Conceptualizing sustainable development: An assessment methodology connecting values, knowledge, worldviews and scenarios

Sustainability science poses severe challenges to classical disciplinary science. To bring the perspectives of diverse disciplines together in a meaningful way, we describe a novel methodology for sustainability assessment of a particular social-ecological system, or country. Starting point is that a sustainability assessment should investigate the ability to continue and develop a desirable way of living vis-à-vis later generations and life elsewhere on the planet. Evidently, people hold different values and beliefs about the way societies sustain quality of life for their members. The first step, therefore, is to analyze people's value orientations and the way in which they interpret sustainability problems i.e. their beliefs. The next step is to translate the resulting worldviews into model-based narratives, i.e. scenarios. The qualitative and quantitative outcomes are then investigated in terms of associated risks and opportunities and robustness of policy options.The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) has followed this methodology, using extensive surveys among the Dutch population. In its First Sustainability Outlook (2004), the resulting archetypical worldviews became the basis for four different scenarios for policy analysis, with emphases on the domains of transport, energy and food. The goal of the agency's Sustainability Outlooks is to show that choices are inevitable in policy making for sustainable development, to indicate which positive and negative impacts one can expect of these choices (trade-offs), and to identify options that may be robust under several worldviews. The conceptualization proposed here is both clear and applicable in practical sustainability assessments for policy making.     

The challenge of understanding decisions in experimental studies of common pool resource governance

Common pool resource experiments in the laboratory and the field have provided insights that have contrasted to those derived from conventional non-cooperative game theory. Contrary to predictions from non-cooperative game theory, participants are sometimes willing to restrain voluntarily from over extracting resources and use costly punishment to sanction other participants. Something as simple as face-to-face communication has been shown to increase average earnings significantly. In the next generation of experiments, both in the laboratory and in the field, we need to extract more information that provides insight concerning why people make the decisions they make. More information is needed concerning attributes of individuals as well as the social and social-ecological context in which they interact that may give rise to such deviations from theoretical predictions. In the process of extracting more information from participants and the contexts in which they interact, we face several methodological and ethical challenges which we address in this paper.     

WSR方法论及其应用

WSR方法论既是对世界系统科学界的响应,也是对中国传统文化中的系统思想的提炼、继承和发扬。"天人合一"与中医辨证施治都充分体现了中国传统文化中的系统思想和精神。物理、事理、人理既是构成WSR方法论的内容,同时也需要用系统论的思想来审视物理、事理、人理与其作为方法论在内容、结构等方面的相互作用、互为补充的关系。对WSR方法论研究成果的统计结果表明:WSR方法论已经得到国内众多学者的重视,并被积极应用于各个学科领域中。     

系统重要性银行监管改革进展及对我国的启示

近年来,随着我国银行市场的逐步开放,大型商业银行持续开展综合经营业务,银行在金融体系中的系统重要性不断增强.银行集团的快速发展推动了银行机构与其他类型金融机构、金融市场间的组织融合和业务交叉,同时也对集团风险管理和银行监管制度带来较大冲击.金融稳定理事会、巴塞尔银行监管委员会提出的系统重要性银行评估方法和额外资本要求,以及美国、英国、欧盟对系统重要性银行的监管改革经验做法,对完善我国银行监管制度具有重要的启示意义.     

Modeling resilience of the ATC (Air Traffic Control) sectors

This paper develops a theoretical framework containing the methodology for assessing resilience of the ATC (Air Traffic Control) sectors affected by the impact of a given disruptive event. The resilience is considered as ability of these sectors to retain a certain level of the regular/nominal performance during the impact and fully recover relatively fast afterwards. The actually rear disruptive event is considered to be the large-scale failure of a component of the ATC facilities and equipment supporting safe, efficient, and effective air traffic. Under such conditions, different mitigating contingency measures are generally applied resulting in deteriorating the operational, economic, and environmental performance of the affected sectors while maintaining the required level of safety. This performance is represented by the indicators such as demand, capacity, traffic complexity, the ATC controller workload, aircraft/flight delays and their costs, and additional fuel consumption and related emissions of GHG (Green House Gases). The proposed methodology consists of the generic model of resilience, the analytical models for estimating the indictors of ATC sectors’ performance, and the analytical models of resilience based the indicators as figures-of-merit for assessing resilience. These models are based on the practice-close mitigating contingency measures applied to the ATC sectors affected by a given disruptive event. The possible application of the proposed methodology is also elaborated.     

A Personal View of the Evolution of the Accounting Professoriate

The first three‐quarters of this paper are a review and analysis of the evolution of the accounting research environment, primarily in the United States but also with respect to Canada, from the 1960s to the present time. The final quarter of the paper consists of a critique of contemporary approaches to accounting research as well as recommendations for reform.     

“统计学是研究方法论的科学”之说辨正——与杨缅昆、游玲杰先生商榷

本文从科学研究的任务是探求客观事物发展规律的观点出发,论述了规律的涵义,统计学是探求客观规律的科学,而背离客观规律的统计科研成果都是不非科学的。     

Theory creation and the methodological foundation of Post Keynesian economics

For the last 15 years there have been extensive discussionsabout the foundations of Post Keynesian economics. From thesediscussions, Post Keynesians have reached the consensus thattheir economics is based on a philosophical foundation of realismand critical realism. However, the methodological foundationof Post Keynesian economics, which refers to the methodologicalguidelines used for creating and developing theory, has receivedrelatively less discussion and development. The aim of thispaper is to stimulate discussion in this area by advocatingthat the method of grounded theory is consistent with criticalrealism and is a better and more developed set of guidelinesfor theory creation than the currently accepted alternatives.     

我国财政风险指数预警方法的研究

财政风险预警系统是一个由数据库、预警方法、预警指标、预警模型和预警信号系统等多方面构成的财政管理信息系统.本文以指数预警方法为主,选择20个预警指标,并确定了各指标的预警区间,设置了财政风险预警信号系统.将1990-2001年间相关预警指标的样本数据输入上述系统,结果表明样本期内我国的财政风险一直未超过轻警区间的警戒线,处于基本安全状态,并且呈现出2轮小的波动周期.但这期间多数年份财政风险的合成指数接近警戒线,应有所警惕.     

关于转轨经济的初步研究

社会主义国家始于20世纪50年代的变革探索已延续了半个世纪，世界上30多个国家、1/4的人口卷入了这场探索，这些国家可以统称为转轨经济国家，它们的经济运行既不能简单地用发达经济、发展中经济来界定，也不适合用市场经济，计划经济来界定，而是体现出特有的转轨经济共性，转轨经济应该成为一个独特的研究对象，转轨经济的研究不能局限于从传统理论或已有体制的视角出发，而应该立足于转轨经济国家已经走过的实际历程。归纳可以作为规律性的东西，寻求方法论上的创新，本文对开展这一研究的初步思考以整个转轨经济国家为背景，而以中国经济转轨为个案。