财政支农支出对西部农业经济可持续发展的实证分析

本文选取我国西部各省市区1999～2003年的面板数据,利用生产函数框架就财政支农支出对西部农业经济可持续发展的贡献度进行了实证分析。结果显示:地方财政支农支出有利于农业经济增长,其产出弹性系数为0.06。进一步考察发现,各省市区农业投入要素的贡献率不同,可据此将西部各省市区农业经济增长类型分为三类。     

西部科技、教育与经济高质量协调发展研究

以2010—2019年西部11省的面板数据为样本,建立耦合协调模型,对各省科技、教育和经济高质量协调增长状况进行动态评价。发现:各省的科技、教育和经济高质量增长指数都呈波动上升趋势,但发展不均衡。科技、教育和经济高质量增长的耦合协调度整体保持上升趋势,但协调等级都偏低,说明西部科技和教育发展显著滞后于经济高质量增长。科技和教育对经济高质量增长的贡献偏低、科技制度不完善、科技创新能力弱和教育投资激励不足是西部各省共同的突出短板。     

财政分权对地方政府治理和经济增长的影响

本文对财政分权影响地方经济增长的一种可能的机制进行实证检验,即财政分权通过改善地方治理水平进而对地方经济增长产生正面影响.利用1999-2007年各省制造业细分行业面板数据,运用计量模型进行实证分析,发现在财政分权程度越高的省份,制造业中对治理水平要求越高的行业增长越快.这个结果证实了财政分权通过改善地方政府治理,从而有利于地区经济增长的假说.本文的研究说明为了促进我国地方政府治理水平的提高和地区经济的发展,应适当增加地方预算内财政收入比重,扩大地方政府分权程度.     

省及省以下财政分权与省际经济增长

本文重点检验了省及省以下财政分权对省际人均GDP增长率的影响,发现省级财政分权和省以下财政支出分权对省际人均GDP增长率影响为正,省以下收入分权和财政自给率对人均GDP增长率具有负向影响。根据不同区域地理状况,本文同时将总体样本分为东部、中部和西部地区检验了财政分权对不同区域经济增长的影响,分样本研究也支持了省级财政分权和省以下财政支出分权对经济增长具有正向影响的观点,省以下财政收入分权与东部地区经济增长正相关,与中部和西部地区负相关,省以下财政自给率对中部地区具有正向影响,对东部和西部地区影响为负。     

西部财政教育投入与经济增长关系的实证分析——基于西部省级面板数据的单位根、协整和Granger因果检验

自从舒尔茨“人力资本”的理论开始,越来越多的经济学家开始把教育投资当成影响一国经济发展的内生变量。通过运用面板单位根检验和面板协整分析这种更加有效的方式综合数据信息的方法来考察西部财政教育经费投入与经济增长之间的长期关系。基于Granger因果检验发现,西部财政教育投入与经济增长二者存在长期稳定的均衡关系,财政教育投入是经济增长的原因,增加滞后期,结论十分稳健。     

财政支农、劳动力流转与农业经济增长

推动农业经济增长是保障粮食安全的必然要求，利用全国26个省2005-2019年的面板数据，基于农业劳动生产率分组视角，应用动态面板模型系统考察现阶段中国财政支农与劳动力流转对农业经济增长的动态影响及其分组差异，并运用系统广义矩估计(GMM)等方法进行实证检验，为新时代揭示农业经济增长驱动性因素提供可靠依据。研究发现，从全国看，财政支农与劳动力流转对农业经济增长呈现显著正向影响；从分区看，劳动力流转对农业经济增长的影响在高农业劳动生产率区域中显著，财政支农对农业经济增长的影响在低农业劳动生产率区域中显著。因而，从财政支农与劳动力流转两方面，针对不同农业劳动力生产率区域，提出推动农业经济发展的政策建议。     

中国财政农业投入最优规模实证分析

财政投入最优规模是经济学界研究的重要问题,国内外很多文献都有相关论证,并且得出了不同结论.通过构建符合我国具体情况的农业生产函数模型,并代入我国1981-2004年的财政支出与经济增长相关数据进行回归,发现中国财政农业投入最优规模为8.26%,实际投入规模要小于此最优水平.因此未来应进一步加大财政对农业的支持力度,确保农业经济的长期稳定健康增长.     

新农村建设投资支出对陕西经济增长的贡献率研究

农业是陕西经济发展的基础产业,农业的发展需要财政的支持.本文运用C-D生产函数测定新农村建设投资支出的边际产出效应,进一步计算和分析出新农村建设投资支出对陕西农业经济增长和整个陕西经济增长的贡献率.结果显示:陕西省新农村建设投资支出对农业经济产出的平均贡献率达到22.04%,说明陕西省农业经济增长的1/5是依靠农业财政的支持,新农村建设投资支出对陕西经济增长的贡献率也达到2.41%.拟为陕西新农村建设投资支出的最优规模提供决策依据和为制定财政支农政策提供可资借鉴的思路.     

基于省际面板数据模型的地方财政科技投入与经济增长的关系研究

地方财政科技投入与经济增长关系密切。目前,在两者关系的估算研究中存在数据折算、累积和模型滞后期等问题。所以,采用1998—2007年的31个省(区、市)际面板数据,分别对数据折算、累积和滞后期等问题给出相应的处理方法,并分析了地方财政科技投入与经济增长的关系。结果表明:地方财政科技投入对各省经济增长起到促进作用,而且弹性相同,但由于各省的软硬件基础条件相异,所以对经济增长的促进程度不一;地方财政科技投入对经济增长的滞后效应明显,在第3年达到最大。各省应优化投资结构,促进科技投入对象多元化,建立高水平的科技投入配置机制与绩效评价体系,以提高科技资金的使用效率。     

财政支农支出总量及结构与农业经济增长的关系——基于1980—2005年中国数据的实证分析

本文在C-D生产函数的框架下,利用1980—2005年我国政府财政支农支出和农业GDP的相关数据,对财政支农支出的总量和结构对农业经济增长的关系进行了实证分析。结果表明:政府财政支农支出总量对农业经济增长具有显著的正效应,即财政支农支出总量每增长1个百分点,农业GDP将增长0.3087个百分点;目前我国财政支农支出与农业经济增长之间存在一定的结构性偏差。因此,政府应在增加财政支农支出总量的同时,不断优化财政支农支出结构,以提高农业经济增长效率。     

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.”     

Neurally reconstructing expected utility

While the concept of “expected utility” informs many theories of decision making, little is known about whether and how the human brain might compute this quantity. This article reviews a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) experiments designed to localize brain regions that respond in anticipation of increasing amounts of monetary incentives. These studies collectively suggest that anticipation of increasing monetary gains activates a subcortical region of the ventral striatum in a magnitude-proportional manner. This ventral striatal activation is not evident during anticipation of losses. Actual gain outcomes instead activate a region of the mesial prefrontal cortex. During anticipation of gain, ventral striatal activation is accompanied by feelings characterized by increasing arousal and positive valence. These findings affirm the role of emotion in the anticipation of incentives, and may provide an initial step towards a neural reconstruction of expected utility.     

Duplication, Growth and ‘Total Return Economics’

Maintenance consumption is an expense recovered in product prices, yet also a source of taste satisfaction which must be exhausted, rather than reinvested, from the capital affording it. This riddle is solved in the duplication rules: the cost of maintenance consumption is recovered in pay and prices, but an equal flow is exhausted from the human capital of the worker earning the pay. The rules impact tradition in several ways. If output is defined in principle as value added, then it cannot also be described as consumption plus net investment without double-counting the maintenance consumption recovered in prices. Also rate of return in the stationary state is not zero, but is the rate sufficient to offset the exhaustion of individual human capital. The rules lead to new insights into economic return, and support an argument that all growth at the scale of closure is due to productivity gain rather than to thrift.     

John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

Although he was much influenced by David Ricardo when he wrote the classical part of his Principles , John Stuart Mill was not a Ricardian when he penned his theories of wealth and distribution. They are based on a triple foundation. First, a belief that economics is a moral discipline. Second a theory of custom-driven human behavior. Third, an empirically formed conviction that the institutions of state, education and business cooperate to structure the distribution of income. On the basis of these presuppositions, Mill formulated 1) an institutional theory of the formation of human and non-human wealth and 2) an even more institutional theory of distribution demonstrating how the aforementioned institutions malignantly skew the distribution of income to the advantage of the propertied classes and to the extreme disadvantage of the working class. As a social economist, Mill recommended institutional reforms designed to eradicate the poverty of the working class.     

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.     

Simulating the Effect of Regulatory Systems in a Fishery, An Application to the French Driftnet Albacore Fleet

With a thin economic component, most bio-economic models of fisheries failto assess the effects of the regulation systems on firms. In order to analysethe short term consequences of different management schemes, a simulationmodel is applied to the French driftnet albacore fleet: licence allocation withdriftnet regulation, individual quotas, and individual transferable quotaswithout any input control. Vessel technology is estimated by using the datacollected, and groups of vessels are distinguished according to criteria ofperformance. We present the adjustment within firms and between groupsunder different scenarios (limited entry with and without driftnetregulation, individual quotas and individual transferable quotas allocation),and we compare their results in terms of quasi-rent value and otherindicators such as hake harvests or dolphin by-catches.     

Knowledge as a Path-Dependence Process

By following a new approach proposed by Cognitive and Neuroeconomics, this paper presents and extends that part of Hayek's theory concerning knowledge in path-dependent terms, and shows that this is a fertile theory, opening new lines of inquiry for contemporary economics. In his theory of knowledge Hayek shows that the dynamics of economic change is path-dependent, in a different and more profound way than in the rest of the path-dependent literature. This literature deals with an important controversy, which will be also discussed and its specific and original meaning will be highlighted. As it will emerge, knowledge as a path-dependent process is consistent with cognitive theories of perception and learning and it plays a more important role than is traditionally assumed. Path-dependence is in fact always present in the cognitive dimension of perception and in individual decision-making processes, as well as in the processes of organizational innovation, and even in the macro-dimension of institutional change. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

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.