TOWARDS A MORE GENERAL APPROACH TO TESTING THE TIME ADDITIVITY HYPOTHESIS

A new procedure is proposed for re-examining the assumption of additivity of preferences over time which, although untenable, is usually maintained in intertemporal analyses of consumption and labour supply. The method is an extension of a famous work by Browning (1991). However, it is more general in permitting the estimation of Frisch demands, which are explicit in an unobservable variable (price of utility), but may lack a closed form representation in terms of observable variables such as prices and total outlay. It also makes an extensive use of duality theory to solve the endogeneity problem encountered in Browning\'s study. Applying this method with an appropriate estimator to the Australian disaggregate data, we find that the intertemporal additivity hypothesis is decisively rejected, which is consistent with Browning\'s conclusion. Results also indicate that the effects of lagged and future prices in determining current consumption decisions are insubstantial.Frisch Demands; The SNAP Structure; Intertemporal Additivity Hypothesis;

Cuckoo: a Language for Implementing Memory- and Thread-safe System Services

This paper is centered around the design of a thread- and memory-safe language, primarily for the compilation of application-specific services for extensible operating systems. We describe various issues that have influenced the design of our language, called Cuckoo, that guarantees safety of programs with potentially asynchronous flows of control. Comparisons are drawn between Cuckoo and related software safety techniques, including Cyclone and software-based fault isolation (SFI), and performance results suggest our prototype compiler is capable of generating safe code that executes with low runtime overheads, even without potential code optimizations. Compared to Cyclone, Cuckoo is able to safely guard accesses to memory when programs are multithreaded. Similarly, Cuckoo is capable of enforcing memory safety in situations that are potentially troublesome for techniques such as SFI

Inverse Demand Systems for Composite Liquid Assets: Evidence from China

This paper applies the concept of inverse demands and its related scale and substitution effects to model the demand for liquid assets in China. We also propose a new model, termed the Modified Almost Ideal Inverse Demand System (MAIIDS), which nests the Almost Ideal Inverse Demand System (AIIDS) as a special case. We estimate this new model and its special case by using Chinese panel data and find it statistically superior to the AIIDS. Results also reveal the improved regularity features of the MAIIDS, and show that demand patterns of liquid assets across different income groups in China are distinctive.AIIDS; MAIIDS; Regularity; Liquid assets.

China Bashing 2004

On April 26, 2004, Senator John Kerry released his six-point trade program, "Trade Enforcement: Asleep at the Wheel," and conspicuously targeted China for violating worker rights, dumping, and supporting "illegal currency manipulation" (Kerry 2004). Five days earlier, senior Bush administration officials met with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi to settle a few trade disputes (e.g., WiFi) but did not resolve the most contentious ones (exchange rates, semiconductors, and labor rights).

Prospects for Regional Free Trade in Asia

Frustrated with lackluster momentum in the WTO Doha Round and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and mindful of free trade agreement (FTA) networks centered on the United States and Europe, Asian countries have joined the FTA game. By 2005, Asian countries (excluding China) had ratified 14 bilateral and regional FTAs and had negotiated but not implemented another seven. Asian nations are also actively negotiating some 23 bilateral and regional FTAs, many with non-Asian partners, including Australia, Canada, Chile, the European Union, India, and Qatar. China has been particularly active since 2000. It has completed three bilateral FTAs—Thailand in 2003 and Hong Kong and Macao in 2004—and is initiating another 17 bilateral and regional FTAs. However, a regional Asian economic bloc led by China seems distant, even though China accounts for about 30 percent of regional GDP. As in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, many Asian countries are pursuing FTAs with countries outside the region. On present evidence, the FTA process embraced with some enthusiasm in Asia, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere more closely resembles fingers reaching idiosyncratically around the globe rather than politico-economic blocs centered respectively on Beijing, Brussels, and Washington.Regional free trade agreements, China, trade liberalization, Asia, FTA strategy

The housing ladder and Hong Kong housing market\u27s boom and bust cycle

This paper presents evidence, based on the recent Hong Kong experience, for the existence of a “housing ladder effect.” An increase of housing equity at the bottom of the ladder tends to translate into a trading up activity that will both increase housing market turnover and buoy up the entire housing market. Based on a natural experiment through the introduction of a public housing privatization scheme, this papers presents evidence supporting this story using a logit model and a price-volume causality test

Hardware Design and Implementation for a Wireless Distributed Intelligent System Utilizing 802.11

Wireless devices using the IEEE 802.1 1 standard have two inherent fundamental limitations. The range of wireless devices themselves, entailing a point-to-point communication channel, constricts the area of coverage. Secondly, the standard only provides for a wireless communication path connecting devices, no facility is available for users to implement services at each wireless device To overcome these deficiencies, a separate subsystem that can be controlled and enhanced with added computational sub-systems is constructed. By introducing the ability to control the wireless module with supporting hardware and firmware, the extra intelligence required to implement peer-to-peer connectivity and the facility for users to introduced distributed intelligence. With these additions, wireless infrastructures that are truly scalable and distributed will be possible. This report will outline the design of a wireless device that will enable higher level systems to facilitate a wireless network that will be totally peer-to-peer and the ability to incorporate distributed intelligence

Regular and Estimable Inverse Demand Systems: A Distance Function Approach

To be useful for realistic policy simulation in an environment of rapid structural change, inverse demand systems must remain regular over substantial variations in quantities. The distance function is a convenient vehicle for generating such systems. While it directly yields Hicksian inverse demand functions, those functions will not usually have an explicit representation in terms of the observable variables. Note however that this problem need not hinder estimation and could be solved by using the numerical inversion estimation approach. This paper develops the formal theory for using distance functions in this context, and demonstrates the operational feasibility of the method.Inverse Demands; Distance Functions; Numerical Inversion Estimation Method; Separability.

The Benefit Function Approach to Modeling Price-Dependent Demand Systems: An Application of Duality Theory

In this article we advocate more extensive use of the benefit function in specifying price-dependent or inverse demand models. In particular, we demonstrate how duality theory may be used to establish the inter-relationships between the Marshallian (or Hicksian) inverse demands and Luenberger's adjusted price functions, allowing estimable inverse demands to be derived directly from a benefit function. We also make use of a numerical inversion estimation method to rectify the "unobservability of utility problem" encountered in the empirical analysis of these inverse demands. To illustrate the usefulness of the proposed methods, we estimate two systems of inverse demands for Japanese quarterly fish consumption. Results generally indicate that the proposed methods are promising and operationally feasible so that we have opened up a wider range of empirical inverse demand specifications that can be subjected to tight theoretical restrictions.Benefit Functions; Duality Theory; Numerical Inversion Estimation Method