政府规模、市场化与地区腐败

Using a panel data at the provincial level during the period of 1989–2004, this paper examines the effects of social and economic factors such as government scale, privatization, openness, and education on regional corruption. Applying a fixed-effect model and IV estimation, we find that government size positively affects the incidence rate of corruption, and the effect becomes larger with the increase in the size of the core department of the government. 1% increase in the core department of the government leads to a 0.68%–1% increase in the number of corruption cases. While the proportion of FDI is positively associated with the corruption of regional officials, the ratio of the import and export trade to GDP is negatively associated with corruption. The impact of privatization on corruption is ambiguous. We also identify the significant impacts of the size and structure of the government expenditure on corruption. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2008, (11): 16–26     

Synergy Goes to War: A Bioeconomic Theory of Collective Violence

Synopsis Synergy – here defined as otherwise unattainable combined effects that are produced by two or more elements, parts or individuals – has played a key causal role in the evolution of complexity, from the very origins of life to the evolution of humankind and complex societies. This theory – known as the ‘Synergism Hypothesis’ – also applies to social behavior, including the use of collective violence for various purposes: predation, defense against predators, the acquisition of needed resources and the defense of these resources against other groups and species. Among other things, there have been (1) synergies of scale, (2) cost and risk sharing, (3) a division of labor (or, better said, a ‘combination of labor’), (4) functional complementarities, (5) information sharing and collective ‘intelligence’, and (6) tool and technology ‘symbioses’. Many examples can be seen in the natural world – from predatory bacteria like Myxococcus xanthus to social insects like the predatory army ants and the colonial raiders Messor pergandei, mobbing birds like the common raven, cooperative pack-hunting mammals like wolves, wild dogs, hyenas and lions, coalitions of mate-seeking and mate-guarding male dolphins, the well-armed troops of savanna baboons, and, closest to humans, the group-hunting, group-raiding and even ‘warring’ communities of chimpanzees. Equally significant, there is reason to believe that various forms of collective violence were of vital importance to our own ancestors’ transition, over several million years, from an arboreal, frugivorous, mostly quadrupedal ape to a world-traveling, omnivorous, large-brained, tool-dependent, loquacious biped. The thesis that warfare is not a recent ‘historical’ invention will be briefly reviewed in this paper. This does not mean that humans are, after all, ‘killer apes’ with a reflexive blood-lust or an aggressive ‘drive’. The biological, psychological and cultural underpinnings of collective violence are far more subtle and complex. Most important, the incidence of collective violence – in nature and human societies alike – is greatly influenced by synergies of various kinds, which shape the ‘bioeconomic’ benefits, costs and risks. Synergy is a necessary (but not sufficient) causal agency. Though there are notable exceptions (and some significant qualifiers), collective violence is, by and large, an evolved, synergy-driven instrumentality in humankind, not a mindless instinct or a reproductive strategy run amok.      

中国西部地区的能源开发与经济增长——基于"资源诅咒"假说的实证分析

Based on resource curse hypothesis, this paper carries out an econometric analysis on the relationship and its transmission mechanism between energy exploitation and economic growth with cross-province panel data over 1991–2006. Results reveal that there is the significantly negative correlation between energy exploitation and economic growth, which indicates since the 1990s, the resource curse effect from energy exploitation has appeared evidently; though, before the implementation of the Western development strategy, energy exploitation acted negatively on opening degree, S&T innovation and human capital input, the effect was yet uncreated. However, after the implementation of the strategy, the effect emerged evidently as a result of the enhanced negative effect of energy exploitation on S&T innovation and human capital input. Moreover, further tests indicate that energy exploitation impeded economic growth mainly through three indirect transmission channels: The crowding-out effect towards human capital input and S&T innovation, and the weakening of institution aroused by rent-seeking and corruption. And among them, human capital input is the strongest transmission factor. __________ Translated from Jingji yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2008, (4): 147–160     

Complexity of economic structures and emergent properties

This concept revolves around differences of embeddedness of organizations in the macro patterns of routines (economic policy regimes), which in turn may differentially provide them–and the system as a whole–with ‘procedural rationality’ in dealing with identified problems in their relevant complex environment. Regularities of interdependence are specified between different regime patterns and the variety of coordination routines between and inside micro organizations. Corresponding regularities are also observed for internal governance routines of organizations, which in turn determine the behavioral adaptation by self-organization that may be rationally in a local perspective, but–contingent on the organization’s embeddedness in the coordination structure–not necessarily so in a comprehensive one.

增长失衡与政府责任:基于社会性支出角度的分析

There exists a kind of growth imbalance in China’s current development process, which is essentially characterized by the imbalance between the nation’s wealth and the people’s welfare. This paper points out that growth imbalance results mostly from insufficient government social spending on people’s welfare. Consequently, the government should shoulder the basic responsibility for the provision of education, health and social security, quicken the transformation of government expenditure structure and increase the share of social spending, in order to improve the people’s welfare and achieve the rebalancing of growth. The increase in social spending can also promote the accumulation of human capital, which will help the conversion of economic growth pattern and the realization of sustainable and healthy economic development. Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2006, (10): 4–17     

Corruption and the Political Economy of Resource-Based Development: A Comparison of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

We model how the “supply and demand” for bribes affects resource use by an economy, and the reinvestment of resource rents in other assets. This requires adjusting the World Bank’s measure adjusted net savings for any rent dissipation due to corruption. The impacts of corruption on long-run changes and periodic growth in the adjusted net savings rate are estimated across African and Asian economies from 1970 to 2003. Corruption rather than resource dependency per se affects negatively the ability of African countries to reinvest resource rents in the short term, but for Asian countries, corruption is less important than point resources. Corruption influences long-run growth in adjusted net savings rates in all countries, and is also the “pathway” through which this growth is affected by patterns of resource use, trade and abundance.     

Economic Reform and Corruption: Evidence from Panel Data

The notion that economic reform can reduce corruption remains prevalent in the policy agenda of international financial institutions, especially of the World Bank. Economic reforms have, therefore, been carried out throughout various parts of the world to improve the performance of the economies. Using data from 94 low‐ and middle‐income nations for the period 1996–2015, this study employs static and dynamic panel analysis to examine whether economic reform undertaken in accordance with the World Bank's reform programs negatively affects corruption. Our findings suggest that enhancing government effectiveness (i.e. independence of civil service from political pressure, provision of quality public services, effective policy formulation and the government's commitment to such policies) and improving public rights and civil liberties could be some of the most promising policies in terms of fighting corruption. The role of economic development and growth in real per capita income is also found to be significant in some of the specifications. However, the assertion that economic reform can reduce corruption is rejected in all the specifications. We rather find evidence that economic reforms negatively affect the ability of democracy to fight corruption, although on a slim margin. The central theme of the implications of our findings is that in combating corruption, social, institutional and legal means are far more important than economic means. The finding thus is compatible with the World Bank's effort in the later years to introduce governance and democracy as effective tool against corruption.     

Foreign trade, local protectionism and industrial location in China

In this paper, we find that, in China, geographical changes of industrial bases in the 1980s had led to a slight drop in the extent of specialization and location imbalance, but in 1990s the specialization and industry imbalance have further developed. The geographical advantage for trade has a significant impact on the location patterns, and the effects of local protectionism are confined to the hinterland in 1990s. The role of comparative advantage in shaping industry location is evident, and some predictions derived from new economic geography are partially supported. __________ Translated from Jingjixue (Jikan) 经济学(季刊) (China Economic Quarterly), 2006, 5(3): 733–760     

Natural persons,corporate actors,and constitutions

Extending the concept of efficiency beyond economic markets to social transactions generally, this paper asks the question whether social efficiency might not be better realized by removing the barriers to transactions between political and economic resources. With political rights (i.e. resources) held by natural persons, and economic resources held by corporate actors, such transactions could in principle replace taxation for redistribution, as a more efficient method of redistribution, intrinsic to the socio-political system. Such politico-economic transactions would supplement the primary means of distribution of the social product in an economic system, that is wages for productive labor. In the paper it is argued that this primary means of distribution is increasingly ineffective as the economy becomes increasingly interdependent. This change places an increasing burden on the “second round” of distribution through taxation, and forces consideration of a less defective and more theoretically sound means of supplementary income distribution. Paper was presented at the Organizations, Constitutions, and Liberty conference sponsored by the Liberty Fund, June 21–24, 1990 at the Sheraton Hotel in Crystal City, Virginia.     

The Sensory Order and other Adaptive Classifying Systems

Synopsis Hayek’s cognitive theory, which seeks to describe the operation of a particular order, in fact provides a paradigmatic account of knowledge-generating orders in general. We claim that this paradigm provides a fertile conceptual framework for exploring a variety of problems in economics and social theory. In particular, we shall show that Hayek’s conception of the ‘map’ and the ‘model’, which he uses to explain the operation of the complex adaptive classifying system called ‘mind’, are promising analytical devices with applications extending to social structures of various kinds and complexity. We use Hayek’s notion of the map and model to analyze how different social structures – regarded as classifying systems – work in terms of their input, processing, and output capabilities. The adaptive characteristics of such systems, via communicative routines, multi-level classification, and feedback, form central motifs for our discussion of markets, science, and other social structures. We show that by analyzing the knowledge-generating characteristics of such structures we are also able to gain insights about the circumstances affecting their adaptive properties.     

What economic agents do: How cognition and interaction lead to emergence and complexity

Kohn (The Cato Journal, 24(3):303–339, 2004) has argued that the neoclassical conception of economics—what he terms the “value paradigm”—has experienced diminishing marginal returns for some time. He suggests a new perspective is emerging—one that gives more import to economic processes and less to end states, one that bases behavior less on axioms and more on laboratory experiments. He calls this the “exchange paradigm”. He further asserts that it is the mathematization of economics that is partially at fault for leading the profession down a methodological path that has become something of a dead end. Here I suggest that the nascent research program Kohn has rightly spotted is better understood as distinct from its precursors because it is intrinsically dynamic, permits agent actions out of equilibrium, and treats such actions as occurring within networks. Analyzing economic processes having these characteristics is mathematically very difficult and I concur with Kohn’s appeal to computational approaches. However, I claim it is so-called multi-agent systems and agent-based models that are the way forward within the “exchange paradigm,” and not the cellular automata (Wolfram, A new kind of science, 2002) that Kohn seems to promote. Agent systems are generalizations of cellular automata and support the natural abstraction of individual economic agents as software agents.     

On locally optimal programs in the Robinson–Solow–Srinivasan model

In the context of a model due to Robinson, Solow and Srinivasan (the RSS model), we report results on the existence and characterization of locally optimal programs, a concept taken from theoretical physics. In particular, we propose a (new) transversality condition under which all locally optimal programs are good. An extended introduction places our theorems in the context of previous work on the existence question, including that on agreeable programs. It appears that there is no completely rational way to attack [the] problem without considering development programmes over an infinite horizon (Gale in Rev Econ Stud 34:1–8, 1967). The analysis of simple models is essential if we are to understand the corresponding situation for more complex models of the economy (Mirrlees and Stern in J Econ Theory 4:268–288, 1972). The technical convenience, for clear and quantitative results, of using an infinite time horizon is rather great (Hammond and Mirrlees in Models of economic growth, Wiley, New York, pp 283–299, 1973).     

The impact of liberalization on bureaucratic corruption

Liberalization increases the number of goods available for consumption within a country. Since bureaucrats value variety, this raises the marginal utility of accepting a bribe. This “benefit effect” is counteracted by an increasing “cost effect” from corruption deterrence activities that arise due to greater international pressure to curb corruption. The interaction of these two effects can lead to a non-monotonic relation between liberalization and corruption. Moreover, pre-commitment to deterrence activities is shown to be more effective in controlling corruption. Empirical evidence supports the existence of a non-monotonic relation between economic openness and corruption among developing countries.     

Corruption clubs: empirical evidence from kernel density estimates

A common finding of many analytical models is the existence of multiple equilibria of corruption. Countries characterized by the same economic, social and cultural background do not necessarily experience the same levels of corruption. In this article, we use Kernel Density Estimation techniques to analyse the cross-country distribution of corruption. Particular emphasis will be given to the question whether the distribution of corruption shows more than one peak. We find that most of the estimated densities exhibit twin peaks. We also provide some evidence on the intra-distribution dynamics and the persistence of corruption. We find the group of countries classified within the two ‘clubs’ to be very stable. Corruption is a highly persistent phenomenon. Substantial changes in the economic, political and cultural environment of countries within the ‘corruption club’ are required before a significant decline of corruption is to be expected.     

Evolutionary macroeconomics: a research agenda

In this article, the goal is to offer a new research agenda for evolutionary macroeconomics. The article commences with a broad review of the main ideas in the history of thought concerning the determinants of economic growth and an introduction to the evolutionary perspective. This is followed by a selective review of recent evolutionary approaches to macroeconomics. These approaches are found to be somewhat disconnected. It is argued that the ‘micro-meso-macro’ approach to economic evolution is capable of resolving this problem by offering an analytical framework in which macroeconomics can be built upon ‘meso-foundations’, not micro-foundations, as asserted in the mainstream. It is also stressed that the economic system and its components are complex adaptive systems and that this complexity must not be assumed away through the imposition of simplistic assumptions made for analytical convenience. It is explained that complex economic systems are, at base, energetic in character but differ from biological complex systems in the way that they collect, store and apply knowledge. It is argued that a focus upon stocks and flows of energy and knowledge in complex economic systems can yield an appropriate analytical framework for macroeconomics. It is explained how such a framework can be connected with key insights of both Schumpeter and Keynes that have been eliminated in modern macroeconomics. A macroeconomic framework that cannot be operationalized empirically is of limited usefulness so, in the last part of the article, an appropriate methodology for evolutionary macroeconomics is discussed.     

Testing the balanced growth hypothesis: evidence from China

We investigate whether China’s experience during 1952–2004 supports the balanced growth entailment of the neoclassical growth model. Estimation of long-run relations among output, consumption and investment for the full period reject the balanced growth hypothesis for both the national and regional economies. When the economic reforms of the late 1970s are modelled as a structural break by the methods of Johansen et al. (Economet J 3(2):216–249, 2000) and Perron (Econometrica 57(6):1361–1401, 1989), we find some evidence of balanced growth in the pre-break period but in the post-break period the ‘great ratios’ are trend-stationary, precluding fully balanced growth, though permitting a common (stochastic) productivity trend.      

Economic impact of ocean fish populations in the global fishery

Our goal in this paper is to estimate the total output in an economy that is currently dependent (at least partially) on current fisheries output. We therefore applied the Leontief technological coefficients at current production and then estimate total output supported throughout the economy at the current level of production. Estimates of gross revenue from capture fisheries suggest that the direct value of output for this sector is US $80–85 billion annually (Sumaila et al., Journal of Bioeconomics 9(1):39–51, 2007; Willmann et al., The Sunken Billions, World Bank, FAO, Washington DC, Rome, 2009). However, as a primary or a potential economic base industry, there are a vast number of secondary economic activities—from boat building to international transport—that are supported by world fisheries, yet these related activities are rarely considered when evaluating the economic impact of fisheries. This study applies an input–output methodology to estimate the total direct, indirect, and induced impact of marine capture fisheries on the world economy. While results suggest that there is a great deal of variation in fishing output multipliers between regions and countries, when we apply the output multipliers to the capture fisheries sector at the global level, we find that significant indirect and induced effects place the impact of this sector to world output nearly three times larger than the value of landings at first sale, at between US $80–85 billion annually (Sumaila et al., Journal of Bioeconomics 9(1):39–51, 2007; Willmann et al., The Sunken Billions, World Bank, FAO, Washington DC, Rome, 2009). However, as a primary or a potential economic base industry, there are a vast number of secondary economic activities—from boat building to international transport—that are supported by world fisheries, yet these related activities are rarely considered when evaluating the economic impact of fisheries. This study applies an input–output methodology to estimate the total direct, indirect, and induced impact of marine capture fisheries on the world economy. While results suggest that there is a great deal of variation in fishing output multipliers between regions and countries, when we apply the output multipliers to the capture fisheries sector at the global level, we find that significant indirect and induced effects place the impact of this sector to world output nearly three times larger than the value of landings at first sale, at between US 225 and 240 billion per year.     

On a clear day you might see an environmental Kuznets curve

We shed some new light on the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and show how it can be viewed as a particular form of equilibrium relationship, where technology and preference parameters determine the shape of the curve. In contrast to most of the literature on the EKC, we estimate a theoretically consistent model on long-run data (Swedish sulfur emission, covering the period 1900–2002). Furthermore, we test and date structural change. The model suggests four regimes, 1900–1918, 1919–1933, 1934–1967 and 1968–2002, generating four rather different patterns for pollution over time. The policy-conclusions are consonant with Pearce’s general view about the EKC: there is no theoretical presumption that it has an inverted U shape, nor should any country try to “grow out of the environmental problems” without analyzing the benefits and costs of so doing.     

The demand for money in Austria

In this paper, the demand for real money M1, M2, and M3 is estimated for Austria over the time period 1965–96. The modelling takes place within the framework of a small vector autoregression. To estimate the demand for money, two-equation error-correction models are constructed, which contain the short-run dynamics and the long-run economic equilibrium. It is found that a stable money demand exists for all monetary aggregates. The long-run equilibrium of M1, after accounting for a structural break in 1979, can be characterised as a classical type of money demand, with no interest rate effects and an elasticity of one for real GDP. In the case of M2 and M3, we find a unit coefficient on income and a significantly negative influence of a long-term interest rate. The statistical properties of the estimated short-run money demand equations – considering in-sample and out-of-sample tests – are generally very good. First version received: October 1996/Final version received: April 2000     

Property as an economic concept: reconciling legal and economic conceptions of property rights in a Coasean framework

Adopting a simplistic view of Coase (J Law Econ 3:1–44, 1960), most economic analyses of property rights disregard both the key advantage that legal property rights (that is, in rem rights) provide to rightholders in terms of enhanced enforcement, and the difficulties they pose to acquirers in terms of information asymmetry about legal title. Consequently, these analyses tend to overstate the role of “private ordering” and disregard the two key elements of property law: first, the essential conflict between property (that is, in rem) enforcement and transaction costs; and, second, the institutional solutions created to overcome it, mainly contractual registries capable of making truly impersonal (that is, asset-based) trade viable when previous relevant transactions on the same assets are not verifiable by judges. This paper fills this gap by reinterpreting both elements within the Coasean framework and thus redrawing the institutional foundations of both property and corporate contracting.