农村地下金融转化的焦点与关键:夯实政府管制

农村金融组织建设和缓解农村市场的融资问题已成为促进农业稳定发展、农民持续增收的关键所在。在市场不完美、信息不对称条件下,政府干预无疑是促进农村经济发展不可或缺的重要手段,但是从当前农村金融市场发展中所面临的借贷难、地下金融泛滥的现实看,提高政府干预或管制的水平至关重要。因此,发展农村金融市场必须加强政府管制水平和力度,充分发挥政府在不完全竞争市场中的力量,促进"地下金融"转化成"地上金融",实现农村金融市场又好又快地发展。     

关于构建我国和谐农村金融体系的思考

农村经济发展需要农村金融的大力支持。构建我国和谐的农村金融体系,建立以商业性金融为主导,政策性金融、合作性金融和民间金融等多种形式的金融机构并存、合理分工协作、功能互补的有机体系,这对建设社会主义新农村有重要意义。一、我国农村金融体系的概念和构成农村金融体系是指农村各类金融机构及其活动所构成的有机整体。作为国家整个金融体系不可分割的组成部分,它在组织农村货币流通,调剂农村资金余缺,加强农村资金运动,加速社会资金周转等方面发挥着重要的作用,对带动整个国民经济发展具有重要的意义。经过二十年的改革和发展,我国…     

农村金融放松管制的动力机制——基于国家效用函数的分析

现有关于农村金融放松管制的研究多集中于对策层面.本文通过构建国家放松农村金融管制的效用函数,分析我国农村金融放松管制的动力机制.研究表明,在转轨经济中,当影响国家效用函数最大化的约束因素突破国家承受底线,进而降低国家效用时,国家会做出放松管制的决策.随着转轨经济的完成,国家效用函数会从租金偏好转为效率偏好,这会带来进一步的放松管制,以提升农村金融效率.     

农村民间金融发展状况及改革路径

农村金融体制的改革严重滞后,已经成为农村发展的重要障碍,在现阶段,中国要取得农村金融改革的成功,必须重塑农村非正规金融的体系,特别是对其进入以及利率进行全方位的管制。通过探讨农村金融发展问题,进而提出民间金融的改革方向。     

从新农村建设"缺血"看农村金融体系建设待加强

社会主义新农村建设，离不开资金投入，而我国农村正规金融机构为农村经济发展提供金融支持的能力正在不断减弱，非正规金融的发展受到严格的管制，由此导致农村的金融抑制变得更加严重．因此，必须改革农村金融体系以发挥农村金融在社会主义新农村建设中的重要作用。     

黑龙江省构建普惠型农村金融体系的思考

黑龙江省目前农村金融体系离普惠型金融还有很大距离，亟待建立一个更完善更有活力的农村金融服务体系，这就要从农村金融体系的整体着眼，放松对农村金融的管制。培育竞争性的农村金融市场。     

我国三十年来农村地区金融改革的逻辑轨迹——基于新比较经济学分析框架的研究

文章基于新比较经济学的分析框架,从正规金融和非正规金融两个方面来论述三十年来中国农村地区金融改革的基本逻辑。研究认为,农村金融发展滞后于农村经济发展的原因是政府对农村金融的控制方式不尽合理。文章充分肯定了国家2005年至今的改革措施,认为新型金融机构的引进将成为建立完善的农村金融体系的契机。     

中国农村金融改革与发展探索

世界金融理论界关于农村金融存在多种流派,我国学术界对我国农村金融改革也多有争议。1978年以来,我国农村金融改革走的是准入管制之路。历经曲折,2006年监管层准许微型金融机构进入农村金融市场,这是顺应农村经济社会发展的政策选择。今后,农村金融改革与发展一方面要改造合作金融、商业金融和政策性金融这"三驾马车",另一方面应大力发展微型金融。     

关于购建我国和谐农村金融体系的思考

农村经济发展需要农村金融的大力支持.构建我国和谐的农村金融体系,建立以商业性金融为主导,政策性金融、合作性金融和民间金融等多种形式的金融机构并存、合理分工协作、功能互补的有机体系,这对建设社会主义新农村有重要意义.     

论农村金融资源的合理开发与利用

金融作为一种资源,在可持续发展过程中起到非常重要的作用.农村经济发展需要开发和利用农村金融资源,从而实现农村经济的可持续发展.本文在分析农村金融资源现状、农村金融组织体系存在的问题和农村金融需求的基础上,对如何合理开发和利用农村金融资源提出具体建议.     

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.”     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.