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Is human capital heterogeneity a decisive factor for Chinese enterprises to invest in Africa? Based on the Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI） data of Chinese enterprises in 37 African countries from 2007 to 2017, this paper using the FGLS model, is the empirical analysis of the mechanism and effect of the human capital heterogeneity of host countries on OFDI location selection. The human capital heterogeneity can be divided into four dimensions: scale, quality, cost and structure, which can be measured by health level, education level, wage level, child dependency ratio and old-age dependency ratio. The results show that: (1) the host country's human capital scale and child dependency ratio structure have a significant positive impact on decision-making for OFDI; (2) the cost of human capital and the structure of old-age dependency ratio are negatively correlated with the inflow of OFDI; (3) different from the existing conclusions, the quality of human capital will inhibit the inflow of OFDI in the sample period; (4) the extended test shows that the quality of human capital has a significant positive impact on OFDI decision-making. The results of robustness test are reliable. Finally, according to the conclusion of this paper, policy recommendations are put forward.

The recognition rate of some face recognition methods that require a certain number of samples will be significantly reduced in case only one sample is available for training. Aim at this situation, a new feature extraction method, HOG–LDB (histogram of oriented gradients–local difference binary), is proposed. Then, we combined this method with SVDL (sparse variation dictionary learning) to recognize the probe images with different facial variations (e.g., illuminations, poses, expressions and disguises). The descriptor of HOG–LDB can extract the edge features and local pattern features of the image. After the feature extraction, SVDL is employed in the generic training set and the generic variation dictionary is obtained. Then, the dictionary is used for predicting the subjects of the probe images with different facial variations. Finally, experimental results on the AR dataset, the Yale dataset, the Extended Yale B dataset and the CMU-PIE dataset proved the validity of the proposed method.

Comprehensively considering the factors of environmental pollution, financial development and spillover effects, this paper analyzes the spatial dependence and clustering characteristics by selecting provincial panel data from 2005 to 2018. Meanwhile, considering geographic distance, economic distance and asymmetric factors, the optimal spatial econometric models are determined by constructing five different weight matrices and utilizing spatial panel models. The results show that (1) there existed significant positive correlation in the regional economic development and the spatial dependence played a significant role in promoting the economic development; (2) the direction and significance of spatial spillover effects were consistent under different spatial weights, and the spatial weight which considered geographical distance, economic distance and asymmetric factors proved to be the best; (3) the environmental pollution had a significant positive correlation with economic growth; (4) financial development had some positive effects on economic growth; (5) financial development was conducive to reducing the impact of environmental pollution on economic growth, and the promotion of environmental quality could strengthen the role of financial development in promoting economic growth; (6) from the perspective of regional heterogeneity, the cross terms of environmental pollution and financial development were not significant in the eastern region, but significantly negative in the central and western regions.

Considering three monetary policy rules, together with two endogenous macroprudential policies that are credit constraints (loan to value, LTV) for households and counter-cyclical capital (capital requirement ratio, CRR) for bankers, this paper establishes a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. Based on the welfare analysis of different combinations of macroprudential rules and monetary policy rules, this paper identifies the optimal policy combinations and analyzes the coordination effects between macroprudential policies and monetary policies. The results show that no matter what kind of monetary policy rules is implemented, the introduction of macroprudential rules has improved the level of total social welfare. In the optimal “two pillars” framework of monetary policies and macroprudential rules, the main objective of monetary policy is to stabilize price inflation, and the macroprudential policy to be implemented is the CRR macroprudential policy. This combination can effectively promote the stability of the real estate market, financial market, and macroeconomy, while maximizing the improvement of total social welfare.

This paper highlights a prominent yet neglected feature of North–South trade, namely that the Northern currency is used as the medium of exchange. It investigates how this feature may affect the way real and monetary shocks are transmitted from the North to the South through trade. It shows that technological progress in the North benefits its Southern trading partner. However, if Southern consumers need to hold Northern money to pay for imports, a monetary expansion in the North hurts the South. In particular, it increases the demand for Northern money in the South, which has to be met by a transfer of real resources from the South to the North. This has an adverse effect on the terms of trade for the South and on the trade balance for the North. This last result is supported by our empirical analysis which shows a positive correlation between US money supply and US bilateral trade deficits with Mexico and with India.

Face Recognition plays a very important role in numerous occasions based on visual security in recent days. The current methods of face recognition are to extract the different features of different faces to distinguish from others, so feature extraction has become a vital step in face recognition. For this reason, this paper presents a new fusion of local difference binary (LDB) and histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) for face recognition. We use LDB descriptor to extract the local pattern features of a face image. At the same time, the edge features of the original image are extracted by using HOG descriptor. The proposed new fusion of features improves the shortcomings of the low accuracy and avoids the problems that the dimension of the general fusion of features is too high. The experimental results on ORL and Yale face database verify the validity of the proposed fusion of features.

This paper develops two models to study the impact of outsourcing on wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor in the developed country and the developing country. The first model assumes symmetric production technologies in both countries, and predicts that outsourcing will increase wage inequality in the developed country, but decrease wage inequality in the developing country. The second model assumes asymmetric technologies in the production of the intermediate good and predicts that outsourcing can lead to an increase in wage inequality in both the developed country and the developing country.

This paper develops a general equilibrium 3-good Ricardian model that extends Professor Samuelson's example on the impact of productivity progress published in JEP (summer 2004). Our model highlights Professor Samuelson's insight that productivity progress can change the pattern of trade which in turn can have dramatic welfare implications. It also shows that while Professor Samuelson is correct that productivity growth in one country can hurt another, the loss is not as permanent as his example appears to suggest. Continuing productivity growth in one country is likely to benefit all trading countries in the long run.