中国东部沿海地区全要素碳生产率动态面板数据分析

文章利用2001—2015年我国东部沿海各地区投入和产出数据,运用数据包络分析(DEA)方法测算各地区全要素碳生产率变化的Malmquist指数并将其分解,再利用动态面板数据的分析方法,对全要素碳生产率影响因素进行实证分析。研究发现:2001—2015年,我国东部沿海地区全要素碳生产率指数呈现波动上升的趋势,少数地区全要素碳生产率水平较低,各地区每年全要素碳生产率不稳定;我国东部沿海地区全要素碳生产率指数年均增长率为5.4%,其中技术进步年均增长率为4.2%,技术效率年均增长率为1.2%,全要素碳生产率提高主要是由技术进步引起;产业结构、能源利用效率、能源消费结构和城市化水平与全要素碳生产率呈负相关,对外开放程度和创新能力与全要素碳生产率呈正相关。     

中部地区全要素生产率估算及分解

全要素生产率是衡量经济增长质量的重要指标。选用Malmquist指数方法对中部地区全要素生产率进行计算和分解。全要素生产率计算和分析结果表明,1978-2007年,中部地区TFP平均增长率为1．45％,全要素生产率的增长主要源于技术进步,而规模效应和效率提升缓慢,经济增长质量有待提高。     

江苏省生产效率与全要素生产率分解的空间格局演变分析

选用超越对数函数的随机前沿模型,估算1993—2009年江苏省各县市的生产效率,并分解其全要素生产率增长率。结果表明:①苏南地区生产效率最高,苏北地区生产效率最低;各地区平均生产效率均出现不同程度下降,苏南下降幅度最小,苏北下降幅度最大;苏南地区生产效率较为均衡,苏中、苏北地区内部差距逐渐增大。②城市化率、GDP中第二产业比重、出口与GDP之比对生产效率具有正面作用,而政府干预程度与生产效率呈负相关关系。③各地区全要素生产率增长率是逐步增加的,增长主要是由技术进步率贡献的。④通过对TFP增长率和产出增长率联合对比把各县市分为四种类型。全要素生产率从另一个侧面揭示区域经济增长及差异的形成过程。     

效率增进、技术进步及高技术产业经济的动态增长——基于随机前沿模型

基于随机前沿模型(SFA),测算了1997—2008年我国30个省级地区高技术产业相对技术效率、全要素生产率增长率。研究表明,我国高技术产业技术效率总体水平不高;区域效率差异显著,东部地区相对技术效率明显高于中、西部地区;样本期间内高技术产业全要素生产率增长率波幅不大,增长趋势尚不明显;全要素生产率增长的根本动因在于技术效率,高技术产业仍不具有规模经济性。     

中国低碳经济下区域全要素生产率研究

文章根据低碳经济的要求和特征应用Malmquist生产率指数法对我国各区域低碳全要素生产率变动情况进行了实证分析,并做了低碳全要素生产率的收敛性研究.研究表明考虑低碳因素后,中国的全要素生产率增长率得到增加;低碳全要素生产率的变动由技术进步率的变化主导,低碳技术效率变化对低碳全要素生产率的影响有限;西部地区不存在绝对收敛,东部地区和中部地区存在较明显的“俱乐部收敛”,我国总体及东中西三大地区都存在明显的条件收敛趋势.各个地区都存在并将收敛于各自的稳态水平.     

中国服务业全要素生产率增长的实证分析

本文采用非参数Malmquist指数方法实证分析了中国服务业全要素生产率的增长状况,并将其分解为技术效率和技术进步。结果表明,1990-2003年中国服务业全要素生产率的平均增长率为0.12%,主要原因是技术进步水平的提高,但技术效率下降产生的负面影响也不可忽视,不同时期技术效率和技术进步对中国服务业全要素生产率增长的贡献存在一定差异;同时,东中西部地区之间和地区内部服务业全要素生产率的增长率也存在显著差异,主要原因是技术进步水平不同。     

我国高技术产业研发创新效率及TFP变动研究

利用1997—2007年我国29个省(自治区、直辖市)的研发投入数据以及1999—2009年研发产出数据,运用数据包络分析法,测算了我国29个省高技术产业的研发创新效率和全要素生产率增长率。结果表明:11年间我国高技术产业年均技术效率只有0.4;三大地区高技术产业的研发创新效率存在较大差异,东部地区省份普遍高于中、西部地区,中、西部地区高技术产业的技术效率水平相当;三大地区高技术产业的全要素生产率持续增长,技术进步是全要素生产率增长的主要动力。     

低碳经济下中国区域全要素生产率的收敛性研究

发展低碳经济是中国应对日益严峻的能源紧张和气候变化的必然选择。考虑各区域在能源约束和碳排放下的全要素生产率显得日益重要。根据低碳经济的要求和特征应用Malmquist生产率指数法对我国29个省份及东中西三大地区低碳全要素生产率变动情况进行了实证分析。研究表明,考虑低碳因素后中国的全要素生产率增长率得到增加;低碳全要素生产率的变动由技术进步率的变化主导,低碳技术效率变化对低碳全要素生产率的影响有限;西部地区不存在绝对收敛,东部地区和中部地区存在较明显的“俱乐部收敛”,我国总体及东中西三大地区都存在明显的条件收敛趋势。     

经济特区与非特区全要素生产率比较研究——基于DEA的实证分析

文章运用DEA方法测度了1980—2012年中国东部十个城市(省)的技术效率、技术进步及曼奎斯特生产率指数,以此为基础比较分析了以上地区中经济特区与非特区的生产率增长情况。研究表明:平均来说,经济特区比非特区具有更高的全要素增长率;经济特区与非特区的全要素生产率在2005年以后有趋同倾向;深圳特区中的全要素增长率最高,但对生产前沿面的追赶程度较小导致其技术效率相对较低。经济特区在深化改革时期应重视技术创新和优化产业结构来进一步提高其技术效率。     

中国文化产业全要素生产率变动、区域差异分析——基于Malmquist生产力指数的分析

本文综合运用Malmquist生产力指数模型,选取中国31个省市2005-2009年的面板数据对文化产业全要素生产率变动以及技术变动进行实证研究。研究表明:2005-2009年我国文化产业全要素生产率整体呈波动式增长;西部省份文化产业效率虽然在总量上与东、中部省份存在较大差异,但西部省份通过改善基础设施建设,文化生产产能获得极大释放,以西藏自治区表现尤为典型。生产率增长率绝对数值上已经超过东、中部地区,且总量差距进一步缩小。西部地区在技术进步方面优于东、中部地区,但东部和中部地区在技术使用效率和规模效率方面均优于西部地区,这表明西部地区与东、中地区相比较,文化产业还处于不同阶段。目前的发展侧重点不尽相同。根据分析结论,本文提出了提高我国文化产业生产效率的建议措施。     

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.     

Neurally reconstructing expected utility

While the concept of “expected utility” informs many theories of decision making, little is known about whether and how the human brain might compute this quantity. This article reviews a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) experiments designed to localize brain regions that respond in anticipation of increasing amounts of monetary incentives. These studies collectively suggest that anticipation of increasing monetary gains activates a subcortical region of the ventral striatum in a magnitude-proportional manner. This ventral striatal activation is not evident during anticipation of losses. Actual gain outcomes instead activate a region of the mesial prefrontal cortex. During anticipation of gain, ventral striatal activation is accompanied by feelings characterized by increasing arousal and positive valence. These findings affirm the role of emotion in the anticipation of incentives, and may provide an initial step towards a neural reconstruction of expected utility.     

Duplication, Growth and ‘Total Return Economics’

Maintenance consumption is an expense recovered in product prices, yet also a source of taste satisfaction which must be exhausted, rather than reinvested, from the capital affording it. This riddle is solved in the duplication rules: the cost of maintenance consumption is recovered in pay and prices, but an equal flow is exhausted from the human capital of the worker earning the pay. The rules impact tradition in several ways. If output is defined in principle as value added, then it cannot also be described as consumption plus net investment without double-counting the maintenance consumption recovered in prices. Also rate of return in the stationary state is not zero, but is the rate sufficient to offset the exhaustion of individual human capital. The rules lead to new insights into economic return, and support an argument that all growth at the scale of closure is due to productivity gain rather than to thrift.     

John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

Although he was much influenced by David Ricardo when he wrote the classical part of his Principles , John Stuart Mill was not a Ricardian when he penned his theories of wealth and distribution. They are based on a triple foundation. First, a belief that economics is a moral discipline. Second a theory of custom-driven human behavior. Third, an empirically formed conviction that the institutions of state, education and business cooperate to structure the distribution of income. On the basis of these presuppositions, Mill formulated 1) an institutional theory of the formation of human and non-human wealth and 2) an even more institutional theory of distribution demonstrating how the aforementioned institutions malignantly skew the distribution of income to the advantage of the propertied classes and to the extreme disadvantage of the working class. As a social economist, Mill recommended institutional reforms designed to eradicate the poverty of the working class.     

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.     

Simulating the Effect of Regulatory Systems in a Fishery, An Application to the French Driftnet Albacore Fleet

With a thin economic component, most bio-economic models of fisheries failto assess the effects of the regulation systems on firms. In order to analysethe short term consequences of different management schemes, a simulationmodel is applied to the French driftnet albacore fleet: licence allocation withdriftnet regulation, individual quotas, and individual transferable quotaswithout any input control. Vessel technology is estimated by using the datacollected, and groups of vessels are distinguished according to criteria ofperformance. We present the adjustment within firms and between groupsunder different scenarios (limited entry with and without driftnetregulation, individual quotas and individual transferable quotas allocation),and we compare their results in terms of quasi-rent value and otherindicators such as hake harvests or dolphin by-catches.     

Knowledge as a Path-Dependence Process

By following a new approach proposed by Cognitive and Neuroeconomics, this paper presents and extends that part of Hayek's theory concerning knowledge in path-dependent terms, and shows that this is a fertile theory, opening new lines of inquiry for contemporary economics. In his theory of knowledge Hayek shows that the dynamics of economic change is path-dependent, in a different and more profound way than in the rest of the path-dependent literature. This literature deals with an important controversy, which will be also discussed and its specific and original meaning will be highlighted. As it will emerge, knowledge as a path-dependent process is consistent with cognitive theories of perception and learning and it plays a more important role than is traditionally assumed. Path-dependence is in fact always present in the cognitive dimension of perception and in individual decision-making processes, as well as in the processes of organizational innovation, and even in the macro-dimension of institutional change. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.