正规金融发展、非正规金融发展对城乡收入差距的影响——基于地级市层面数据的分位数回归分析

在理论剖析正规金融发展、非正规金融发展对城乡收入差距影响的基础上,基于2000—2013年中国225个地级市的面板数据,分别利用分位数回归方法和OLS回归方法对之进行了实证分析。结果显示:正规金融发展和非正规金融发展会影响城乡收入差距,就业结构、固定资产投资、城镇化水平和教育发展水平等也对城乡收入差距产生影响;在不同的分位点,正规金融发展、非正规金融发展对城乡收入差距的影响不同,而就业结构、固定资产投资、城镇化水平和教育发展水平等的影响未发生变化。     

结构转变、经济增长与城乡收入差距

经济增长体现为一个结构转变的过程,并通过结构转变影响城乡收入差距。综合分析产业结构、城乡结构转变,以及经济增长对城乡收入差距的作用机理,并基于1978—2011年的相关统计数据进行实证检验。结果显示：中国的经济增长与城乡收入差距存在库兹涅茨倒u型关系;城乡二元经济结构的转变有助于缩小城乡收入差距;城市化对城乡收入差距的影响则出现阶段性特征,城乡收入差距随城市化水平的提高呈现出先扩大后缩小的特征。应注重经济增长、转变经济发展方式、以科学发展观推进城市化发展。     

文化和旅游产业融合发展对城乡收入差距的影响——基于省域面板数据的实证分析

研究文旅融合发展对城乡收入差距的影响,对区域协调发展、促进共同富裕具有重要意义。基于文化和旅游产业融合发展缩减城乡居民收入差距的内在机理,文章利用中国31省（自治区、直辖市）2008—2021年的面板数据,通过构建中介效应模型,揭示文化和旅游产业融合对城乡收入差距的平抑作用和传导路径,并采用面板分位数回归检验融合发展与城乡收入差距的非线性关联。研究结果表明：文化和旅游产业融合经由区域经济增长、市场化发展和人力资本提升中介路径缩减城乡收入差距,并且融合发展对收入不平等的缓和呈现“倒U”型库兹涅茨曲线特征。     

保险业对“经济增长—城乡收入差距”非线性动力系统的影响

本文运用2004—2013年季度数据建立经济增长与城乡收入差距的非线性动力系统模型,引入保险业发展与产寿险结构作为控制变量,较为全面、系统地研究和比较了该经济系统的不同控制方案。研究发现,我国经济增长与城乡收入差距存在长期均衡的非线性关系;寿险业发展会抑制经济增长,并扩大城乡收入差距,财险业发展可以促进经济增长,同时缩小城乡收入差距;如果扩大财险业相对于寿险业的规模,会缩小城乡收入差距,促进经济增长;引入稳定度的最优控制可以有效缩短控制时间,但也会产生较高控制力度与社会福利损失。通过比较不同控制措施和控制方案,本文建议通过控制产寿险结构可以在较短时间内以较低控制成本实现经济增长与城乡收入差距的控制目标。     

我国城乡收入差距过大的现状与对策选择

近年来,城乡收入差距问题成为倍受社会各界瞩目的焦点。该文对改革开放26年来,我国城乡居民收入差距变化的状况进行了耙梳。发现,与传统的U型理论不同,以城乡居民收入比衡量我国城乡收入的差距呈W型,且收入差距远大于国际经验水平。文章在对影响我国城乡收入差距过大的因素分析之后,给出了调控城乡收入差距的政策建议。     

论20世纪70年代末以来中国城乡居民收入差距的变化及其对城乡居民消费水平的影响

20世纪70年代末以来,伴随着经济的高速增长,中国城乡居民收入水平都得到了很大的提高,由此使得城乡居民的生活水平都得到了根本性的提高,但是城乡居民收入的增长却不平衡,无论是城乡居民的相对收入差距,还是城乡居民的绝对收入差距都呈现出长期扩大的趋势。城乡居民收入差距的扩大导致城乡居民之间的消费水平也呈现出长期扩大的趋势,无论是从城乡居民的消费占比、消费支出、消费水平,还是从城乡居民的恩格尔系数、耐用消费品普及率等方面,都反映了城乡居民消费水平所存在的长期扩大的差距。城乡居民消费水平差距的扩大既不利于扩大总需求,也不利于产业结构升级,因此采取措施遏制城乡居民收入差距的扩大的势头,使农村居民收入获得更快的增长,以进一步促进中国经济增长和社会福利水平的提高。     

高新技术产业发展对城乡居民收入差距的影响

本文基于我国30个省市1999—2012年的面板数据,分别利用固定效应模型和分位数回归方法分析了高新技术产业投入对城乡收入差距的影响;进一步分析了东、中、西三大经济区高新技术产业对城乡收入差距影响程度和趋势的差异性。结论为:高新技术产业发展会拉大城乡收入差距且存在时滞性,不同地区的影响幅度和变化趋势不同。政府应通过降低高新技术产业投入在城乡间的差距以减少因此带来的城乡收入差距。     

浙江省经济增长与收入分配互动关系研究——基于VAR模型的分析

城乡居民收入与其消费水平息息相关,随着我国经济增长从高速向中高速发展,城乡居民收入分配差距问题再一次引发了社会各界的高度重视。本文收集了2005—2016年的数据,对浙江省城乡收入分配现状进行分析,并建立VAR模型,研究浙江省居民收入差距与经济增长之间的关系,结合模型数据分析给出缩小浙江城乡居民收入差距同时进一步减少贫困的建议,以期实现浙江经济更好更快发展。     

江苏省县域消费水平的空间格局及影响因素分析

以人均消费品零售额表征区域消费水平,利用探索性数据分析法,探究江苏省1995—2011年来区域消费水平的空间格局与演变,通过分位数回归结果进行解释。得出以下结论:通过全局自相关计算可知,1995—2011年间江苏省区域消费水平存在着显著的空间集聚特性,且呈现出不断波动增强趋势;时间突变点表明,2004年是区域消费水平空间关联的突变点,2004年以前,区域消费水平空间分布较均衡,地区差距较小,而2004年以后,消费水平地区发展不平衡,差距越来越大,空间分异不断扩大;消费水平的空间格局演化表明,1995年来江苏省区域消费水平的集聚分异格局不断增强且趋于稳定,呈现"南高北低"集中连片的分异态势;分位数回归结果详细刻画了不同分位点上消费水平影响因素的作用程度与方向,其中,城乡人均收入、城市化率、人均生产总值及第三产业比重对区域消费水平起到正向的积极作用,固定资产投资额起到负向的抑制作用,而二三产业从业人员、公路里程及人均财政支出对区域消费水平的影响在不同分位点上存在着显著的差异性。     

城镇化、城乡收入差距与经济增长——基于河北省时间序列数据的实证研究

基于1978—2012年间河北省时间序列数据,采用协整分析方法对城镇化、城乡收入差距与经济增长之间的关系进行实证分析。研究发现,在1978—2012年间河北省城乡收入差距具有明显的阶段波动性,且呈扩大的趋势,河北省的城镇化水平、经济增长与城乡收入差距之间存在长期稳定的协整关系。具体来看,城镇化对城乡收入差距的影响显著,两者呈正效应关系,同时随着经济的增长加大了城乡收入差距。因此,如何协调城镇化发展对缩小河北省城乡收入差距具有重要意义。未来城镇化发展中应更多地关注农民利益,推进二元经济结构转换,因地制宜地解决收入分配问题,提高区域开放程度同时积极引进外商投资,有利于从根本上缩小城乡收入差距。     

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.