Digital Platforms and the Nature of the Firm

Abstract:

Digital platforms turn traditional approaches of the firm, which relied on the wage relation to explain the major difference between firm and market, upside down and underline the advantages of coordination through organization over coordination through market. This study aims to propose a definition of the firm able to integrate, besides the integrated firm, also hybrid forms such as networks of subcontractor/subcontracting firms as well as atypical forms such as digital platforms. By reactivating the firm-boundary problem, this article suggests putting valorization by labor at the heart of the firm’s decisions concerning integration. It suggests therefore a general definition of the firm as a techno-institutional center of capital valorization, provided that firms make profits by means of the appropriation of labor incorporated into their (productive, structural, intellectual) capital through institutional arrangements. By stressing the relation of production between the owners of the means of production and the direct producers, the approach of the firm supported here should allow to cover the different existing models of the firm, from the classical firm to hybrid models, around which the boundary debate has revolved, to digital platforms.     

Welfare Policy and Precarious Lives: “Welfare Reform” Revisited

Abstract:

Although welfare reform has not been one of the most highly visible policy agendas for the Trump administration, restricting access to public assistance programs has been a part of proposals and actions in a number of areas. The Trump administration’s overall approach to welfare reform was articulated formally in 2018 in an Executive Order and a Council of Economic Advisers Report. To provide some context for a discussion of these two documents, the article begins with a discussion of the different meanings of “welfare reform” identified in institutionalist literature, and a brief overview of some important findings on the impacts of the 1996 welfare reform. It then highlights some key aspects of the Trump administration’s approach to welfare reform and responses from the poverty research and advocacy community.     

A Stochastic Model with Penalized Coefficients for Spatial Price Comparisons: An Application to Regional Price Indexes in Italy

This paper focuses on a new strand of research that uses stochastic approach for making spatial price comparisons. We propose a novel method to account for the presence of spatial dependencies in consumer prices and consequently in price indexes by imposing penalization conditions on the estimation of traditional CPD models leading to the spatially-penalized country-product-dummy (SP-CPD) model. The paper proposes an appropriate estimation strategy, which enables us to simultaneously estimate all the parameters in the model, including the smoothing parameter of the penalization term instead of determining it externally. In order to estimate spatial price indexes for areas lacking in price data, we suggest applying the kriging methodology to the price indexes obtained from the SP-CPD model. This new approach is applied to official Italian CPI data for constructing regional spatial price indexes for 2014. The results show that price levels are higher in the Northern-Central regions than in the South.     

高质量发展视角下区域创新能力的提升路径 ——以南京市江宁区为例

我国经济已由高速增长阶段转变为高质量发展阶段,实现高质量发展是新时代我国经济发展的根本要求。高质量发展与创新驱动紧密关联,必须多举措协同提升区域创新能力。区域创新能力是指一个地区将知识转化为新产品、新工艺、新服务的能力,代表了创新要素在一定区域内聚集、整合以及推动区域可持续发展的基本能力。为了有效提升区域创新能力,必须强化区域创新的综合保障、构建区域创新综合生态体系、促进创新创业项目孵化与成果转化、强化区域制造业发展相关的创新活动等。以南京市江宁区为例对此进行了分析,该区积极实施战略科技引领计划,不断强化创新工作,通过促进区域创新平台建设、区域创新的服务支撑体系构建、高端创新资源在区域的聚集、区域制造业创新发展及合理布局等,不断增强区域创新能力,有效支撑了区域高质量发展。     

Will FinTech make regional banks superfluous for small firm finance? Observations from soft information-based lending in Germany

Regional banks have a competitive advantage in that short distances to clients enable the use of soft information for superior lending decisions. If the ambition of FinTech start-ups to create superior screening and monitoring technologies materialises, this advantage would be diminished and regional banks would become superfluous for small firm finance. To explore this claim, the paper in hand analyses qualitative empirical data about the lending processes and rating system use of regional German savings banks. In essence, the results from participant observation and interviews clarify the importance of “real” soft information for critical lending decisions. The context specificity and limited verifiability of “real” soft information hamper it from being hardened through the use of rating systems and other bank-ICT. Though FinTech's scoring technologies may overcome the first limitation, it appears likely that in the course of scoring development “real” soft information will be systematically crowded out due to the manipulation problem. The paper expects improved access to finance for SMEs if FinTech solutions overcome both limitations of “real” soft information use, or if peer-to-peer lending and regional banks coexist. Deteriorated access to finance is expected if FinTech companies displace the relationship banking of regional banks due to enhanced competition, without preserving the advantages of “real” soft information with superior screening and monitoring technologies. The paper concludes with recommendations on how to prevent deteriorated access to finance for small firms by promoting fair competition and FinTech innovations.     

省级区域规划实施评估方法和机制探究

省级区域规划是国家和地方发展和空间规划体系中的重要组成部分。在我国建立更加有效的区域协调发展新机制的实践中,探究我国省级区域规划实施评估中存在的问题,研究和建立更加有效的省级区域规划实施评估的内容、方法和机制,对于进一步落实好省级政府的责任和义务,更好全面、有效实施好省级区域规划具有重要推动作用。文章提出了我国省级区域规划实施评估存在的问题、评估的方法、评估的内容和指标体系,并提出了具体建立更加有效的省级区域规划实施评估机制的建议和设想。     

Aggregate and distributional impacts of China’s household responsibility system

It is 40 years since China started to abandon collective farming, with initial rural reforms in 1978 that culminated in adoption of the household responsibility system (HRS). Existing studies of impacts of these reforms do not consider nonrandom spread of the HRS, spillovers from early adopters, or distributional effects. In this paper, the synthetic control method and spatial autoregressive panel models with autoregressive errors are used to estimate impacts of the HRS that account for these features. The HRS had a significant positive effect on grain output and food supply in China, while also helping to reduce regional inequality.     

基于系统动力学的区域林业碳汇市场中三方主体利益行为演化博弈分析

分析影响三者策略行为的作用因素,构建区域林业碳汇市场的演化博弈模型。在此基础上,结合系统动力学理论,对广东省的碳汇发展状况进行仿真模拟,找出影响市场均衡发展的关键因素。结果表明:政府部门趋向于选择投入策略,其中提高市场碳交易额对拉动市场需求有显著影响,而增强对林农碳汇林的补贴力度难以解决市场当前供需问题。     

中部崛起政策对地区产业升级的异质性影响与机制分析--基于PSM-DID方法的一项拟自然实验

国家中部崛起政策实施13年来,相关地区的经济发展和产业结构发生不同程度的变化。为进一步引导发展,需对这一政策的实施效果作整体评估和检验。基于1999-2013年我国201个地级市的面板数据,运用PSM-DID方法,从长期影响角度评估中部崛起政策实施效果。结果表明,以地区技术复杂度度量的产业结构得到了显著的提升。在此基础上考察中国式财政分权模式下政府财政行为波动对政策效果的影响,结果显示政府财政支出波动对地区产业升级会起到负面作用。进一步的机制检验表明,吸引外商直接投资、积极性政府财政政策、突破路径依赖是实现政策效果的中介变量;政策着力点主要在高技术水平的产业上;由于地区异质性的存在,部分省份产业升级并未达到预期效果。因此,制定新一轮崛起战略措施时,要因地制宜,充分考虑地区异质性,走内涵式发展道路。     

旅游业—城市化—经济—交通复合系统的耦合协同演化机制 ——以云南省为例

基于云南省16个州(市)的面板数据,运用ArcGIS空间分析、耦合协调度模型等研究方法,从时空视角对云南省旅游业-城市化-经济-交通四个系统的发展水平及其耦合协调发展状况进行了整体评价。结果显示:云南省旅游业、城市化、经济、交通发展水平整体分别提升了48.15%、47.59%、35.91%、46.89%。2005~2017年,云南省各州(市)旅游业-城市化-经济-交通复合系统的耦合协调度呈上升趋势,但87.50%的州(市)仍处于中度耦合失调水平,且空间分异特征显著,形成以昆明为核心的"核心-边缘"梯度递减的空间结构特征,整体呈滇中>滇东南>滇西南>滇西北>滇东北>滇西的空间分布格局。