关于大饥荒研究中的几个问题

本文指出<"大跃进"运动与中国1958-1961年饥荒:集权体制下的国家、集体与农民>和<从退堂权的失而复得看"大跃进"饥荒的成因和教训>两文中的几个问题,这些也是近年来研究中国大饥荒的文献中争论最多的问题:(1)森的饥荒理论框架同样适用于计划经济体制,饥荒的发生本质上是因为食物获取权的失败;(2)粮食征购率的解释在统计上可能存在问题,其解释能力可能被高估;(3)公共食堂机制可能更多反映了政策的激进程度,而公共食堂本身只是一个副产品;(4)将不同层面的解释融合在一起时可能各自混淆,集体提留与分配体制只是同一问题的不同方面而已.     

CRIMINAL SENTENCING GUIDELINES AND JUDICIAL DISCRETION

This article studies the institutional structure of criminal sentencing, focusing on the interaction between legislatures, which set sentencing ranges ex ante, and judges, who choose actual sentences from within those ranges ex post. The key question concerns the extent to which judges are afforded discretion in sentencing, given the possibly divergent interests of legislatures and judges regarding the social function of criminal punishment. The ongoing debate over federal sentencing guidelines provides a context for discussing the policy implications of the model. ( JEL K14, K42)     

Economic Theory as a Guideline for Government Intervention and Control: Comment

This paper provides an institutionalist analysis of the impasse over labor issues that has stalled much needed reform of U.S. immigration policy. While it is unlikely that institutional economics can dislodge a century of conventional wisdom regarding the impact of immigrants on the labor market, a more modest goal is to refute the mainstream economic assertion that what the United States needs to do is to reduce the supply of immigrants, a conclusion that fuels the disgraceful "war on immigrants" that has long plagued reasonable debate over immigration policy.     

Medical service reform: Rituals,hypothetical games and the social sciences

The purpose of this article is two-fold. It provides a framework for understanding what happened in the recently failed effort to reform the U.S. medical industry. The guiding theme is that politicians, the public at large and social scientists framed the discussion in largely ritualistic terms: “bureaucratic reformers” advocated a federally regulated national health system: “market reformers” advocated a free market health system. This framing of the debate doomed meaningful reform, whether or not the Clinton plan had passed. Second, with this discussion as backdrop, a closely related problem is examined:¹ why most social scientists failed to introduce more thoughtful, critical discussion into public debate. This part of the discussion draws on, though is not limited to, the author's experience of more than a decade with issues of health planning and policy,² in medical industry reform in Omaha and in Nebraska.     

The Administered Labor Market: An Institutional Analysis

The purpose of this article is to offer a Polanyian perspective on the issue of guaranteed income (GI). In analyzing the debate over the Speenhamland system, especially as Karl Polanyi ([1944] 2001) describes it in The Great Transformation, he offered an important criticism of a GI program that some contemporary Polanyian economists have been struggling to come to terms with in their writings. Instead of defending a GI policy by seeking to reject Polanyi’s analysis of the problem, I suggest that we should consider embracing Polanyi’s concern by proposing a comprehensive twin policy that would complement a basic income program with a Keynesian full employment commitment.     

Dualistic Discourse and Immigration Policy

Abstract:

The central question in immigration policy is whether to support less immigration through more “restrictive” laws and procedures or whether to support more immigration through a “relaxation” of existing laws. Recently, however, a second debate has arisen on one side of this debate regarding the appropriate types of arguments that may be used to support “restrictive” immigration. Ross Douthat refers to this dispute as the “race versus economics” question: using “race-based” arguments is not legitimate; while an “economic” or a “fact-based” argument is regarded as legitimate. We argue that this distinction in anti-immigration rhetoric is more apparent than real. Using the two most common historical “tropes” in immigration policy, “criminal” and “worker,” we find that racist, anti-ethnic, and classist assumptions pervade U.S. immigration law and policy and have been far more influential in formulating actual policy than either economic or “fact-based” analysis. The central problem with restrictive immigration policy is that its primary purpose is to determine who is eligible to be an American, and who is not; in other words, immigration policy is, by its fundamental intent, invidious. The question is whether it is possible to exclude individuals on these “legitimate” grounds without relying on “illegitimate” invidious distinctions?     

The Clean Development Mechanism’s Low-hanging Fruit Problem: When Might it Arise,and How Might it be Solved?

It is widely recognized that industrialized countries’ commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions will be far less costly to achieve if they can be met at least in part through investment in cheap abatement options available in developing countries, as is permitted under the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. Developing-country NGOs and others involved in the policy debate on the CDM have frequently raised concerns, however, about the so-called “low-hanging fruit” problem. The standard characterization of this problem is that if developing countries allow their cheap abatement options to be used now, they may find themselves worse off in future when they take on emissions-reduction commitments of their own, because only expensive abatement options will remain. We show that under plausible CDM-market imperfections a low-hanging fruit problem may indeed arise, but that the standard characterization of the problem is incorrect. We also present a potential solution, based on mandating a “virtual” option clause in CDM-investment contracts.     

The Institutionalist Roots of Macroprudential Ideas: Veblen and Galbraith on Regulation,Policy Success and Overconfidence

One consequence of the global financial crisis has been to prompt debate over macroprudential regulation – meant to limit private risk-taking that threatens systemic stability. In this paper, we stress the roots of macroprudential ideas in the Institutionalist economics of Veblen and Galbraith in a way that highlights both unrecognised policy possibilities and underappreciated impediments to policy effectiveness, arguing in particular that regulatory success can breed overconfidence. First, we argue that while Veblen's views anticipated macroprudential arguments, they also obscured tensions between the technocratic acumen of policy ‘engineers’ and popular legitimacy. Second, we argue that while Galbraith's views similarly shaped the postwar Keynesian policy mix, they also echoed Veblen in underrating the potential for populist resentment of an intellectual ‘technostructure’. We conclude that while this analysis can be seen as highlighting an overlooked century of macroprudential debate, it also demonstrates the potential for technocratic overconfidence – which can eventually undermine policy legitimacy and effectiveness.     

World energy outlook: An assessment of long-term energy developments and related policies

The purpose of this article is two-fold. It provides a framework for understanding what happened in the recently failed effort to reform the U.S. medical industry. The guiding theme is that politicians, the public at large and social scientists framed the discussion in largely ritualistic terms: “bureaucratic reformers” advocated a federally regulated national health system: “market reformers” advocated a free market health system. This framing of the debate doomed meaningful reform, whether or not the Clinton plan had passed. Second, with this discussion as backdrop, a closely related problem is examined:1 why most social scientists failed to introduce more thoughtful, critical discussion into public debate. This part of the discussion draws on, though is not limited to, the author's experience of more than a decade with issues of health planning and policy,2 in medical industry reform in Omaha and in Nebraska.     

Closure in risk debates: Pre-assessment of Finnish forest biotechnology

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a more systematic and integrative pre-assessment of risk. The paper argues that although there are many insights into ‘pre-assessment’ within the field of risk studies, it suffers from a lack of robust methodological tools and approaches. A problem with the neglect of such approaches is that factors that set the stage for further steps in the risk-handling chain can remain in a state of implicit assumptions, impose biased interpretation of relevant risk issues and mislead the consideration of active intervention options. The suggestion of this article is that ‘social arena analysis,’ combined with the identification of ‘closure mechanisms,’ can provide a practical and theoretically anchored tool for the pre-assessment of risk. The value of this approach is demonstrated through the analysis of a debate on the future and risks of Finnish forest biotechnology, and in a final discussion on policy options emerging from the analysis.     

Incentive Contracts for Natura 2000 Implementation in Forest Areas

The implementation of nature conservation policy is often based on contracts between public authorities and landowners. In this article, we model incentive contracts in forest areas in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard when the conservation outcome is uncertain ex ante but observable ex post. The results show that agents who are likely to achieve a higher level of conservation should be offered a contract where transfers depend on the final outcome, with a bonus for a high ecological level of the forest. When conservation measures are correlated with forest management, we show that the contractual measures involve distorted transfers. We analyse the payment mechanisms used in France and Denmark in the context of the Natura 2000 policy. These mechanisms result in overcompensation and under-performance since they do not take the problem of moral hazard and natural variability into account.     

Environmental (De-) Regulation, Competition, and Policy Rules

This article analyzes some problems regarding our knowledge of environmental policy. Sustainable development as the prospective enlargement of the political agenda has been identified as a long-term challenge for economic policy which could get trapped in a new form of interventionism. The evolutionary market approach that is presented here focuses on development risks of environmental policy that are mostly neglected in standard theory. A transfer of the Hayekian concept of negative rules to the realm of environmental policy is critically discussed. A straight-forward transfer of Hayek's theory stressing the importance of negative rules cannot be recommended, since even the negative rules carry some development risks in the realm of environmental policy. Some preliminary political consequences are drawn which are appropriate to limit the extension of environmental targets in the future.     

The evolution of the monetary policy regimes in the U.S.

The existing literature on U.S. monetary policy provides no sense of a consensus regarding the existence of a monetary policy regime. This article explores the evolution of U.S. monetary policy regimes via the development of a Markov-switching model predicated on narrative and statistical evidence of a monetary policy regime. We identified five regimes for the period spanning 1956:I?C2005:IV and they roughly corresponded to the Chairman term of the Federal Reserve, except for the Greenspan era. More importantly, we demonstrate that the conflicting results regarding the response to inflation for the pre-Volcker period in the existing literature is not attributable to the different data but due to different samples, and also provided an insight regarding the Great Inflation??namely, that the near non-response to inflation in the early 1960s appears to have constituted the initial seed of the Great Inflation. We also find via analysis of the Markov-switching model for the U.S. real interest rate, that the regime changes in the real interest rate follow the regime changes in monetary policy within 2?years and that the evolution of real interest rate regimes provides a good explanation for the conflicting results regarding the dynamics of real interest rate.     

Forecasting MBT technologies using DEA and LR

First, this paper explores Main Battle Tank (MBT) data set with different statistical methods in order to decide the most appropriate variables as reliable yardsticks in applying technology forecasting (TF) using data envelopment analysis (TFDEA) technique. It then applies TF using DEA method to forecast MBT technologies. This article attempts to predict technology development year of MBT commercialised from 1941 to 1994. This article presents the processes of TFDEA in detail and identifies some issues to search for appropriate input and output variables to forecast MBT technologies. The purpose of this study is to address some issues and identify an appropriate data to predict future trends of MBT technologies when using TFDEA and multiple linear regression tools. Finally, the study provides an understanding of the technological advances being sought in MBT technologies and information for use in making decisions regarding development strategy.     

Inflation volatility,economic growth and monetary policy in Bangladesh

This article provides an overview of the trends and movements of CPI-inflation in Bangladesh since the early 1950s and examines the key issues in rule-based monetary policy for price stability, implying low and stable inflation, in this country. Under a fixed exchange rate system, inflation in Bangladesh was moderately high and volatile during the 1950s and 1960s. Since the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, inflation in Bangladesh has remained moderately high on average and highly volatile and persistent under a fixed-pegged exchange rate system or under a managed floating system since 2003. Using data from the early 1970s or earlier depending on data availability, the article undertakes both Granger-causality and the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) analysis with two models. The first model is comprised of such variables as inflation, the real interest rate, the real exchange rate and output growth, and the second model is comprised of the volatilities of money growth, real output growth and inflation. Then, based on the empirical findings, the article concludes that a rule-based monetary policy, namely monetary targeting or inflation targeting, remains appropriate for Bangladesh provided that it adopts a more flexible, if not freely floating, exchange rate system. The article suggests that the use of monetary policy to achieve multiple objectives under a fixed-pegged exchange rate system creates a time-inconsistency problem, reduces monetary policy credibility and makes it (monetary policy) ineffective in lowering inflation and its volatility. Low credibility of monetary policy in particular raises inflation persistence. Within the present monetary-policy framework in Bangladesh, the article illustrates how the fixed-pegged exchange rate system has generated money growth volatility in the presence of large-scale inflows of overseas workers’ remittances and readymade garments export earnings. This does not seem to be a concern of the central bank of Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bank); rather, it (Bangladesh Bank) pursues monetary-base targeting to keep inflation low and stable after considering economic growth. The consequent diminishing credibility of monetary policy has kept inflation volatile and persistent, which has adversely affected economic growth.     

Institutions, social norms, and decision-theoretic norms

This article attempts to contribute to the debate on how to define and theorize institutions, particularly regarding normativity and explanations for conformity. Firstly, it proposes some distinctions and concepts: it separates moral from epistemic values, leading to different types of legitimacy and social norms; then it distinguishes different meanings of the term ‘normative’ and introduces the concept of decision-theoretic norm. Secondly, the article defends a broad concept of institutions by arguing that some institutions are neither social norms nor decision-theoretic ones, a point that matters for institutional change and stability. Some conventions from which innovators break are highlighted as an example.     

Is Rationing an Option for Approaching Healthcare Services Provision? The Case of the Greek Cardiac Patients

This paper attempts to address some of the issues surrounding rationing of healthcare services, with application to Greece’s delivery of cardiac services. To this end, first, we provide highlights of the current debate concerning rationing worldwide and critically discuss them. Following that, an empirical analysis of the way ‘key’ stakeholders perceive rationing issues in Greece, is performed. Findings indicate that rationing is a highly disputed approach, subject to individualistic interpretations and moral issues. At policy level, it becomes evident that rationing is a mixture rather than a single policy concern, depending on a complicated range of locally-based reconciliation made at various levels of interested parties. Hence, no universal formula exists to fit all countries’ healthcare systems and further case-by-case research, is required.     

Stiglitz on Globalization and Development with an Eye to Keynes

Abstract

Joseph Stiglitz has laid out many of the issues central to the debate on globalization in a compelling story in a recent influential book. Globalization has become a contentious issue because the economic policies advocated for and, at times, almost imposed upon developing countries by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization are based on misconceptions about how market systems work. Market fundamentalism underlies the entire policy framework of the Washington Consensus. The limits of this approach are nowhere clearer than in the examples presented by developing and transition economies. Many policy missteps could have been avoided by adopting the main insights of traditional Keynesian theory, the basic lessons of which remain valid, even if it has been largely excised from the IMF's recipe book. The results of 20 years of market fundamentalism make it clear that globalization and development are distinct issues and that the former does not necessarily entail the latter. In order to understand how they are connected we need to supplement macroeconomic analysis with studies of how international economic integration comes about.     

A Micro-Econometric Analysis of Determinants of Unsustainable Consumption in The Netherlands

Recently, much attention has been given to the notion of `sustainable consumption'. Whereas environmental economics traditionally has focused environmental policy analysis on producers, this new notion broadens the perspective to include environmental policies aimed at directly influencing consumer decisions regarding buying, using, and recycling products. This could suggest policies that link not only to price incentives, but also and especially to persuasive instruments, such as education and information provision. These policies might take into account certain characteristics of households, such as lifestyle and family size. This article presents a first econometric analysis of consumption in the context of environmental sustainability. Relationships between different types of household expenditures and a range of household characteristics are assessed, based on a large micro data set of households for the Netherlands. Use is made of various demand models and econometric techniques to adequately address theoretical and technical issues involved. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the results for environmental policy directed at stimulating sustainable consumption.     

Models to date the business cycle: The Italian case

The problem of dating the business cycle has recently received many contributions, with a lot of proposed statistical methodologies, parametric and non-parametric. In general, these methods are not used in official dating, which is carried out by experts, who use their subjective evaluations of the state of economy. In this work we try to apply some statistical procedures to obtain an automatic dating of the Italian business cycle in the last 30 years, checking differences among various methodologies and with the ISAE chronology. The purpose of this exercise is to verify if purely statistical methods can reproduce the turning points detection proposed by economists, so that they could be fruitfully used in official dating. To this end parametric as well as non-parametric methods are employed. The analysis is carried out both aggregating results from single time series and directly in a multivariate framework. The different methods are also evaluated with respect to their ability to timely track (ex post) turning points.