基于生态系统服务价值的区域土地整理生态效益评价——以南京市为例

以Costanza等提出的生态系统服务价值理论为基础,建立了区域土地整理生态效益经济评价模型,并以南京市土地整理为例,评价了南京市土地整理项目实施取得的生态系统服务价值。结果显示:土地整理引起了土地利用结构变化,也必然引起区域土地生态服务价值的变化,而这种变化可能是正向的,也可能是逆向的。合理开发利用各类土地资源,适当增加和保护生态服务价值高的地类,补充一定生态用地,应成为当前土地整理过程中重要的内容。     

实现楚雄州耕地总量动态平衡的策略选择

实现耕地总量动态平衡的最终目标是满足人口对食物的持续需求。本文分析了楚雄州耕地资源现状及耕地资源变化的趋势,提出在耕地后备资源严重不足的楚雄州要实现耕地总量动态平衡的最终目标,首先必须把目光投向广大的山地,综合开发利用山地,其次必须实施土地整理;第三必须大力发展生态农业,实现耕地的可持续利用。     

土地整理可持续发展评价体系研究

研究土地整理可持续发展问题是土地资源持续性和经济社会生态持续发展的重要课题,而建立土地整理可持续发展评价体系对于保证土地整理可持续发展具有重要作用,作者通过参加土地整理规划工作并结合研究了近年来国内外可持续土地整理方面的资料与成果,阐述了土地整理可持续发展的内涵和体系建立的原则与程序。     

论山区持续发展的农业技术─—山地农业复式生态技术

山地农业复式生态技术是在山区水土整治和农业综合技术基础上发展起来的新型土地开发利用技术，是实现山区土地永续利用和农业经济持续增长的重要途径。包括山地复式梯田、果园、草场、防护林四个子系统。其根木特点是最大限度减少工程投入，增加土地利用层次立体经营，全面提高多年生植物覆盖率，以获得更好的生态、经济和社会效益。     

肃南县山地草原畜牧业的发展模式

本文以祁连山区的肃南县为实验基础,通过对山地草原牧区生态保护和经济发展之间现存问题的分析,提出了以草原管理,牲畜繁育和产业发展为主要内容的山地草原畜牧业的生态经济发展模式。它将山地草原的生态保护与农户的经济增长兼容起来,从而成为山地草原畜牧业的一个可持续发展模式。     

土地开发整理工作的若干思考

我国目前开展的土地整理活动,带来的不仅仅是耕地的增加,它对区域范围内的国土资源开发利用的影响是全方位的,产生了经济、社会、生态三方面的效益,因此,需要对土地开发整理的实质、影响、规划控制等进行多维思考,从而使土地整理活动在资源开发利用和社会系统的发展中发挥更好的作用。     

沙漠化典型地区农户生态经济行为与保护生态环境的矛盾研究

本文以土地沙漠化发生的三个典型区域类型为例,采用环境社会学的研究方法,对农户的生态经济行为进行了调查。统计分析表明,追求经济利益最大化是农户生态活动的根本目标,其不合理的经济行为是土地沙漠化发生的根本原因。农户经济行为的目标层次性决定了其经济行为与保护生态环境之间的矛盾,文章据此提出了治理土地沙漠化的建议。     

经济发达地区农户土地流转影响因素分析——基于江苏684个农户调查样本的实证

基于江苏684个农户调查样本,运用probit和tobit计量模型,分析经济发达地区农户土地流转影响因素。研究结果表明,资源禀赋差异、种植业调整和劳动力转移是农户土地流转的主要动力。整体上,土地流转表现出由土地资源丰富、种植粮食作物和劳动力转移比重高的农户向劳动力资源丰富、种植经济作物和劳动力转移比重低的农户流动的趋势。此外,研究还发现老年人经营农业趋向于自给自足,农业劳动力老龄化抑制农户间的土地流转。     

粮食主产区农户耕地质量保护情况调查研究——基于吉林省446户样本的分析

耕地是保证国家食物供给和粮食安全不可替代的资源。基于"农户—政府—第三方主体"耕地质量保护主体三维坐标,从地理区位差异、地块数量差异、耕地面积差异、生态认知差异等角度分析,粮食主产区农户耕地质量保护行为呈现如下特征:不同地理区位农户耕地质量保护行为差异显著;地块数量与农户耕地质量保护行为呈倒"U"形关系;耕地规模与农户耕地质量保护行为呈近似线性关系;生态认知对农户耕地质量保护行为起到决定性作用。因此,应推广"种养结合"的农户微观经营模式;健全土地流转市场,适时推出进城落户农户土地承包权退出机制;完善服务组织载体,加快农户嵌入农业现代化进程;强化耕地保护相关主体的责任意识。     

生态文明视角下制约贵州少数民族地区山地农业发展的因素分析

改革开放以来,贵州少数民族地区一直是全国最为落后的地区,并且生态环境十分脆弱.本文以生态文明的视角,从农业资源稀缺、生态环保意识差及农业技术落后两个方面阐明制约贵州少数民族地区山地农业的发展.为解决生态环境和山地农业的经济发展矛盾,进一步提出了调整种植业结构、发展生态山地农业和提高生态环保意识、培养农业科技人才的对策和建议.     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

Neurally reconstructing expected utility

While the concept of “expected utility” informs many theories of decision making, little is known about whether and how the human brain might compute this quantity. This article reviews a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) experiments designed to localize brain regions that respond in anticipation of increasing amounts of monetary incentives. These studies collectively suggest that anticipation of increasing monetary gains activates a subcortical region of the ventral striatum in a magnitude-proportional manner. This ventral striatal activation is not evident during anticipation of losses. Actual gain outcomes instead activate a region of the mesial prefrontal cortex. During anticipation of gain, ventral striatal activation is accompanied by feelings characterized by increasing arousal and positive valence. These findings affirm the role of emotion in the anticipation of incentives, and may provide an initial step towards a neural reconstruction of expected utility.     

Duplication, Growth and ‘Total Return Economics’

Maintenance consumption is an expense recovered in product prices, yet also a source of taste satisfaction which must be exhausted, rather than reinvested, from the capital affording it. This riddle is solved in the duplication rules: the cost of maintenance consumption is recovered in pay and prices, but an equal flow is exhausted from the human capital of the worker earning the pay. The rules impact tradition in several ways. If output is defined in principle as value added, then it cannot also be described as consumption plus net investment without double-counting the maintenance consumption recovered in prices. Also rate of return in the stationary state is not zero, but is the rate sufficient to offset the exhaustion of individual human capital. The rules lead to new insights into economic return, and support an argument that all growth at the scale of closure is due to productivity gain rather than to thrift.     

John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

Although he was much influenced by David Ricardo when he wrote the classical part of his Principles , John Stuart Mill was not a Ricardian when he penned his theories of wealth and distribution. They are based on a triple foundation. First, a belief that economics is a moral discipline. Second a theory of custom-driven human behavior. Third, an empirically formed conviction that the institutions of state, education and business cooperate to structure the distribution of income. On the basis of these presuppositions, Mill formulated 1) an institutional theory of the formation of human and non-human wealth and 2) an even more institutional theory of distribution demonstrating how the aforementioned institutions malignantly skew the distribution of income to the advantage of the propertied classes and to the extreme disadvantage of the working class. As a social economist, Mill recommended institutional reforms designed to eradicate the poverty of the working class.     

Forecasting the price of gold

This article seeks to evaluate the appropriateness of a variety of existing forecasting techniques (17 methods) at providing accurate and statistically significant forecasts for gold price. We report the results from the nine most competitive techniques. Special consideration is given to the ability of these techniques to provide forecasts which outperforms the random walk (RW) as we noticed that certain multivariate models (which included prices of silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, besides gold) were also unable to outperform the RW in this case. Interestingly, the results show that none of the forecasting techniques are able to outperform the RW at horizons of 1 and 9 steps ahead, and on average, the exponential smoothing model is seen providing the best forecasts in terms of the lowest root mean squared error over the 24-month forecasting horizons. Moreover, we find that the univariate models used in this article are able to outperform the Bayesian autoregression and Bayesian vector autoregressive models, with exponential smoothing reporting statistically significant results in comparison with the former models, and classical autoregressive and the vector autoregressive models in most cases.     

Simulating the Effect of Regulatory Systems in a Fishery, An Application to the French Driftnet Albacore Fleet

With a thin economic component, most bio-economic models of fisheries failto assess the effects of the regulation systems on firms. In order to analysethe short term consequences of different management schemes, a simulationmodel is applied to the French driftnet albacore fleet: licence allocation withdriftnet regulation, individual quotas, and individual transferable quotaswithout any input control. Vessel technology is estimated by using the datacollected, and groups of vessels are distinguished according to criteria ofperformance. We present the adjustment within firms and between groupsunder different scenarios (limited entry with and without driftnetregulation, individual quotas and individual transferable quotas allocation),and we compare their results in terms of quasi-rent value and otherindicators such as hake harvests or dolphin by-catches.     

Knowledge as a Path-Dependence Process

By following a new approach proposed by Cognitive and Neuroeconomics, this paper presents and extends that part of Hayek's theory concerning knowledge in path-dependent terms, and shows that this is a fertile theory, opening new lines of inquiry for contemporary economics. In his theory of knowledge Hayek shows that the dynamics of economic change is path-dependent, in a different and more profound way than in the rest of the path-dependent literature. This literature deals with an important controversy, which will be also discussed and its specific and original meaning will be highlighted. As it will emerge, knowledge as a path-dependent process is consistent with cognitive theories of perception and learning and it plays a more important role than is traditionally assumed. Path-dependence is in fact always present in the cognitive dimension of perception and in individual decision-making processes, as well as in the processes of organizational innovation, and even in the macro-dimension of institutional change. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.