农户闲置宅基地退出的影响因素及政策衔接——行为经济学视角

以行为经济学为理论基础,采用条件价值评估法调研、访谈河南省城市近郊、城市远郊共996户农户,对调研结果进行统计学分析和Logistic回归分析,研究微观层面宅基地禀赋效应、农户个体特征、农户认知的锚定心理、农户的现状偏见、未来状态的不确定性厌恶以及群体社会性特征对闲置宅基地退出的影响程度。研究结果显示:农户年龄负向影响宅基地退出,农户兼业程度、受教育程度正向影响宅基地退出;禀赋效应抬高农户宅基地主观估价,负向影响宅基地退出;农户的现状偏见、不确定性厌恶、关注负面事件的锚定心理负向影响宅基地退出。群体内从众、示范、攀比效应以及利他、互惠行为双向影响宅基地退出。针对研究结果,宅基地退出过程中应进行政策引导与解读,消除不同主体认知偏差。注重宅基地退出与土地承包经营权流转、土地整理、农民安置、就业、子女教育、社保及落户政策的衔接,解决宅基地退出后的连带问题。     

农户宅基地利用状况、腾退意愿及利益诉求——对河南省1105个样本农户的调查

宅基地腾退是城市化与工业化良性互动、城乡建设用地增减挂钩、土地整理与集约利用的关键环节。了解农户宅基地利用状况、腾退意愿和利益诉求有利于公正、合理、有序地推进宅基地整理工作。该文运用问卷统计和入户座谈相结合的方法,通过对河南省1105个农户的实地调研,得出以下结论:河南省宅基地闲置严重,具有整理的必要性;农户具有宅基地腾退、置换城镇住房的意愿,对城市生活成本、住房配套有心理预期;90-120平方米的城镇置换房能够满足大多数人的需求,农户可承担5-15万元额度的住房贷款;就业技能和创业技能成为农户进城后关心的重要问题。基于此,提出了将宅基地腾退与产业发展、农民安居、培训、就业相结合,建设多位一体示范区等建议。     

基于Logistic回归模型的农户宅基地流转意愿研究——以微观福利为视角

通过对“武汉城市圈”农户宅基地流转意愿的抽样调查,采用问卷调查法和Logistic分析方法,从福利角度研究农户宅基地流转意愿与宅基地功能、农户家庭属性特征、农户心理特征等的关系,探寻影响农户宅基地流转的主要因素.研究表明:当前农户流转宅基地的意愿比例为18.97％;影响农户宅基地流转意愿的因素依次为户主受教育程度、庭院经营性收入、家庭归属感、宅基地区位条件和家庭非农收入比例;其中户主受教育程度、家庭非农收入比例的影响方向为正,其他因素的作用方向为负.基于此,提出了农村宅基地流转的相应对策:开展对宅基地福利水平的评估,给予流转农户足额福利补偿;建立统筹城乡的公共服务体系及社会保障体系;加强新安置点的选址与规划,使宅基地流转后农户福利水平随着社会经济发展而逐渐得到提高.     

农户分化对农村宅基地使用权流转意愿的影响分析——基于结构方程模型(SEM)的估计

笔者运用结构方程模型(SEM),以河南省4个试点县(濮阳县、杞县、固始县、汝阳县)的调查材料为依据,对影响农村宅基地使用权流转意愿的因素进行了实证分析。结果表明,农户职业分化和经济分化程度对农村宅基地使用权流转意愿具有显著影响;在可观测变量中,年龄、文化程度、家庭农业劳动力人数、宅基地使用权稳定性的认知等对宅基地使用权流转意愿具有显著影响效应。因此,农村宅基地使用权流转政策要注意区分不同阶层农户特点,积极促进农户各阶层职业结构的合理化。     

农户转入土地行为及其影响因素分析——基于三峡库区427户农户的调查数据

基于三峡库区427个样本农户的调查数据,分析了目前农户转入土地的行为特征,通过建立Logistic模型对农户转入土地行为的影响因素进行了甄别,并对农户转入土地行为的主观解释进行了分析。研究表明,农户自身及家庭特征、土地资源特征、环境因素和政策因素对农户转入土地行为均有一定程度的影响。其中,非农收入所占比重、耕地面积和地理条件是影响农户是否转入土地的主要因素。     

沿海地区农民宅基地退出意愿的实证分析--以福建省晋江市为例

契合当下宅基地制度改革试点和沿海经济发达地区的样本特性,本文以对晋江市807户农户进行问卷调查为基础,采用描述性统计分析和多项Logistic回归方法,对农民退出闲置宅基地意愿及其影响因素进行分析。研究结果表明：在分别反映农户特征、住房使用情况和农民认知程度的变量中,只有家庭收入、是否有其他住房、是否有多处宅基地和房产是否确权四个变量有显著影响,其他的影响因素均不能通过检验。其原因与沿海经济发达地区独有的经济结构、宅基地利用情况、农民大量务工和经营二、三产业的现实情况有很大的关系。     

农户参与农村宅基地使用权抵押贷款意愿及其影因素分析

本文以河南省824户农户调查材料为依据,运用结构方程模型对农户参与农村宅基地使用权抵押贷款意愿及其影响因素进行了实证分析。结果表明:户主年龄、户主文化程度、职业类别、信贷政策的了解情况、社会保障是否完善等变量,对农户参与农村宅基地使用权抵押贷款意愿具有显著性影响。最后,提出了积极开展农村宅基地使用权抵押贷款业务,加强社会服务体系建设等政策建议。     

基于SEM的农村居民点整治中农户意愿影响因素——潼南县中渡村实证

以重庆市潼南县柏梓镇中渡村农户的调查数据为基础,建立农户家庭特征、农户居住特征、农户宅基地特征、农户意识特征等19项指标的影响因素集,运用结构方程模型,对中渡村农村居民点整治中农户意愿影响因素进行分析。结果表明:143.51%的农户愿意进行农村居民点整治,47.08%的农户不愿意,9.21%的农户认为无所谓。改善居住条件、获得一定的补偿是农户愿意进行整治的主要原因。2非农务工人数、家庭非农收入、农户产权意识、宅基地利用状况和房屋结构是影响农户是否愿意进行农村居民点整治的关键因素。     

浙江农村“三权”改革背景下农户宅基地空间置换意愿的影响因素

通过对浙江省某自然村农户宅基地空间置换意愿的实地调查,采用问卷调查法和排序因变量模型,从农村"三权"改革的视角研究了农村宅基地空间置换意愿与"三权"政策、"三权"确权情况、承包地流转情况和农民家庭资源禀赋的关系,探寻影响农户宅基地空间置换意愿的主要因素。结果表明:农户宅基地空间置换意愿偏低,仅为23.33%;影响农户宅基地空间置换意愿的因素由高至低依次为对宅基地空间置换政策的了解程度、承包地是否流转出租、户主最高学历状况、房屋状况等级和家庭劳动力人口数量,五类指标均对置换意愿有显著正向影响。认为为了有序推进农村宅基地的空间置换,应加强对农村宅基地置换政策和农地改革政策的宣传力度;开展集中置换点选址的广泛调研,充分调动农户的积极性和参与意识;将宅基地置换与承包地流转、集体资产股份权流转有机结合,建立"三权"改革的联动机制。     

农户采用新技术的行为差异、决策依据、获取途径分析——基于陕西、甘肃、宁夏的调查

通过对陕甘宁诸多村庄的调查,考察农户采用不同属性技术的行为特征和差异,并对农户采用技术的决策因素和技术获取条件进行了分析。研究发现,农户采用新技术的行为基本符合"理性小农"理论和"技术诱导"理论;技术属性的差异对农户采用新技术的行为具有显著的影响;投入成本、家庭经济水平、技术的风险情况是影响农户技术采用决策最重要的3种因素。此外,苹果种植户的决策受到家庭劳动力数量的影响较大,小麦种植户受"看其他人的选择或收益"的影响较大,节水灌溉农户受政府鼓励措施和技术难易程度的影响较大;农户对采用技术顾虑因素的认知具有一致性的特征。技术获取条件方面,农户了解技术信息以自发性和分散性的方式为主,专业性的技术信息供给渠道仅起到辅助的作用;农户参与培训的内容主要集中在生产技术方面。     

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.