社会网络与信任文化的生成

信任是社会资本必不可少的组成部分。现代信任理论认为,信任文化对于一个地区的政治稳定、经济发展、社会和谐和文化进步等方面起着举足轻重的作用。但是信任文化的生成是受到许多因素制约的。波兰著名的社会学家彼得·什托姆普卡在研究信任文化的生成时发现社会网络对信任文化的生成具有重要影响。通过对广西实证资料的分析我们发现,社会网络规模对信任文化的生成影响不大,网络趋同性对信任文化的生成具有重要影响。     

信任及其解释:来自中国的跨省调查分析

“信任”被普遍认为是除物质资本和人力资本之外决定一个国家经济增长和社会进步的主要社会资本。华人社会在许多跨文化研究中被认为是低信任度的社会 ,而在国内 ,许多学者已用“信任危机”概括人与人关系的现状。本文试图通过中国跨省的信任调查数据 ,揭示信任对一个地区的经济绩效 ,例如企业规模、企业发展速度、引进外资等的影响 ,进一步分析影响信任的因素。我们的发现表明 ,一个地区能否被人们所信任与地域文化并不紧密相关 ,更重要的是跟人们之间的交易被重复的可能性、交易的发达程度、教育水平等因素有关。这些证据支持了经济学理论中关于重复博弈导致信任的基本假说。     

文化和经济发展——福山社会信任理论及其意义

福山在其著作《信任———社会美德与创造经济繁荣》中 ,进行了跨文化 -经济的对比研究 ,认为文化与该国经济具有很大的相关性。他按照文化特性区分了三种社会及其经济状况 :高信任文化、低信任文化和全面缺乏信任文化的社会。全面缺乏信任文化的社会是一个贫穷社会 ,如南部意大利和美国黑人社区 ;高信任文化的社会拥有大型的私人企业 ,如美国、日本和德国 ;低信任文化的社会其私人企业主要是小型家族企业 ,如中国、法国等。     

方言与社会信任

方言作为地域文化的载体,是影响经济绩效的重要因素之一.现有研究虽然揭示了方言的经济后果,但对其产生影响的机制却语焉不详.文章基于中国综合社会调查数据库,将社会信任作为理解方言影响经济绩效的渠道,考察了方言对社会信任的影响.研究发现:(1)在陌生人之间,使用同一种方言有利于建立信任,即方言会影响社会信任的形成;(2)方言之所以能够影响社会信任,是因为它作为个体来源地的符号,能够增进彼此的身份认同感;(3)方言对社会信任的影响具有异质性,不仅会因个体受教育程度、城市发展水平和城市人口结构的差异而有所不同,也会因地区差别而有所差异.文章从社会信任的视角为方言影响经济绩效背后的机制提供了一个微观解释.     

信任文化群体差异现象的实证分析——以广西为例

信任是社会资本的必不可少的组成部分。现代信任理论认为,信任文化对于一个地区的政治稳定、经济发展、社会和谐和文化进步等方面起着举足轻重的作用。但是各类群体之间的信任文化是否存在差异呢？通过对广西实证资料的分析我们发现不同性别、民族类别、宗教信仰和政治面貌的群体其信任文化不存在差异,这与波兰著名的社会学家彼得·什托姆普卡的研究结论存在差别之处,由此我们有必要探索中国的信任文化是受哪些因素影响的。     

纵向一体化:理论考察与述评

纵向一体化在经济学与企业理论中一直备受关注。支持纵向一体化的解释很多 ,其中交易成本经济学则是集大成者。但是其人的机会主义行为的假设容易导致对内部员工的积极性与创造性的忽视和对外部良好的合作关系的不信任。结合对一个社会的文化或者是社会信誉度的考察与企业能力理论的解释并且动态地看待企业的发展过程 ,在“企业———中间形态———市场”这个连续体中进行更加广泛的选择会是更加现实的考虑     

政治信任及其起源——对亚洲8个国家和地区的比较研究

政治信任是一个政府合法性的重要指标之一.本文以亚洲8个国家和地区为研究对象,首先对政治信任的分布现状进行了实证分析,然后对政治信任的成因进行了探讨.根据分析结果,目前对政治信任起源的两种理论视角,即制度的和社会文化的视角对政治信任成因的解释均具有意义,两种解释理论至少在实证研究上并不相互排斥.本文最重要的发现是,在东亚及东南亚国家,权威主义价值观作为一个文化的因素,对人们的政治信任的形成产生了重要影响.这一分析结果部分地修正了目前关于政治信任的有关理论.     

社会资本与企业网络竞争力的相关研究

社会资本是一个新概念，但不是一个新话题。它既开拓了跨学科(经济学、社会学、政治学等)研究的新领域，也为这些学科之间的对话提供了概念和方法上的支持。将社会资本与企业网络联系起来的是社会学家。他们早就注意到了社会资本对人类行为的影响，并对经济学的经济人假定提出了批评，认为资源配置方式除了市场、等级外，“网络”(包括信任、互惠、友爱等)也是重要的资源配置体制。     

关于消费经济学的几个理论问题

<正> 消费经济学是不是一门独立的经济学科,为什么要开展对这门经济学科的研究,它的研究对象和内容是什么,这是经济学界关心的一个重要题目。但是,在过去很长一段时间里,经济理论界却忽视了对消费领域的研究,认为生产消费,它本身就是一种生产行为;而作为个人消费,只是执行生活的职能,并不反映人与人之间的经济关系。因而,把消费领域的研究完全排除在经济学、特别是政治经济学范围之外。加之林彪、“四人帮”横行十年,推行普遍贫穷的假社会主义,把人民的消费斥之为福利主义和修正主义,大张挞伐。消费经济更无人敢于研究和探索。我国是一个有九亿多人口的社会主义大国。社会主义基本经济规律要求“保证最大限度地满足整个社会经常增长的物质和文化需要”。满足需要,归根到底,就是要满足九亿人民的消费需要。否定人民群众的消费需要,实质上就是社会主义经济的变质。开     

经济衰退的文化药方

普遍联系的观点是经济学研究的一个极其重要的思维原则 ,但是现代经济学却存在着把经济问题的研究主要局限于追求财富增长、实现效用最大化的功利境界内 ,以及过分强调经济学的“精确化”和“数量化” ,强调市场、价格要素、生产要素等等 ,而忽视了影响经济发展的人文因素。文章从文化因素来解释日本、欧洲的经济衰退和复苏乏力 ,并强调经济重症需要文化药方。     

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.”     

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.     

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.     

Planned adaptation in risk regulation: An initial survey of US environmental, health, and safety regulation

In principle, we want regulatory programs to be based on current realities, as reflected for example in the best knowledge of relevant experts. That would imply that old rules now on the books should be consistent with today's knowledge base, not just what was known when a rule or standard was originally set. This paper reports on a survey of US programs, examining how often existing rules are actually updated in light of better knowledge, and identifies five programs that attempt to make policy routinely adaptive. These programs exhibit what we term Planned Adaptation: they both revise rules when relevant new knowledge appears, and take steps to produce such improved knowledge. While Planned Adaptation is rare, it is used in several nationally prominent programs, including air pollution, airplane safety, and drug safety. Planned Adaptation is a policy tool that deserves more attention.     

The greenhouse effect: Damages,costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — CO₂ in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the most favorable (although not necessarily likely) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded.The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO₂ eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO₂ emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO₂ saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings.We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.During the academic year 1989–90 Dr. Ayres was at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.During the summer of 1989 Mr. Walter was a member of the Young Scientists' Summer Program at IIASA.     

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.