循环经济下的项目管理体系研究

面对经济高速发展所伴随的高消耗、高污染和资源约束问题，项目管理领域也开始把循环经济的理念运用到项目管理的全过程中，循环经济下的项目管理体系都是围绕着3R原则而进行的。通过循环经济与项目管理体系的结合，提高项目实施过程中的资源利用率和减少项目建成后对环境的污染程度，实现经济的可持续发展。     

关于青岛市发展循环经济的思考与分析

近年来,循环经济模式成为许多国家经济发展的主流。循环经济模式改变传统经济中存在的弊端,缓解经济高速发展与环境资源利用之间的矛盾。青岛市作为一个典型资源稀缺城市,随着经济的高速发展,经济与环境之间的矛盾日益尖锐,把循环经济模式引入青岛城市建设已经成了当务之急。从循环经济理论出发,根据青岛市的现状,着重阐明青岛市建设循环型城市的必要性和可行性,提出建设循环型城市的思路和对策。     

关于我国实现循环经济与可持续发展的思考

改革开放以来，我国经济进入了高速发展阶段，用短短几十年时间走完了发达国家上百年的路程，以至生态和环境遭受了严重破坏，资源和环境的承载力已难以支撑经济的高速增长，成为经济增长的瓶颈。所以我们必须加快转变经济增长方式，大力发展循环经济，实现资源的高效利用和循环利用，对于我们这样一个资源和环境容量有限的人口大国，就具有重要的现实意义。     

构建中国特色的循环经济发展模式

在对我国当前经济高速增长的要求与有限资源和环境支持能力之间的矛盾进行描述后,文章对我国目前发展循环经济的实际障碍进行了分析,并在此基础上提出了构建中国特色的循环经济发展模式的解决对策。     

中小企业循环经济制度创新研究

随着中国经济的高速发展,环境恶化、资源短缺已成为中国经济进一步发展的制约因素,作为国民经济重要组成部分的中小企业,参与发展循环经济的热情不高、推进循环经济发展缓慢。从制度方面探讨目前中小企业实施循环经济的障碍,并据此提出中小企业发展循环经济制度创新的思路。     

中国循环经济发展现状及对策

循环经济本质上是一种生态经济，要求运用生态学规律来指导人类社会的经济活动，要求在经济生产中遵循自然规律尽可能实现资源循环。目前，我国经济高速增长，但环境状况日趋严峻，资源相对缺乏，要坚持可持续发展战略，实现经济、社会、环境的协调发展，大力发展循环经济是必然的选择。     

发展地区循环经济的瓶颈及对策研究

资源和环境已成为我国经济发展面临的瓶颈约束，提高资源利用率，发展循环经济，已成为我国当前经济建设最为紧迫的任务之一。本文从体制角度分析了循环经济与市场经济的关系，论证了发展循环经济需要高水平规模化资源再生产业的支持；从企业内部、生态工业园、区域内和区域间四个层面，分析了制约地区循环经济体系建立的瓶颈因素；最后，在以上研究的基础上提出了发展地区循环经济的对策。     

循环经济理论与"三同时"法律制度的融合

发展经济与保护环境资源成了当今社会一对矛盾的统一体 ,也是人类在 2 1世纪面临的重大挑战。我国已处于经济高速发展时期 ,人口众多 ,面临着比其他国家更大的资源和环境压力。因此 ,转变传统的经济模式 ,探索新的经济增长模式已是势在必行。循环经济的发展模式已被公认为是可以使人口、经济与环境相协调的新的经济增长模式。本文旨在探讨循环经济理论与环境管理的“三同时”法律制度之间的内在关系 ,以期在理论上作一个新的尝试 ,推进我国循环经济与环境保护的协调发展     

发展循环经济：实施可持续发展战略的现实选择

"循环经济"是指在资源投入、企业生产、产品消费及其废弃的全过程中,把传统的依赖资源消耗的线形增长的经济,转变为依靠生态型资源循环来发展的经济。1992年联合国环境发展大会后,发展循环经济被认为是实施可持续发展战略最重要和最现实的选择。循环经济理念的产生和发展,是人类对人与自然关系深刻反思的结果,是人类在社会经济的高速发展中陷入资源危机、生存危机,不得不深刻反省自身发展模式的产物。     

发展循环经济实现山西煤炭企业可持续发展

发展煤炭循环经济是顺应我国经济的高速增长应运而生的,是建立在对煤炭资源的循环有效利用,促进资源、环境与经济协调发展的新型生产模式。山西煤炭企业是山西经济举足轻重的传统产业,发展煤炭循环经济,是山西煤炭企业实现跨越转型的必由之路。文章针对山西煤炭企业发展过程中存在的问题,阐明发展循环经济的重要性及迫切性,探讨实现山西煤炭企业可持续发展途径。     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.