国债投资的波及效果与需求拉动

实施以扩大国债投资为重点的积极财政政策的基本目标是,通过国债投资的扩张,引导、启动民间投资,刺激消费需求增长,扩大国内需求,抑制经济下滑趋势,保持经济的稳定、健康发展。从实际政策结果看,1998～2001年,各年国债投资对经济增长的贡献率分别达到1.5个、2个、1.7个和1.8     

我国继续实施积极财政政策的对策探讨

我国现阶段有效需求不足的问题仍比较突出,表现在：投资增长缓慢,民间投资启动乏力,消费需求不足依然存在,针对我国当前的经济现状及发展需要,仍须继续实施积极的财政政策,并适当调整政策重点;注重适度发行国债与有效发挥国债投资使用效益并举;注重供给调节与加强需求管理相结合;注重利用财政贴息刺激投资需求,注重积极财政政策与其它改革措施配套等,以进一步推动我国经济的可持续发展。     

积极财政政策淡出问题讨论综述

1998年,面对1997年爆发的亚洲金融危机的冲击、世界经济增长放慢的国际背景和国内有效需求不足的情况,我国实施了以增发国债为主要内容的反周期调节政策即积极财政政策,积极扩大内需,使我国经济不仅度过了危机,而且走过了一段建国以来从未有过的既稳定又较快增长的经济增长阶段。这一政策是一项长期政策还是一项短期措施?如果是短期政策它应该如何退出?它如果退出应该有怎样的政策替代?对此理论界和实务界都进行了大量讨论,现将有关观点做一综述。     

关于积极财政政策调整问题的看法

1998年以来的积极财政政策对刺激经济增长的效果是明显的，但是这种政策基本局限于增发国债带动政府投资扩张，其效果则主要体现为对经济增长的直接贡献。1998—2002年国债投资对GDP的直接贡献分别达到19.2％、28.2％、21.3％、24.7％、25％，这种直接产出政策效果与当初实施积极财政政策的初衷有很大出入，没有达到拉动和带动民间投资，改善消费预期     

当前经济形势与税收政策的选择

积极的财政政策要求财政政策与货币政策配合。当前积极财政政策的重点包括继续适度增发国债,鼓励和引导民间,刺激消费,鼓励出口等方面,通过这些政策的作用,启动我国经济腾飞,提高人们物质文化生活水平。     

消费启动时机已成熟

在经济萧条时期,国债投资是迅速扭转经济下滑并走出通缩阴影的重要的积极财政政策调控工具。在我国目前宏观经济总体向好的时局下,以国债投资为重点的投资启动应该转变为消费启动,即以增加居民收入和扩大消费来启动经济。纵观几年来经济发展特点,有以下几个方面值得关注:1、我国经济对外依存度过大,应逐步转向内生型。美国、日本这些发达国家的外贸依存度只有22%和17%,经济发展的主要动力在于内部消费;而我国的外贸依存度已经超过50%,经济发展的主要动力在投资和出口,内需没有得到有效重视。2、最终消费率和居民消费率过低。美国的消费率长…     

关于民间投资的体制性障碍分析

随着形势的变化，积极财政政策的效果正在弱化。由于政府的行政性垄断和对经济的过度干预民间投资增长缓慢。要加快经济的增长速度，启动民间投资，必须按市场经济的要求规范政府经济行为。     

中国国债投资绩效的实证评估

1998年以来，随着积极财政政策的启动，国债规模与日俱增。在民间资本增速下降、消费增长持续低位运行、外部环境恶化导致长放缓的背景下，国债投资的特殊性出发，着重通过对国债在固定资产投资、技术改造和经济波动等几个方面的作用进行实证分析，力图对近年来国债投资绩效作一简单评估。     

我国国债政策取向分析

经过连续数年的积极财政政策的实施,尽管有效需求不足的问题尚未得到根本解决,但其重要性已有所下降。相反,产业结构转型和升级问题变得日益突出。客观经济形势的变化,迫切要求我们对作为积极财政政策重要组成部分的国债政策做出调整。我国国债政策的基本取向是:国债政策目标应从片面强调确保年度经济增长转移到实现经济的可持续发展;国债政策的着力点应转移到推动产业结构的转型与升级上来;严格控制国债发行规模,调整国债资金使用方向。     

国债政策的经济增长效应研究

自1979年恢复国债政策以来,国债政策一直是财政政策重点实施的工具之一。国债政策究竟能否拉动经济增长以及在多大程度上拉动经济增长,一直是学术界研讨的热点。分析我国国债政策的经济增长效应,李嘉图等价定理成立与否是起点,在检验其在我国存在性的基础上引入了格雷钠的国债与经济增长模型,同时,结合我国国债使用的实际情况,验证了我国的国债政策能够在一定的程度上拉动国内经济的增长,并就此进一步研究了我国国债政策的可持续性。     

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.