中国近年来消费需求增长乏力的原因探析

消费需求增长乏力是近年来我国宏观经济面临的突出问题,这是居民消费能力、消费动力和消费环境三方面因素共同作用的结果。首先,居民收入增加与GDP增长不同步导致居民消费能力有限,而收入差距不断拉大则引起消费能力分配失衡;其次,未来收入和支出的预期不稳定、消费信贷制度滞后等在很大程度上降低了居民消费动力;最后,相关配套体制和设施不健全、与市场经济不协调的消费习惯等也都影响了消费需求的增加。     

论大众文化消费及其特征

文化消费是现代人在物质生活得到丰富的同时进行精神状态的自我调整,充实感情和复归人性的一种重要方式。大众文化更是掀起了一股文化消费的大众化浪潮,以满足人们的娱乐消费需求,大众文化也成为大众传媒时代满足大众闲暇时间的文化消费需求的最好形式。大众文化消费有其独特的消费文化特征。     

The Effects of Spousal Health on the Decision to Smoke: Evidence on Consumption Externalities, Altruism and Learning Within the Household

Married individuals are healthier than single individuals though the reasons are not well understood. Individuals with spouses/or partners are less likely to smoke. We explore the relationship between health and marital status by analyzing three potential channels through which marriage affects smoking, i.e., consumption externalities (one spouse's smoking affects the other spouse's welfare), altruism (one spouse reduces smoking in response to the other spouse's bad health), and learning about risks of smoking from the health experience of one's spouse. We find spousal health does not affect smoking due to altruism or learning within the household but do find evidence for consumption externalities.     

新贫困视域下乡村转型的困厄与重构路径

中国社会转型的重要背景之一是全球消费社会的到来。 这使得新穷人现象日渐凸显,并成为影响甚至主导整个社会转型的核心线索。 作为新穷人的典型表现,乡村新贫困既包括在城乡二元结构下,村民难以获得以城市生活方式为参照的社会公认生活水准而引发的结构性贫困,也包括由消费欲望激发的社会心理性贫困。 由此,乡村消费转型表现为如下困境:私人消费中,个体消费认同在地和脱嵌的困境以及家庭消费规范物质化和人伦的两难;集体消费中,消费品“上移冶和“下乡冶的悖论。 为应对这些困境,必须从消费角度,破解“新穷困冶的结构性和文化困境,实行新型城镇化和新农村建设并举。     

Then press enter: digital payment technology and the history of telephone interface

The internet and other digital networks in the U.S. (and beyond) remain essentially an upgrade of the national telephone network built by AT&T over the first half of the twentieth century, and digital payment remains tethered to telephony at the level of infrastructure. Telephone history also continues to inform digital payment at the level of interface. Debit card readers feature a keypad nearly identical to those introduced (also by AT&T) to the dialling public a half-century ago on touch-tone telephones. In this essay I highlight the development of the touch-tone keypad as a transformative payment technology. There have been three great leaps forward in the history of telephone interface: the dial, the keypad and the touch screen. Each corresponds to a period of technological transformation in the telephone industry and society more broadly: the rotary dial and automation, touch-tone keypads and digitization, and touch screens and computerization. The successful careers of the dial and the keypad, especially when read in tandem, suggest that touch screens will alter the everyday economics of retail payment even more radically than its predecessors. I also describe a broader trajectory of digital naturalization, whereby telephone numbers have proliferated into a personal identification number, passwords and a plethora of personalized information. Payments increasingly circulate today as subsets of personal information within the vast sea of big data. Payment apps are demonstrating a capacity to reorganize retail transactions on a scale as vast as any technology since the cash register. The history of retail payment finds the point of sale heading from the till into shoppers’ pockets. As a result, consumers are increasingly shouldering the costs of purchasing, maintaining, upgrading and securing the technology used for everyday transactions.     

Consumption Commitments and Habit Formation

We analyze the implications of household‐level adjustment costs for the dynamics of aggregate consumption. We show that an economy in which agents have “consumption commitments” is approximately equivalent to a habit formation model in which the habit stock is a weighted average of past consumption if idiosyncratic risk is large relative to aggregate risk. Consumption commitments can thus explain the empirical regularity that consumption is excessively sensitive and excessively smooth, findings that are typically attributed to habit formation. Unlike habit formation and other theories, but consistent with empirical evidence, the consumption commitments model also predicts that excess sensitivity and smoothness vanish for large shocks. These results suggest that behavior previously attributed to habit formation may be better explained by adjustment costs. We develop additional testable predictions to further distinguish the commitment and habit models and show that the two models have different welfare implications.     

地区收入、食品价格与恩格尔系数

本文以2016年我国31个省级地区截面数据为样本,构建扩展模型考察恩格尔系数与收入、食品价格之间的关系。研究发现,恩格尔系数与地区收入存在显著的负相关性,纳入食品价格后收入对恩格尔系数的影响变得更为显著,二者关系满足恩格尔定律。恩格尔系数和以地区食品价格平价代表的食品价格之间显著正相关,若再考虑其他因素,则食品价格对恩格尔系数的影响会稍有减弱。进一步将食品区分为生活必需型食品与非生活必需型食品,测算得到的基本恩格尔系数、高阶恩格尔系数与收入之间仍呈负相关关系,但与基本恩格尔系数相比,高阶恩格尔系数与收入之间的负相关性更弱。恩格尔系数受生活必需型食品价格的影响强于非生活必需型食品价格的影响,基本恩格尔系数主要受生活必需型食品价格的影响,而高阶恩格尔系数同时受到两类食品价格的影响。     

知识经济下的新奢侈品及新奢侈消费：概念与内涵界定

从回顾新奢侈品内涵的相关研究出发,指出现有概念从单一维度进行界定的歧义和不足;在探索、追溯和理解新奢侈品出现的原因、背景下,从广义奢侈品中剥离、发现和界定了具有实质意义的新奢侈品和新奢侈消费概念和内涵,引入个人维度和社会维度,从二维角度构筑了一个认识与甄别目标客体的参照体系。     

我国信用消费发展缓慢原因分析及对策思考

信用消费制度在某些地区和某些产品中尚未形成气候,究其原因,主要是因为我国信用消费在实施过程中存在四个方面的制约因素:信用消费环境差、信用消费风险大、尚未建立完善的个人信用制度、有关的法律和法规不健全。为尽快发展信用消费,作者提出如下对策思考:（1）加强宏观调控,改善信用消费环境;（2）建立和完善个人信用制度;（3）实现信用消费与担保、保险有机结合;（4）加强和完善信用消费的法律、政策环境。     

地方政府支出与农村居民消费需求：基于1998-2007年省级 面板数据的经验分析

 政府支出对居民消费需求产生挤出抑或挤入效应是理论界最近关注的焦点之一。本文在理论诠释地方政府支出对农村居民消费需求的传导机制以及模型建立的理论框架下,通过建立地方政府支出与农村居民消费支出之间的个体固定效应变截距模型,运用我国31个省份1998-2007年的经验数据进行实证检验,结果表明：地方政府财政支农支出对农村居民消费具有显著的挤入效应,而转移性支出与农村居民消费的相关程度并不明显。基于理论分析和实证检验结果,本文最后针对地方政府扩大农村居民消费提出相关建议。