长春市工业空间格局时空演变特征

依据1995、2003、2008年长春市土地利用现状图和2013年卫星影像图,借助Arc GIS技术,综合运用分布重心方法和空间关联分析法,对长春市工业空间格局时空演化特征进行分析,结果表明:1长春市工业空间整体经历了"东南方向—西南方向—东北方向"大规模开发过程;2工业用地整体分布具有空间正相关特征,在部分近邻区域具有集聚性,但集聚程度呈现出先降低后逐渐增加的趋势;3工业用地空间集聚情况呈现相对稳定的状态;工业空间变化呈现出"主导地域集中—交通轴向扩展—轴间指状填充"的特点;4工业空间扩展模式遵循"扇形结构模式—圈层结构模式—扇形+圈层结构模式"的规律。研究认为自然条件、土地使用制度的改革、产业结构升级的驱动作用、政府调控作用以及交通机制是长春市工业空间时空演化特征的驱动力。     

北京市A级旅游景区空间结构及其演化

北京市自2001年认定首批A级旅游景区以来,其发展势头在空间上已呈现出一定的分布结构和演化规律。通过GIS空间分析发现,当前北京市A级旅游景区在空间分布上呈现出城区和远郊区密集、近郊区稀疏的＂哑铃结构＂,这种结构主要受资源和市场两大因素共同驱动;通过对不同阶段A级旅游景区空间分布的变化,进一步揭示北京市A级旅游景区具有沿交通干道演化、沿重要水系与公共绿地演化和沿旅游集散中心与集散镇演化的规律,这些规律表明,资源本底、水系和公共绿地条件、交通与基础设施条件在A级旅游景区发展中起决定作用。     

基于生态位适宜度理论的区域创新系统评价研究

目前,河南省正在积极构建适应自身发展特点的区域创新系统。2007年,河南省委、省政府出台了《中共河南省委河南省人民政府关于增强自主创新能力建设创新型河南的决定》,河南省政府颁布了《河南省中长期科学和技术发展规划纲要（2006—2020年）》。基于中国原经济区发展的战略背景,构建了区域创新生态系统的评价指标体系,引入生态学中生态适宜度评估模型对河南省17个地级市的区域创新生态系统的适宜度进行了测算和分析。研究结果表明：除郑州、洛阳两个地市外,河南省各地市的创新适宜度普遍偏低。     

1975年以来新疆县域产业结构的空间分异研究

以1975-2010年8个年份的县域产业数据为基础,运用探索性空间统计方法(ESDA)对该时段新疆县域产业结构发展格局的时空差异特征进行了分析.结果表明:从总体空间格局来看,新疆县域产业发展水平具有较强的正空间自相关性,集聚态势显著,并呈现出以2000年为拐点先增强后减弱的趋势.“五五”时期以来,主要分布在北疆、东疆的产业发展热点区域由单一的核心区域向东扩展为三大核心区并列(“克拉玛依—奎屯—乌苏”、“乌鲁木齐—昌吉”、“哈密—吐鲁番”),进而连接形成天山北坡优势产业带;但“十五”时期以后,产业带又收缩为原有的三个核心区.新疆冷点区域主要集中于西南部,其范围呈现出2000年以前不断向东扩张到阿克苏、和田东部地区,而2000年以后又开始向西退缩至和田西部、喀什地区.总体来看,沿东北到西南方向,新疆产业结构的集聚分布呈现出“热点区—次热区—次冷区—冷点区”的阶梯环形带,并有按梯度推移模式扩展的趋势.资源禀赋、区位条件和区域政策环境是促使产业结构时空格局发生演化的重要因子,其中改革开放和自1999年底开始实施的西部大开发战略对新疆产业空间格局演化的推动作用更为明显.     

山西省各地区产业结构转换能力综合发展水平的动态比较

基于区域经济学理论,运用改进的主成分分析法,测算了山西省11个地市的产业结构转换能力综合发展水平,并分析了其在2000—2008年的变化情况。结果表明:2000—2008年期间山西省各地市的产业结构转换能力均有不同程度的提高,但各地市的提高幅度存在较大差异;各地市的产业结构转换能力存在显著差异,其中,产业结构转换能力的增长能力差异是导致各地区产业结构转换能力综合发展水平差异加大的主要因素。     

河南区域文化产业发展的环境因素及对策分析

河南省区域文化产业发展面临着极为复杂的内部和外部环境因素，在这种复杂的内外环境下，推进河南省文化产业发展就要确立新型文化发展观，推进文化体制改革向纵深发展，改善和优化环境，调整产业结构，提高科技含量，合理配置文化资源，重视人才队伍建设，扩大对外文化交流。     

河南省人口空间结构演变格局研究

以河南省人口总体以及各地市数据为基础,采用Arc?GIS从空间演化的角度进行定量研究,研究结果表明:河南省人口整体逐年增加,呈"中心性"趋势,但增长速率放缓,人口分布非均衡性和空间集中性呈现不断增强趋势;高人口密度地市逐渐增多,低人口密度地市的范围逐渐变小,各个地市之间人口密度呈现显著性差异,地市的人口密度大于河南省总体的人口密度;而人口在空间分布的不平衡,主要受制于自然、历史、经济和政策等众多因素的综合影响,可从构建多中心区域结构、调整区域产业空间布局、平衡区域资源配置以及优化基础设施的区域差异方面入手,从而保证区域的可持续发展.     

河南省产业结构效益演化分析

河南作为农业大省曾对中国的建设与发展起着重要的作用。作为粮食产量的中心，在国民经济中起着举足轻重的作用。而产业结构及其效益一直是影响地区经济发展的重要因素，也是区域产业经济学研究的重点。运用比较劳动生产率及比较劳动生产率差异指数的计量方法，对1978—2003年河南省三次产业结构效益状况进行评价，并且和中部地区、西部地区以及和全国作比较。二十多年来，河南省产业结构效益演化趋势为：三次产业结构整体来说趋于良性发展，但是和全国及东部相比结构还不合理.     

中国东部沿海地区经济空间格局变化

采用标准差椭圆和标准距离方法,定量识别并以空间可视化的方式精细地刻画2003—2011年国内外复杂背景下的我国东部沿海地区经济空间格局时间变化特征。结果表明:2003—2011年沿海地区经济空间分布呈现向西移动,且空间扩张的趋势;国内市场的聚集经济作用在增强;长三角地区以及山东省北部主要城市对沿海地区经济的影响作用减弱,京津地区、珠三角地区经济的拉动作用增强;沿海地区经济空间格局演化与全国经济空间格局变化时序波动相吻合,很大程度上影响着全国经济空间格局的变化。     

江西省产业结构效益分析（1978—2006）——基于比较劳动生产率视角

区域经济发展不仅是经济水平不断提高的过程，也是产业结构不断优化的过程。而产业结构效益是产业结构优化的重要内容。本文从比较劳动生产率视角分析了1978—2006年的江西省产业结构效益演化情况。     

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.     

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.     

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.