Leontief's Great Leap Forward: Beyond Quesnay,Marx and von Bortkiewicz

Wassily Leontief's input-output analysis is often interpreted simply as a logical next step in the chain of ideas from Quesnay to Marx to von Bortkiewicz, the last of these having been Leontief's thesis adviser in Berlin. Here, it is shown that input-output is far more than that. Unlike any predecessor, it is a flexible model with widely varied applications that permits direct empirical evaluation. This is illustrated by application to net energy calculations, showing that the normal evaluation methods that ignore input-output considerations probably overestimate by 20 to 60% the net energy yield of projects designed to save energy.     

Bell, Merton and Mills as Veblen Critics: A Comment

A bstract . Professors Tilman and Simich offer some thought provoking and reasoned criticisms of the analysis and applications of Veblen's social theory by Bell, Merton and Mills. However, while Tilman and Simich identify some key concepts and ideas central to Veblen's social theory development, they fail to articulate the inner logic of Veblen's paradigm which integrates and amplifies the individual concepts and ideas: the genetic, evolutionary development of the life process. Veblen's evolutionary paradigm not only challenges but threatens the very legitimacy of much of orthodox analysis in such disciplines as sociology, economics and political science.     

Competitive Advantage and Internal Organization: Nucor Revisited

Why does the cost of organizing particular activities differ across competitors? This article explores in detail the organization of Nucor, a steel minimill that has sustained a significant cost advantage over its competitors. Nucor's past success highlights the complementarities among organizational policies and competitive advantage as well as barriers to the imitation of apparently superior organizational arrangements. The case study also suggests avenues for additional empirical and theoretical research.     

可持续城市化:发展视野中的批判

可持续城市化发展在共同的发展理念遮蔽下存在着重大的内在差异,从发展哲学的整体性研究视野出发,我们通过对可持续城市化发展理念内在分歧的反思揭示出可持续城市化发展理念分歧的理论基础;进一步指出,当今世界城市可持续发展浪潮的实质是资本城市化;在中国实施城市的科学发展必须走自己的道路,要以城市的新现代性引领中国特色的可持续城市化发展道路.     

Discrimination by Black Males Revisited:

ABSTRACT In an earlier article on faculty salary discrimination at a Southern, historically black, public university (SHBU), the authors presented evidence of salary discrimination by black males against other race-sex groups (Riggs and Dwyer 1995). The authors now contrast SHBU's salary model with the model of Riggs and Dwyer and apply the latter to new data to determine whether SHBU eliminated race and sex discrimination in faculty salaries. After equity adjustments, the evidence suggests that SHBU has eliminated the salary discrimination found by Riggs and Dwyer in their earlier study.     

Tiebout Revisited: Redrawing Jurisdictional Boundaries

Central city households who subsidize local public sector goods through local property taxes have an incentive to flee from the city or to change the jurisdiction's boundary. We focus on the latter case, a neighborhood's attempt to deannex from a central city and subsequently annex to a suburb. The difficult theoretical problem is to explain why a large percentage of central city voters supported the deannexation proposal, most apparently becoming worse off if the issue was approved. While no explanation is consistent with fully rational voters, it appears that high property value owning voters supported the attempt in hope of being part of the next wave of deannexers.     

Lean Production and Beyond: the System,Its Critics and the Future

Peter Wickens, who is Director of Personnel and Information Systems of the Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd, puts ‘lean production’ in its historical context, examines some of the criticisms of the system and considers some of the changes taking place in Japan. He goes on to suggest possible ways forward and makes the case for a system of ‘lean production’ managed by people who care about people.     

The distribution of personal income: Revisited

In a recent paper, Majumder and Chakravarty (1990) propose a four-parameter model which they find provides a better fit to some income data than the lognormal, gamma, Singh-Maddala, Dagum, and generalized beta of the second kind (GB2) distributions. This note (1) demonstrates that the model proposed by Majumder and Chakravarty is a reparameterization of the GB2 and (2) reconciles the corresponding contradictory empirical findings reported by Majumder and Chakravarty.     

Time-inconsistent preferences and social security: Revisited in continuous time

?mrohoro?lu et al. (2003) prove that it is impossible in a three period partial equilibrium model for social security to improve the welfare of a naive quasi-hyperbolic agent if the program has a negative net present value. This paper first generalizes their impossibility theorem to a continuous time setting and then proves analytically that no discount function exists that can rationalize a social security program with a negative net present value.     

Chamberlin's Experimental Markets Revisited: A Computerized Journey

A bstract . Professor Edward Hastings Chamberlin conducted many experiments about imperfect markets at Harvard University, using his students as bargaining agents. He found that transaction volumes ( i.e. number of units sold) were consistently higher in these "imperfect" markets than would have been the case if the markets were "perfect." This he found surprising but explainable. He also found, however, that the average transaction prices were consistently lower than their equivalents in perfect markets. That he found both surprising and unexplainable. He finally assumed that the biased behavior of his students caused that phenomenon. In the present study, his experiments were replicated but the alleged bias was eliminated by replacing the students with a computer which was programmed to deal impartially and objectively with all buyers and sellers. On completion of the simulation, it was found that the transaction volumes were indeed significantly higher than their perfect market equivalents, but average prices were very comparable to their counterparts in perfect markets. Thus Chamberlin's hypothesis was correct on both counts. This verification of the suspect results we consider very significant, because they may have far reaching effects on welfare economics. As more 'transactions may be completed at essentially the same average price, perhaps the efficiency of these markets could be improved by making these markets less perfect rather than less imperfect.     

Prices Revisited: Their Effects on Industrial Structure

In January 1986, Spain became a member of the European Economic Community (now the European Union). This had two major effects on the Spanish economy: first, the introduction of a new tax, i. e. value-added tax; second, the variation of foreign trade taxes. The new situation produced considerable changes throughout the Spanish economy, but the main effect was on the country's industrial structure. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to verify how Spain's industrial production system was affected by these two facts, in view of price variations induced by the circumstances mentioned. We present the analysis at the regional level.     

Migration and the Tiebout-Tullock Hypothesis Revisited

This study investigates, using state-level data for the period 2000–2005, the Tiebout hypothesis (as extended by Tullock) of voting with one's feet. This analysis differs from previous related studies not only in its adoption of more current migration and other data but also in other ways. First, unlike most earlier related studies, it includes a separate measure of the overall cost of living; second, it examines per pupil (rather than per capita) outlays on public primary and secondary education; and third, in addition to property taxes, it also focuses on per capita state income tax burdens. Inclusion of the last of these variables in the analysis is based on studies that have found the existence of a state income tax to have influenced migration patterns and other studies that have found higher state income tax levels to have resulted in reduced per capita income growth over time. Moreover, including both property tax burdens and income tax burdens broadens the scope of the hypothesis. Strong empirical support for the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis (as interpreted here) is obtained for the study period.     

Inference in Cointegrating Models: UK M1 Revisited

The paper addresses the practical determination of cointegration rank. This is difficult for many reasons: deterministic terms play a crucial role in limiting distributions, and systems may not be formulated to ensure similarity to nuisance parameters; finite-sample critical values may differ from asymptotic equivalents; dummy variables alter critical values, often greatly; multiple cointegration vectors must be identified to allow inference; the data may be I(2) rather than I(1), altering distributions; and conditioning must be done with care. These issues are illustrated by an empirical application of multivariate cointegration analysis to a small model of narrow money, prices, output and interest rates in the UK.     

建立在信赖与活力基础上的法中关系——访法国外贸部长级代表弗朗索瓦·洛斯

2004年以来，中法关系有了新的重大发展，尤为突出的是法国总统希拉克去年对中国的访问。法国外贸部长级代表弗朗索瓦、洛斯对两国关系的加强感到极为满意。在接受《中国新时代》专访时，他阐述了对法中关系的看法，并表达了他对加强法中贸易和工业各部门合作的希望。     

Much Ado About Nothing: the Mixed Models Controversy Revisited

We consider a well-known controversy that stems from the use of two mixed models for the analysis of balanced experimental data with a fixed and a random factor. It essentially originates in the different statistics developed from such models for testing that the variance parameter associated to the random factor is null. The corresponding hypotheses are interpreted as that of null random factor main effects in the presence of interaction. The controversy is further complicated by different opinions regarding the appropriateness of such hypothesis. Assuming that this is a sensible option, we show that the standard test statistics obtained under both models are really directed at different hypotheses and conclude that the problem lies in the definition of the main effects and interactions. We use expected values as in the fixed effects case to resolve the controversy showing that under the most commonly used model, the test usually associated to the inexistence of the random factor main effects addresses a different hypothesis. We discuss the choice of models, and some further problems that occur in the presence of unbalanced data.     

Technology Flows Matrix Estimation Revisited

This paper revisits the methodological problems of estimating matrices showing how technological advances--measured by industry research and development outlays--flow from industries of origin to using industries. An early effort relied upon the analysis of 15 112 US patents. Several alternative methods are explored to address methodological questions concerning the choice of carrier matrices, the handling of diagonal elements, and the treatment of capital goods flows. Technology flow matrices estimated using diverse combinations of assumptions are tested for goodness-of-fit relative to the original patent-based matrix and for their ability to "predict' productivity growth in Solowian regression equations. Although some anomalies emerge, the best results are obtained using combined first-order transactions and capital flows matrices with diagonal elements adjusted to reflect the ratio of internal process to all R&D spending. However, flow data compiled using the Leontief inverse matrix add explanatory power in productivity growth regressions.