论不景气市场——需求不足与加工业过剩并存

论不景气市场——需求不足与加工业过剩并存王琢今年第一季度，我国ＧＤＰ增长７％，比今年全年增长目标８％低一个百分点。这一问题已引起理论界广泛关注，本文对制约我国经济发展的新矛盾加以探讨。一、什么是制约当前经济发展的新矛盾我国近２０年的改革开放，已经取得...     

黄金正向你招手——国内黄金市场现状透视

中国黄金业生产、加工、销售的情况及政策导向是许多人都不明白的事。此文读后,便令你豁然开朗。黄金饰品市场上出现的各种现象,自有明晰的市场规则的影响向和制约,而中国黄金市场开放而与国际市场接轨,则尚属可望不可及之事。"转型时期",此又一例,     

金融市场发展与货币政策有效性探析

我国在金融体制转轨过程中必须重视金融市场政策传导机制的影响。目前我国金融市场发展还不够完善,资本市场和货币市场一体化的程度不高,货币政策传导机制受到各种制约。因此应不断完善资本市场与货币市场,开辟两个市场间的联系渠道,提高货币政策有效性。     

构建企业家人才市场的制度设计思考

长期以来,由于国有企业经营者实行政府任命制,制约了企业经营者的积极性和创造性的发挥,也制约了国有企业的进一步深化改革。因此,构建企业家人才市场,解除企业家的行政依附和单位依附,实行由市场来选择企业家就成了目前深化国企改革的一项重要任务。本文试图通过对企业家人才市场制度设计的思考,探讨构建企业家人才市场的必要性与可行性。     

市场发育的几个制约因素及对策

目前，我国的市场发育由于种种因素的制约，使其发育断断续续，步履艰难。只有充分认识并克服了这些制约因素，才能为市场发育铺平道路，才能顺利形成促成经济发展良好的市场环境。     

浅谈加强战略联盟 开拓农村生产市场

农村市场是我国国内市场的重要组成部分 ,它为企业发展提供了广阔空间。然而 ,受多种因素的制约 ,企业开拓农村市场举步维艰。利用战略联盟形式 ,加强与政府、现代农业公司、经销商或经纪人及乡镇企业等联系 ,有助于企业开拓农村生产市场。     

关于加快农村市场发育的思考

关于加快农村市场发育的思考刘颖，张晶华改革开放以来，随着农村改革的深化和农村经济的发展，我国农村市场有了很大发展。但是，从总体来看，仍处于初级现货市场阶段，还存在许多问题制约农村市场的发展。突出表现在以下几个方面：（一）制约因素多，发展极不平衡党的十...     

试论我国中小企业外源性融资问题

中小企业外源性融资渠道不畅,存在诸多制约因素,严重制约中小企业发展,解决中小企业外源性融资问题已经成为当前不容回避的重要课题。文章通过分析制约我国中小企业外源性融资的主要因素,进而提出解决该问题的对策建议。     

我国农产品物流主体发展的问题及对策

目前,我国农产品物流主体的培育存在一些问题,严重制约现代农产品物流业的发展。本文提出培育和发展中国农产品物流主体的对策与建议。     

我国农产品物流主体发展的问题及对策

目前，我国农产品物流主体的培育存在一些问题，严重制约现代农产品物流业的发展。本文提出培育和发展中国农产品物流主体的对策与建议。     

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.     

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.