城乡建设用地增减挂钩潜力分析——以新疆玛纳斯县为例

城乡建设用地增减挂钩潜力分析是在当前的标准和要求下对农村居民点建设用地所节约土地面积是否能够满足城镇建设用地需求量进行的分析。通过对玛纳斯县城农村居民点整理潜力分析和城镇建设用地需求量分析,表明整理潜力对城镇建设用地需求量的供给程度较高,具备实施增减挂钩的基本条件。     

广西农村居民点整理的现实潜力测算研究

以广西壮族自治区为例,划分山区、丘陵、平原三类地形分别测算农村居民点整理资金修正系数与农户搬迁意愿的修正系数,并将人均建设用地指标法测算的理论潜力修正为现实潜力。结果显示：广西农村居民点整理现实潜力仅为理论潜力的57.07%,其中山地地区潜力不能释放,而平原地区是潜力释放主要区域。结果表明了资金与农户整理意愿对潜力释放具有显著影响,广西农村居民点整理应根据现实潜力大小安排重点区域,以便取得较高整理效率。     

农村居民点整理的现实潜力测算——以湖南望城为例

在分析该区农村居民点用地现状以及土地功能分区的基础上,利用人均建设用地测算方法和层次分析法,测算该区的农村居民点整理潜力,结果表明,望城区各乡镇综合修正系数介于0.2～0.5之间;2020年农村居民点整理的现实潜力为2 749.81 hm2。应根据各区域现实潜力大小来安排农村居民点整理,以便提高整理效率。     

农村居民点用地现状分析

农村居民点整理是我国农村土地整理的主要内容之一。它不仅是盘活农村存量建设用地、缓解建设用地供需矛盾的主要途径;而其也是促进农村居民点合理布局。改善农民生产生活条件,推进城乡统筹和社会主义新农村建没的主要举措。     

天津市、成都市城乡建设用地增减挂钩模式的启示

2005年以来,天津市、四川省作为国土资源部第一批开展城乡建设用地增减挂钩工作的省（市）,积极探索统筹城乡发展,促进新农村建设路子,取得了一定经验,形成独特的运作模式。本文通过对两种模式运行机制、特点的分析,研究其对福建省城乡建设用地增减挂钩工作中,土地整治方案编制、项目建设资金筹措、集体土地产权调整与登记、宅基地复垦、农民权益保护等方面值得借鉴的启示和经验,提出进一步做好城乡建设用地增减挂钩工作的建议。     

内蒙古自治区农村居民点用地整理潜力研究

通过文献资料法、定性分析和定量计算相结合的方法,以旗县为单位,在对内蒙古自治区农村居民点用地整理潜力调查的基础上,采用人均用地指标法,对农村居民点用地整理潜力进行测算,并运用聚类分析法对整理潜力进行了类型划分和效益评价分类,针对不同的类区,结合当地实际情况提出了相应的整理建议。     

城乡建设用地增减挂钩——新农村建设的新探索

社会主义新农村建设赋予了国土资源管理工作新的内涵,也拓展了土地整理工作的思路。焦作市近年来立足当地的农村宅基地现状,以城乡建设用地增减挂钩为目标,从服务农业、服务农村、服务农民入手,积极开展农村宅基地整理工作,大大缓解了当地建设用地供需矛盾,有力地支持了当地的新农村建设。     

仙女山镇和鸭江镇城镇建设用地增减挂钩项目研究

城乡建设用地增减挂钩项目是统筹城乡发展、建设社会主义新农村的重要抓手,也是解决当前保护资源与保障发展两难命题的重要出路。通过分析重庆市武隆县人民政府拟定的仙女山镇城镇建设用地增加和鸭江镇青峰村等4个村农村建设用地想减少试点项目区的合法性、合理性和必要性,得出了该试点项目区可行性极高的结论,为相关部门决策提供一定的参考依据。     

城乡建设用地增减挂钩政策的观察与思考

随着我国经济发展和城市化步伐加速,城市建设用地供需矛盾日益突出,而与此同时,我国农村土地利用却存在着闲置浪费的现象。城乡建设用地增减挂钩政策是在统筹城乡发展的背景下提出的,旨在促进城市发展的同时实现现实耕地总量的动态平衡,以有效缓解城市建设用地供需矛盾。但在实践中,增减挂钩政策的推进并不顺利,在实施过程中出现了一些问题,偏离了该政策提出的初衷。因此,必须对这些问题追根溯源,探求解决之道,以推动增减挂钩政策的顺利实施。     

中国山区城乡建设用地增减挂钩项目合理性辨析

基于对59个山区城乡建设用地增减挂钩项目的实证研究,从生态效益、耕地占补平衡、农户利用耕地等角度对当前中国盛行的城乡建设用地增减挂钩政策在山区实施的合理性进行了辨析,并分析了其给山区农村、农民带来的影响。研究结果显示:现行城乡建设用地增减挂钩项目导致了山区生态用地的损失,在耕地占补平衡、农民利用耕地等方面也存在着占优补差、增大耕作半径等诸多弊端与不合理性。最后根据研究结果提出山区城乡建设用地增减挂钩的相关政策启示与建议。     

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.”     

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.     

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.     

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     

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.