Walras as an ordoliberal?

Léon Walras and the ordoliberals share the opinion that State intervention in favour of a competitive order is a central element of economic policy. Hence, can Walras be regarded as a forerunner of ordoliberalism? This study performs a methodological and ontological analysis of Walras’ and Eucken’s thoughts and sheds light on another common ground: philosophical idealism. By taking different inclinations – Walras’ Teleological Realism vs Eucken’s Historicist Conceptualism – these authors reveal different relations with reality and methodological stances, which result in opposing philosophies of History. Paradoxically, by revealing tenuous epistemological bonds, we set a new distance between Walras and the ordoliberals.     

Migration as an antidote to rent-seeking?

We develop a new mechanism through which skilled migration may influence economic performance in the sending country. If agents can choose between acting as rent-seekers and engaging in productive activities, and only productive skills are exportable, a positive probability of migration (to a more secure economy) reduces the relative expected returns from rent-seeking, thus decreasing the proportion of skilled workers who opt for “parasitic” activities. Such an improvement in the allocation of talent may prevail over the loss of skilled workers due to outmigration. However, we show that this result is not robust to the introduction of endogenous protection. If productive workers share their resources between accumulation of productive capital and investment in security, prospective migration may induce a weaker protection against rent-seeking, which in turn might depress average income in the source economy.     

The sceptic as an economist's philosopher? Humean utility as a positive principle

Whereas in philosophy David Hume was long regarded as a negative thinker to be criticized rather than read, many thinkers interested in social and economic theory from Adam Smith onwards found key concepts, distinctions and problems as developed by Hume useful and inspiring. This applies not only to his seminal contributions to technical problems in economics. It is argued that the way in which Hume employed ‘utility as a positive principle’ (most notably in his ‘experimental’ moral theory) is of pivotal importance in this context. It allows for:

a. distinguishing between internal motifs and external circumstances and constraints; and for

b. making explicit the abstract logic of social interaction structures, mechanisms and processes.

Both are necessary conditions for employing the logic of social situations and mechanisms in the explanation of social institutions and economic processes. It moreover prepares the ground for the use of simplified or cartoon-like models of individual agency in economic and social theory, but also for its critique. On this basis, Hume's influence on various strands of social and economic thought, but also the specific differences with regard to more ‘rationalistic’ approaches (such as Hobbesianism or important versions of neoclassical economics) can be assessed more clearly.     

Gross national happiness as an answer to the Easterlin Paradox?

The Easterlin Paradox refers to the fact that happiness data are typically stationary in spite of considerable increases in income. This amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis that current income is the only argument in the utility function. We find that the happiness responses of around 350,000 people living in the OECD between 1975 and 1997 are positively correlated with the level of income, the welfare state and (weakly) with life expectancy; they are negatively correlated with the average number of hours worked, environmental degradation (measured by SOx emissions), crime, openness to trade, inflation and unemployment; all controlling for country and year dummies. These effects separate across groups in a pattern that appears broadly plausible (e.g., the rich suffer environmental degradation more than the poor). Based on actual changes from 1975 to 1997, small contributions to happiness can be attributed to the increase in income in our sample. Interestingly, the actual changes in several of the ‘omitted variables’ such as life expectancy, hours worked, inflation and unemployment also contribute to happiness over this time period since life expectancy has risen and the others have, on average, fallen. Consequently the unexplained trend in happiness is even bigger than would be predicted if income was the only argument in the utility function. In other words, introducing omitted variables worsens the income-without-happiness paradox.     

Interpreting life-cycle inequality patterns as an efficient allocation: Mission impossible?

The life-cycle patterns of consumption, wage and hours inequality observed in U.S. cross-sectional data are commonly viewed as incompatible with a Pareto efficient allocation. We determine the extent to which these qualitative and quantitative patterns can or cannot be produced by Pareto efficient allocations in models with preference shocks, wage shocks and full information.     

Patent Statistics as an Innovation Indicator? Evidence from the Hard Disk Drive Industry

We assess the usefulness of patent statistics as an indicator of innovation, using a direct measure of innovation in the hard disk industry (1976–1998). Three findings emerge: (i) patents “predict” innovations better than a random guess, and a simple refinement makes them more useful; (ii) conditional on actually innovating, conglomerates and larger firms patent more than specialised startups and smaller firms; and (iii) patent reforms seem to make the patent–innovation relationship nonstationary. These results suggest that researchers should use caution when comparing patents of different types of firms and across years.     

Services as drivers of economic growth. Is there an opportunity for Latin America countries?

ABSTRACT

Considering the recent improvements in services innovation and productivity performance, the aim of the article is to analyze if they can act as a new growth driver for Latin American countries. For that, we review the literature on services and structural change in two stages. First, we apply a bibliometric methodology to identify the main trends in literature. Second, we analyze in-depth a smaller set of papers in order to extract the main lessons regarding three aspects of our question: (i) services and productivity growth, (ii) new opportunities for innovation in services and (iii) relation between services and manufacturing through servitization process. The results show that productivity and innovation growth in services are concentrated in only a few branches. Besides this, services performance depends on their links with manufacturing activities. We conclude that the current Latin American servitization process clausure opportunities for developing instead of opening them.     

Inflation targeting: Should it be modeled as an instrument rule or a targeting rule?

The paper discusses how current inflation targeting should be modeled, and argues that it is better represented as a commitment to a targeting rule (a rule specifying operational objectives for monetary policy or a condition for the target variables), than as a commitment to a simple instrument rule (like a Taylor rule).     

学术不端行为的经济学浅析

近年来,国内的学术不端行为可谓是愈演愈烈,不仅影响了学术界的声誉,而且严重阻碍了知识创新的进程,对社会进步也是危害巨大。以广义效用和多人囚徒困境理论为依托,剖析这一现象的来龙云脉,并简要指出摆脱学术不端困境的途径：即完善对学术行为的监控、审核和奖惩制度。     

Reconsidering Wagner’s law: evidence from the functions of the government

We revisit Wagner’s law by function of government expenditure. Using data of 14 European countries between 1996 and 2013, we apply panel data and SUR methods to assess public expenditure–income elasticities. We find that some functions of government spending for a few countries (e.g. Austria, France, the Netherlands and Portugal) validate Wagner’s law. For the Netherlands, expenditures with environment protection increase more than proportionately to economic growth, and for France that is the case of spending in housing and community amenities. In addition, Greece is the only country where two public spending items react more than one to one to growth.     

基于不同视角的法律经济学研究: 一个文献综述

法律经济学是20世纪后半期经济学界乃至法学界最重要的学术成果.但是,法律经济学的研究视角并不统一.基于经济学、法律、哲学、批判法学、女性主义、比较分析、博弈论和心理学不同视角的法律经济学研究,在不断修正法律经济分析存在的局限性的基础上,提高了法律经济学的解释力和预测力,使法律经济学的触角几乎遍及了法律和法学的每一个领域,并使法律经济学的研究成果日益充实和拓展.随着中国经济市场化改革的深入,不同视角的法律经济学的研究成果,为我们体察和审视中国经济改革中的法律制度的变革与演进,提供了富有启发性的理论结构.     

The Impact of Perceived Familiarity and Perceived Importance on Economic Reasoning in Time-Allocation Decisions

Single-equation regression models are employed to estimate the student-teacher race and gender interaction effects in high school economics courses. No evidence of a gender role-model effect is found, but there is evidence of effects for African-American students.     

农村合作经济组织发展的税收理论解析及对策构想

《农民专业合作社法》的通过及正式实施对于农村合作经济组织无异于一场及时雨,使其发展迎来了又一契机。本文运用经典的马克思主义理论和现代经济学的理论为税收支持农村合作经济组织发展进行诠释,并在科学发展观指导下提出促进农村合作经济组织发展的税收对策构想。     

妇女权益法律保护的法经济学分析

针对当前侵犯妇女合法权益这一严重的社会问题,从法经济学的视角进行分析,认为侵犯妇女合法权益问题的经济性成因,微观方面在于＂经济人＂的本性,宏观方面在于法律制度失灵。在此基础上,提出了有效维护妇女合法权益的可行性建议。     

Bioeconomics as economics from a Darwinian perspective

Bioeconomics—the merging of views from biology and economics—on the one hand invites the 'export' of situational logic and sophisticated optimization developed in economics into biology. On the other hand, human economic activity and its evolution, not least over the past few centuries, may be considered an instance for fruitfully applying ideas from evolutionary biology and Darwinian theory. The latter perspective is taken in the present paper. Three different aspects are discussed in detail. First, the Darwinian revolution provides an example of a paradigm shift which contrasts most significantly with the 'subjectivist revolution' that took place at about the same time in economics. Since many of the features of the paradigmatic change that were introduced into the sciences by Darwinism may be desirable for economics as well, the question is explored whether the Darwinian revolution can be a model for introducing a new paradigm in economic theory. Second, the success of Darwinism and its view of evolution have induced economists who are interested in an evolutionary approach in economics to borrow, more or less extensively, concepts and tools from Darwinian theory. Particularly prominent are constructions based on analogies to the theory of natural selection. Because several objections to such analogy constructions can be raised, generalization rather than analogy is advocated here as a research strategy. This means to search for abstract features which all evolutionary theories have in common. Third, the question of what a Darwinian world view might mean for assessing long term economic evolution is discussed. Such a view, it is argued, can provide a point of departure for reinterpreting the hedonistic approach to economic change and development. On the basis of such an interpretation bioeconomics may not only go beyond the optimization-cum-equilibrium paradigm currently prevailing in economics. It may also mean adding substantial qualifications to the subjectivism the neoclassical economists, at the turn of the century, were proud to establish in the course of their scientific revolution.     

GDP dynamics and unemployment changes in developed and developing countries

We design a new specification of Okun’s model that takes the following features into account: estimation of the relation in first differences, the possible lagged effect of GDP dynamics on unemployment changes, the persistence of unemployment rate dynamics, the possible different values of Okun coefficients under recession (with respect to periods of increases in GDP), the existence of cross-country institutional and structural differences (i.e. country-specific Okun coefficients), the additional effect on unemployment caused by large adverse shocks such as financial crises.

A distinctive feature of this article is its consideration of a large set of countries for which we find differentiated Okun coefficients. Moreover, we focus in particular on the distinction between developed and developing countries, and on the additional impact of financial crises. From an econometric point of view, the model developed belongs in the family of linear mixed-effects models. The estimation method uses an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. Our results confirm the general validity of ‘Okun’s law’; they show the Okun coefficient differences between high- and low-income countries; and they evidence an additional impact of some types of financial crisis on the unemployment dynamics of developed economies.