陕南新农村建设典型模式探析——陕西省商州区秦茂村个案研究

近年来,我国在社会主义新农村建设的实践中,各地涌现出许多新农村建设的优秀典范,以西部欠发达地区高寒边远村落、全国文明村——秦茂村为个案,探析扶贫推动式新农村建设模式,总结其成功经验,寻找其融入西部大开发、农村经济大发展的新路径,旨在为其他西部地区的新农村建设提供模式参考与经验借鉴。     

对欠发达地区社会主义新农村建设的若干思考

党的十六届五中全会提出建设社会主义新农村,是党中央在新的历史时期、新的发展阶段统揽全局、着眼长远做出的重大战略部署,充分体现了党中央关注农村发展,着力解决"三农"问题的信心和决心。而欠发达地区"三农"问题是我国农村问题的重中之重,因此,欠发达地区新农村建设是我国新农村建设中需要重点突破的一环。文章对此进行了分析探讨。     

我国欠发达地区低成本推动型新农村建设道路——以江西赣州市新农村建设调查为例

目前,我国已经进入以工补农、以城带乡的新阶段。党的十六届五中全会提出,建设社会主义新农村是我国现代化进程中的重大历史任务。为了了解我国欠发达的中西部地区新农村建设情况,及时总结已有的欠发达地区典型建设经验,认真解决欠发达地区新农村建设中存在的问题,加快推进广大欠发达地区新农村建设,为决策部门制定更加具体详细的区域性政策提出建议,由国家发改委农村经济司与产业所共同组成联合调研组,于2005年10月8~10日,前往江西省赣州市调研。先后与市政府有关部门、大余县和兴国县政府、基层村镇和农民进行了座谈,并对五个新农村建设试…     

以农业带动农村,走内源式发展之路——云南省元谋县"三化并举"推进新农村建设的调研

欠发达农业地区如何推进新农村建设是一个亟待破解的难题.云南省元谋县依托本地优势资源,以发展规模化、市场化、产业化绿色无公害果蔬种植业为主导,带动加工服务业发展,初步走上了一条以农业带动农村、城乡协调发展的内源式发展之路,这对我国目前欠发达典型农业地区破解新农村建设难题有一定的启示.     

新农村建设背景下欠发达地区乡村旅游发展探讨——以湖北省黄冈市为例

十二五时期,中国建设社会主义新农村的重点和难点仍在欠发达地区。黄冈市位于湖北省东部大别山南麓属于经济欠发达地区。欠发达地区在新农村建设中面临着基础设施及环境建设滞后等亟待解决的难题。以黄冈市为例,分析和概括欠发达地区乡村旅游现状及其存在的问题,寻求解决欠发达地区乡村旅游发展的建议性思路。     

发达地区新农村建设的思路与对策研究

发达地区与其他地区在社会主义新农村建设进程中有着不同的路径选择，文章首先提出了经济发达地区新农村建设的基础、特征与内涵，进而总结了发达地区新农村建设的功能定位、模式选择及推进模式，最后提出了发达地区建设新农村的对策措施。     

欠发达地区生态旅游可持续发展模式研究

生态旅游作为对旅游目的地经济、社会和文化尤其是生态负责的新型旅游活动引起了人们的关注。许多欠发达地区把发展生态旅游作为实现跨越式发展和脱贫的有效途径,而选择适合的发展模式是欠发达地区生态旅游可持续发展的关键。在分析总结欠发达地区基本特征的基础上,结合目前我国生态旅游发展的一般模式,对欠发达地区生态旅游可持续发展模式进行了选择,并提出了实施策略建议。     

县域经济、新农村建设如何借鉴南方发达地区发展模式探析

文章以华西村、义乌小商品城发展模式为主线,阐述了新时期中西部特别是欠发达地区中小城市如何结合自身实际借鉴南方发达地区发展模式的思路和方法,对加快调整优化县域经济结构,推进城镇化,推进社会主义新农村建设提供有益参考。     

欠发达地区新农村建设中"大理模式"的现实意义

在新农村建设的具体实践中,大理州探索出了以"扶贫、脱贫"为主线的"抓两头促中间"模式,为欠发达地区的新农村建设提供了有意义的借鉴.     

对经济欠发达地区建设社会主义新农村的认识

从经济欠发达地区实施新农村建设以来的变化和成效中,发现新农村建设中存在的不足或是需要解决的问题,提出经济欠发达地区提高新农村建设质量的建议。     

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.”     

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.     

Planned adaptation in risk regulation: An initial survey of US environmental, health, and safety regulation

In principle, we want regulatory programs to be based on current realities, as reflected for example in the best knowledge of relevant experts. That would imply that old rules now on the books should be consistent with today's knowledge base, not just what was known when a rule or standard was originally set. This paper reports on a survey of US programs, examining how often existing rules are actually updated in light of better knowledge, and identifies five programs that attempt to make policy routinely adaptive. These programs exhibit what we term Planned Adaptation: they both revise rules when relevant new knowledge appears, and take steps to produce such improved knowledge. While Planned Adaptation is rare, it is used in several nationally prominent programs, including air pollution, airplane safety, and drug safety. Planned Adaptation is a policy tool that deserves more attention.