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AbstractRecent studies have indicated that government bonds are an imperfect substitute for money in providing transaction services. Based on these studies, this article develops a theoretical framework showing that, as with money seigniorage, the government can gain an interest benefit from issuing government bonds. The article terms this interest benefit as 'government bond seigniorage'. Further, the article estimates government bond seigniorage in comparison with money seigniorage for five countries (Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the United States) during the period 1959–2001. It is found that government bond seigniorage accounts for a larger percentage of Gross Domestic Product than money seigniorage, but also experiences greater fluctuations for all sample countries.

We introduce a model of government bonds with transactions services into a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium sticky-price monetary economy. This additional feature results in an endogenous interest-rate spread and affects equilibrium allocations and inflation by altering the Ramsey planner's sequence of implementability and sticky-price constraints. Qualitatively, the trade-off confronting a planner in sticky-price models shown in recent literature, between using inflation surprise and labor-income tax, is eliminated by the liquid bond channel. We find that the more sticky prices become, the more the optimal fiscal-monetary policy stabilizes prices and also creates less distortionary and less volatile income taxes by taxing the liquidity service of bonds. Quantitatively, we show that the additional tax instrument created by the bond liquidity channel can yield a sizable welfare gain from an economy without this channel.

We introduce a model of government bonds with transactions services into a standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium sticky-price monetary economy. This additional feature results in an endogenous interest-rate spread and affects equilibrium allocations and inflation by altering the Ramsey planner's sequence of implementability and sticky-price constraints. Qualitatively, the trade-off confronting a planner in sticky-price models shown in recent literature, between using inflation surprise and labor-income tax, is eliminated by the liquid bond channel. We find that the more sticky prices become, the more the optimal fiscal-monetary policy stabilizes prices and also creates less distortionary and less volatile income taxes by taxing the liquidity service of bonds. Quantitatively, we show that the additional tax instrument created by the bond liquidity channel can yield a sizable welfare gain from an economy without this channel.

Abstract.  Using a data set based on a cross‐sectional firm level survey conducted by the World Bank in year 2001, in this paper we investigate the major sources of production improvement and innovation growth of Chinese enterprises from ten major industries and five major cities. In terms of production improvement, the production network, R&D and innovation and openness are the crucial factors; and in terms of innovation growth, it could be enhanced through raising R&D inputs, training, improving managers' education, outsourcing and participating in a production network.

AbstractThe interaction of maintenance processes between partners constitutes a complex context, which can be categorized into individual‐ and interactive‐level relationship maintenance processes. Individual‐level maintenance processes refer to both partners' relationship maintenance enactment and perception of partners' relationship maintenance. Interactive‐level relationship maintenance processes include similarity, accuracy, and projection. This study investigated the actor and partner effects of individual and interactive relationship maintenance processes on commitment as moderated by relationship satisfaction. We recruited 193 mixed‐gender married couples from the midwestern US and adopted the two‐intercept actor‐partner interdependence model to analyze the data. The results demonstrated a positive association between husbands' relationship maintenance enactment and their commitment, a negative association between similarity of relationship maintenance enactment and wives' commitment, a positive association between husbands' accuracy and wives' commitment, and a negative association between husbands' projection and their commitment. Satisfaction was strongly associated with participants' commitment and moderated the association between relationship maintenance enactment and commitment for both partners, the association between husbands' maintenance enactment and wives' commitment, and the association between husbands' partner perception and their commitment. Satisfaction also moderated the association between wives' accuracy and husbands' commitment and the association between husbands' projection and both partners' commitment.

Hospital infrastructure has been addressed as the prerequisite of healthcare delivery which intensively affects medical quality. Over the past decade, China has proposed a series of investment plans for hospital infrastructure in order to promote healthcare development in underdeveloped regions. Focusing on the construction of hospital buildings as the key component of hospital infrastructure, this study aims to examine whether the investment efficiency is lower where a government prioritizes equity and to explore what kind of geographical predispositions should be embedded in governmental investment plans for hospital infrastructures from the perspectives of both investment equity and efficiency. Relevant data from 330 governmental-invested hospital building construction projects in Sichuan province, China, from 2009 to 2018 were collected. Concentration index was used to evaluate the equity in the distribution of the investments. Tobit model was employed to explore the relationship between regional economic development and investment efficiency measured by an integrated approach of principal component analysis and data envelopment analysis. The results demonstrated a slight concentration of governmental investments in economically developed regions, while a negative association with regional economic development was identified with investment efficiency. Our study illustrated the investment efficiency was higher where a government prioritized equity and provided empirical evidences on switching governmental investment predisposition in the aspect of healthcare infrastructure construction toward less developed regions in China from the perspectives of both investment allocation equity and efficiency, which would further assist in the formulation of region-specific policies and strategies for underdeveloped regions.

Available evidence highlights the importance of emotion regulation (ER) in psychological well-being. However, translation of the beneficial effects of ER from laboratory to real-life remains scarce. Here, we present proof-of-principle evidence from a novel cognitive-emotional training intervention targeting the development of ER skills aimed at increasing resilience against emotional distress. This pilot intervention involved training military veterans over 5–8 weeks in applying two effective ER strategies [Focused Attention (FA) and Cognitive Reappraisal (CR)] to scenarios presenting emotional conflicts (constructed with both external and internal cues). Training was preceded and followed by neuropsychological, personality, and clinical assessments, and resting-state functional MRI data were also collected from a subsample of the participants. Results show enhanced executive function and psychological well-being following training, reflected in increased working memory (WM), post-traumatic growth (PTG), and general self-efficacy (GSE). Brain imaging results showed evidence of diminished bottom-up influences from emotional and perceptual brain regions, along with evidence of normalized functional connectivity in the large-scale functional networks following training. The latter was reflected in increased connectivity among cognitive and emotion control regions and across regions of self-referential and control networks. Overall, our results provide proof-of-concept evidence that resilience and well-being can be learned through ER training, and that training-related improvements manifested in both behavioral change and neuroplasticity can translate into real-life benefits.