A constitutional paradigm is not enough—would sovereign citizens really agree to manipulative nudges?—A reply to Christian Schubert

In this short note I reply to a comment made by Christian Schubert, who argues that my criticism of libertarian paternalism cannot be upheld under a constitutional economics paradigm. I disagree: it is implausible to assume that sovereign individuals behind a veil of ignorance would actually agree on manipulative nudges from the public sector. Resorting to a constitutional economics paradigm does not diminish the force of the manipulation objection—libertarian paternalism remains morally objectionable. Moreover, where sovereign citizens would agree on permissible (morally legitimate) nudges behind a veil of ignorance, these would no longer constitute “paternalism” under its commonly agreed definition. More constructively, the only morally defensible paternalistic nudges would be those that improve welfare while respecting or, better yet, improving individual autonomy. These are not the typical nudges defended by libertarian paternalists.     

Constitutional politics within the interest-group model

I examine constitutional politics using the interest-group model of politics. Constitutional economics argues that rent seeking is inevitable in majoritarian democracy and genuine reform is possible only at the constitutional level. By implication the constitutional equilibrium must differ from the political equilibrium. I examine reasons that such a difference might exist but find weak prospects for a general-interest victory over the special interest in constitutional politics. Although implicit constitutional change (for example, through Supreme Court reinterpretation) and explicit violation are substitute means of altering the constitution, the former dominates the latter. This suggests that a third factor participates in constitutional politics in addition to the general and special interests, which is support for the Constitution itself. Effective rules to restrain rent seeking need to ensure the congruence of the constitutional and general interests.     

市场结构理论分析范式演进研究

通过系统地梳理市场结构理论从SCP框架到厂商策略性行为研究的演变历程,并结合分析经济实践变迁,本文发现,推动市场结构理论分析范式演进的两个主要动因是方法论创新和理论范畴拓展。前者导致了结构主义SCP范式的确立和行为主义的兴起;后者催生了以交易费用为核心概念的新制度主义产业组织理论。展望市场结构理论未来的发展趋势,本文认为,从方法论创新上,博弈论将研究重点转向了企业策略性行为;从范畴拓展上,品牌经济学将开创对消费者行为研究的新领域。     

Value and exchange in law and economics: Buchanan versus posner

Meir Kohn’s Exchange and Value claims that economics can be organised around two opposed paradigms, the exchange and the value paradigms. In this paper, we apply this dichotomy to characterize the analyses proposed by economists in the field known as “law and economics”. We compare and contrasts the perspectives proposed by two prominent scholars—James Buchanan and Richard Posner—and argue that they, respectively, represent the exchange and the value paradigm in law and economics. More precisely, we show that Buchanan sticks to a definition of economics based on the exchange paradigm, and this leads him to define law and economics in a rather specific, different, narrower than Posner’s way to define law and economics—a definition that corresponds to a conception of economics based on the value paradigm.     

Political Learning: The Neglected Precondition of Constitutional Reform

This paper analyses the claim of constitutional economics that liberal economic policy requires far-reaching constitutional reform. The paper starts with a restatement of this claim and reinforces the rationale of the currently most influential variants of constitutional economics as represented by contractarian constitutional economics (Brennan, Buchanan), on the one hand, and Hayek s evolutionary theory, on the other. However, these constitutional proposals have shortcomings because the institutional preconditions of constitutional reform are not sufficiently reflected. Instead, I argue that, in face of economic crisis, a revision of in-period politics requires no more collective rationality than constitutional reform does. As a consequence, the introduction of new constitutional rules depends on political learning. The article concludes that constitutional rules in the sense of CPE can stabilise political learning but they cannot replace it.     

空间经济研究中马克思主义与新古典两条路径的关联——基于资本逻辑与空间基本规律的比较视角

空间经济学研究的兴起,主要有两条理论路径:第一条是马克思主义政治经济学到"马克思主义地理学"的研究路径,第二条是以马歇尔、克鲁格曼等为代表的空间要素模型分析研究路径。文章认为这两条路径有内在关联,前者是关于经济空间的动力机制的理论,后者是关于经济空间运动形式的理论。空间经济的深层逻辑和具体规律互为表里,为当前中国空间经济学发展提供了启示。     

Buchanan’s constitutional political economy: exchange vs. choice in economics and in politics

This article discusses the methodological foundations of Buchanan’s constitutional political economy. We argue that Buchanan is a constitutional economist because he is an economist or a political economist. In other words, Buchanan is a constitutional economist—he insists on the necessity of focusing on constitutions and to analyze the “rules of the social game”—because he defines economics as a science of exchange. Buchanan’s definition of economics is not only specific, it is also opposed to the definition of economics that other economists retain and, above all, opposed to the definition of economics that many public choice theorists use. The latter have, in effect, adopted the Robbins 1932 definition of economics as a science of choice that Buchanan criticizes and rejects. Buchanan’s constitutional economics can be a branch of public choice only under certain conditions.

The Institutional Theory of Radhamakal Mukerjee: Lessons for Modern Nonprofit Economics

This paper examines the way the institutional economics of Radhamakal Mukerjee can inform modern nonprofit economics. A brief survey of Mukerjee's work highlights several elements of his theory that yield useful implications understanding the nonprofit sector. First, Mukerjee's theory implies that this sector's role is in helping the economies to better accommodate broader societal values, rather than in addressing market failure. Second, his theory suggests that the nonprofit sector provides an institutional framework for the pursuit of common interests that are not reducible to individual utility maximization. Finally, as he considered the state to be inherently coercive, he believed the nonprofit sector to be the only meaningful outlet for citizenship behavior, thus advancing an original theory of complementary state-nonprofit relationship. The paper concludes with calling for more institutionalist research on the economics of the nonprofit sector.     

Toward a holistic nonprofit economics: insights from institutionalism and systems theory

The main thrust of the current nonprofit economics literature is that nonprofit organizations exist to correct market failures. However, the methodological individualism of the market failure theories of nonprofit organizations makes these theories unable to take account of the complex institutional embeddedness of the nonprofit sector. To fill this gap, the present paper outlines an approach of holistic nonprofit economics by building upon the insights from Thorstein Veblen’s institutionalism and Ervin Laszlo’s contribution to the general systems theory. From the Veblenian dichotomy, holistic nonprofit economics benefits by recognizing the limitations of the profit motive in ensuring a high quality of community life. From the systems theory conception of the multi-level universe, holistic nonprofit economics borrows the insight that the key to a high quality of community life is in the integration between man, society, and nature. Accordingly, holistic nonprofit economics locates the role of the nonprofit sector in ensuring this integration by counteracting the profit motive. Thus, in contrast to the market failure theories of nonprofit organizations, holistic nonprofit economics generates a research program exploring the embeddedness of the nonprofit sector into the encompassing societal and natural systems.     

Re-framing the urban blight problem with trans-disciplinary insights from ecological economics

Similar to circumstances in the field of economics, market fundamentalism dominates urban blight policy spaces in the U.S. despite criticisms of the paradigm. Unlike the unified alternative that ecological economics (EE) provides to conventional economic theory, however, disagreement over the meaning of “blight” has prevented a commonly held pre-analytic vision and policy agenda from forming in critical blight scholarship. This paper asserts that “applied EE” offers a framework in which to develop such a vision, and to strengthen the inchoate critical blight policy stream. We draw on the EE theory and concepts to argue that blight can be understood as a stock that accumulates in an urban system as a result of underinvestment into real property. Our conceptualization of the problem has several important implications for public policy. A brief illustration compares the relative efficacy of one city's characteristically neoliberal blight policies with more “EE-consistent” policies in a second city to show that the latter might in fact outperform the former.     

The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister,Volume One,Minister of Housing 1964–66

While John R. Commons often referred to third sector organizations, such as associations, cooperatives, and trade unions, it is unclear how these organizations can be fitted into his transactional typology. This paper clarifies this problem by identifying two dimensions of bargaining, managerial, and rationing transactions: 1) the extent of legal equality of transactional participants, and 2) the extent of commonness of these participants' transactional interests. These dimensions enable defining the identity of the third sector in terms of a distinct variety of rationing transactions combining legal equality of transactional participants with significant commonness of their interests. The paper further explores several implications of this argument for new institutional economics, concerning the citizenship aspect of markets and hierarchies and the possibility of viewing third sector organizations as hybrids between markets and hierarchies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for further research.     

Vilfredo Pareto on Labor: A Critical Re-examination

This article comprehensively examines Vilfredo Pareto's thoughts on labor and highlights their significance within his body of work. Like the other pioneers in neoclassical economics, Pareto disregarded worker subjectivity toward labor performance and the resulting variability in the substance of labor. Thus emasculating the human traits of labor, in his theory of pure economics, Pareto identified the nature of labor exchange with that of the exchange of nonhuman objects, thereby subsuming the former under his general equilibrium system. This neoclassical principle of rationalizing the market determination of labor exchange on its deindividuation governed Pareto's speculations throughout his work. Even his arguments in applied economics in favor of worker solidarity and strikes were grounded on this principle. It remained the basis for Pareto's opinions on actual labor relations. Pareto's frustration here turned him into an anti-unionist, but it also helped to mold his prime ideas regarding sociology and his awareness of the limits of economics. However, Pareto's adherence to his former concept of labor exchange contradicting its nature became a chief cause of his failure to integrate his economic thinking with its sociological counterpart and occasioned his sympathy with Fascism. Thus, this article concludes that Pareto's thoughts on labor profoundly affected his entire body of thought and that their flaw is not exclusive to him but inherent in neoclassical economics.     

Bioeconomics as economics from a Darwinian perspective

Bioeconomics—the merging of views from biology and economics—on the one hand invites the 'export' of situational logic and sophisticated optimization developed in economics into biology. On the other hand, human economic activity and its evolution, not least over the past few centuries, may be considered an instance for fruitfully applying ideas from evolutionary biology and Darwinian theory. The latter perspective is taken in the present paper. Three different aspects are discussed in detail. First, the Darwinian revolution provides an example of a paradigm shift which contrasts most significantly with the 'subjectivist revolution' that took place at about the same time in economics. Since many of the features of the paradigmatic change that were introduced into the sciences by Darwinism may be desirable for economics as well, the question is explored whether the Darwinian revolution can be a model for introducing a new paradigm in economic theory. Second, the success of Darwinism and its view of evolution have induced economists who are interested in an evolutionary approach in economics to borrow, more or less extensively, concepts and tools from Darwinian theory. Particularly prominent are constructions based on analogies to the theory of natural selection. Because several objections to such analogy constructions can be raised, generalization rather than analogy is advocated here as a research strategy. This means to search for abstract features which all evolutionary theories have in common. Third, the question of what a Darwinian world view might mean for assessing long term economic evolution is discussed. Such a view, it is argued, can provide a point of departure for reinterpreting the hedonistic approach to economic change and development. On the basis of such an interpretation bioeconomics may not only go beyond the optimization-cum-equilibrium paradigm currently prevailing in economics. It may also mean adding substantial qualifications to the subjectivism the neoclassical economists, at the turn of the century, were proud to establish in the course of their scientific revolution.     

人才集聚中的动态均衡机制研究

综合运用新国际贸易理论、新地理经济学、劳动经济学以及数量经济学等相关理论和方法,构建了人才集聚、产业集聚和城市化的动态均衡模型,并提出了S(Situation)—P(Patterns     

高储蓄真是两难的吗?-与麦金农教授商榷

该文对麦金农的高储蓄两难综合症理论提出了质疑.通过分析该理论背后两个关键命题(汇率变动对经常项目的调整无效和本币资产的风险升水为负)的证明中存在的问题,我们得出结论:前一个命题只是一个未被证明的假说;后一个命题则不适用于新兴市场国家(如中国)的情形.据此,我们认为麦金农的高储蓄两难综合症理论是有缺陷的,高储蓄未必是两难的,同时麦金农关于如果人民币升值,中国将很有可能最终陷入通货紧缩螺旋和零利率流动性陷阱的说法也是不能令人完全信服的.     

The exchange paradigm: Where to now?

This essay restates the main conclusions of “Value and Exchange,” discusses three possible directions of research that flow from it, and evaluates their likely impact on the economics profession. The three directions are (1) the application of the distinction between value paradigm and exchange paradigm to the elucidation of the history of economic thought, (2) formal theorizing within the framework of the exchange paradigm, and (3) empirical work informed by the insights of the exchange paradigm.      

新古典经济学在中国转型实验中的作用有限

“华盛顿共识”和“休克疗法”是新古典宏观经济学派反凯恩斯革命的新浪潮。他们否认大萧条的基本教训,无视历史的多样性和经济的复杂性。他们自上而下设计的自由化与私有化政策,导致苏东(前苏联和东欧)经济在过去十余年间的大幅下跌。中国和苏东转型实验的比较研究,促使我们重新检验经济学的基本问题,例如均衡学派与非均衡演化学派关于经济波动本质的争论。转型萧条的惨重代价,使我们加深理解新古典经济学的误区,例如价格的线性供求理论、预算软约束理论、宏观经济的微观基础理论,以及新制度经济学的趋同理论。中国基于学习、创新和分散试验的新经验,将使经济学超越均衡优化的古典规范,去探索非均衡演化的复杂经济学。     

人民币实际汇率对中国外商直接投资效应分析——基于VAR模型的视角

基于传统的国际直接投资理论,根据我国1985-2010年的时间序列数据,通过构建VAR模型实证检验了人民币实际汇率对外商直接投资的影响。结果表明:中国实际国内生产总值、实际工资水平对外商直接投资有显著影响,且前者的影响力高于后者,而人民币实际汇率对外商直接投资的影响力较弱。因此,中国应积极采取吸纳外商直接投资,努力改善投资环境,竭力控制通货膨胀以及逐步放松人民币汇率管制等措施。     

诺斯制度变迁理论方法论探析:修正的新古典经济学范式

关于诺斯制度变迁理论的方法论，有观点认为它以新古典经济学的“理性人”范式为基点。笔者不同意这种观点，笔者认为它属于修正的新古典经济学范式。这主要表现在三个方面：一、修正的经济人假设；二、非零交易成本假设；三、新古典经济学分析工具的继承。