Flipping burgers or flipping pages? Student employment and academic attainment in post-Soviet Latvia

Latvian higher education has undergone a dramatic transition since 1991. This study employs a survey of nearly 1000 social science students studying in 13 different institutions in Latvia to consider the impact of the increase in the number of students who are working while studying. Evidence indicates employment has a strong and significant negative impact on school performance, and the negative impact increases as weekly hours worked increase. This manifests itself through reduced class attendance and reduced time spent in independent study. Finally, we find that the probability of student employment is most significantly affected by the availability of financial aid, gender, ethnicity, and age.     

浅议入世后我国中小企业经济发展政策

加入WTO后 ,我国中小企业既面临着发展的机遇 ,也面临着严峻的挑战。中小企业的经济管理及其成长发展的优劣 ,对正在向市场经济体制转轨并已成为世贸组织成员的中国来讲 ,具有十分特殊的意义。我国应把促进中小企业经济发展作为 2 1世纪的一个重大战略决策来对待 ,并实施与之相适应的有关政策     

中国财政法治化创新的法哲学解析

以财政法治化为制度目标 ,根据政府对经济运行的控管程度 ,中国财政制度理论类型可分为“计划类型”、“管理类型”、“服务类型”三类。由于政府在财政理论中的主线作用 ,中国财政法治化创新将引发“社会公共需要的制度化满足”、“权力制衡秩序的完善”、“有限政府理念的确立”、“国家责任机制的启动”、“弱势群体利益的制度化保障”、“区域财政资源不济的公平性协调”等法哲学问题。财政法治化创新体现了“权利本位”的法律精神 ,公共财政制度内涵应是对“以人为本”价值的制度化确认。     

论《外资金融机构管理条例实施细则》的修订

随着我国银行业的进一步对外开放和监管法律框架的不断完善,为促进外资金融机构的安全、健康发展,我国对原《外资金融机构管理条例实施细则》进行修订和完善。本文从新《细则》的修订入手,通过比较我国和美国监管法的不同,论述了新《细则》修订的必要性、科学性及前瞻性。     

关于金融监管与金融发展的若干问题

对金融监管的内涵、目标、职能等方面的分析 ,在于使我们加深对我国金融监管体系制度变革方面重要性的认识。在完善我国金融监管体系的建议对策中 ,要重视对金融监管与金融创新、发展关系的研究 ,金融监管一定要服从服务于金融创新、金融发展 ,没有创新、发展的监管是没有生命力的     

国际金融市场研究方法的逻辑演变——有效市场假说面临的挑战

有效市场假说作为金融经济学的理论基石,无疑是我们研究国际金融市场的重要方法和依据。许多其他得到广泛 应用的金融投资理论皆以此为基础。历经30年的发展,有效市场理论在不断得到支持的同时,也面临了许多新的市场理论的挑 战。混沌理论和分形市场理论,特别是对于市场异象做出新解释的行为金融学,都从不同角度对传统有效市场理论进行了突破。这 不仅为研究国际金融市场提供了新的思路和方法,也对金融市场的决策者和生产者有着巨大的现实意义。     

Money for our people? Decentralisation and corruption in Romania: the cases of the equalisation,infrastructure and pre‐university education funds

In spite of the attempts, in the most recent years, to introduce simple, accountable and rule‐based mechanisms governing the flows of funds for Romanian local governments (LGs) there is evidence showing that deviations from the norms are still widespread and undermine the stated goals of many policies. This article aims to explore to what extent the political factor (party affiliation, i.e. local informal power networks) interferes with the allocation of public funds as far as three main areas of decentralised policy are concerned: (i) the general purpose equalisation transfers; (ii) the Roads Fund grants and (iii) the transfers for financing the pre‐university education. These components represent a relatively large share of the local budgets and are illustrative for two important attributions Romanian LGs perform today: maintaining the local infrastructure and providing essential social services. Through a set of variables—measuring, on the one hand, the real pattern of resource allocation and on the other hand, the intensity of politicisation in the three areas—we tested the hypothesis that intergovernmental financial flows in Romania are to a large extent captured by rent‐seeking groups. It turns out that this is indeed the case with the funds for infrastructure, and much less so with the transfers financing pre‐university education. Some conclusions from these contrasting situations are drawn which reflect on the broader discussion, the link between decentralisation and corruption. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

互联网融资创新、风险及其法律规制——以P2P网贷平台为分析视角

互联网金融作为传统金融自发改革、创新的产物,具有传统金融无可比拟的优势,但它既具备金融领域的固有风险,也具有互联网先进技术与传统金融结合而生成的新风险。对于这种风险,应该坚持"非法律规范—行政法规范—刑法规范"的调整位阶,以保护金融创新为监管的出发点。对于致力于信用担保的P2P网贷平台,应该对其资金池引入第三方托管,不应一概以非法吸收公众存款罪取缔。金融创新背景下,对金融管理秩序的垄断性保护失去了其正当性,对于非法吸收公众存款罪的解释,应该以公众财产权益这一法益为指导。     

Global poverty and inequality: are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation?

The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these changes are much less significant than they at first appear, and we present a more nuanced alternative interpretation by exploring changes across the entire global distribution.     

The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.