瑞典的生物质能应用及其对我国的启示

瑞典在过去三十年中持续地增加生物质能（bioenergy）应用,使生物质能达到国家能源总消费的约1／3。在这一过程中,生物质能的生产技术趋向成熟,生物燃料（biofuels）市场得到发展,大型装备和运输体系逐步改进,产业链初步形成。瑞典发展和应用生物质能的实践,对中国调整能源结构、实行节能减排、利用地区生物质资源,以及用工业化方式生产生物质能有一定借鉴意义。     

秸秆发电:绿色电能造福亿万农民

国家发改委近日出台的《可再生能源中长期发展规划》,把生物质能的综合开发利用列为可再生能源的重要发展领域,并指出2010年生物质能发电总装机容量可     

能源税对我国生物质能产业发展的激励效用研究

本文通过构建CGE模型模拟了征收能源税对我国宏观经济和发展生物质能的影响。模拟结果表明,征收能源税将会一定程度上影响我国的出口,对国民经济造成了一定的负面影响;能源税能显著减少化石能源行业的产出,有效减少环境污染。但是征收能源税并不能显著地促进生物质能产业的发展。因而,政府可以通过能源税实现保护环境和节能减排目标,通过科技创新战略,降低生物质能的生产成本,促进生物质能的发展。     

关于我国生物质能的调研

生物质能是以生物质为栽体的能量形式,即通过植物的光合作用把太阳能以化学能的形式在生物质中储存的一种能源形式.目前,生物质能仅次于煤炭、石油和天然气而居于世界能源消费总量第四位的能源.生物质能是重要的可再生能源资源,具有能源种类多.分布广的特点,在当今能源日趋紧张的情况下,越来月引起人们的关注.我国是一个农业大国,薪材、秸秆、畜类等农业生物质能非常丰富.所以,如果能解决一些技术难题还有国家政府能予以重视,制定相关的法制法规予以政策辅助,是我国的生物质能得以健康快速的发展.     

2007年三季度我国宏观经济政策跟踪

一、推动经济社会持续发展的基础经济政策:建设有中国特色的社会主义(一)发展规划。1.发展生物质能、可再生能源。7月2日,农业部发布《农业生物质能产业发展规划(2007~2015年)》,提出要立足我国国情,走中国特色农业生物质能产业发展道路。该规划提出,到2015年,农村户用沼气总数     

发展生物质能源重在解决“五难”

面对全球性的减少化石能源消耗,控制温室气体排放的形势,利用生物质能资源生产可替代化石能源的可再生能源产品,已成为我国应对全球气候变暖和控制温室气体排放问题的重要途径之一,国家出台了具体的补贴措施,并且规划到2015年,生物质能发电将达1300万千瓦的目标.然而受原料收集难、政策补贴不到位等难题,生物质能源产业的发展规模和水平远远低于风能、太阳能的利用.如何发挥生物质能企业的生产积极性,尽快解决这些难题,为此,本刊记者采访了中国农村能源行业协会生物质专委会秘书长肖明松,国家发展和改革委员会能源研究所研究员秦世平教授,以及可再生能源学会生物质能专业委员会秘书长袁振宏.     

生物质能利用技术的开发研究

国外生物质资源的利用现状与前景 随着生物质能源转化技术的发展,以及人们对于改善环境要求的提高,生物质能所起的作用越来越重要.据估计,目前世界总能源消费中,14%的能源供应来自生物质能,在发展中国家生物质能约占农村用能的90%;在发达国家,如欧共体国家能源消费中2%到2.5%是由生物质能提供的,一些世界能源组织(IEA)成员国,生物质能在总能耗中所占份额高达15%.     

中国生物质能发电的费用分摊机制

研究中国生物质能发电费用分摊机制,对于促进可再生能源产业乃至低碳能源产业发展具有重大政策指导意义。本文将现有的生物质能发电费用分摊机制分为费用来源、费用支付和配额交易三个环节分别进行解读,并对我国自2006年以来的六个生物质能发电补贴方案的执行情况进行了系统整理,发现当前的费用分摊机制已经无法满足生物质能发电产业发展的需要。同时,在对生物质能发电费用分摊机制的三个环节的研究中,发现现行的生物质能发电费用分摊机制存在费用来源太少、支付机制不合理、配额交易机制不清晰等问题。以上问题有违《可再生能源法》中规定的有利于促进可再生能源发电利用和经济合理原则。本文针对这些问题提出了相应的对策建议:拓宽征收电价附加资金的渠道,明确电价附加收入的调配方式,规范配额证的交易秩序。     

低碳经济背景下我国生物质能发展分析及比较

生物质能已成为当前世界各国能源发展的重点之一。我国在政策支持以及具体的实践方面已越来越重视生物质能的发展。与国外相比较,我国生物质能的技术水平、政府资金支持等方面都存在巨大差距。我国需要制定长远发展规划,加强生物质能研发,进一步推进低碳经济发展。如进一步加强国家政策支持;全方位拓宽融资渠道;引进技术与加强研发相结合,提升我国生物质能技术;积极发展低碳技术,加强生物质能的国际合作。     

福建省生物质能源政策永续发展模型建构与评价

结合生物质能源政策永续发展的目标,构建了一个由四个层次指标构成的生物质能源政策永续发展评价指标体系,以此反映生物质能源政策永续发展的本质特征、内在规律和演变趋势。福建省生物质能源政策永续发展评价结果显示:福建省生物质能源政策的整体绩效水平尚处于永续发展的起步阶段,政府在生物质能产业有效规制与激励方面应加强能源市场机制建设,努力发展绿色能源消费,这也是最优先推动的永续能源策略之一。此外,推动生物质能的教育宣传与科技研发、加大政府公共研发、强化公众参与、提高人力资本素质是未来的努力方向。     

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.     

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.     

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     

Types of technology

Technology is a concept rife with confusion. Here, I argue that technologies can be distinguished as a combination of type of producer and an idealized artefact life history. Using this definition, a number of technologies are identified. The first technology historically, in the Protostomes, was the production of individual or family dwellings. Next came objects such as spider webs for trapping prey. Stigmergy followed, with the social insects, as a collective endeavour to construct a mega-structure using simple rules of accretion. Some birds and primates began to make tools, or simple technological objects whose function is closely related to their form. Humans are distinguished by their ability to make machines. Traditional technology took place once people voluntarily organised into groups with specialised knowledge to produce more complex objects and structures. Monumental objects like ceremonial pyramids came with the command economies of the early agrarian societies, which also resulted in a new category of artefact, the network. Finally, with modern civilizations came ad hoc accretion, or population-level adding-on, to make truly complex technological systems. Developing a theoretical framework within which artefacts, production processes and ways of interacting with them are identified should help the study of technology to become more scientific.