交通基础设施和人力资本对区域创新能力影响研究

笔者使用中国1995—2015年面板数据,采用不同空间权重矩阵构建动态空间杜宾面板模型,使用误差修正准极大似然估计方法经验分析了交通基础设施和人力资本对区域创新能力的空间溢出效应.结果显示:交通基础设施和人力资本在空间相邻权重矩阵和空间距离幂权重矩阵(Ψ=-1)中对区域创新能力具有显著空间溢出效应.其中,交通基础设施发挥扩散作用,人力资本发挥集聚作用;交通基础设施和人力资本对区域创新能力具有动态特征;交通基础设施和人力资本对区域创新能力提升的速度没有显著影响.     

产学研合作对区域创新产出的影响研究——基于人力资本和金融支持的门槛效应

文章基于2009-2018年中国30个省份面板数据,采用普通固定效应模型和面板门槛模型对产学研合作与区域创新产出之间的关系进行了研究.研究结果表明,产学研合作对区域创新产出有显著的促进作用;人力资本未跨越门槛值时,产学研合作对区域创新产出的促进作用相对较小,人力资本跨越门槛值后,产学研合作对区域创新产出的促进作用明显增大;当金融支持低于门槛值时,产学研合作对区域创新产出呈现不显著的正向影响,金融支持高于门槛值时,产学研合作对区域创新产出的正向影响变得显著,且影响程度明显增强.研究结论明晰了人力资本和金融支持作为创新资源环境在产学研合作影响区域创新产出中的作用机理,有助于优化创新资源环境和推动区域创新产出.     

区域智力资本与区域创新能力的关系——一个理论分析框架

本文从理论上全面透彻分析了区域智力资本与区域创新能力之间的关系,运用组织智力资本理论将区域智力资本划分为三个要素（区域人力资本、区域关系资本和区域结构资本）,并分别从三个方面逯一分析研究了它们各自与区域创新能力之间的关系．从而诠释了区域智力资本与区域创新能力之间相互促进、相辅相成的依赖关系。通过研究认为,区域人力资本与区域创新能力之间是一种双向互动关系,区域关系资本与区域创新能力之间存在着双向作用关系,区域创新能力和区域结构资本之间是一种相互依赖、互为因果、共同进化的“互动”因果关系。     

区域智力资本与区域创新能力——基于相关关系及其影响模型的实证研究

本文利用我国31个省(市、区)2006年的截面数据,定量研究了区域智力资本和区域创新能力的关系。研究结果显示:区域创新能力与区域智力资本及其各要素(区域人力资本、区域关系资本、区域结构资本)之间都存在正相关关系;区域创新能力与区域人力资本和区域结构资本的各构成要素之间也存在正相关关系;区域智力资本三要素之间高度相关,区域关系资本与区域结构资本之间的相关性最强,这说明区域智力资本三要素之间是相互影响的,一个地区的关系资本很大程度上受结构资本的影响和制约。     

研发投入对区域创新能力的影响

研发投入是区域创新能力的重要影响因素,其作用形式可能是非线性的。以中国2007—2015年30个省际(西藏及港澳台地区除外)面板数据为研究样本,利用面板门槛模型考察了研发投入影响区域创新能力的金融发展水平门槛效应。研究表明:研发劳动投入、研发资金投入对中国区域创新能力的影响存在着基于金融发展水平的"单一门槛效应",研发投入与中国区域创新能力之间的非线性关系是显著存在的;研发劳动投入能推动中国区域创新能力,而研发资金投入对中国区域创新能力的提升具有一定的抑制作用;区域创新能力的主要促进因素有研发劳动、城市化水平、政府投入、地区经济发展水平、对外直接投资;当金融发展水平处在不同区间时,研发劳动投入、研发资金投入对区域创新能力的影响存在着明显的差异。     

OFDI逆向技术溢出、制度质量与区域创新能力——基于两步差分GMM门槛面板模型的实证分析

基于2005—2016年我国省际面板数据,首先通过OLS、DIFF-GMM、SYS-GMM3种基准线性回归方法论证了OFDI逆向技术溢出对我国区域创新能力的促进作用。以OFDI为核心解释变量,分别构建以地区腐败、市场化程度和知识产权保护为门槛变量的动态门槛回归模型。结果发现:随着地区腐败程度加深,我国区域创新能力逐渐减弱;以市场化程度、知识产权保护为门槛变量,跨越门槛点后OFDI对我国区域创新能力的拉动作用依次增强。最后,结合面板向量自回归模型进一步研究对外直接投资过程中地区腐败、市场化程度和知识产权保护对区域创新能力的动态即期冲击。结果显示:市场化程度单位变动对区域创新能力的影响呈现正向冲击且持续性较强,知识产权保护对区域创新能力的拉动最为迅速但后期持续性较弱,地区腐败对区域创新能力产生负向冲击作用。     

人力资本与区域经济增长:只是线性关系吗

本文通过引入人力资本部门内的溢出效应,在理论模型推导基础上,利用中国省际面板数据考察了人力资本对经济增长的非线性影响。实证结果发现全国范围和东部地区的人力资本与经济增长之间存在鲜明的非线性关系,且东部地区人力资本溢出效应的门槛值(7.68)明显高于全国平均水平(5.81);同时,由于受人力资本自身存量以及区域经济发展阶段的影响,中、西部地区人力资本与经济增长之间并不存在非线性关系,只存在一般的线性关系。     

OFDI逆向技术溢出、制度质量与区域创新能力

基于2005—2016年我国省际面板数据,首先通过OLS、DIFF GMM、SYS GMM3种基准线性回归方法论证了OFDI逆向技术溢出对我国区域创新能力的促进作用。以OFDI为核心解释变量,分别构建以地区腐败、市场化程度和知识产权保护为门槛变量的动态门槛回归模型。结果发现：随着地区腐败程度加深,我国区域创新能力逐渐减弱;以市场化程度、知识产权保护为门槛变量,跨越门槛点后OFDI对我国区域创新能力的拉动作用依次增强。最后,结合面板向量自回归模型进一步研究对外直接投资过程中地区腐败、市场化程度和知识产权保护对区域创新能力的动态即期冲击。结果显示:市场化程度单位变动对区域创新能力的影响呈现正向冲击且持续性较强,知识产权保护对区域创新能力的拉动最为迅速但后期持续性较弱,地区腐败对区域创新能力产生负向冲击作用。     

国内市场一体化对出口技术复杂度提升的门槛效应研究

利用中国2003-2016年30个省份的面板数据,采用门槛回归模型实证检验了市场一体化对出口技术复杂度的影响效应及约束机制。研究结果表明,市场一体化对出口技术复杂度的影响具有门槛效应和边际效率递增的非线性特征。市场一体化水平只有跨越一定门槛才会对出口技术复杂度提升发挥积极作用。同时,市场一体化对出口技术复杂度的提升作用还受到人力资本和创新能力的约束。只有在人力资本和创新能力达到一定水平时,市场一体化对出口技术复杂度的提升作用才能充分发挥,并且随着人力资本水平和创新能力的提高,这种促进作用将越来越强。这一结论对中国推动国内统一大市场建设,提高人力资本和科技创新水平,实现贸易强国目标具有借鉴意义。     

区域智力资本与区域创新能力的评估——基于我国2006年截面数据的实证研究

本文采用智力资本的"H-S-C"范式,运用主成分分析方法和因子分析方法对我国31个省(市、区)2006年的区域智力资本和区域创新能力进行了评估。研究发现:人口素质、医疗与社会保障水平对区域人力资本的贡献最大,国内外贸易及经济往来对区域关系资本的贡献最大,政府服务保障与社会沟通机制对区域结构资本的贡献最大,创新投入与创新过程对区域创新能力的贡献最大;区域人力资本受经济发展水平和教育投入力度的影响较大,区域关系资本受区位优势的影响较大,区域结构资本受体制、制度、机制和经济发展环境氛围的影响较大。     

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.