拓宽中国特色社会主义经济学的研究视野--从多向比较揭示规律性

为深化中国特色社会主义经济学研究、认识中国经济发展的特殊规律，必须进行多向的比较分析，包括对中国经济自身发展历史阶段的比较分析、同苏联模式的比较分析、同俄罗斯和东欧等“转型“”国家的比较分析、同发展中国家的比较分析、同西欧发达国家的比较分析，在比较中鉴别，为理论升华开拓广阔的视野。     

Immigrant selection before and after communism

The end of the Soviet Union and communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe led to sudden increases in emigration and large changes in wage inequality. This has provided a unique opportunity to understand how these changes altered incentives to emigrate during the transition period. In this paper, I analyze immigrant selection before and after the fall of the Soviet Union within a Roy Model framework, in which the relative return to skills determines the skill composition of immigrants. Using micro-level data from Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria, matched to Census data on immigrants from these countries in the United States, Spain and Greece in the post-Soviet period, I find evidence of positive selection of immigrants in the US, and negative selection for Greece and Spain. Using retrospective data from Ukraine during the communist period, I find that selection among Soviet men in the US was intermediate and selection among women was positive.     

Inspiration vs. perspiration in economic development of the Former Soviet Union and China (ca. 1920–2010)

Here, we discuss the role of both perspiration factors (physical and human capital) and inspiration factors (Total Factor Productivity) in the economic development of the Former Soviet Union area (FSU) and China, ca. 1920–2010. Using a newly created dataset, we find that during the Socialist central‐planning period, economic growth in both countries was largely driven by physical capital accumulation. This finding follows logically from the development policies in place at that time. During their transition periods, (i.e., starting from the late 1970s in China and the late 1980s in the FSU), China managed to keep technical inefficiency of production factors in check, largely by massively increasing its human capital, thereby lowering the physical‐to‐human capital ratio. In contrast, the FSU accomplished a similar outcome largely through reducing its stock of physical capital. As a result, although there was little difference in technical efficiency between these two economies, China's emphasis on human capital formation made it easier for this country to improve its general productivity and to increase per capita growth. This changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the FSU began to recover economically, regaining its 1990 levels of output and productivity.     

Institutional Matrices Theory,or X- and Y-Theory: A Response to F. Gregory Hayden

This article draws attention to issues about the institutional matrices theory (IMT) as perceived by and raised in the article by F. Gregory Hayden. To clarify the “controversial” points, I structure my response narrative along two lines. First, I present the prehistory of IMT, or X- and Y- theory, including earlier work by scientists related to the concept of institutional matrix. I connect the development of the actual IMT with the period of “perestroika” and the associated market experiments and reforms in Russia and Eastern European countries. One could see that the effects of market reforms in Russia were different in comparison with other countries in economic transition. I show that the institutional approach was accepted as more relevant to understanding the unexpected results in Russian society. I present IMT as a development of the ideas of Karl Polanyi and Douglas North to answer the challenges of explaining the real social and economic processes in Russia, as well as its wider application to a broader range of economic and social situations in different countries. Second, I then present the main IMT theses, giving special attention to the issues as perceived and raised by Hayden. In conclusion, I suggest the possibility of a joint project that combines IMT consideration and the social fabric matrix (SFM) concept of F. Gregory Hayden.     

Education, inequality and transition

I consider evidence on differences in access to education and in learning achievement within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The situation inherited from the communist period is first summarized: there were some significant disparities with, for example, family background having a strong association with tertiary enrolments, as in Western countries. Analysis of the transition period focuses on differences in access and achievement associated with household income and geographic location. Disparities are not the same across the region; in some countries, such as Russia, there are clear grounds for serious concern, but it is unlikely that any country has cause for complacency.     

Regionalisation trends in Russia: Between the Soviet Legacy and the Forces of Globalisation

Regionalisation in Russia is to be understood as part of the overall transformation process. It is argued that while the form of regionalisation during the Yeltsin era after 1991 presented an image of democratic legitimacy, it was still largely based on the same structures and characteristics as the ‘regionalism’ that took shape during the Soviet era. In this context, the real significance of Putin's federal reforms is to be seen in the fact that a number of the faults in this essentially Soviet system have been laid bare and challenged. Thus, Putin's reforms are not to be dismissed as a purely administrative measure to strengthen central state power and control. Instead, they constitute an attempt to eliminate this form of regionalism in order to build a more favourable basis for Russia's integration into global economic contexts and structures. The fact that Russia is moving in this direction is not, however, solely attributable to Putin's federal reforms. There is a wide and diverse range of other factors propitious to this course.     

A note on measuring the unofficial economy in the former Soviet Republics1

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre‐transition Soviet Union. In addition, these estimates appear to understate the size of the unofficial economies in these countries. We propose alternative estimates and find that they are more strongly related to the institutional factors commonly used to explain the size of the unofficial sector. Our estimates also show that the size of a country's pre‐transition unofficial economy is an important predictor of its size during the transition. This suggests that the size of the unofficial economy is to a large extent a historical phenomenon only partly determined by contemporary institutional factors. JEL classification: O17, P2, P3.     

Polanyi and Post-neoliberalism in the Global South: Dilemmas of Re-embedding the Economy

Although Karl Polanyi Studied a different epoch and focused on Europe, his ideas have inspired an outpouring of studies on contemporary problems and prospects in the neoliberal era. The bulk of these studies pertain to industrial countries or global economic issues. However, the human, environmental and financial impact of market deregulation is arguably more devastating in the ‘developing’ countries than in the core. A question thus arises: do Polanyi's reflections on progressive alternatives to liberalism clarify contemporary debates on development alternatives in the Global South? I contend that democratic socialism – Polanyi's preferred remedy to the ‘demolition’ of society and nature occasioned by market civilisation – is problematical in light of what we have learned from the twentieth century, but his framework for evaluating alternatives – featuring the re-embedding of economy in society – remains as powerful as ever, I support this argument with an exploration of socialism and social democracy – as well as community – based alternatives arising from ‘reciprocity’. Each possibility raises distinctive dilemmas, as an analysis of cases reveals.     

Land rights,rental markets and the post-socialist cityscape

Inefficiently organized, factory-dominated cityscapes have been one of the more enduring legacies of the twentieth century experiment with socialist central planning in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Drawing on a unique survey of large, formerly state-owned urban industrial firms in Russia, we explore how land tenure reforms affect the pace at which this legacy is being erased. For various historical, political, and economic reasons, there is substantial variation across firms as to their ownership of the land on which they sit. Despite facing no additional formal constraints, those that do not own their plots rent them out at a lower frequency than those that have acquired private tenure to their land. The privatization of plots, in other words, promotes the development of a rental market that transfers land use rights away from socialist-era industrial users. We address the potential endogeneity of land tenure using a measure of regional variation in urban land policy and Communist party vote shares as instrumental variables.     

Friedrich List and the Imperial origins of the national economy

This essay offers a critical reexamination of the works of Friedrich List by placing them in the context of nineteenth-century imperial economies. I argue that List's theory of the national economy is characterised by a major ambivalence, as it incorporates both imperial and anti-imperial elements. On the one hand, List pitted his national principle against the British imperialism of free trade and the relations of dependency it heralded for late developers like Germany. On the other hand, his economic nationalism aimed less at dismantling imperial core–periphery relations as a whole than at reproducing these relations domestically and expanding them globally. I explain this ambivalence with reference to List's designation of imperial Britain as the prime example of successful economic development and a model to be emulated by late industrialisers. List thereby fashioned his ideas on national development out of the historical experience of an empire whereby he internalised its economic logic and discourse of the civilising mission. Consequently, List's national economy culminated in an early vision of the global north–south relations, in which the global industrial-financial core would expand to include France, Germany and the USA, while the rest of the world would be reduced to quasi-colonial agrarian hinterlands.     

From socialism in the 1900s to socialism in the 2000s: the rise of liberal socialism

In the twentieth century, Europe and North America were at the epicentre of the century-long conflict between capitalism and socialism; more specifically, between the rule of law and the rule through law. By the early 1990s, socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe decayed from within leaving in its wake economic misery and intellectual emptiness. Yet, socialism is raising its head once again. This new variant of socialism, which I call ‘liberal socialism’, has one critical difference that sets it apart from its predecessors. Unlike all three types of socialism in the last century – Fascism, National Socialism and Communism – liberal socialism is not imposed from the top down; it is emerging from the bottom up. The incentive effects of increasing redistributional governmental programmes map a road to liberal socialism by influencing the median voter and weakening private property rights. However, election results in many European countries, and at state and local levels in the United States, suggest that the median voter has not moved to the left. At the same time, economic analysis and empirical evidence have established the economic efficiency of credible and stable private property rights relative to all other property rights arrangements. Thus, liberal socialism is a real threat to the rule of law but its success is far from certain.     

The Sins of the Fathers: Intergenerational Income Mobility in China

This paper aims to obtain an accurate estimate of China's intergenerational income mobility and to present evidence on its distributional pattern. Using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) over the period 1989–2009, I find that China is less mobile than most developed countries. Then, I employ five different approaches to investigate the distributional pattern of China's intergenerational mobility across income levels. The results suggest that poor families have relatively high mobility, indicating opportunities for the poor children to escape poverty. Finally, I show that while wealthy fathers are likely to pass on their favorable economic status to their sons, rich sons come from a very wide range of family economic backgrounds.     

Geopolitical fantasies,national strategies and ordinary Russians in the post‐communist Era

New geopolitical writings that have developed in the post‐Soviet period are predicated on different ideological and historical perspectives and against the formal statements of Russia's place in the world from President Vladimir Putin and enshrined in the document ‘Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation’. Four geopolitical schools can be identified, ranging from the fantastic notions of extreme Eurasianism to the reformers’ goal of tying Russia firmly to the West. Formal statements concentrate on Russia's regional prominence in Eurasia and on close integration into the world economic and political systems. However, ordinary Russians display little interest in these geopolitical writings or in the foreign policy actions of the Russian state, except in special cases where the Russian military are actively involved on Russian territory or the ‘near abroad’. In this regard, Russian public opinion has increasingly become like that of the Western democracies, generally disinterested in foreign policy and focused on their personal day‐to‐day lives.     

Watching out for regional separatism in the Russian far East: Ideological cueing of territorial security,economic incentives and cultural identity

Why has regional separatism failed to materialise in the post‐Soviet Russian Far East despite the region's remoteness from Russia's European heartland, its proximity to the Pacific Rim economies, the decline of economic support from Moscow, and a ‘frontier’ culture of resistance to Moscow's rule? Focusing on political developments in Primorskii Krai ‐ the key frontier province in the Russian Far East ‐ the study finds that territorial security, economic incentives, and cultural identity affect proclivities for regional separatism selectively, depending on ideological and institutional constraints in which centre‐periphery relations are embedded. In the absence of ideological commitments and enforceable institutional rales and norms, centre‐periphery conflicts devolve into economic bargaining and rule‐manipulation by elites for quick material gains. The changing ideological context amidst post‐Soviet institutional transition in Russia provide the most consistent explanation of conflict dynamic between Primorskii Krai's leaders and Moscow, of the non‐emergence of regional separatism, and of gross economic mismanagement of the province.     

The Lost Promise of Democratic Socialism in Russia

To explain the failure to create democratic socialism in Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, I apply Thorstein Veblen’s vision of economic democracy as a cure for vested interests. In late imperial Russia, many socialist thinkers imagined socialism primarily in terms of workplace democracy, worker ownership, local governance, and economic decentralization. Their vision was destroyed, first, by Bolshevik policies and then by Stalin’s tyrannical command economy. Thereafter, vested interests reemerged in the Soviet Union as an underground economy, rife with theft of public resources, and then, with the beginning of transition, capitalism in its most neoliberal form was restored.     

The impact of sub‐national institutions

This paper assesses the effect of sub‐national institutions on the economic performance of Russia's regions (oblasts, republics, krais and okrugs) from 2001 to 2008, a period of rapid economic advancement and recentralization. Approximating sub‐national institutions with the RA Expert index of investment risk, we find that a reduction in investment risk by one standard deviation increases output by 1.4 percent in the short run and 11.9 percent in the long run, suggesting a substantial regional performance gap in government practices, despite intensive political recentralization. Assuming that the main components of effective governance are running satisfactory public health programmes aimed at decreasing overall mortality among the working‐age population, creating fair labour market conditions and improving the regional institutional climate to encourage investment in fixed assets, we argue that sub‐national institutions remain important for growth in post‐Soviet Russia after 2000. This paper contributes to the literature on institutional persistence.     

Crime and corruption in transitional economies: lessons for Cuba

Trends in aggregate crime rates across Europe reveal significant increases in crime in transitional countries. We identify causal mechanisms associated with the economic transition. Historical experience of corruption in the Soviet Union is reviewed, and connections between corruption and transition are analyzed. We apply the results to Cuba's current circumstances, examining the potential for growth in crime and corruption in Cuba and suggesting policies to ameliorate it.     

Geography, institutions, and the making of comparative development

While the direct impact of geographic endowments on prosperity is present in all countries, in former colonies, geography has also affected colonization policies and, therefore, institutional outcomes. Using non-colonized countries as a control group, I re-examine the theories put forward by La Porta et al. (J Law Econ Org 15(1):222–279, 1999 and Acemoglu et al. (Am Econ Rev 91(5), 1369–1401, 2001. I find strong support for both theories, but also evidence that the authors’ estimates of the impact of colonization on institutions and growth are biased, since they confound the effect of the historical determinants of institutions with the direct impact of geographic endowments on development. In a baseline estimation, I find that the approach of Acemoglu et al. (2001) overestimates the importance of institutions for economic growth by 28 %, as a country’s natural disease environment affected settler mortality during colonization and also has a direct impact on prosperity. The approach of La Porta et al. (1999) underestimates the importance of colonization-imposed legal origin for institutional development by 63 %, as Britain tended to colonize countries that are remote from Europe and thus suffer from low access to international markets.     

The Economic Agenda: a View from Europe

Over the course of the 1990s, the US outperformed Europe not only in output growth, but also in productivity and employment generation, thereby stopping Europe's decade‐long period of catching up. The author shows that the growth difference originates at least partly from insufficient investment by Europe into the determinants of long‐run growth (research, education, and the diffusion of new technologies). Northern European countries with comprehensive welfare systems performed better than the big economies in continental Europe, owing to their timely realization that these costly systems require the highest possible levels of productivity and fast growth. The European agenda for the next decade is based on this analysis. It stresses the importance of accelerating economic growth, primarily through investment into growth drivers. Labor market reforms are necessary, as is the redefinition of macroeconomic policy, a regional policy adequate for European enlargement, and reforms in the public sector. Distributional and ecological issues are also on the agenda, even though Europe outperforms the US in these fields, as is reflective of European preferences.     

Colombian international trade from a physical perspective: Towards an ecological “Prebisch thesis”

Prebisch's approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour. Peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while Centre countries export industrial goods. The Terms of Trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate. This approach can be extended to ecological issues. The international Centre–Periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital, but also the physical exchange in which Southern countries provide materials and energy so that Northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism. This metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods. This paper aims to apply and extend Prebisch's thought on unequal exchange, both monetary and ecological, in relation to Colombian trade in the period 1970–2002, using Material Flow Analysis.