Frequent probabilistic punishment in law enforcement

Timing and frequency of punishment are critical elements in law enforcement. Previous studies suggest the superiority of immediate punishment schemes over delayed punishment, as well as the importance of frequent punishment. Yet law enforcement schemes which utilize both frequent and immediate punishment are often cost prohibitive. In this work, we propose the “bad lottery immediate punishment” as an effective substitute to immediate punishment. This is a punishment mechanism that signals immediately to an offender that his violation has been spotted, but the actual penalty is delayed and probabilistic. We discuss implications in law enforcement, where probabilistic punishment is potentially more cost effective. Received: May 2000 / Acccepted: December 2000     

Competition in law enforcement and capital allocation

This paper studies inter-jurisdictional competition in the fight against crime and its impact on occupational choice and the allocation of capital. In a world where capital is mobile, jurisdictions are inhabited by individuals who choose to become either workers or criminals. Because the return of the two occupations depends on capital, and because investment in capital in a jurisdiction depends on its crime rate, there is a bi-directional relationship between capital investment and crime which may lead to capital concentration. By investing in costly law enforcement, a jurisdiction makes the choice of becoming a criminal less attractive, which in turn reduces the number of criminals and makes its territory more secure. This increased security increases the attractiveness of the jurisdiction for investors and this can eventually translate into more capital being invested. We characterize the Nash equilibria—some entailing a symmetric outcome, others an asymmetric one—and study their efficiency.     

在美国吃快餐

每天的午餐是美国人一日三餐中食品最简单、食量最少、最好对付的一餐,通常都是吃快餐.到了中午,美国的大街小巷上食客众多热闹异常.有一边看书报一边吃、一边听着音乐手舞足蹈一边吃的,有坐在车里吃、站在路边吃、蹲在树下吃的,甚至走在路上吃、连跑带吃的也随处可见.美国人追求效率效果,讲究省时省力,注重方便实惠,正是这一特点,使得作为美国餐饮文化特征的快餐渗透到美国社会的各个角落.     

Urban Ethnographies in the United States

Books reviewed in this article: Gamm, Gerald, Urban Exodus: why the Jews left Boston and the Catholics stayed Pattillo‐McCoy, Mary, Black picket fences: privilege and peril among the black middle class     

Dynamics of fiscal financing in the United States

General equilibrium models that include policy rules for government spending, lump-sum transfers, and distortionary taxation on labor and capital income and on consumption expenditures are fit to US data under rich specifications of fiscal policy rules to obtain several results. First, the best-fitting model allows many fiscal instruments to respond to debt. Second, responses of aggregates to fiscal policy shocks under rich rules vary considerably from responses where only non-distortionary fiscal instruments finance debt. Third, in the short run, all fiscal instruments except labor taxes react strongly to debt, but long-run intertemporal financing comes from all components of the government’s budget constraint. Fourth, debt-financed fiscal shocks trigger long-lasting dynamics; short-run and long-run multipliers can differ markedly.     

浅谈海事行政执法文书的规范制作

行政主体依法作出具体行政行为的表现形式,是保障行政机关行政行为立于不败之地的证据。因此,海事行政执法文书的规范制作也是海事执法的有机组成部分。     

Use of employees and alternative work arrangements in the United States: a law,economics, and organizations perspective

This paper considers the incidence of employees versus other forms of work in the United States, including temporary agency workers, contract company workers, independent contractors, and self-employment. It does so within a single, unifying framework. The approach takes an economics of organizations focus to consider when it is optimal for the firm to control the work routine instead of the worker. This is critical in defining and determining employment versus other forms of work. The cost of measuring output and monitoring effort and of worker versus firm expertise are important in determining the organization of work. This approach proves fruitful, but it also is important to account for the impact of certain legal restrictions in the U.S. labor market. The empirical findings show that independent contractors are in jobs that require worker expertise and training and for which monitoring of worker effort is difficult. Contract company workers' characteristics are a hybrid between independent contractors' and employees'. Temporary agency workers occur where the firm wishes to legally outsource its low-wage workers yet still maintain a degree of control over their work routine.     

加强预算执行审计促进法治政府建设

"2004年审计工作在社会上产生了比较强烈的反响,各方面对我国政府审计给予了高度的评价和肯定……"这是李金华审计长对去年审计工作的评价.去年的审计工作取得了明显成效,中央预算执行审计引起了很大的社会反响,很重要的一点,就是审计部门加大了对中央部门的审计力度,揭露了一些部门在预算执行和财务管理中存在的深层次问题.加强对政府部门的审计监督,促使其带头依法行政,加强管理,对于建设法治政府具有十分重要的意义.     

Occupational and industrial mobility in the United States

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and using both the original and the new series of occupation and industry codes, we investigate occupational and industrial mobility of individuals over the 1969–1980 and 1981–1993 periods in the U.S. We find that workers changed both occupations and industries more frequently in the later period. We also find that for men occupational and industrial changes are associated with lower earnings, though this effect has lessened somewhat over time; while for women the results are mixed. Our results also indicate that older and better paid men are less likely to shift occupation or industry.     

Judicial checks on corruption in the United States

Judicial oversight provides an important check on executive and legislative power. Two components of judicial oversight have been identified in the literature: judicial independence and constitutional review. Recent research using country-level data indicates that the effectiveness of constitutional review is largely determined by the rigidity of the constitution. In this paper, I use state-level data to test whether judicial independence and constitutional rigidity are related to a specific type of abuse of power by government officials: corruption in office. Specifically, I fit negative binomial regressions in which the dependent variable is the number of officials convicted for corrupt acts and the independent variables are (i) measures of judicial independence, such as judges’ remuneration, method of appointment, and term length, along with various controls or (ii) measures of constitutional rigidity, such as legislative majorities required to propose constitutional amendments and provisions for constitutional conventions or constitutional initiatives, along with various controls. I find that, in general, states with higher levels of judicial independence and more rigid constitutions have lower levels of corruption per capita than states with the opposite characteristics.     

The pattern of demand in the United States.

The objective of this paper is to examine the demand for goods and services in the United States using the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). The focus is on testing the theoretical properties of demand. The model fits the data well. The suggestion is that food, clothing, housing and transportation are necessities while medical care and recreation are luxuries. The notion of homogeneity is generally accepted while symmetry is soundly rejected. Finally, negativity is shown to hold.     

试论如何提升城建行政执法的工作效能

"以人为本"是社会主义法制观念的基本内容,城市建设管理行政执法人员在工作中,要积极践行"民有所呼、我有所应;民有所想、我有所为;民有所难、我有所帮"的执法承诺,坚持以"以人为本"为主导,构建文明和谐的执法关系,为建设创新城市、精致城市、幸福城市做出应有贡献。     

Decomposing the growth in residential land in the United States

This paper decomposes the growth in land occupied by residences in the United States to give the relative contributions of changing demographics versus changes in residential land per household. Between 1976 and 1992 the amount of residential land in the United States grew 47.7% while population only grew 17.8%. At first glance, this suggest an important role for per-household increases. However, the calculations in this paper show that only 24.5% of the growth in residential land area can be attributed to state-level changes in land per household. 37.3% is due to overall population growth, 22.6% to an increase in the number of households over this period, 6% to the shift of population towards states with larger houses, and the remaining 9.6% to interactions between these changes. There are large differences across states and metropolitan areas in the relative importance of these components.     

美国见闻录

今年6月29日至7月21日,在国家外国专家局的支持下,我随同参加过国内1000户重点企业领导人员工商管理培训的部分企业家继续赴美国培训.在美国培训考察21天,参观了旧金山、洛杉矶、纽约、费城、华盛顿等城市和一些高新技术企业及高等学校,对美国的社会、政治、经济、科技乃至历史有了比较直观的感受.可以说,百闻不如一见.现将所见所闻追记下来,并略加议论,以飨读者.