A Dynamic Analysis on the Level of New-type Industrialization in China＇ s Western Region From the Angle of Western Region Development Program

通过构建区域新型工业化评价指标体系,运用多指标综合评价方法,对西部地区新型工业化水平进行测算和分析,并与其他区域进行多角度动态比较,结果显示：西部大开发战略实施以来西部地区新型工业化取得显著进展,但区域内省际分异较明显;新型工业化总水平以及工业化进程、科技创新、资源环境、社会协调发展水平均落后于其他区域且差距并未明显缩小甚至趋于扩大,而经济效益水平持续提升已居各区域之首。最后针对西部地区薄弱环节提出促进新型工业化的政策建议。     

Leaders, self-confidence, and hubris: what's the difference?

Success can easily breed hubris. As leaders become more confident, their success can limit their learning because they develop repetitive patterns of filtering information based on past successes and discount information that does not agree with their patterns of success. It is important for leaders to stay grounded in reality and effective as their success grows. Humility, gratitude, and appreciation will avoid the overconfidence that leads to hubris. Building confidence in others is the mark of a great leader. Hubris is not.     

Research on the Development Model of Ecological Agriculture in Loess Hilly-Gully Region of Northern Shannxi, China

On the Loess Plateau of China, facing the vulnerable environment, local people have to try their best to guarantee the security of food, and at the same time, to control the most serious soil erosion in the world. The paper introduces two typical models of ecological agriculture: ecological agriculture with commodity and agriculture with soil and water conservation. According to the local natural condition, the model of eco-agriculture with commodity could be characterized by the structure of “agriculture-byproduct”, “agriculture-fruit” or “agriculture-forestry-husbandry”. The development of agriculture with soil and water conservation has decreased the soil erosion rate from 12, 184 ton/kin^2 in 1980 to 458.4 ton/kin^2 in 1999, while the farmers‘ income has increasingly risen. Analyses on the two models‘ benefits both in terms of ecological and agricultural economy show that there is a great possibility to construct or restore good eco-environment with comprehensive control in the hilly-gully area of north Shannxi. Further more, the paper points out the potential problems of foodstuff production and stockbreeding development in forming ecological agriculture and eco-environmental restoration.     

Study on the causes and countermeasures for the dislocation of industrial structure in Three Gorges Region

1. IntroductionIndustrial structure theory, including the forma-tion and development theory of industrial structure,industrial linkage theory, industrial layout theory andso on, mainly studies the composing structure ofindustry, the connection between industries and theconnection between various industries and the wholeeconomy in a certain economy system[1]. Throughstudying the history, status quo and future of in-dustrial structure, it reveals the general trend of theindustrial structure evol…     

The Accounting Reform in the Brussels-capital Region： New Tool for Financial Analysis

In the last 20 years, public administrations in Belgium have completely reformed their accounting systems. The new system consists in combining double-entry general accounting with budgetary accounting, which is traditional in the public sector. The accounting reform of 2003 marks a turning point in the history of accounting of the federal State and federated entities （regions and communities）. The Brussels-capital region is the first federated entity to embark on the adventure and implement the new accounting system in 2006. The aim of this article is to introduce the legislative framework and the different implementation steps of the accounting reform in the Brussels-capital region and to provide a financial analysis of the region. The objective is to see if the region has a good financial situation. To do this, this paper analyses the data from the balance sheet and the income statements from 2008 to 2011. On one hand, it analyzes the evolution of the region＇s different results; and on the other hand, it presents different financial ratios. It also analyzes the evolution of the regional debt. This paper concludes that, although expenses and the debt are increasing, the situation of the region is not worrying, because of good budgetary performances, sophisticated financial management, and law loans rates. Even if the results of the analysis don＇t have to be interpreted as the same way as for a private company, the annual accounts provide interesting information that can be used to improve public finance.     

Career Paths,Unemployment, and the Efficiency of the Labor Market: Should Youth Employment Be Subsidized?

This paper studies the implications of learning‐by‐doing on youth unemployment and market efficiency when workers benefiting from this kind of training experience search (while on the job) for a higher skill job. Firms with low‐skill jobs suffer from a poaching behavior by firms with high‐skill jobs, causing a shortage of low‐skill jobs and excessive youth unemployment. An optimal policy, consisting of taxing the output of high‐skill jobs and subsidizing the output of low‐skill jobs, restores market efficiency and reduces youth unemployment.     

Return, purchase, or skip? Outcome, duration, and consumer behavior in the rent-to-own market

Rent-to-own (RTO) is attractive to financially distressed consumers. It allows immediate access to merchandise and an opportunity for eventually acquisition. Yet goods can be returned at any point without penalty or other adverse consequences. We use a competing risk methodology that accounts for unobserved consumer heterogeneity to study how contracts conclude, estimating the probabilities of exit??via return, purchase, or skip??and the associated durations. The estimated outcome probabilities highlight the use of the embedded return option by RTO consumers and the trade-offs and cross-subsidization implicit in the RTO contractual arrangement. We offer rational and behavioral explanations of consumer behavior in the RTO market, which we believe can be generalized to other consumer loan markets.     

Return of the State? The G20, the Financial Crisis and Power in the World Economy

The Group of Twenty and the new world order it is meant to signify have prompted a wave of triumphalism around the world from those who, like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, bemoan the influences of ‘Anglo-Saxon capitalism’ and from neo-Marxists, who view the economic crisis as a harbinger of the resurgence of states over markets. A little over a decade ago, however, the late doyenne of international political economists, Susan Strange, wrote eloquently about the reasons why the state was in retreat, its structural power draining away in favour of markets. Have the intervening dozen years, with their recurrent crises in markets and corporate governance, demonstrated the need for a return of the state? This analysis of the G20 London communiqué, using criteria that Strange advanced, suggests that far from asserting a return of the state, the G20 signifies its persistent weakness and concludes that the G20 leaders, at least, sense a more complex network of power relationships, and that structural power rests in the network.     

What about the Elephant in the Room? Varieties of Capitalism,Varieties in Capitalism

Conceived as considerably broader than simply the Varieties of Capitalism framework, I argue that the varieties of capitalism literature is premised upon an institutional reductionism which necessitates the search for a more holistic approach. In brief, if we are to explain convincingly the evolution of national political economies, then we must acknowledge that varieties of capitalism are also varieties in capitalism. In particular, Antonio Gramsci's writings on common sense enable us to focus on the role of institutions as a historical force without abandoning the system of production that they are part of. I then provide an alternative explanation, compared to the varieties of capitalism literature, of the evolution of the Dutch and German political economies in order to demonstrate the advantages of the framework I develop.     

A European Geopolitical Subject in the Making? EU,Russia and the Kaliningrad Question

This article engages the recent studies that have treated the European Union (EU) in geopolitical terms, as an empire engaged with enlargement. The article introduces the meta-concept of geopolitical subjectivity. This meta-concept enables us to situate such imperial interpretations of the EU into a theoretically informed, comparative setting. The meta-concept is defined as goal-oriented ordering of territories and political spaces, extending from one's own sphere of sovereign rule to broader regional contexts. It is used to study the EU-Russian interaction in creating order to the Kaliningrad region that is set to become a Russian enclave/exclave within the enlarged EU. The article concludes by arguing that in this case, the EU's geopolitical subjectivity is constituted more strongly by Russia's recognition of this status than by the EU's own identity and interest projects.     

Neo-Patrimonialism,Rent-Seeking and Development: Going with the Grain?

This contribution summarises research conducted by the Africa Power and Politics Programme, which finds that contrary to standard policy advice, neo-patrimonial governance can under certain conditions be compatible with a growth-enhancing investment climate.     

What are the ethics of welfare economics? And,are welfare economists utilitarians?

Four questions: (1) What is welfare economics? (2) Is it an ethical system?  (3) How do welfare economists differ from one another? And (4), how do they differ from other economic ethicists? Then utilitarianism is discussed. I was taught, and have inferred to others, that welfare economists are utilitarians. They are not. Welfare economics is an atypical form of welfare consequentialism: consequentialist in that whether an act or policy is right or wrong is a function of only its consequences—the adjective “welfare” because the only consequences that matter are the welfare (well-faring) consequences. Most welfare consequentialists are neither welfare economists nor utilitarians. And, most moral philosophers are not welfare consequentialists—neither are most normal folk.     

Is the monetary policy rule responsive to exchange rate changes? The case of Indonesia,Malaysia, the Philippines,and Thailand

Extending Obstfeld and Rogoff (J Econ Perspect 9:73–96, 1995), Ball (Monetary policy rules, University of Chicago Press, pp. 127–144, 1999), Svensson (J Int Econ 50: 155–183, 2000), Taylor (Am Econ Rev 91: 263–267, 2001), Gali and Gertler (J Econ Perspect 21:25–46, 2007), and others, this paper finds that central banks in the Philippines and Thailand respond negatively to the current real exchange rate and positively to the lagged real exchange rate whereas central banks in Indonesia and Malaysia do not react to the current or lagged real exchange rate. For the Philippines and Thailand, the null hypothesis that the sum of the coefficients of the current and lagged real exchange rates is zero cannot be rejected at the 5% level. Central banks in these four countries respond positively to the inflation rate and the output gap, suggesting that the concept of a simple or an extended Taylor rule would apply to these countries. Monetary policy reaction functions for Indonesia and Thailand are steeper than those for Malaysia and the Philippines and would be more responsive to a change in the inflation rate.      

Militarism,Realism, Just War,or Nonviolence? Critical Geopolitics and the Problem of Normativity

Despite illuminating multiple modalities by which armed conflict is discursively justified, critical geopolitics can be criticised for providing a weak normative engagement with the social institution and practices of warfare. This has limited the impact of this school of thought outside of geography and critical security studies at a time when the ethics of military intervention have been prominent in public debate. This article explores the moral discourse of critical geopolitics through an examination of Gerard Toal's writings on Iraq and Bosnia. This scholarship is reviewed in the light of Coates's typology of major traditions of moral reflection on war – militarism, realism, just war theory, and pacifism/nonviolence. This analysis interrogates Toal's narratives, in which American military intervention was advocated in the Former Yugoslavia and opposed in Iraq. This suggests that rather than a thoroughgoing commitment to pacifism/nonviolence, or a blanket cynicism about American foreign policy, Toal's thinking includes an underlying attachment to some form of just war reasoning. However, its implicit and partial appropriation leads to a certain incoherence and selectivity that calls for further reflection. This presents a challenge to critical geopolitics. If it chooses to engage more explicitly with just war theory, its insights into identity and militarism could in turn inform a reworking of aspects of the theory, thereby facilitating critical geopolitics' engagement with wider public anti-militaristic modes of discourse. However, as this risks blunting the political potential of the project and repeating the mistakes of twentieth-century geopolitical thought, the paper concludes with a call for a wholehearted commitment to nonviolence.     

‘Wiped From the Map of the World’? Zanzibar,Critical Geopolitics and Language

This essay uses the case of Zanzibar in its complicated relationship with the United Republic of Tanzania (of which it is a part) as a lens on debates in political geography on empirical and conceptual approaches to critical geopolitics. We test the veracity of a multi-faceted critical geopolitics in the contemporary public contestation of Zanzibar's place in the United Republic from 2008–2012. We analyze Tanzanian media, the speech acts of Tanzanian leaders, and the key events and processes related to what is termed the ‘Zanzibar problem’ during the selected years, to make two points about a critical geopolitics approach: to strengthen critical geopolitics by broadening the analysis of language to engage political acts and languages beyond the Global North; and taking ‘subaltern geopolitics’ more seriously via engagement with critical geopolitical voices on discourses, events and processes from the Global South.