Workfare,welfare, agency,and well-being

Workfare programs are state-instituted programs that require able-bodied persons with children of school age who wish to claim welfare payments to participate in job training programs, and, eventually, to enter the work force. The philosophy of workfare is based on the value of work and the goal of self-determination. However, as a mandatory program for welfare recipients, workfare requires of those recipients certain duties which, according to those who challenge workfare, interfere with the freedom to choose what one will do with one's life. Whether some form of workfare will be adopted as part of our national welfare system remains to be seen. What the debate about such a program suggests is that welfare, in itself, by ignoring the necessity of security and education for full human agency, neither satisfies basic needs nor prepares its recipients for any life other than that of dependency. With all its difficulties workfare nevertheless presents an alternative to welfare that, at least in theory, more closely identifies its purpose with the values of our society.     

Externalities, Indivisibility, Nonreplicability, and Agglomeration

In this paper we argue that the impact of external scale economies and diseconomies on city size is not nearly as clear-cut as it is tacitly believed in urban economics. Similarly, city-size distortions are not caused by externalities alone. Indivisibility and nonreplicability, which prevent establishing the “right” number of cities, may represent a source for city-size distortions which can be stronger than the standard resource misallocation resulting from external scale economies and diseconomies. It follows that a direct population dispersion policy is not just an inferior substitute to Pigouvian taxes and subsidies but rather a useful complement.     

企业·产品·人

企业是人,产品也是人,把企业和产品当做人来看,办企业就简单了。人有成长过程,企业也有,产品也有。怎样定位一个企业是好企业产品是好产品,跟怎么定位一个人是好人是一样的。要有思想,有文化,有道德,符合社会进步的需求,企业产品也都是如此。     

Returns to specialization,competition, population,and growth

Using an expanding-variety endogenous growth model with purposive human capital accumulation, this paper provides an alternative explanation of why we may observe an ambiguous correlation between product market competition (PMC) and economic growth, and between population and economic growth rates. Our explanation is based on the notion of ‘returns to specialization’. Under the model's assumptions, PMC and economic growth are ambiguously correlated when returns to specialization are decreasing, whereas population growth and productivity growth are ambiguously correlated when returns to specialization are increasing. From a theoretical point of view, these results are explained by the presence or absence of an ‘increasing production-complexity’ effect associated to the use of a larger number of intermediate-input varieties in the same production process.     

Mean, median, mode

Summary This note is an attempt to avoid doing the same search for the third time. It happened twice in my life that I wished to prove that the median is located between mean and mode for certain B -distributions: first in 1953, next in 1976. For arbitrary distributions the result is sometimes referred to as F echner's theorem. Of course it does not hold in general. In order to prove the result for particular distributions one can often use an elegant theorem of T imerding . There is a nice relationship with the standardized third central moment.     

Skills,core capabilities,and the choice between merging,allying, and trading assets

We analyze two firms’ choice between merging, allying, and trading assets. We consider a setting in which firms have assets, skills, and core capabilities; skills are the component of organizational capital that increases in the course of joint operations, core capabilities the component that does not. We find that the two firms trade assets for them to operate separately in case the two firms have high initial skills; the two firms merge in case they have similar core capabilities; they ally where there is little equilibrium double moral hazard. We compare the times to dissolution in the alliance with those to divesture or post-merger integration in the merger; for all but the last jointly operated asset, we find that joint operations cease earlier in the alliance than in the merger.     

Indifference,indecision, and coin-flipping

This article operationalizes a non-empty relation as implied if strict preference and indifference jointly do not completely order the choice set. Specifically, indecision is operationalized as a positive preference for delegating choice to a least predictable device.     

诚信 奋斗 创新——贺上海立信会计学院成立暨学报更名

<正> 银杏飘香,金秋送爽。立信的发展进入了崭新阶段:上海立信会计学院成立暨学报更名为《上海立信会计学院学报》,这是立信教育发展史上的一个里程碑。我们谨代表学院党委和行政向全院教职员工表示热烈的祝贺!     

ICP测定土壤中的K,Na,Ca,Mg,Fe

本论文采用等离子体发射光谱法(ICP-AES)土壤中的K,Na,Ca,Mg,Fe进行了测定,样品以四酸体系溶矿,不经分离杂质,即可直接测定。本法通过优化实验条件确定了最佳分析波长,该测定方法检出限为:0.006~0.0186mg/ml,RSD%为:0.5032%~1.030%,双差均小于1,回收率为99.41%~100%。准确度和精密度较高,方法快速简单,预处理简单,分析流程短,完全满足地质工作要求。