台湾利率期货和现货价格收益率与溢出效应研究

期货市场和现货市场的波动溢出效应是研究利率市场发展的信息流动、风险传递的重要内容。本文主要采用GARCH—M模型对中国台湾期货市场和现货市场的价格收益率和波动性进行研究,发现两个市场波动性之间存在非对称性,期货市场对现货市场存在单向显著溢出效应和重要影响。     

Local Governments’ Responses to Revenue Changes: The Effects of Unreserved General Fund Balances

ABSTRACT

Volatile revenues affect the quality and consistency of municipal service provision. This article investigates how cities use unreserved general fund balances to mitigate annual expenditure fluctuations when confronted with volatile revenues. Based on the analysis of a panel dataset of over two thousand American cities from 2003 to 2011, the fixed-effects regression results suggest that unreserved general fund balances reduce municipal expenditure fluctuations on a year-to-year basis. The expenditure-smoothing effects were more pronounced when municipal governments experienced large revenue changes. Results are robust when excluding large cities, using different cutting-points to define ‘moderate’ or ‘large’ revenue changes, and in recession and non-recession years. This article contributes to the local expenditure stabilization literature by recognizing the unreserved general fund balances’ expenditure-smoothing effects during ‘non-rainy days.’ It adds empirical evidence to the organizational theory that financial slack works as a crucial buffer against external changes and provides managerial discretion to local administrators.     

Comparing deep-end confinement in England & Wales and Norway

Extreme forms of custody represent the boundary points of state power. The configuration of the most restrictive corners of prison systems, and what goes on within them, is highly instructive in exposing the objectives, limits, and implications of state coercion at its most severe. Based on data collected in England & Wales and Norway, this article has two main aims. The first is to explore the degree to which “deep-end” confinement differs between jurisdictions with different penal philosophies. The second is to understand how the most extreme form of confinement in each jurisdiction differs from the more typical carceral experiences within each system and its overall penal ethos. Empirically, then, the article seeks to shine light into the deepest dominions of both prison systems, illuminating the experiential texture of extreme forms of imprisonment. It concludes by asking what can be inferred about Nordic exceptionalism, and about deep-end confinement more generally, by analyzing these domains.     

Death by a Thousand Grants? The Challenge of Grant Funding Reliance for Local Government Councils in the Northern Territory of Australia

In July 2008, the local government sector in the Northern Territory of Australia underwent wide-sweeping reforms whereby 53 councils, most of which were located in remote Indigenous communities, were amalgamated into eight regional shires. The dominant justifications for these reforms focused on internal ‘deficit’ views about the community council sector, including lack of competent and ethical staff, managerial workforce instability, inefficient use of resources, and poor oversight as the primary causes of chronic underperformance and dysfunction. This paper identifies and discusses the under-scrutinised role of grants revenue dependency and volatility in the demise of remote small councils in the Northern Territory. We analyse financial data to demonstrate the extreme volatility in year-on-year grants funding. With their high dependency on grants revenue, such volatility and unpredictability resulted in councils being hamstrung in their ability to strategically plan and ensure stability in service delivery, infrastructure management and employment provision. We argue that these fiscal dynamics, fuelled by hierarchical intergovernmental relations, contributed significantly to dysfunction in the sector, as well as mutually reinforcing pre-existing structural and endogenous weaknesses. This argument runs against the common conceptualisation of the sector as requiring of externally imposed structural reform. We conclude by suggesting that there are factors additional to scale that need to be incorporated into analysis of the effects of amalgamation policies on remote councils.     

Extreme-right parties in contemporary Estonia

Kasekamp examines extreme-right political parties (ERPs) in Estonia since the restoration of independence in 1991. While nationalist sentiments have been widespread and political discourse has been dominated by the centre right, ERPs have not been successful. It is possible to identify two distinct generations of ERPs in Estonia with two different programmatic emphases: the first of 1992–8 could be labelled ‘anti-Soviet’; the second generation beginning in 1999 focuses on opposition to the European Union (EU) and as such has more in common with the ERPs in Western Europe than the first generation. Following Roger Eatwell’s model for the political breakthrough of ERPs, Kasekamp concludes that conducive conditions do not exist at present for such a breakthrough in Estonia, although opposition to the EU offers notable potential for future mobilization.     

日本出版市场萎缩原因及应对举措

在全球出版业整体萎缩的大背景下,日本出版业自上个世纪末开始遭遇了长达十几年的萧条。日本号称世界出版大国,它的教训与经验值得关注。通过对日本出版业市场萎缩的原因及其应对措施进行认真探析,以期为我国正在发展中的出版市场带来一些警示和启迪。     

当事人主义:“转型论”信条批判分析

“转型论”界定当事人主义的标准与其将大陆法系民事诉讼也归为当事人主义的观点相冲突。其主张实际是准极端当事人主义。它不当援用了“法治三阶段说”,忽略了普通法系民事诉讼中的强职权主义成分,将法官职权介入大致对应于法官不中立。当事人主义不能“独占”其接受的结论,对其他重大问题的处理也不能提供帮助,家事案件的审理应采职权主义,这些都表明当事人主义不具有“顶层”地位。转型论要求对当事人主义的“绝对”服从近似于演绎论,排斥多角度的理性考量和论证。它对于当事人意志的尊重可能会流于形式,且已严重削弱释明制度,并可能对法官的事实认定产生消极影响。     

几种挥发性有机物的降解性能研究

选择了四种典型的挥发性有机废气———苯、甲苯、氯苯、二氯乙烷 ,在它们相互混合时进行了降解性能研究     

CasaPound Italia’s cultural imaginary

ABSTRACT

CasaPound Italia (CPI) is an Italian extreme-right movement. It has its headquarters in Rome but the movement has branches in other northern and southern cities. Members of CPI define themselves as ‘Fascists of the Third Millennium’. Bulli’s article focuses on the mix of cultural imaginaries that the organization offers to its members and sympathizers as well as for public consumption. The movement is able to function at different levels of political mobilization—and to recruit members by presenting a targeted set of incentives designed to engage them politically—which include various forms of cultural identification. All these levels are linked by a common idealized subjectivity that brings together classic elements of historic Fascism, including cultural references to the ‘speed of action’ typical of Futurism, with an overcoming of the party-centred post-Fascist Italian political subculture. Bulli’s article emphasizes CPI’s strategic construction of a multifaceted cultural imaginary in which language, communication and codes of conduct play a role comparable to values and ideology.     

公安机关在极端天气类自然灾害临战处置中的职责——美国圣路易斯市应急预案给我们的启示

极端天气类自然灾害会给社会带来重大损失，对极端天气类自然灾害的临战处置是公安机关义不容辞的责任。本文通过对美国圣路易斯市应急预案中“极端天气标准应急管理分系统”的相关分析，结合2008年春节以来公安机关抗击雨雪冰冻灾害的成功经验，明确了公安机关在极端天气类自然灾害临战处置中的两类职责，对提高公安机关应对该类突发事件的能力具有重大促进作用。