基于因子分析的保险市场区域差异研究——以江苏省为例

根据保险市场发展对宏观经济环境的要求,以2011年江苏省保险业发展为例,采用因子分析和聚类分析对保险市场区域差异问题进行实证研究。结果表明,引起地区间保险市场发展差异的主要因素是经济外部环境,以及保险业自身发展存在的问题。因此,需要完善宏观经济环境,加强政府引导、市场培育、自身服务创新,以促进保险业和区域经济的协调发展。     

中国保险业区域发展比较研究——基于“保险基准深度比”的分析

本文在梳理有关衡量中国保险业区域发展的传统比较方法及其局限的基础上,提出保险基准深度比这一新方法,并在新的方法体系下,对有关中国保险业区域发展的传统判断进行重新审视并提出一个经过检验的新判断,最后提出有关中国保险业区域发展的新解释和新启示。本文研究的基本结论是:第一,以可比意义的相对于经济发展的保险业发展水平来衡量,中国保险业在东、中、西三大区域间的发展程度实际上是较为均衡的;在过去一段时期,这种均衡状态不仅较为稳定,而且有所改进。第二,对于中国保险市场的区域群聚现象,非饱和市场是一种更具证据、更为合理的解释。第三,对于保险公司,区域布局不应是简单地优先考虑中西部地区;在东部地区应当实施差异化的市场竞争策略。第四,对于政府监管机构,保险业区域政策导向不应是简单地向中西部倾斜;应当重视东部地区的市场恶性竞争问题;应当加强保险偿付能力监管。     

区域经济与区域保险协调发展研究

一、加快东北老工业基地和中西部地区的经济发展 区域经济在区域保险的发展中起着至关重要的作用。没有区域经济水平的提高,区域保险的发展将成为无源之水。我国保险业发展程度最高的是东部地区,其次为东北地区,最后是中西部地区。区域保险的协调发展关键就在于中西部地区经济的发展,该地区落后的经济发展水平成为制约保险业进一步发展的瓶颈。     

我国服务业发展的区域差异及其动态演化——基于Theil指数视角的分析

服务业的发展水平已成为一个衡量国家和地区社会经济发达程度的重要标志.中国经济自改革开放以来得到了前所未有的发展,服务业也进入高速发展时期,各地服务业在促进经济增长的同时在国民经济中的地位也在日渐提升,由于区域发展的不平衡,服务业的发展也存在区域差异.本文运用泰尔指数测算并分析了我国服务业区域差异及其变迁.结果表明,我国服务业发展的区域差异较为明显,主要是三大经济区域之间发展不平衡,总体差异是先缩小后扩大的趋势;差异主要来源于区域内部,其中大部分来源于东部区域内差异,即东部地区内部差异处于缩小趋势,西部地区呈扩大趋势,中部地区较为平稳;从服务业国内生产总值来看,东部服务业在总量上远远超过西部地区.在加快服务业发展的同时,应促进区域协调发展并优化服务业的产业结构.     

“一带一路”沿线国家保险市场发展差异研究

"一带一路"建设从基础设施建设到国际贸易再到金融服务,对保险的需求日益增加,同时也为中国保险业走出去提供一个重要平台。目前"一带一路"沿线国家保险市场的整体发展程度处于全球中下水平且各国之间存在较大差异。本文利用锡尔系数对沿线国家保险市场发展差异进行测度,发现沿线各国保险市场总体差异在逐步缩小,且主要来自区域间的差异,而非区域内部差异;另外中东内部差异程度较东南亚、南亚和东欧都要大。采用系统GMM估计,对沿线国家保险市场发展的影响因素进行了实证检验,发现沿线保险市场的发展差异主要取决于经济发展水平、金融市场发展程度、通货膨胀等经济因素,城镇化和宗教信仰等社会因素也有一定影响,同时沿线国家保险市场未来发展的持续性明显。中国保险业应抓住"一带一路"建设带动沿线国家未来经济向好的机遇,推动周边保险市场发展;分区域制定对外保险服务合作计划;高度重视沿线国家经济特点、文化和政治法律差异,制定适宜的合作策略等。     

中国经济增长区域差异的制度分析

自改革开放以来,中国区域经济获得了很大发展,但在区域经济增长上表现出严重不平衡.研究认为,制度因素在区域经济增长差异中起重要作用.中国的改革是一个渐进的制度变迁过程,且这一过程的区域进展从沿海到内地逐步减慢,各区域市场化进展的不平衡将导致区域经济增长差异的扩大.通过对全国31个省、市、自治区制度变量与经济绩效的定量研究,结果表明:制度变量在不同区域间的发展水平表现出很大的差异,东部地区的经济发展与制度变迁已经进入了一个良性循环互动的演变路径,而中西部地区各项制度变量值相对偏低.相应的,东部沿海地区比中西部地区具有更高的经济发展水平.     

浅析规避逆选择和道德风险的制度建设

随着社会经济的发展,中国保险业也在飞速发展.但是在发展的背后也存在很多问题.保险市场是典型的信息不对称市场,由信息不对称引起的逆选择和道德风险是广泛存在的.这些问题在很大程度上影响了保险风险分散机制的发挥,进而阻碍了保险市场的发展.本文主要结合我国保险市场的实际情况从制度建设的角度提出了规避保险市场逆选择和道德风险的对策.     

我国社会保障制度区域差异研究

由于我国实行社会保障属地化管理原则,在区域经济发展不平衡的条件下,由地方政府举办的社会保障存在明显的区域差异,中西部地区社会保障覆盖范围小、水平低、负担重、抗风险能力差,这不仅不利于区域社会协调发展。而且背离了区域基本公共服务均等化的目标。实现区域经济协调发展、完善现行社会保障制度、加大中央财政对中西部地区的转移支付力度是缩小社会保障制度区域差异的必然选择。     

对保险人才供求不协调的思考

我国保险业在改革开放政策的推动下一直处于高速发展状态,取得了令世人瞩目的成就.但是无论是与世界其他国家和地区保险业发展的水平相比,还是与我国经济发展和人民生活提高的内在需要相比,我国保险市场的发展仍显滞后.保险业是知识密集型的产业,人才具有基础性、战略性、决定性的作用,我国保险人才已成为我国保险业发展的最大瓶颈.     

辽宁区域经济发展的时空差异探讨

在我国经济发展的初期阶段,各个地区的经济水平逐渐上升,但是辽宁区域的经济发展水平明显较差,随着创建了东北老工业基地,同时也加快了辽宁区域经济发展的步伐.在发展当中,随之出现了区域之间经济发展不平衡现象,给各个区域经济的发展带来时空差异.本文主要对我国辽宁区域经济发展的时空差异进行了探讨和分析,针对出现的问题,提出有效的解决办法.     

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.