实施“走出去”开放战略应处理好四个关系

实施“走出去”开放战略要注意处理好“走出去”与“引进来”、对外投资与对外贸易、政府与企业、产业选择与区位选择的关系。     

影响我国企业“走出去”的途径探析

选择何种途径“走出去”是企业在对外投资过程中需要考虑的一项十分重要的内容。企业能否选择适合企业“走出去”的途径在某种程度上可以决定企业对外投资的成败。具体而言，不同企业应该根据自己的情况，结合各种有利条件在“走出去”的过程中选择适合本企业发展的途径。     

我国企业“走出去”的认知误区

我国企业在“走出去”的过程中 ,面临着区位选择、企业规模、价值链的进入环节、成功经验移植等方面的认知误区 ,正确地辨识这些问题 ,并对此进行深入地分析与解剖 ,才能为我国企业成功“走出去”奠定坚实的基础     

经济全球化与“走出去”战略

“走出去”战略是贯彻国际贸易“双向循环流动”规律的需要，在当前，我国具备了“走出去”战略的可行性，企业应实施正确的“走出去”策略选择，政府也应采取措施推进“走出去”战略的顺利实施。     

东盟十国的投资环境分析与我国企业“走出去”战略

随着中国-东盟自由贸易区建设的逐步加强，东盟国家已成为中国企业“走出去”的重点地区之一。只有在对东盟十国投资硬环境、投资软环境比较分析的基础上，我国企业才能实施正确的“走出去”战略。本文通过对东盟十国投资硬环境、投资软环境的分析结论是，新加坡的投资环境最好，投资风险是最小的，其次为马来西亚和泰国，印尼、缅甸、束埔寨和越南等国的风险是比较大的。针对不同的投资环境，本文提出相应的企业“走出去”战略。     

中国“走出去”战略中企业选择的几点思考

“走出去”战略是中国的一项重要国策,中国在大力实施“走出去”战略过程中存在不少问题,其中企业选择是重要问题之一。显然,“走出去”战略并不是鼓励所有的企业都走出去,只有具备一定条件和竞争优势的企业通过积极走出去,找准自己发展的方向,抓住发展机会,才能提升自己的国际竞争力,获得更大的对外发展空间和发展前景。如何进行正确的企业选择,是我们在实施“走出去’战略中必须解决的一个重要问题。     

“走出去”战略背景下中国对外情报体系的构建

我国提出企业“走出去”战略,推动更多企业到国外开展投资合作、拓展国际市场,但企业缺乏有效的信息渠道,对国外情况缺乏了解,容易造成企业“走出去”的盲目性。因此,非常有必要建立一套符合中国特色的对外情报体系。     

影响我国企业"走出去"的途径探析

选择何种途径"走出去"是企业在对外投资过程中需要考虑的一项十分重要的内容.企业能否选择适合企业"走出去"的途径在某种程度上可以决定企业对外投资的成败.具体而言,不同企业应该根据自己的情况,结合各种有利条件在"走出去"的过程中选择适合本企业发展的途径.     

中国企业“走出去”区域格局变化的影响因素与产业选择分析

伴随着中国“走出去”规模不断增大以及国内国际经济发展要求,中国“走出去”区域格局也一直在发生变化.作为一个发展中的投资大国,了解企业“走出去”区域变动影响因素进而形成相应的对策和措施,对于现阶段我国经济与社会的持续、稳定、健康发展具有重要的理论和现实意义.本文分别从“走出去”区域格局变动趋势和变动特点入手,利用Panel Data模型研究区域格局变化的影响因素,并对产业选择做相关分析,提出相应的产业对策措施.     

企业运用华商网络"走出去"的思考

中国经济20多年来的迅猛发展，海外华商的特殊作用功不可没。他们以往更多的是在“引进来”的过程中发挥重要作用；今后将在中国企业“走出去”的过程中，充当把中国企业推向世界的中介和桥梁作用。因此，本文从我国对外投资所面临的困难与问题出发，探讨中国企业“走出去”与华商网络的这两个紧密相关问题     

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.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.     

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Hume's discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739?–?40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Hume's theory of choice.     

The concept of freedom and its relation to economic development--a critical appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen

Following a brief review of the conception of freedom as employedin economic discourse, this paper focuses on the evolution ofthe concept of freedom in the work of Amartya Sen. It tracesthe development of Sen's thought from the capability analysisof the late 1970s to his more recent separation of freedom intoits opportunity and process aspects. While broadly appreciativeof Sen's development of the concept of positive freedom, thepaper identifies some difficulties arising from his definitionof capability as a set of options as well as from his separationof the opportunity and process aspects of freedom. Aspects ofthe relationship between Sen's conception of freedom and thatof Marx are discussed briefly in the context of Sen's recentdiscussion of the market as a source of freedom.     

How chaebol restructuring after the 1997 crisis has affected corporate decision and performance in Korea: debt financing,ownership structure,and investment

ABSTRACT

Korean chaebol firms, characterized by excessive debt financing and overinvestment, experienced restructuring after the 1997 crisis. By reducing debt financing and thus overinvestment, they tried to reorganize financing structure and ownership structure. Chaebols’ debt reduction turns out to have improved performance. However, polarization between chaebol and non-chaebol firms has become more significant. Even after the crisis, firms that give higher cash flows to a controlling shareholder take more capital investment, indicating that agency problems still exist within chaebols. Chaebol-affiliated firms continue to be more active in R&D than non-chaebol firms. However, the pattern is limited to the group of top 10 chaebols after the crisis.

Abbreviations: KFTC: Korea Fair Trade Commission     

Types of technology

Technology is a concept rife with confusion. Here, I argue that technologies can be distinguished as a combination of type of producer and an idealized artefact life history. Using this definition, a number of technologies are identified. The first technology historically, in the Protostomes, was the production of individual or family dwellings. Next came objects such as spider webs for trapping prey. Stigmergy followed, with the social insects, as a collective endeavour to construct a mega-structure using simple rules of accretion. Some birds and primates began to make tools, or simple technological objects whose function is closely related to their form. Humans are distinguished by their ability to make machines. Traditional technology took place once people voluntarily organised into groups with specialised knowledge to produce more complex objects and structures. Monumental objects like ceremonial pyramids came with the command economies of the early agrarian societies, which also resulted in a new category of artefact, the network. Finally, with modern civilizations came ad hoc accretion, or population-level adding-on, to make truly complex technological systems. Developing a theoretical framework within which artefacts, production processes and ways of interacting with them are identified should help the study of technology to become more scientific.