THE FUTURE OF MARKETS

In the 2009 Wincott Lecture, the author argues that in their approach to markets, economic researchers and policy-makers have focused too much on the role of prices as signals to guide resource allocation, at the expense of two possibly more important elements – markets as a process of discovery and markets as a mechanism for the diffusion of political and economic power. Government policies should support the market rather than particular industries, promote competition not concentration, and facilitate entry, not confer advantages on existing firms.     

SHIFTING BOUNDARIES IN ECONOMICS: THE INSTITUTIONAL COGNITIVE STRAND AND THE FUTURE OF INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS

This paper aims at contributing to the debate on the future of institutional economics and of the field as a whole by starting from the literature that discusses the relationship between Old‐Original Institutional Economics and New Institutional Economics. It suggests that the process of reunifying OIE and NIE (and evolutionary economics) prompted by part of the literature could be improved by the contribution of the Cognitive Institutional Economics. The paper follows a two‐stage pathway: first, it frames the debate on the relationships between NIE and the OIE and it concentrates on a subset of the literature that shows that NIE's recent developments complicate the distinction between NIE and OIE, and it explores the possibility that NIE and OIE may merge so that an amalgam of NIE, OIE and Evolutionary Economics becomes the next economic paradigm. Secondly, the paper argues that a step forward in the direction outlined by the literature has been made by CIE, which is a research stream that developed from cross‐fertilization among NIE, OIE and the Hayekian contributions to the analysis of institutions. In the concluding remarks, the possible emergence of a single institutional paradigm is discussed in the light of the literature about change in economics.     

BRIDGING TRADE THEORY AND LABOUR ECONOMETRICS: THE EFFECTS OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION*

Abstract This paper surveys current theoretical and empirical research on international migration with a particular emphasis on the links between trade theory and labour empirics.     

ECONOMIC RECESSIONS,BANKING REFORM AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM1

In the 2010 London School of Economics and Political Science Hayek Memorial Lecture, the author argues that flaws in the design of the monetary and financial system were responsible for the global financial crisis and the subsequent recession. The crash reflected the unsustainable nature of the bubble induced by artificial credit expansion created by fractional‐reserve banking under the direction of central banks. Such boom–bust cycles will continue until radical reforms are implemented, including a 100% reserve requirement for demand deposits.     

SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT THE FAILURE OF THE HOTELLING RULE?

Abstract The continuing dependence of the global economy on fossil fuels is worrying because it imposes limits on growth due to the non‐renewable nature of these resources and also contributes to global climate change. Resource optimists believe that this is no reason to worry, because the economy will always find a way to overcome these constraints. Their arguments, however, require that resource prices reflect the scarcity of non‐renewable resources, which implies that they must obey the Hotelling rule. Empirical analyses, however, show that the Hotelling rule does not hold in reality, which raises the question: does the failure of the Hotelling rule imply that social optimality is not achieved? This paper argues that the answer depends on the reason for the failure. If extraction and exploration costs, or technological progress in these activities, are the reasons for the failure, a market failure is not implied, and optimality may still be achieved. But if the Hotelling rule fails due to uncertain property rights or strategic interaction, the market will surely fail to provide an optimal solution. A market failure is likely to speed up resource consumption compared to the social optimum.     

THE DECOUPLING OF EMERGING ECONOMIES: THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL PUZZLE

With the growing importance of the emerging economies (EEs) in the international scene, a lively debate has begun on whether the national economic cycles are converging or the cycles of EEs and advanced economies (AEs) are becoming disconnected, the so-called ‘hypothesis of decoupling of EEs from the AEs’. Given the important practical implications that decoupling could have, for example, on the definition of national and international economic policies and on business strategies aimed at investment diversification and risk management, the question kindles not only the interest of academics but also policymakers and practitioners are very interested in the issue. The decoupling question has been long debated in different circles and from different points of view. This survey aims to retrace the steps of this debate and to provide some suggestions for future empirical researches.     

MEASURING THE DIVERSITY OF HOUSEHOLD SPENDING PATTERNS

Households tend to diversify their spending across a wide range of goods and services as they become more affluent. Recently, there has been growing interest in understanding the precise manner in which this spending diversification process takes place. We review what facts are known about this process and the underlying behavioural tendencies that are thought to drive it. In addition, we clarify the relationship between different approaches to measuring the level of spending diversity. A number of indices are employed, including measures based on joint probabilities, distances and the concept of entropy. Using UK household spending data, we show the extent to which these measures deliver different results and shed light on the nature of behavioural heterogeneity.     

资源开发的“财富悖论”探究——基于收益分配视角

经济学中的经典假说"资源诅咒"往往表现为自然资源开发中区域经济层面的"资源地贫困"与微观经济层面的"采掘企业超额利润"同时存在的"财富悖论"现象.通过运用全部采掘业占工业总产值的比重来度量资源丰度、用城市家庭人均可支配收入增长来度量经济发展水平、使用2001年-2005年的省际面板数据对资源开发与地区经济发展水平之间的相关性及其传导作用机制进行实证检验,证实了我国内部地区层面存在"资源诅咒"效应.资源开发收益在企业微观层面的各利益主体之间和政府区域层面的资源区与受益区之间的收益分配不公,是导致资源开发的财富悖论不可忽视的原因.     

矿产资源节约与综合利用的发展现状与展望

文章简要的分析了矿产资源节约与综合利用在新时代地质工作中的需求,结合发展需求分析了矿产资源综合利用的必要性,进一步总结了“矿产资源节约与综合利用”工程实施以来的重要成果贡献;针对目前存在的问题,指出了未来矿产资源节约与综合利用的发展方向,还根据新时代的新要求,针对推进矿产资源全面节约与综合利用工程提出几点建议。可为从事相关研究工作的研究人员提供参考。     

RESEARCH ON THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY: STATE OF THE ART AND NEW DIRECTIONS OFF THE BEATEN TRACK AWAY FROM THEATRICAL RELEASE

The motion picture industry has been subject of extensive academic research over the last decades. However, most scholars focused on the U.S. theatrical motion picture market. The number of research activities regarding even more profitable release windows, such as home video or television, has been substantially lower. Although international distribution is essential for a motion picture project to break even, there has been little significant re-search on most other markets. This paper aims at summarizing the current state of research on the motion picture industry, particularly from marketing and management perspective, revealing research gaps, and proposing recommendations for future research endeavors. Therefore, a three-pillar scheme is developed to systemize previous findings: Research on intraorganizational decision making, contractual relationships between national stakeholders, and international market competition are differentiated. Since these insights are mainly derived from U.S. theatrical exhibition, they can hardly be applied to other markets and exhibition windows. Thus, potential research areas are identified to expand knowledge of posttheatrical and international markets.     

THE ‘REFERENCE POINT’ APPROACH TO THE THEORY OF THE FIRM: AN INTRODUCTION

There is a small but growing literature on the ‘reference point’ approach to incomplete contracts as formulated by Hart and Moore. The reference point approach has begun to be applied to the theory of the firm in 3 recent papers. This introduction reviews the main theoretical aspects of each of these papers. It then discusses the relationship between the reference point approach to the firm, the transaction cost approach and the property rights approach. Here it is argued that the reference point approach is a step back towards ex post inefficiencies, away from reliance on ex ante inefficiencies.     

我国自然资源审计的理论框架与实践路径——基于五大发展新理念的思考

自然资源审计是自然资源资产负债表编制工作的应用和延伸,自然资源审计框架的探讨对于自然资源审计技术的形成、指导我国自然资源的可持续发展和应用并落实自然资源审计制度具有重要意义。为明确自然资源审计对象和内容,构建了企业、政府、CPA“三位一体”的自然资源审计理论框架,并提出以五大发展新理念为指导的自然资源审计实践路径：树立协调理念,发挥企业、政府、CPA协同效应,调整自然资源和生态监管部门职责;树立创新理念,探索自然资源审计新方法;树立绿色理念,开展自然资源离任审计、跟踪审计和合作审计;树立开放理念,引入现代风险导向观;树立共享理念,编制自然资源资产负债表,建立自然资源信息系统。     

CHARTERS,PARTNERSHIPS AND NATURAL RESOURCES: TWO CASES OF ENDOGENOUS REGULATION IN ITALY

This paper illustrates two examples of natural resources management drawn from Italian history: the rural charter system in the current province of Trento and the rural partnership system in Nonantola in the province of Modena. These institutions lasted for many centuries, and survived and evolved in the contemporary legal system. It is concluded that both the cases can be defined as ‘robust’ institutions for the successful management of common pool resources.     

EMBODIED CARBON IN TRADE: A SURVEY OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

This paper critically reviews the literature on embodied carbon in trade and evaluates our present empirical understanding of these flows. A careful comparison of quantitative results from this literature exposes significant inconsistencies. For instance, estimates for emission embodied in world trade in 2004 range between 4.4 Gt and 6.2 Gt CO2, the difference corresponding to around half of Europe's annual emissions. A few consistent themes do nevertheless emerge from the literature. Most importantly, emissions in trade constitute a large and growing share of global emissions. Uncertainty about country‐level embodied emissions remains large, however, which presents severe limitations for the practical application of embodied carbon principles in climate policy.     

THE NEW NEO‐MERCANTILISM: CURRENCY MANIPULATION AS A FORM OF PROTECTIONISM

Three waves of mercantilism have arisen in the past few centuries. The first wave was countered by the classical economists. The second wave (neo‐mercantilism) hit during the inter‐war period. Today's third wave uses monetary policy. We explore the mercantilist waves and argue in favour of a free trade policy. We conclude that an international system of free banking best protects the economy from currency manipulation as a form of protectionism.     

LOCAL LABOR MARKETS AND NATURAL RESOURCES: A SYNTHESIS OF THE LITERATURE

A primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor, with greater extraction requiring more workers. Shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings, the main labor market outcomes, or through changes in the population and income, more generally. These changes may spillover into the nonresource economy, leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out; be spread unequally across the population, thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate; or influence educational attainment, as people choose between additional schooling and work. In this review, the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider. This synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years. It also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta‐analysis.     

INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE TAX AVOIDANCE: A REVIEW OF THE CHANNELS,MAGNITUDES, AND BLIND SPOTS

This paper reviews the rapidly growing empirical literature on international tax avoidance by multinational corporations. It surveys evidence on the main channels of corporate tax avoidance including transfer mispricing, international debt shifting, treaty shopping, tax deferral, and corporate inversions. Moreover, it performs a meta-analysis of the extensive literature that estimates the overall size of profit shifting. We find that the literature suggests that, on average, a 1 percentage-point lower corporate tax rate will expand before-tax income by 1%—an effect that is larger than reported as the consensus estimate in previous surveys and tends to be increasing over time. The literature on tax avoidance still has several unresolved puzzles and blind spots that require further research.     

PPPs: THE PASSAGE OF TIME PERMITS A SOBER REFLECTION

This paper argues that evaluations of public–private partnerships thus far point to contradictory results regarding their effectiveness and value-for-money. Despite continuing political popularity, greater care is needed to strengthen future evaluations and conduct such assessments away from the policy cheerleaders.     

CONTRACTS,ENTREPRENEURS, MARKET CREATION AND JUDGEMENT: THE CONTEMPORARY MAINSTREAM THEORY OF THE FIRM IN PERSPECTIVE

This survey gives an overview of the theory of the firm as it is formulated within the contemporary ‘mainstream’ of economics. Two groupings of theories are briefly discussed: principal–agent and incomplete contract models. Next, three of the most recent contributions regarding firms are considered. The reference point approach is looked at first followed by a discussion of Spulber's book The Theory of the Firm. Last, we consider the entrepreneurial judgement perspective.     

《反垄断法》的实施效应评估

我国《反垄断法》实施两年来,既产生了及时有效保护竞争和维护正常市场竞争秩序的积极效应,也存在"经济宪法"地位是否凸显、执法效应偏离反垄断法目标、私益保护乏力的论争。结合应然效应和美国等主要国家《反垄断法》的实践,科学理性地评估我国《反垄断法》的实施效应,建议在WTO核心原则框架下实现《反垄断法》实施的良好效应。