论城市商业活动空间结构研究的几个问题

针对当前我国商业活动空间结构研究相对低靡的现状,本文对城市商业活动空间结构的概念和研究框架、评价和研究方法体系、亟待研究的重点以及中心性和城市区域关系等几个问题进行了概述,以期开创相关研究的新领域.     

商业活动的经济学方法与原理分析

商业活动的经济学方法与原理分析曹宝明商业是由处于商品交换和商品流通过程中的所有商业中介人即商人构成的一个特定产业；商业活动则是商人在这一产业内提供以“为卖而买”为核心内容的商业服务活动。商业经济学是专门以商业或商业活动为研究对象的科学①，然而，当社会...     

大连临港产业集聚与城市空间结构演变研究

港口城市的发展历程表明,临港产业的集聚对城市空间结构的演变产生极为深远的影响。为深入研究港口城市空间结构演变问题,从临港产业集聚与城市空间结构演化过程出发,以大连地区为研究对象,基于遥感分析与地理信息系统技术手段,提取城市空间利用地理信息,结合分形几何、空间重心等理论,综合考虑临港产业集聚发展过程中城市社会人口、产业经济等多方面因素,探讨了港口城市空间结构演化现象,归纳总结了港口城市空间结构演变规律。结果表明:该研究可分别从城市空间增长速率、结构形态、分型演变与重心转移角度揭示港口城市空间结构演变过程与规律,可为提高港口城市空间结构演化合理性提供了理论依据和决策支持。     

"世界遗产地苏州"城市旅游空间结构研究

城市旅游空间结构的研究是研究城市旅游的一个重要方面。苏州作为国务际公布的第一批历史文化名城，城市旅游空间结构的发展颇具代表代。更重要的是，苏州拥有先后两批申报成功的的世界遗产项目－－拙政园等九处苏州古典园林，这使得城市旅游的空间结构又呈现出了特有的规律。本文在分析苏州城市旅游空间结构的节点、通道和域面要素的基本上，提出整合苏州城市旅游空间结构的两个途径：整体整合与核心整合，探讨了城市旅游空间整合的基本原则。     

西北干旱区城镇体系空间结构及其分形——以酒泉市为例

以西北干旱区城市酒泉市为例,运用定性和定量两种方法对市域城镇体系空间结构进行分析研究.介绍了分形理论及其在城镇体系研究中的应用,对城镇空间结构进行定性分析;其次,运用分形理论中的网格维数和关联维数模型对城镇空间结构进行定量分析,结果表明该区域城镇体系空间结构具有分形特征,与定性分析结果一致;最后,在上述分析的基础上提出城镇空间结构优化建议.     

试论合理城市空间结构的构建

自古至今，城市经历了从无到有，从简单到复杂的漫长的发展过程，随着城市的演化发展，一系列的城市问题接踵而至，推动人们不断去探索和建构合理的城市空间结构与发展模式来引导城市有序健康发展。本文通过对城市空间演化经典理论的研究与思考，分析了城市空间结构集中和分散两种演化趋势的各自利弊，提出了城市空间结构演化的合理方向和有序城市空间结构的构建。     

淮安城市产业结构调整与空间结构演化的关联研究

产业活动和空间结构是城市构成的重要载体，城市产业结构直接决定了城市的经济功能，进而对城市空间结构产生影响，它们之间存在着内在的关联机制。选择以淮安市为例，本文分析产业结构调整和空间结构演变之间的关系，并提出了相关结论和建议。     

石家庄的城市意象空间及其重塑性研究

通过城市意象来分析城市空间结构,可作为进行现代城市空间结构研究的一个途径.通过问卷调查对石家庄居民城市意象空间结构进行研究,重点分析石家庄城市意象空间结构及其重塑对策.研究表明,石家庄居民城市意象空间主要是受到年龄、文化程度、职业和所在地的影响;石家庄需要从城市文化和特色建筑方面进行城市意象空间的重塑.     

基于GIS的城市居住与商业空间结构演变相关性研究——以长沙为例

居住与商业是城市空间结构中最为重要的两个功能要素,它们的协调发展与城市空间结构优化和居民生活品质提高紧密相关。以长沙为例,应用GIS技术从居住与商业空间结构演变的角度研究了它们之间的相关性,指出了居住空间与商业空间发展不匹配和居住空间布局与商业业态布局不匹配是长沙居住与商业空间结构演变过程中的主要问题,并提出探索和建立我国城市规划评估机制等方面的思路和建议。     

吉林省城镇体系空间结构及优化研究

本文在回顾城镇体系空间结构研究的基础上，引进经过修正的重力模式和断裂点计算方法，对吉林省城市基础数据进行处理，得出吉林省9个地市（州）及2个样本市的人口经济规模排序及相互间的横向引力矩阵与纵向引力矩阵，分析了吉林省城镇体系空间结构的现状特点，并提出了相应的结构优化对策。     

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.