城市交通中的“绿色交通”理念

随着城市机动化发展，小型汽车不断地增加，由此带来的城市环境问题也得到人们的重视。“绿色交通”理念的提出正是为降低城市空气污染的程度，实现城市的可持续发展。本文对城市交通中的“绿色交通”的交通方式进行简要介绍并对“绿色交通”的发展提出建议。     

基于可持续发展的绿色交通体系构建的思考

可持续发展是人们对传统发展模式反思之后的创新。随着社会的发展，我国传统的交通规划已不能适应现代城市交通发展的需要，“绿色交通”是继传统观念后的一个全新的理念，它强调的是城市交通的“绿色性”，即减轻交通拥挤，减少环境污染，合理利用资源。本文在对我国城市交通规划现状的考察以及分析目前制约我国交通发展因素的基础上，提出要使我国城市道路交通在尽可能长的时间段内保持生机与活力，就需要构建可持续发展的绿色交通体系。     

基于生态交通的城市客运交通结构优化模型研究

文章探讨适合我国不同时期和不同类型城市的优化方法——基于生态交通的优化方法,目的是为城市交通方式结构的优化提供一套系统的理论方法体系。同时建立基于环保约束的城市客运交通结构优化模型。该模型融入了影响城市交通结构的各种因素,使其既能满足经济发展带来的交通需求,又能使交通的环境污染和能源消耗最小,从而为可持续发展的交通运输系统规划提供可行的理论与方法。     

突出公交,综合推进,太原市应从可持续发展高度重新审视对城市交通的认识

一、对城市交通认识的转变城市交通是影响和带动整个城市功能布局发展 ,改善人们居住生活与出行条件的一个重要因素 ,同时也与城市环境质量密切相关。对城市交通问题的一个基本观点就是 :城市交通不仅是保证车流与人流畅通的基本要求 ,而且是关系到城市可持续发展的重要问题。也就是说 ,过去对于交通问题从保障其人流、车流畅通谈得比较多 ,现在应当从可持续发展的高度来重新审视交通问题。未来的城市发展要通过交通规划与建设来影响和带动城市布局的调整 ,而不是先确定城市布局 ,然后通过制定若干交通规划方案来适应。二、太原市对城市交通…     

生态城市的环境伦理实践——以商丘为例

当前我国城市建设过程中出现诸多环境问题,本文立足于环境伦理学并借助相关资料,对城市建设进行分析,提出环境伦理下商丘生态城市建设所要遵循的目标和原则。从华商文化、城镇化布局、乡镇特色、生态安全、绿色交通、水土资源、社会治安等方面构建商丘生态城市,以期为我国生态城市建设提供借鉴,以引导中国城市合理规划,最终实现城市可持续发展。     

基于城市生态交通理论的交通节能研究

本文通过描述和分析城市生态交通系统的内涵及其内部各子系统之间的关系,指出城市生态交通系统是一个复杂大系统,交通问题不只是路与车、车与人的物理或经济问题,而是一个由交通工具、道路、土地、能源、环境和出行主体组成的复合生态系统问题。同时,本文通过分析城市交通高能耗产生的原因以及高能耗所带来的城市环境污染问题,提出了降低城市交通能耗、创建和谐城市生态交通的战略措施。     

城市交通中的"绿色交通"理念

随着城市机动化发展,小型汽车不断地增加,由此带来的城市环境问题也得到人们的重视. "绿色交通"理念的提出正是为降低城市空气污染的程度,实现城市的可持续发展.本文对城市交通中的"绿色交通"的交通方式进行简要介绍并对"绿色交通"的发展提出建议.     

四川省绵阳市城市交通发展战略

改革开放30年来,绵阳市城市迎来了发展机遇。但是绵阳市城市现状交通设施先天不足、规划缺失,交通问题凸显,难以满足城市交通需求增长。作者以绵阳市城市综合交通规划项目为例,对绵阳市城市交通发展战略进行研究。基于对绵阳城市现状交通问题、城市及交通发展趋势分析,从区域、市域、都市区、中心城区多个层面构建了绵阳城市交通发展战略,为下阶段城市综合交通体系规划提供了重要指导依据,并可作为类似城市的良好借鉴。     

浅议生态城市的园林绿化

在生态城市建设中.城市园林绿化是建设生态城市的一个重要切入点,城市绿地系统的规划、设计、建设、管护都应当按照生态城市建设的要求,以全新的理念来进行,其中包含可持续发展原则、生物多样性原则、生态设计等原则.城市绿化是处理城市中人与自然和谐统一关系的重要手段.本文结合园林绿化的作用和存在的一些主要问题,并针对这些问题提出了相应的可持续对策,为将来生态城市的园林绿化提供依据.     

基于生态文明的京津冀智慧交通问题研究

文章以生态文明理念为指导,阐述了智慧交通的发展趋势以及交通生态文明建设现状,分析比较了京津冀三地智慧交通发展状况,提出基于生态文明的智慧交通建设水平提升的对策建议:统筹京津冀智慧交通协同发展规划、建立交通运输能耗检测平台、推广清洁交通能源应用、搭建政府、社会和公众互动的智慧交通平台。     

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.