20世纪90年代以来中国农村居民信息消费的实证研究

信息消费正成为社会新的消费热点和经济增长点。运用误差修正模型和Granger因果关系检验对1992--2008年来我国农村居民的信息消费问题进行实证研究表明，农村居民信息消费与人均纯收入之间存在长期稳定的均衡关系，农村居民人均纯收入的增加直接促进了农村信息消费的增长．而农村居民收入增长在很大程度上也得益于农村信息消费水平的提高。因此，采取有效措施扩大农村居民的信息消费支出，对在世界性经济危机的背景下促进我国农村消费结构的优化、升级以扩大内需。拉动经济增长有着重要的现实意义。     

经济增长、物价变动对农村居民收入影响探析

基于1984-2013年全国农业生产总值、农村居民消费价格指数和农村居民家庭人均纯收入数据,研究农村经济、物价变动对农村居民收入的影响。研究表明:长期来看,三者之间存在长期均衡关系。这说明农村经济的增长会提高农村居民收入,物价的变化则会反向影响农村居民收入。而短期来看,物价的上涨会增加农村居民的人均纯收入,农村经济的增长则不会对农村居民收入有明显的影响作用。     

试析社会保障对中国农村居民消费的影响

完善农村社会保障体系,促进农民收入增长,是解决三农问题的关键。影响中国农村居民消费的最为直接的仍然是收入问题,然农村社会保障体系的建立对于化解农村居民所面临的来自于自然、社会、市场等等风险,缓解收入不确定性的作用日益凸显,成为继收入之后影响农村居民消费的最重要因素,随着社会前进经济的日益发展,社会保障对农村居民消费的影响作用必将进一步彰显。     

经济刺激计划与农村消费启动——基于我国农村居民收入分解的实证分析

文章在对我国农村居民收入构成进行分解的基础上,利用协整等计量工具时影响我国农村居民消费的各种因素进行了量化分析,并由此对照我国政府为应对世界经济危机而出台的一揽子经济刺激计划,分析经济刺激计划中各项具体政策措施在促进农村消费方面的作用.实证分析和政策分析的结果表明:(1)当前对农村居民消费具有显著影响的因素主要是农村居民经营性收入、工资性收入及国家财政农村救济费支出;(2)已出台的经济刺激计划,既有消费价格补贴等短期措施,也有旨在提高农村居民收入、完善农村社会保障、优化农村消费环境的长期性政策,时于促进农村消费具有很强的针对性;(3)未来促进农村居民消费仍需继续着眼于各种长期性政策.国家在加大财政支农力度时,应注重提高农林水事业费以外的支农支出比重;(4)县域经济是启动农村消费的关键.未来的政策着力点可以考虑将启动农村消费与发展县域经济、推动城乡一体化发展相结合.     

消费支出增长快 生活质量再提高——“十五”时期广东农村居民生活消费状况分析

“十五”时期,随着收入的持续稳步提高,广东农村居民用于生活的消费支出迅速增长,生活水平和质量进一步改善。农村居民生活消费支出全面增长在收入增长加快的拉动下,农村居民对收入增长预期提高,消费信心增强,生活消费支出全面增长。据农村住户抽样调查,2005年广东农村居民人均生活消费支出为3707.7元,比2000年增加1061.7元,增长40.1%,年均增长7.0%;扣除物价因素年均实际增长6.0%。1、八大项消费支出全面增长。2005年广东农村居民人均食品消费支出1789.4元,比2000年增长35.8%;人均衣着消费支出143.5元,增长37.7%;人均居住消费支出530.3元,增…     

宿迁市农村居民收入与消费关系的实证研究

基于宿迁市农村居民收入与消费的特点,运用协整理论和格兰杰因果检验对其关联性进行分析。检验结果表明：1999—2008年宿迁市农村居民人均纯收入和人均消费支出间存在长期稳定的均衡关系,短期内宿迁农村居民实际收入与实际消费间相互影响微弱,为此政府有必要采取措施促进收入与消费的长期发展。     

经济学视阈下中国农村居民文化消费需求探析

随着中国农村居民纯收入的不断增加,农村居民用于文化方面的绝对支出不断提高,但存在增长缓慢等问题。究其原因,主要包括农村居民收入水平低、收入差距大、社会保障制度不健全、文化"硬件"落后",软件"缺乏、文化供给少、价格高、质量低、文化消费能力不高、文化消费观念落后等。今后,要通过增加农村居民收入、缩小农村居民收入差距、健全农村社会保障制度,改善农村文化"硬件"和"软件",增加文化供给,降低文化产品及服务价格,提高文化消费能力,转变农村居民文化消费观念等方式,促进农村居民文化消费的提高。     

我国农村居民消费对经济增长拉动作用的实证分析及对策

近年来,我国消费需求不足成为制约国民经济增长的症结。为此,我国政府适时提出把扩大国内需求作为促进经济增长的主要方针。目前,我国仍有8亿人口在农村,农村居民是我国最大和最具潜力的消费群体。在投资促进经济增长的作用受限、出口拉动经济增长受阻及城镇居民增量消费短时内难以迅速增加的情况下,农村居民消费需求的增长应成为当前推动我国经济增长的主要动力。本文讨论了当前以扩大农村消费需求拉动经济增长的可行性,对1985～2008年农村居民消费对经济增长间相互关系的变动趋势做了实证分析,分析了其影响系数变化的原因,并就当前如何发挥我国农村居民消费对经济增长的有效支撑作用进行了探讨。     

我国农村居民消费不足的成因及对策研究

扩大农村居民消费是加快形成国内大循环的内在要求.本文基于居民消费理论,以我国农村地区出现的消费降级和边际消费倾向递减问题为原点,从收入差距、农村人口结构、农村金融发展、消费习惯和偏好等角度出发,系统分析了农村居民消费不足的主要成因.并在此基础上提出了进一步提升农村居民消费的对策建议,即促进收入分配公平、完善社会保障体系、促进农村金融发展、合理引导农村居民消费.     

安徽省城乡居民收入与消费关系的协整分析

本文运用协整和误差修正模型,以安徽省1984—2006年的统计资料为样本,构建了城乡居民长短期的收入与消费模型,对城乡居民收入与消费之间的关系进行了分析。结果表明：安徽城乡居民的收入和消费之间各自存在着长期的均衡关系,在人均消费的层面上,城镇居民对于消费增长的支持大于农村居民,农村居民的消费需求还有待提高。     

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.