A close eye on the invisible hand

The paper shows how, and under what minimal information supply conditions, a market finds its competitive equilibrium price and thus solves the so-called tatonnement process, without sellers and buyers knowing the equilibrium price in advance. The information premises must be understood as a basic first approach, and do not necessarily mimic the real market process. Demonstration of a discovery process under these information handling conditions is an important finding for an evolutionary market theory. Additional information-processing elements should augment the efficiency of the discovery process. The results of the simulated market process set out above raise new questions. The role of institutional elements (such as the relevance of demand flexibility or “certainty” of knowledge in the learning process, etc.) is discussed further outside the context of the simulation model, providing new insight into the market process.     

The "Invisible Hand"

The argument of the "Invisible Hand" is that the system of free enterprise benefits society in general even though it is not the aim of any particular economic agent to do that. This article proposes an analysis of why this is so. The key is that the morality of the market forbids only force and fraud; it does not require people to do good to others. Nevertheless, when all transactions are voluntary to both parties, that is exactly what we can expect to happen. This is both because the sum of the benefits of innumerable transactions, which are beneficial to both parties, is very great, but also and especially because of Positive Externalities. People use the particular products and services they get in market exchanges in ways that benefit others in ways not at all foreseen by the agents to those transactions at the time. These externalities range from the benefits of invention and ingenuity to the exercise of charity and philanthropy, all of which flourish in developed capitalist societies.     

Injuries,inequalities and health in Europe

Injuries account for a significant burden of mortality, morbidity, disability and health care costs. They differentially affect age and sex groups and reveal massive inequalities in occurrence within and between countries in Europe. Within countries, the poor suffer most and have least ability to change their exposures to risk. Addressing inequalities in injury occurrence would play a valuable role in reducing the differential burden of ill-health between rich and poor. Despite the evidence for many effective injury-related interventions, limited attention has been devoted to addressing injuries as a public health priority. This paper questions why attention has been limited to date and suggests policy action to support injuries being addressed as a mainstream concern by national and international health policy-makers. The paper briefly highlights the public health burden of injuries and violence; illustrates the range of inequalities that characterise their occurrence; highlights the scope for public health action and considers the extent to which policies that reduce the overall burden of injuries may also reduce inequalities in their occurrence; and finally examines why there has been a limited policy response to date and suggests ways of advancing the agenda.     

Competition and Public Policy in the Nursing Home Industry

A theory of property needs to give an account of the whole lifecycle of a property right: How it is initiated, transferred, and terminated. Economics has focused on the transfers in the market and almost completely neglected the question of initiation and termination of property in normal production and consumption (not in some original state or in the transition from common to private property). The institutional mechanism for the normal initiation and termination of property is an invisible hand function of the market — the market mechanism of appropriation. Does this mechanism satisfy an appropriate normative principle? The standard normative juridical principle is to assign or impute legal responsibility according to de facto responsibility. It is given a historical tag of being "Lockean," but the basis is contemporary jurisprudence, not historical exegesis. Then, the fundamental theorem of the property mechanism is proven, which shows that if "Hume's conditions" (no transfers without consent and all contracts fulfilled) are satisfied, then the market automatically satisfies the Lockean responsibility principle — i.e., "Hume implies Locke." As a major application, the results in their contrapositive form, "Not Locke implies Not Hume," are applied to a market economy based on the employment contract. I show that the production based on the employment contract violates the Lockean principle (all who work in an employment enterprise are de facto responsible for the positive and negative results), and thus Hume's conditions must also be violated in the marketplace (de facto responsible human action cannot be transferred from one person to another — as is readily recognized when an employer and employee together commit a crime).¹     

Do Psychological Fallacies Influence Trading in Financial Markets? Evidence from the Foreign Exchange Market

Research in both economics and psychology suggests that when agents predict the next value of a random series they frequently exhibit two types of biases, which are called the gambler's fallacy (GF) and the hot hand fallacy (HHF). The GF is to expect a negative correlation in a process that is in fact random. The HHF is more or less the opposite of this—to believe that another heads is more likely after a run of heads. The evidence for these fallacies comes largely from situations where they are not punished (lotteries, casinos, and laboratory experiments with random returns). In many real-world situations, such as in financial markets, succumbing to fallacies is costly, which gives an incentive to overcome them. The present study is based on high-frequency data from a market maker in the foreign exchange market. Trading behavior is only partly explained by the rational exploitation of past patterns in the data. There is also evidence of the GF: a tendency to sell the dollar after it has risen persistently or strongly.     

山西省推手竞赛开展现状及对策分析

推手竞赛是一种新型对抗性竞赛项目,具有一定的趣味性和观赏性。本文以山西省为例,系统地分析和研究了推手竞赛的开展现状,并提出了合理化发展对策。     

亚当·斯密的思想框架及启迪

善和恶是人性中的两个基本维度。基于人性恶会导致利己行为,并会为一己之利而损害他人,因此,我们需要通过法律制度来维护正义。基于人性善会产生利他行为,使得人与人之间友爱和睦,因此,我们崇尚人类的美德品质。本文从人性出发,完整地解读了斯密思想的法律观、道德观和经济观,揭示了斯密心中完美的理想社会和人类自然秩序,阐述了斯密思想对现实社会发展的启迪和意义。文章最后揭示了为保障实现理想社会的三条自然法则:正义的法律作为人的一切行为的外在规范;公正的旁观者作为人的一切行为的内心监督;在平等和自由条件下追求自我利益。     

机动车坡道驻车制动效能检验的现状与探新

文章通过对机动车驻车效能检验的现状分析,指出了目前以检测线台式制动方式检验结果代替车辆在实际坡道驻车制动效能的检验方式所带来的一些问题,提出了通过研发机动车坡道驻车制动模拟平台,探索精确、安全、便捷、经济的机动车驻车检验方式。     

常见印章制作的方法及伪造印章的检验鉴定

随着科学技术的飞速发展,印章制作自动化程度的不断提高及计算机排版系统的广泛应用,新的制章方法和伪造方法也不断涌现,高仿真印章印文越来越多地出现在有关案件中。本文主要是介绍常见的印章制作方法以及如何对不同印章的进行检验鉴定,在辨别真伪印章印文上做了进一步的总结和研究。