基于产业集群的湖南民营企业出口竞争力研究

随着经济全球化和区域经济一体化两大潮流的日益深化,湖南民营企业融入区域合作潮流的步伐也正逐步加快。如何以产业集群化提升湖南民营企业出口竞争力,是湖南民营企业当前面对的问题,也是面临的机遇。这需要在明晰产业集群理论的基础上,结合对湖南民营企业产业集群的现状及其存在问题的分析,方能得出具有一定操作价值的相关对策。     

基于民营企业产业集群的小贷公司运营模式研究

民营企业产业集群的发展为解决融资问题提供了新的视角,民营企业产业集群与小额贷款公司的结合为集群内企业融资提供了新模式.本文探讨了基于民营企业产业集群的小贷公司运营的优势和其运营的模式.     

湖南物流产业集群系统发展研究

近年来,湖南物流产业集群随着区域经济地高速增长得到蓬勃发展。但产业集群规模小,缺乏整体规划,信息技术利用程度低,已经难以适应本土的经济发展。要尽快发展湖南物流产业集群,就必须根据湖南地理特征,构建三级物流产业集群系统;根据物流集群的功能,构建双轨物流产业集群系统;而且还要加大信息技术的利用力度,加快物流集群信息整合,构建湖南物流产业集群系统。只有这样,湖南物流产业才能迎头赶上,为湖南经济大发展做出贡献。     

论专业化产业区对县域经济发展的推动作用

专业化产业区是以企业集群为基础的地方产业集聚现象。它以民营企业为主体，具有自组织功能。通过企业集群与产业关联，形成以优势产业为主导的地方产业体系，推动县域工业化、市场化、城镇化进程．是县域经济发展的有效载体与成功之路。     

中西部地区民营企业集群化发展的思路与对策

当前中西部民营企业存在着许多弱点和缺陷，这些弱点和缺陷严重影响了中西部民营企业的竞争力，进而影响到其可持续发展。因此，必须从理论和实践上探索一种新的民营企业成长的产业组织模式。基于此，首先分析了民营企业在发展中存在的问题，并在此基础上指出企业集群是中西部民营企业生存和发展的理性选择，接着对中西部民营企业集群发展的思路与对策进行了探讨。     

民营企业的集群化发展研究——以湖北省民营企业集群化发展为例

本文章通过考察企业集群竞争优势产生的机理,以湖北省为例分析了民营企业集群化发展的优势及劣势,借鉴意大利中小企业集群和我国东南沿海地区民营企业集群发展经验,以湖北省为例指出民营企业集群化发展的路径是:大力培育和激发民众强烈的致富欲望和自主创业精神;提高产业集中度;建立有利于特色产业集群发展的投融资体制;大力支持技术创新;引导建立行业自律性组织和完善产业链条。     

青岛家电产业集群与全球价值链耦合关系分析

在经济全球化背景下，集群作为区域经济的发展载体正快速以不同方式嵌入全球价值链，这就使得全球价值链下的地方产业集群升级显得尤为重要和迫切。因此，要将产业集群和全球价值链理论研究结合起来，用动态耦合方法来分析全球价值链下地方产业集群的升级路径具有现实的指导意义。     

浙江纺织产业集群发展研究与启示

浙江纺织产业集群是改革开放后出现的新经济地理现象。许多研究表明,浙江经济高速发展的重要原因,基于产业集群区域特色经济的快速成长和由此产生巨大活力的支持。本文通过浙江纺织产业集群内在发展本质的剖析,对推动其它区域的经济发展有着重要的借鉴。     

台州产业集群的特色和成长机制探析

台州区域经济的发展离不开当地独具特色的产业集群,台州产业集群在发展过程中呈现了四大特色：属于内生式集群和集群内企业多为民营企业;制造业集群和流通类集群的并联耦合与联动发展;集群主要集中在传统制造业上,且各产业集群间的关联性较强;集群内企业外向型特征明显。在特色分析的基础上,进一步从体制优势、专业市场支撑、民营金融发展、企业家资源和独特的区域“文化基因”等五个方面对台州集群的成长机制问题展开了深入的研究分析。     

产业集群内优势对民营企业总部迁移的影响——基于泉州产业集群的实证研究

通过对泉州产业集群内企业的实地问卷调研,考察了产业集群内不同优势因素对民营企业总部迁移的影响情况。对样本数据进行探索性和验证性因子分析之后,建立Logit回归模型对研究假设进行验证,实证结果显示:1产业集群内"成本优势"越弱,民营企业总部越可能往外迁移;2产业集群内"营销与管理优势"越弱,民营企业总部越可能往外迁移;3产业集群内"创新优势"和"产品优势"因素没有对民营企业总部迁移产生显著影响。表明民企总部是否迁移与产业集群内的成本、营销和管理等优势因素有显著关系,而与集群内的创新、产品等优势因素没有显著关系,民企总部迁移更为注重企业综合经营成本、市场信息和商务服务优势,以及对管理要素资源的追求。     

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.