浅谈微观经济学课程改革

微观经济学课程是一门理论性与实践性都较强的课程。微观经济学侧重于基本概念、基本图形、基本理论的教授,使学生对市场运行机制的一般原理和规范行为等方面的内容有比较全面的了解。通过本课程的学习,可以使学生掌握微观经济学的基本原理,并培养经济学直觉,培养运用基本的微观经济学方法分析现实经济问题的能力。在实际教学过程中,要精心设计教学内容,丰富教学手段,注重理论与实践相结合,从而提高微观经济学的教学质量。     

应用型本科院校微观经济学教学的调查分析与改革

西方经济学是高校财经类各专业的核心课程之一,如何改进课堂教学过程,增加教学效果,一直是该课程教师所关注与探讨的问题。本文立足于对本课程在修学生的问卷调查,从调查结果分析着手,分析了高专类与应用型本科院校的微观经济学课程在教学过程,授课群体、教学目标与研究型本科院校有所差别,本文在分析其中存在的问题,针对该类院校的实际提出了建议,以期对该门课程的教学改革有所裨益。     

微观经济学课程特点及教学方法探讨

目前,微观经济学的如何教学已成为财经专业师生关注的焦点。基于多年教学的经历,对微观经济学课程的特点以及相应的教学方法进行了较为深入的探讨。希望能为今后微观经济学的教学效果的提高具有推波助澜的作用。     

《微观经济学》案例教学探究

微观经济学教学要避免数学化和模型化的倾向。微观经济学的案例教学要坚持本土化的原则，案例的来源要多样化，案例要新颖并能体现专业特点，要注意和其他学科的联系。要用创新的理念从事微观经济学案例的教学和研究。     

应用型本科院校微观经济学教学的调查分析与改革

西方经济学是高校财经类各专业的核心课程之一,如何改进课堂教学过程,增加教学效果,一直是该课程教师所关注与探讨的问题.本文立足于对本课程在修学生的问卷调查,从调查结果分析着手,分析了高专类与应用型本科院校的微观经济学课程在教学过程,授课群体、教学目标与研究型本科院校有所差别,本文在分析其中存在的问题,针对该类院校的实际提出了建议,以期对该门课程的教学改革有所裨益.     

“微观经济学”精品课建设的实践与思考

大学本科＂微观经济学＂是一门理论性与实践性都很强的学科基础课。从教学定位与发展目标、教学重点与难点、教学方法与手段、教学管理等方面,分析了＂微观经济学＂精品课课程建设应注意的问题,旨在为类似精品课的建设提供参考。     

中级微观经济学实践性教学探讨

本文结合上海对外贸易学院本科生的实际情况,根据以往教学效果,在总结经济学教学经验的基础上,对中级微观经济学实践性教学的开设背景、教学目标、教学内容设置和教学效果检验等方面进行全面论述,从而对中级微观经济学的实践性教学进行初步探讨.     

微观经济学课程教学的主要问题与对策

微观经济学课程的特点是理论基础性强，概念和原理较抽象，并且使用大量的数学模型；微观经济学教学的主要问题是课程难度大、内容多和缺乏对学生理论联系实际能力的培养。解决的对策是多做习题，采角启发式和对比式教学，突出对图形的讲解。穿插讲解式案例教学等等。     

《微观经济学》课程教学方法浅谈

《微观经济学》是国家教育部规定的高等院校经管类专业的专业基础课程,学好这门课程对于后续的专业课可以起到很好的支撑作用。文章主要分析了《微观经济学》课程及经管类学生学习的特点,并结合自身多年的《微观经济学》课程教学经验提出了多种教学方法的尝试,以更好地提高教学效果和教学质量。     

浅论民办本科院校微观经济学教学效果优化

阐述了民办本科院校在微观经济学教学过程中存在的问题,结合本科微观经济学教学要求,在分析民办本科大学生特点的基础上,提出应用＂圈子案例＂教学、＂被动复习＂方法等措施来优化课程教学效果。     

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.”     

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.     

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.     

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.     

The greenhouse effect: Damages,costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — CO₂ in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the most favorable (although not necessarily likely) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded.The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO₂ eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO₂ emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO₂ saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings.We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.During the academic year 1989–90 Dr. Ayres was at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.During the summer of 1989 Mr. Walter was a member of the Young Scientists' Summer Program at IIASA.     

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY: TRACING THE FLOW OF BASIC RESEARCH THROUGH MANUFACTURING AND TRADE

This paper describes flows of basic research through the US economy during the late 20th century. In addition, the paper studies the effect of the flows on scientific papers in industries and fields. This article differs from others in its use of measures of science rather than technology. Together, its results present a picture of the structure of basic research flows in a modern, science-intensive economy. Basic research flows are large within petrochemicals and drugs, and within software and communications. Flows of chemistry, physics, and engineering are common throughout all industries – biology and medicine are almost confined to petrochemicals and drugs; and computer science is nearly as restricted to software and communications. In general, basic research flows are more concentrated within scientific fields than within industries. Our findings concerning the production of scientific papers indicate that the effect of a 1% change in academic R&D spillovers significantly exceeds that of industrial spillovers. In addition, within-field effects exceed effects between-fields, while within- and between-industry effects are roughly equal. It follows that scientific fields limit basic research flows more than industries do, perhaps because large firms implicitly span a range of industries.     

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.