歌审美上推尊萧散简远之趣四个主导因素促成的。     

Macroeconomic performance of inflation targeting in European and Asian emerging economies

The macroeconomic performance resulting from adopting an inflation targeting policy in emerging economies of Europe and Central Asia are examined. The research includes 26 countries in the period 1997–2019, with a special focus on the period 2008–2019. Our econometric analysis consists of two approaches: dynamic panel modeling and propensity score matching. The results suggest that macroeconomic performance has improved due to the inflation targeting monetary framework. We find that a policy of inflation targeting has been effective in reducing the inflation rate, inflation volatility, and GDP volatility. The results are particularly robust for the subperiod that started in 2008. Econometric results suggest that inflation targeting policy did not affect inflation persistence or GDP growth. Our results suggest that inflation targeting improves the macroeconomic performance of developing countries even when they only partially meet the standard requirements for its implementation.     

扶贫瞄准中贫困户竞争与协同行为的演化博弈分析

扶贫瞄准过程是贫困户采取竞争和协同行为不断进行博弈的过程。行为演化的结果取决于两类贫困户扶贫协同收益和协同成本的对比关系,只有当协同收益都大于协同成本时,博弈才会向两者都选择协同行为的方向演化。协同收益及其分享系数、协同成本及其分担系数是影响贫困户行为演化路径的关键因素,政府的财政补贴能够改变贫困户的策略选择,并存在一个最佳的补贴临界点,使贫困户都选择协同行为。政府应该采取相应措施,促进博弈向协同方向演化。     

Credibility and Inflation Expectations: What we can tell from seven emerging economies?

This study is a contribution to the literature concerning credibility and its effect on the distribution between forward-looking behavior and backward-looking behavior for formation of inflation expectations in the case of emerging economies. Based on data gathered from seven inflation targeting emerging economies (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey), this paper analyzes how much the credibility associated with the inflation target contributes to anchoring expectations. The findings denote that although credibility is relevant to reduce inflation expectations, these countries present low monetary credibility and thus the backward-looking behavior is predominant for the formation of inflation expectations. Therefore, in order to improve the expectations channel of monetary policy in emerging economies, a policy of increasing transparency regarding inflation expectations is mandatory to the central banks’ task of anchoring inflation expectations.