Perspectives on Michael A. Bernstein's A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America *

The article compares Joseph Schumpeter's well-known perspectives of long term economic development with those put forward in the 1920's by the German economist Werner Sombart who followed an approach of ‘theoretical historicism’. There was general agreement between Schumpeter and Sombart that capitalism as an economic system was on the decline. Whereas according to Sombart this was attributable to a tendancy towards stagnation; in Schumpeter's view capitalism was doomed due to its success, not for its failure. The strongest parallels are to be found with respect to forces driving the transformation process, at the end of which Schumpeter expected a socialist system whereas Sombart envisioned some kind of mixed economy. The article also discusses the relevance of differences of approaches and of value judgments for the results of both authors' investigations.     

Joint implementation

As a theoretical concept for cutting down on greenhouse-gas emissions where this can be done most cost-effectively, Joint Implementation is both straightforward and convincing. However, there are a number of issues relating to the putting into practice of the concept which have yet to be resolved.     

Constructive Pressures And Incentives To Reform: Globalization and its impact on public sector performance and governance in developing countries

Contrary to widespread pessimism regarding the effects of globalization on nation states and the quality of governance in developing countries, this contribution stresses that several of its features can be made instrumental, and be beneficial, in terms of public policy making and state capability. Four ‘constructive pressures’ stemming from globalization could be seized constructively by citizens and governments in the developing world: First, better informed and better connected citizens, and an emerging global civil society, demand improvements in service delivery, transparency, and participation. Second, subnational governments, often backed by local NGOs and businesses, and keen to attract foreign investment, increasingly exert pressure vis-à-vis central governments. Third, global investment strategies by private businesses increase the demand for appropriate institutional arrangements within developing countries as well as credible government policies. Although with mixed results, forth, International Organizations, in particular IFIs, have been addressing public sector modernization in developing countries, also sponsoring global public policy networks in critical areas. Moreover, policy coordination and cooperation among states increases significantly, constraining arbitrary action by governments. Globalization, thus, advances the discussion about, and the demand for, new institutional arrangements, clearly with new opportunities for improvements in state capability and governance.     

Deux conférences sur la théorie des probabilités

Abstract

Dans les pages suivantes, nous nous occuperons de quelques questions qui concernent Ie problème général de l'addition des variables éatoires independantes.     

An Analysis of the Stability and Growth Pact

We use a stylised model to analyse the Stability and Growth Pact for countries that have formed the European Monetary Union (EMU). In our model, shortsighted governments fail to internalise the consequences of their debt policies for the common inflation rate fully. Therefore, while governments have no incentive to sign a stability pact in the absence of a monetary union, they do so with monetary union to restrain this externality. With uncertainty, a monetary union combined with an appropriately designed pact will be strictly preferred to autonomy. With differences in initial conditions, conflicts of interest arise. We study the Nash bargaining solution.     

欧共体反倾销制度的突出特点

译文首先从制度控制层面的角度介绍欧共体反倾销制度，认为欧同体反倾销措施受到了反倾销委员会、欧洲初审法院和欧洲法院以及WTO争端解决机制三个层面有效控制；其次专门介绍了公共利益评估和从低征税这两个“超WTO”规则：最后介绍了欧同体对非市场经济和转型经济的实践。欧共体反倾销制度有效地平衡当事方利益，是较为成功的制度。     

The German economy in the Autumn of 1993

The German economy in the Autumn of 1993     

A law of large numbers for large economies

Summary LetX(i),i[0; 1] be a collection of identically distributed and pairwise uncorrelated random variables with common finite mean and variance ². This paper shows the law of large numbers, i.e. the fact that ₀ ¹ X(i)di=. It does so by interpreting the integral as a Pettis-integral. Studying Riemann sums, the paper first provides a simple proof involving no more than the calculation of variances, and demonstrates, that the measurability problem pointed out by Judd (1985) is avoided by requiring convergence in mean square rather than convergence almost everywhere. We raise the issue of when a random continuum economy is a good abstraction for a large finite economy and give an example in which it is not.I am indebted to Hugo Hopenhayn. Furthermore I would like to thank Dilip Abreu, Glenn Donaldson, Ed Green, Ramon Marimon, Nabil Al-Najjar, Victor Rios-Rull, Timothy van Zandt and the editor for useful comments. The first version of this paper was written in 1987.     

Location Matters: An Examination of Trading Profits

The electronic trading system Xetra of the German Security Exchange provides a unique data source on the equity trades of 756 professional traders located in 23 different cities and eight European countries. We explore informational asymmetries across the trader population: Traders located outside Germany in non-German-speaking cities show lower proprietary trading profit. Their underperformance is not only statistically significant, it is also of economically significant magnitude and occurs for the 11 largest German blue-chip stocks. We also examine whether a trader location in Frankfurt as the financial center, or local proximity of the trader to the corporate headquarters of the traded stock, or affiliation with a large financial institution results in superior trading performance. The data provide no evidence for a financial center advantage or of increasing institutional scale economies in proprietary trading. However, we find evidence for an information advantage due to corporate headquarters proximity for high-frequency (intraday) trading.