分布式创新、区域创新体系与区域分工

分布式创新以主导公司内部知识主体与外部知识主体共同构建知识网络,在保证人力资本的专用性和节省交易费用的前提下,对区域创新体系构建中微观主体发挥比较优势、进行有效知识资源配置有深远影响,对解决区域自主创新和区域分工演进的问题有借鉴意义。     

社会网络视角下的科技型小微企业融资创新网络构建研究

社会网络理论正越来越多地应用到经济与管理领域，尤其是解决管理过程中产生的信息不对称问题，可以通过各自的网络获取经济活动所需的信息和资源。从社会网络理论分析了促进科技型小微企业融资的问题，并从社会网络和协同创新视角构建了科技型小微企业融资创新网络机理示意图，认为应充分发挥政府、企业自身与社会服务中介作用，通过制度引导、政府经费支持、孵化、服务配套、技术指导、信息服务等方式，整合、优化社会中的各种资源，为解决科技型小微企业融资问题提供借鉴。     

FDI知识溢出对区域低碳创新网络效率的门槛效应研究

针对经济全球化趋势和创新驱动发展战略下区域低碳创新网络发展面临的可持续转型增长问题,以及环境规制与低碳创新网络效率的非直接关联特征,通过构建考虑非期望产出的J SBM模型测算低碳创新网络效率,运用核密度函数模型描绘区域低碳创新网络效率的动态演变规律与区域异质性,从环境规制视角构建FDI知识溢出与低碳创新网络效率的非线性面板回归模型,探讨环境规制的门槛效应和时序变化以及FDI知识溢出与低碳创新网络效率的作用机理。研究表明：样本期间区域低碳创新网络效率整体较为收敛,地区差距呈扩大趋势;人力资本和吸收能力因素与低碳创新网络效率显著正相关,政策支持和市场竞争在一定程度上制约低碳创新网络效率提升;加大环境规制强度能够促进FDI知识溢出、提升低碳创新网络效率;门槛效应的时空异质性明显,不同年份同一地区的分布存在较大差异。     

基于区域创新网络的辽宁省产业集群升级研究

文章在界定产业集群升级内涵的基础上,分析了区域创新网络对产业集群升级的影响。然后从区域创新网络的视角分析了辽宁省产业集群发展的现状,并针对辽宁省产业集群升级中存在的问题提出了促进辽宁省产业集群升级对策。     

模糊变化速度视角下制造企业创新网络测度研究

制造企业创新网络随时间及企业投入变化呈现出不同发展态势。因此,从变化速度特征视角研究制造企业创新网络动态测度问题,从创新网络的节点属性、联系强度属性、结构属性3个维度建立了制造企业创新网络指标体系,运用突变级数法对我国各省市制造企业创新网络进行静态评价,并从模糊奖惩特征视角对其创新网络变化速度作进一步探究,构建了具有模糊奖惩的制造企业创新网络变化速度动态综合测度模型,基于时间维度对企业创新网络变化速度进行了动态研究。     

区域产业网络的惯性与突破:基于组织学习的视角

针对区域产业网络升级的问题,从产业内部和主导企业引入两个视角分析了区域产业网络的惯性成因,基于组织学习视角,以产业网络学习能力的提升为切入点,从组织学习的机会、组织学习的推动力和组织学习的效率3个因素方面论证了区域产业网络惯性的突破机制,初步构建了区域产业网络升级路径的理论框架,并围绕网络创新能力的培养提出相关政策建议,为产业升级提供了一种新的研究和实践视角。     

区域创新系统的构建应强化创新网络的功能

区域创新系统的构建是一种新型的区域经济发展模式，而系统功能发挥的关键在于区域创新网络功能的发育。着重论述了区域创新网络的结构和功能，并就网络结构的建设进行了探讨。     

区域创新“知识流”链状网络研究

知识资源在区域创新主体间流动所形成的“知识流”是影响区域创新绩效的重要因素.论文首先分析了在区域创新系统中,知识创新主体间存在的四种“知识流”类型;其次深入阐释了“知识流”链状网络的结构与模式;最后基于“嵌入”视角与“社会网络分析”方法,构建出科学、合理的“知识流”链状网络.     

学习型区域创新网络中知识转移的博弈分析

区域学习和创新能力是区域经济发展的关键因素，学习型区域创新网络中创新主体间的知识转移能力是区域创新和学习能力的关键。但由于创新主体间存在着委托－代理关系，知识转移的过程中普遍存在逆向选择和道德风险问题。从而在一定程度上抑制了知识资本的功能。本文通过构建博弈模型，分析了创新网络中创新主体要素间的知识转移的条件。并在此基础上提出了可行性建议。     

经济地理学视角下区域创新网络的研究综述

受1990年代末期"社会转向、文化转向、制度转向"思潮影响,近年来,有关区域创新网络的研究得到了进一步扩展和延伸。经济地理学视角下区域创新网络的研究,主要从知识、网络、学习、创新等4个方面展开,集中于网络特征、空间属性和动态演化等问题的探讨。通过对国内外经济地理学者文献的梳理,从创新网络的结构、邻近性、网络演化等3个方面对区域创新网络的研究进行了介绍。在此基础上简要评价并提出了未来深化研究的初步建议。     

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.     

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.     

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.