Income disparities in the transition of China: reducing negative effects by dispelling misconceptions

Despite some conflicting figures, the problem of income disparities has probably increased in China, especially in the recent years. Although income disparity may be a natural outcome of a market economy, there are specific factors in China making it more of a problem. The negative effects of income disparity may be inflated by certain misconceptions. Such misconceptions may be dispelled by some simple economic analysis. In particular, the Marxist theory of exploitation can be shown to be incorrect; the enrichment of a sector can be shown to be beneficial to others in its general thrust; and a slightly higher growth rate with greater income disparity may be beneficial to the lower income groups in the long run owing to the compounding effects, which are usually underestimated.     

企业诊断的基础 自我评价模型

自我评价是一种诊断性评价 ,对于企业的持续改进和市场竞争力的提升具有非常重要的作用。模型的建立是任何类型评价进行的重要前提。因此 ,应建立一种自我评价模型 ,并从企业系统的各个方面对模型进行详细的说明 ,然后总结其主要特征。     

Environmental Ethics and Analysis in International Business Courses

The increasing governmental and public concern about threats to the environment will be a significant factor in the conduct of international business in coming years. There will have to be operational and strategic adjustments to cope with the new environmental laws and regulations. Multinational companies will also be expected to be operated under an environmental ethic beyond simply what the law requires. This paper offers a preliminary proposal for incorporating environmental ethics and analysis into the traditional core subjects of international business courses and references a wide body of literature that can be utilized.     

About the authors

The European Commission's proposed consultative document on ‘Commercial Communication within the Internal Market’ should focus on policy objectives. It is only when there is clarity as to the purposes of control that sensible decisions can be made as to the respective roles, across the European Community, of regulation and self-regulation. In the UK, the EC Misleading Advertising Directive has been implemented with the Office of Fair Trading providing a safety net beneath both legal instruments and self-regulatory mechanisms. If self-regulatory mechanisms are to be considered at the EC level, there must be awareness of the strengths and weaknesses. A number of features are identified for self-regulation to be successful. A balance must also be drawn between activity at the EC level and activity at member state level. Standards and enforcement practice should be as consistent as possible, but there is also a need to respect legitimate national, regional and local diversity. The main options are reviewed. There may be a case for a variant of the home authority principle, which has been developed to co-ordinate the domestic ‘cross-border’ work of UK trading standards authorities, to be developed at EC level. The recently formed International Marketing Supervision Network may be a step in that direction.

The forthcoming consultative document will be a vehicle for taking these issues forward. The broad objective should be to secure maximum freedom, transparency and confidence in the market. Effective arrangements, in which both businesses and the public have confidence, are essential for the development of the internal market.     

Towards a Custom-Made Whistleblowing Policy. Using Grid-Group Cultural Theory to Match Policy Measures to Different Styles of Peer Reporting

To be effective, whistleblowing policies should be adapted to the organisational culture. They need to be custom-made and not follow a one-size-fits-all logic, specifically when they are installed to stimulate responsible peer reporting, a highly sensitive and value-laden type of whistleblowing. This paper attempts to illustrate that grid-group cultural theory could help to construct a whistleblowing policy by linking reporting styles to the organisational culture. First, we will identify four types of policy measures that are hypothesized to be effective in four types of organisational culture. Second, we develop the hypothesis that certain organisational cultures can induce peer reporting that is harmful for the organisation. The whistleblowing policy can then be used as a catalyst for cultural change.     

International Organisations: The Challenge of Aligning Mission,Means and Legitimacy

To be effective an international organisation must (a) be given an appropriate mission; (b) be given the means to accomplish its mission; and (c) be viewed as legitimate when carrying out the mission. This paper explores the problems in achieving these prerequisites for success first in a general discussion and then in an application to the WTO. Ensuring these conditions are met is not easy because there is an inherent tendency for many international institutions to experience ‘mission creep’, particularly when accountability for burden sharing is weak. This leads to the central dilemma facing many international organisations. If missions are expanded, and organisations given insufficient means, they are likely to fail (or fall short of optimal behaviour) and be criticised for ineffectiveness. However, the more extensive the means they are given, the more likely that their legitimacy will be questioned. The paper argues that the best way for the WTO to deal with these tensions would be to adopt an approach built on a more variable geometry in which countries would not all be required to participate in a single undertaking.     

Hiring for Subsidiaries in Developing Countries

If local personnel are qualified or can be trained to fill managerial positions in a subsidiary located in a developing country, then MNCs should give them the opportunity to do so. When local talent isn%'t available, expatriates should be used but they need to be fully briefed about the culture, language, and other aspects of the developing country to be their home.     

Suchmaschinen unter der Lupe: Informationsherrschaft und ihre Schranken

Informational power by search engines should be analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, unlimited access to personal data can be in conflict with the interests of individuals whose data can be accessed. These interests are part of a right to privacy, including a “right to be forgotten,” which, however, must be balanced against the public interest in disclosure of information. Balancing these conflicting interests is a difficult task — a task that lies with the search engines themselves. On the other hand, firms and individuals may have an interest in their information to be found, in particular (but not only) for commercial purposes. Suppressing or “downgrading” this information as displayed to users may significantly reduce visibility. In light of these interests, it has been proposed to oblige search engines to implement “search neutrality“; i.e., that they have to present search results in an unbiased way. In this article, we take a clear position against ex ante regulation. Instead, competition law provides a sufficient framework, to protect against the abuse of “informational” market power. We sketch a new approach that may allow competition law to be applied more quickly in dynamic markets such as internet search markets.     

Giving Advice to Government: The Case of Russia

The Russian government is currently inundated with advice from international agencies but such advice should be offered cautiously. Evidence gathered by a recent United Nations Mission to Russia suggests that Western experts are giving insufficient consideration to the inter-relationship between economic and social problems; that the constraints of Russia's historial position cannot be overlooked; that social policies must re-inforce economic reform; and that there is a compelling case for gradual privatisation if mass unemployment is to be avoided. The priority now is to move from what is to be done to how it is to be done.     

外推型预期公式的检验与评价

经济学中的很多变量需要预测,其中的一个方法是运用外推型预期公式。由于外推型预期公式有 其自身特点和规律,即趋势值的选择是影响预测效果的一个主要变量,因此使用该公式进行经济预测时, 短期预测应选择较小的趋势值,长期预测应选取中间的趋势值。     

Finance for development and islamic banking

Islamic banking, where fixed interest contracts are banned, needs if it is to be successful to operate within a type of financial system in which bank-industry relationships are sufficiently close and pervasive for profit- and loss-sharing arrangements to be acceptable to both sides. However, the creation of such a business culture is likely to be difficult.     

Vocational Virtue Ethics: Prospects for a Virtue Ethic Approach to Business

In this essay, I explore the prospects for a virtue ethic approach to business. First, I delineate two fundamental criteria that I believe must be met for any such approach to be viable: viz., the virtues must be exercised for the sake of the good of one’s life as a unitary whole (contra role-morality approaches) and for the common good of the communities of which one is a part as well as the individual good of their members (contra egoist approaches). Second, I argue that these two criteria can be met only if we are able to reconceive and transform the nature of work within contemporary business organizations. In particular, what is needed, I argue, is a retrieval of something like the older ideal of work as a “vocation”, or “calling”, whereby work can be viewed as a specific aspect of a more general calling to pursue, through the practice of the virtues, “the good life” both for ourselves and for others. Lastly, I consider some important challenges to this “vocational virtue ethic” approach to work within contemporary business organizations and offer a few suggestions for how they might be met.     

Defending a dominant position in a technology led environment

A company with a significant technology lead over its rivals cannot afford to be complacent about its position. In this article, Filippo Dell'Osso contrasts the case of Glaxo's Zantac — a massively successful drug representing only a modest technological advance — with EMI's CAT scanner, a massive technological advance of limited commercial benefit to EMI. In order to be fully exploited, a technology advantage needs to be complemented by the development of other corporate assets.     

Social Principles As a Framework for Ethical Analysis (With an Application to the Tobin Tax)

Rooted in a reasoned understanding of what it is to be a human being in community, Catholic social principles are accessible to a pluralistic, even secular, audience. Instead of being used separately in an ad hoc manner, these principles can be applied as a single analytical framework in examining ethical questions. Doing so allows the manifold dimensions of social problems to surface. The paper applies this framework on the issue of whether currency markets ought to be taxed in order to deter speculation.     

信道化发射机在通信对抗中的应用

瞄准式多频点干扰样式可以解决对宽通信频段的干扰问题,该干扰样式可以通过 实信号信道化发射机来实现,该发射机可作为通信干扰机应用于移动通信对抗中。以CDMA扩 频系统为例,可用该发射机对其实施瞄准式干扰,也可将这种发射机应用于对多个通信系统 的干扰中,实现对宽通信频段的有效干扰。     

谈儒家师德观的主要特征及其对当代的启示

教师在从事教育教学活动中,必须遵守一定的行为规范和道德准则,包括教师的道德观念、道德修养、道德教育和道德评价。儒家学者在长期实践中形成了一整套严格的师德思想和独特的价值观念,倡导教师要博学多识、循循善诱、教书育人、为人师表、以德立教、率先垂范、以身作则等等。儒家师德观基于现代人的启示是:教师要具有人格魅力和榜样示范力量,要注重学生品德的培养和塑造,要重视师德建设与社会风尚的关系,要认清师德与学问的关系,要具有大众教育和英才教育的社会责任感,争做"经师",更要做好"人师"。     

Efficient Estimates of the Total Cost of a Selection of Food Items in a Consumer Purchase Setting

The use of computers in planning consumer food purchases requires that price estimates for a selection of goods be determined in advance of the purchases. If such estimates are to be widely used, they must be accurate and inexpensive to generate. This paper describes a price estimation method which meets these criteria. The method is intended to be applied to shopping baskets of goods from any store in a community. The results of empirical tests of the method are reported which reveal support for its accuracy and ease of use.     

关于现行个人所得税税前扣除问题的探讨

综合考虑各方面因素，从纵向公平的角度，我国目前个人所得税800元的税前扣除标准不宜提高，可以通过扩大最低税率级距的办法对中等收入者进行照顾。从横向公平的角度，不宜实行不同地区不同税前扣除标准。对于已有工资薪金所得并已进行税前扣除的个人获得的劳务报酬、稿酬等应全额征税，不再进行税前费用扣除。     

Neutrality agreements: How unions organize new hotels without an employee ballot

Hoteliers who have a project under development increasingly are being asked by labor-union organizers to sign so-called neutrality agreements—sometimes under duress. While labor unions do not operate in all hotel markets, this organizing tactic seems to be gaining currency where unions are present. By signing a neutrality agreement, the hotelier agrees not to oppose the union's organizing efforts, to allow the union to contact employees during work hours, and to allow the union access to employee directories. Without the agreement, the union would not be allowed any of those things, and the hotelier would be allowed to state its case publicly for why employees might not want to be represented by a union. The duress comes from the union's potential threat to use political connections to hamper the project's permits and to invoke the activity of other labor unions. The key element missing in the neutrality agreement is the employees' consent to the arrangement. Given that workers are legally given the right by U.S. labor law to decide via a secret ballot whether they do or do not want to be represented by a union, a neutrality agreement that allows for employers to recognize a union via a “card check” provision appears to abrogate that right to a secret vote by effectively sealing the matter before the hotel even begins hiring. Recent court rulings point to the likelihood that if workers formally complain to the National Labor Relations Board about such agreements, those agreements could be set aside.