土地利用规划系统现状与问题

土地利用规划系统对于科学、合理地利用有限的土地资源,及时了解与掌握土地利用变化数量和空间分布规律,保持耕地总量和土地持续利用都具有十分重要的意义。当前,结合了GIS技术的土地利用规划系统建设已成为主导趋势。文章对主要的土地规划系统及其功能等进行了系统的总结,并对存在的问题做了分析。虽然当前的土地利用规划系统都采用了先进的GIS技术作为平台,但是仍还不完善。在土地信息历史档案管理、土地评价方法以及系统扩展能力等方面,还有需要改进的地方。     

PERCEPTIONS, PROBLEMS AND METHODS OF PREPARING LABOUR FORCE ACCOUNTS IN INDIA

The paper concerns the links between labour force accounts and national accounts. It first discusses the variation in the perception of labour force among countries which results in much disparity in recorded participation rates. This obviously makes international comparison difficult. Since benchmark labour force information is often tied to population censuses which are infrequent and vary in concepts and approaches, even comparisons within a country over time are difficult. Finally a discussion of the use of labour force data to estimate the unrecorded economy is followed by suggestions on the direction for future work.     

SAVING AND SOCIAL INSURANCE

In a model which is both intertemporal and uncertain, this paper shows that risk averters increase saving in response to increases in the probability of income losses and reduce saving in response to social insurance.     

SOCIAL NORMS,LOCAL INTERACTION,AND NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING*

This article examines optimal social linkage when each individual's repeated interaction with each of his neighbors creates spillovers. Each individual's discount factor is randomly determined. A planner chooses a local interaction network or neighborhood design before the discount factors are realized. Each individual then plays a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma game with his neighbors. A local trigger strategy equilibrium (LTSE) describes an equilibrium in which each individual conditions his cooperation on the cooperation of at least one “acceptable” group of neighbors. Our main results demonstrate a basic trade‐off in the design problem between suboptimal punishment and social conflict. Potentially suboptimal punishment arises in designs with local interactions since in this case monitoring is imperfect. Owing to the heterogeneity of discount factors, however, greater social conflict may arise in more connected networks. When individuals' discount factors are known to the planner, the optimal design exhibits a cooperative “core” and an uncooperative “fringe.”“Uncooperative” (impatient) types are connected to cooperative ones who tolerate their free riding so that social conflict is kept to a minimum. By contrast, when the planner knows only the ex ante distribution over individual discount factors, then in some cases the optimal design partitions individuals into maximally connected cliques (e.g., cul‐de‐sacs), whereas in other cases incomplete graphs with small overlap (e.g., grids) are possible.     

ECONOMIC SYSTEMS, POLITICAL STRUCTURES AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The paper deals with the estimation of comparable human rights ratings (defined as a composite of political rights, civil liberties and state power indices) for 154 countries, excluding territories, of the world in 1983. It then develops a theory to gauge the sensitivity of these ratings to a specific disaggregation suggested by the theory of political economy and establishes the close nexus existing between economic systems, political structures and human rights. The results indicate that increasing government intervention, whether economic or political, unequivocally tends to worsen the human rights situation. Moreover, it is seen that affluence and income distribution are significant predictors of human rights ratings across countries.     

SOCIAL CONTRACTS AND PIPE DREAMS

Economists' debate over the public utility "regulatory contract" has increasingly focused on three issues created by sunk costs: (i) Protection of sunk capital, (ii) Division of "windfalls" in a world of uncertainty, and (Hi) Mechanisms to control the regulator who administers long-term agreements. This article uses these three criteria to evaluate regulatory alternatives in the natural gas industry. Facing similar problems under criteria 1 and 2 are: government regulation of pipelines as integrated gas merchants, government regulation of pipelines as gas transporters, and private regulation through competitive contracting. Private contracting, however, offers superior control over the contract administrator, because it removes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's monopoly on contract administration.     

REDISTRIBUTION OF INCOME—NOTES ON SOME PROBLEMS AND PUZZLES

There are both major philosophical and major econometric questions to be faced in the measurement of inequality of income. The scaling of different sizes and types of families can never be unique and may be a function of real income. However, even subjective guesses may be better than doing nothing. Demographic changes, such as the increase in pensioners with the increase in life expectancy, affects the distribution of income, and it seems desirable to estimate the separate effect of their influence. The extent to which the inequality of incomes is reduced by all taxes and benefits combined has remained remarkably constant in the U.K. over the period for which estimates have been made (1937–1967). The progressive effect of all taxes and benefits combined is largely the result of benefits (in cash and kind). The stability in the degree of inequality of original income is much more difficult to explain. A number of factors which reduce or increase inequality can be identified for further analysis.     

SOCIAL CHALLENGES TO ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING AND ECONOMIC CHALLENGES TO SOCIAL ACCOUNTING

The question addressed in this paper is: Why can't we have a good measuring rod of the economic and social performance of our society? The answers are basically positive but lie mostly in the direction of (1) avoiding simplistic solutions such as turning the national income accounts into a measure of social welfare and (2) providing the elements of an information strategy to obtain such a measure or more accurately such a set of measures. The proposed information strategy highlights five activities: (1) the presentation and analysis of welfare outcomes, an activity which is analogous to but broader than “social indicators”; (2) social accounting which includes economic accounting, demographic accounting, and time-use accounting; (3) model building and operation which, unlike accounting, are concerned with behavioral or causal relationships used to explain and project welfare outcomes; (4) hypothesis testing to develop new insights into economic and social behavior; and finally (5) the building and maintenance of a data base required for carrying on the aforementioned four activities.     

SELF‐CONTROL PROBLEMS AND CONSUMPTION‐SAVING DECISIONS: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE*

Time‐discounting is a fundamental preference which affects wealth accumulation. If people are impatient, they may spend their earnings instantaneously, and do not save enough for the future. People are often time‐inconsistent, i.e., they often put exceptionally high value on immediate consumption compared to any time in the future. Whether they are aware or not, these individuals are susceptible to self‐control problems. In this paper, we review theoretical and empirical research on time‐inconsistency and self‐control problems, particularly on consumption and saving, and discuss their policy implications.     

WHY SOCIAL PREFERENCES MATTER – THE IMPACT OF NON-SELFISH MOTIVES ON COMPETITION, COOPERATION AND INCENTIVES

A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, (iii) effects and the determinants of material incentives, (iv) which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and (v) important forces shaping social norms and market failures.     

LIFETIME AND VERTICAL INTERTEMPORAL INEQUALITY, INCOME SMOOTHING, AND REDISTRIBUTION: A SOCIAL WELFARE APPROACH

Between and within-households intertemporal inequality indices are proposed to highlight the vertical and lifetime (i.e. cyclical) components of overall intertemporal inequality. Comparison with the classical static inequality indices is made. Income redistribution and smoothing (i.e. stabilization) are conveniently defined as the public policy impact on welfare, by means of the relative increase in intertemporal vertical and cyclical equity, respectively. The issue is important as many public policies are aimed at both (vertical and cyclical equity) objectives. Our approach provides a more appropriate evaluation of the desirability of public reforms aimed at achieving a greater vertical and cyclical equity, within a social welfare framework.     

EASTERN PROBLEMS AND WESTERN SOLUTIONS

A Review of O. Blanchard, R. Dornbusch, P. Krugman, R. Layard and L. Summers, Reform in Eastern Europe
G. Sinn and H.-W. Sinn, Jumpstart: The Economic UniJication of Germany
J. M. Kovács and M. Tardos (Ed.), Reform and Transformation in Eastern Europe: Soviet-type Economics on the Threshold of Change
R. Layard, 0. Blanchard, R. Dornbusch and P. Krugman, East-West Migration: The Alternatives     

HORIZONTAL SOCIAL COMPARISONS AND VERTICAL RECIPROCITY IN A PRINCIPAL–MULTI‐AGENT EXPERIMENT

The aim of this note is to investigate whether the incentive mechanism based on reciprocity is still effective in the presence of several agents by exploring a principal–multi‐agent relationship in a gift‐exchange experiment. The results show that horizontal social comparisons between agents can undermine the vertical reciprocity‐driven incentive mechanism. When long‐term relationships or merit procedures are introduced in the experiment, reciprocity becomes effective again.