Okun’s law and urban spillovers in US unemployment

Using data for 2002–2010 from 358 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), we estimate Okun’s law which accounts for national shocks and spatial spillovers in urban areas. Our scale of measurement is changed to the state level, allowing us to capture a different source of spatial dependence on unemployment. Our main finding is that MSA-specific growth has a small effect on MSA unemployment rate, implying that in a well-integrated labor market like the USA, unemployment at an urban level is highly dependent on neighboring and national labor market conditions. Our results also show that the driving forces behind the behavior of unemployment for MSAs are different than those for states.     

Does Gibrat’s law for cities hold when location counts?

According to Gibrat’s law, the growth rates of cities are expected to be independent of their sizes. In this study, we hypothesize that growth rates do depend on population size, but that the direction of the relationship depends on location, i.e., in unfavorable loci, growth rates are positively related to size, while the relationship is reversed in favorable loci, i.e., places with several location advantages. The present study examines that possibility, using 1990–2000 population growth data for two levels of geographic resolution—4,667 local administrative units (i.e., municipalities) and 2,189 contiguous urban areas in 40 European countries. According to our findings, when individual localities are considered, ‘proportionate’ growth (expected under Gibrat’s law) emerges at the aggregate (system-wide) level, but ‘dissipates’ when the settlement system is disaggregated into two urban sub-systems, formed by well-positioned localities and poorly positioned ones. Concurrently, for urban areas, a strong positive association between population size and growth emerges both before and after controlling for location attributes. However, this association between population size and growth is not especially strong, if favorably and unfavorably located urban areas are looked at separately.     

论晚清民初时期关于“rule of law”翻译问题

晚清民初是我国翻译史发展的一大高峰时期,在此"西学东渐"过程中,产生了很多外来概念的翻译。但是,使用功能对等翻译理论来分析,这些外来词汇的翻译并不都是成功的。"rule of law"与"rule by law"在翻译中的混淆就是一个很明显的例子。因此,我们有必要从政治和翻译角度讨论这两个词的混淆现象原因,从而探讨对外来概念的翻译处理。     

The Sales Tax Puzzle – Has the law of demand been repealed?

TRA86 removed the deductibility of state and local sales taxes from U.S. personal income taxes. This effectively increased the price to state governments of sales tax revenue relative to income tax revenues. This implies that state reliance on income taxes relative to sales taxes should have increased after TRA86 was implemented. Leading public finance economists investigated this in the period shortly following the reform and invariably found that the predicted substitution of income for sales taxes did not take place. In fact, several studies noted that state dependence on the sales tax increased relative to income taxes – hence the Sales Tax Puzzle. Several experts tried to rationalize their non-findings. These rationalizations are unconvincing. This paper asserts that the puzzle may be resolved in two different ways. The first, seemingly trivial, is that the analysis must incorporate sufficient time so as to allow for relatively complex adjustments. Our contributions here are to anchor this obvious point with a theoretical model related to earlier work of the authors, and an explicit empirical examination of the lag structures of individual states reactions to the comprehensive tax reform. The second demonstrates that the analysis must take into account regional shifts that were taking place in the U.S. during this period. When such compositional shifts involving political and deductibility patterns are explicitly introduced into the model, the paradoxical findings are resolved both in the long and in the short run. Our contribution here is a demonstration that the use of detailed state-level data, unlike any of the earlier work in this area, allows for the inclusion in the analysis of inter-regional shifts in various parameters. An additional contribution is the explicit use and emphasis of the propensity to itemize as an independent variable. The use of this variable ties this area of analysis of post tax reform behavior into a hitherto untapped strand of public-finance literature. The variable is both theoretically interesting, and proves to have experienced compositional shift patterns which help resolve the sales-tax puzzle paradox.     

Improving existing “reaching law” for better discrete control of seismically-excited building structures

In this paper, a novel “composite reaching law” was explained in details: 1) the equation of discrete motion for a control system; 2) the design of discrete-time variable structure control. In addition, the model of a three-storey shear-type building structure was used to verify the effectiveness of the discrete variable structure control method. The results of numerical example analysis of the model show that the control law can effectively reduce the peak value of seismic response of the building structure and the chattering effect of the control system.     

Improving existing “reaching law” for better discrete control of seismically-excited building structures

In this paper, a novel “composite reaching law” was explained in details: 1) the equation of discrete motion for a control system; 2) the design of discrete-time variable structure control. In addition, the model of a three-storey shear-type building structure was used to verify the effectiveness of the discrete variable structure control method. The results of numerical example analysis of the model show that the control law can effectively reduce the peak value of seismic response of the building structure and the chattering effect of the control system. __________ Translated from Journal of Northwestern Polytechnical University, 2007, 25(6): 869-873 [译自: 西北工业大学学报]     

Planning law,power, and practice: Haussmann in Paris (1853–1870)

The transformation of Paris by Haussmann (1853–1870) is presented as a classic case of state-led modernization. What most accounts do not take into consideration is that Haussmann faced formidable opposition from property owners in his attempts to realize the emperor's ambitions for Paris, an opposition that centred on competing interpretations and uses of planning law. Based on heretofore unstudied archival material, this paper traces Haussmann's attempts to establish his (at times) creative use of planning law as legitimate in a context where planning was firmly in the hands of property owners. Haussmann's strategic use of the law, or planning practice, was able to lay bare the fact that planning law has no legitimacy in itself – only particular uses of the law can gain or lose legitimacy. Planning power can thus be defined as the possession of legitimacy in the use of planning law; and since the legal framework is a site of contest rather than a source of legitimacy, planning power depends on external legitimation. In the Haussmann case it is clear that state backing was central, even though (implicit) early support from the Parisian population cannot be ruled out until more research has been conducted.     

Okun’s law,asymmetries and regional spillovers: evidence from Virginia metropolitan statistical areas and the District of Columbia

The purpose of this paper was to examine the strength of the relationship between unemployment and GDP, to determine the extent to which this relationship has been stable in Virginia metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) during the Great Recession and to examine the importance of regional spillovers in Okun’s law. Our results suggest that regional spillovers are very important in local labor markets and in defining the relationship observed at the national level. The MSA level data further supports asymmetries in Okun’s law. The weaker direct relationship between GDP and unemployment at the local level suggests that while federal fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate aggregate demand during periods of economic recovery may be effective, over time, in reducing the unemployment rate, local economic development policies are not effective in achieving the substantial short-term reduction in unemployment needed during recovery. The strong business cycle effects observed in the state MSA, relative to the U.S., suggests that countercyclical policies are fundamentally important and should be targeted more generally to exploit regional spillovers.     

Deconstructing public participation in the Water Framework Directive: implementation and compliance with the letter or with the spirit of the law?

This article offers a fresh reading of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and of the Common Implementation Strategy guidance document number 8 on public participation (PP) aimed at identifying the conditions required for successful implementation. We propose that a central barrier to implementing Article 14 is that Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) problems are complex in character and that participation is a wicked process in practice. This article highlights some ambiguous interpretations of the WFD comparing and contrasting the ‘letter of the law’ and its ‘spirit’, based on a critical review of the nature of PP, who it concerns and when it takes place. First we articulate a complex system interpretation of IWRM in the context of the WFD. Second, we explain the difficulty to define blueprint for PP in IWRM. Finally, we present five interpretative challenging readings in order to highlight tensions between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘letter’ of the WFD.