A Philosopher's Comment on Philosophico-Economic Relations

Scottish philosophers in the eighteenth century interpreted the market economy as a “civil society,” a path toward freedom and a new morality, separate from monarchal government. They expected markets to be self regulating and expected them to function with ties to a moral life. The market was a civil order, but that vision was destroyed when corporations rose to power in succeeding centuries, and governments were enlarged to regulate markets. Today we see a concern about big corporations and government bureaucracy, and a return to the idea of a “civil society.” This article proposes that today's vision of “civil society” is advanced by an economy that returns to its principles of self (civil) regulation. Markets become civil and self regulating when government, business, and nonprofits cooperate to create systems of social accountability for the common good. A self-regulating market is constructed experimentally through civil associations with self-enforceable codes of conduct, civic-oriented partnerships, legislation, banking, investments, and corporations whose policies are based on stakeholder studies that reduce moral and financial costs. Modest steps toward a self-regulating economy offers a foundation for today's version of a “civil society.”     

世界贸易组织体制:帝国主义的新阶段——衰退的资本主义及其替换方案

世贸组织体制下的现代资本主义虽然没有出现殖民化,但垄断资本代替殖民化成为界定帝国主义的第五个要点。对国内市场和世界经济施展支配力量,掌握市场规则的霸权,企业全球化象征着资本主义处于正在衰退的阶段,它既不能保障人们享有幸福稳定的生活,也不能保障食物和生计的安全。必须以经济本土化替换企业全球化,以恢复当地社区的可行性、独立性和可持续性。     

Voting with the wallet

The vote with the wallet is a new, emerging feature of economic participation and democracy in the globally integrated market economy. This expression identifies the pivotal role that responsible consumption and investment can play in addressing social and environmental emergencies which have been aggravated by the asymmetry of power between domestic institutions and global corporations. In this paper, we examine (both in general and by using examples drawn from the financial and non-financial sectors) how ??voting?? for producers which are at the forefront of a three-sided efficiency which reconciles the creation of economic value with social and environmental responsibility may generate contagion effects by triggering ethical imitation of traditional profit-maximizing actors, thereby enhancing the production of positive social and environmental externalities. Within this new framework, policies that reduce the search and information costs of voting with the wallet may help socioeconomic systems to exploit the bottom-up market forces of other-regarding preferences, thereby enhancing opportunities to achieve well-being with reduced top-down government intervention.     

SOCIAL ECONOMY IN THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC POLICY

ABSTRACT:  In this paper, I focus on the contribution of the social economy to the democratization of the State and of public policy by making use of the distinction between the concepts of co-production and co-construction. In part one, I clarify the meanings given to various concepts. In particular, I pay attention to the idea of a co-production of public policy. This concept relates to the organizational dimension of policy and enables a contextualization of the participation of both civil society stakeholders and market forces in the implementation of services to the public. In part two, I discuss the concept of co-construction which relates to the institutional dimension of public policy and enables an analysis of how both civil society stakeholders and market forces are defining public policies. While the co-construction of public policy can produce various types of outcomes, I favor a solidarity-based model in which the State is open to forms of governance inclusive of the contributions of civil society stakeholders and market forces. This type of co-construction is fitting with a concern for the general interest and is ready to use the resources of the social economy. In part three, I review the housing policy case study in Canada and Quebec during the last twenty years. Three observations emerge from this case study: 1) the presence of both co-production and co-construction in public housing policy; 2) an active presence of the social economy such as co-operatives and non-profit organizations; 3) this active presence of the social economy has helped to produce a number of social innovations that have improved the democratization of public policy in the housing field.     

A Case Study of the Dual Labor Market Hypothesis

This paper is about corporations and the principles by which they are guided. The focus is on conceptualization of control issues, and changes in such conceptualizations over time. Among individuals who are in a position to affect the overall direction of corporations, there are broadly shared views of the overall orientation that should be adopted. Such “conceptions of control” are a response to important contingencies in the firm's institutional environment. In the United States the most broadly shared conception of control currently is a particularly narrow one, focusing on financial measures of performance. This has not always been the case: conceptions of control are subject to evolutionary change over time. The paper traces such changes, evaluates the current situation and its relation to shareholders, and speculates as to the possibility of a future change in a more socially conscious direction.     

中国的社会团体、公民社会和国家组合主义：有争议的领域

20世纪90年代中期以来学术界展开了一场争论：一派认为,应该用公民社会概念来研究中国团体;另一派通过调查研究认为,中国几乎所有团体的生活在本质上是国家组合主义。公民社会和组合主义都关注国家和社会之间的社团和其他机构。但不同的是：公民社会站在社会的角度,发展自治社团,维护“公共领域”的能力,以界定和制约国家权力;组合主义则相反,从国家的角度,为实现政府自己的目的,与选定的社团发展一种特殊的关系。在深入细致的实证研究基础上,学者们考察了中国不同类型社团的活动,得出了不同的结论,同时他们也超越了国家、社会和组合主义以及公民社会的框架,阐明了别的一系列重要的问题。     

WORKERS'CO-OPERATION

The first draft of this paper was put forward for consideration within the Labour Movement in April 1975 and was amended as a result of subsequent discussion. The paper examines the present movement for workers' co-operation in the light of the historical development of producers' co-operation in Britain. It concludes that the relative failure of producers' co-operation in the past has been due to the unfavourable economic environment in which it has tried to function – and that as a result it has been unable to compete with aggressive entrepreneurial capitalism in the accumulation of capital. Producers' co-operation has already demonstrated undoubted advantages. It is potentially more efficient in the use of labour and less socially divisive; it provides a model for the future transformation of industry in which workers can play a full part as equal partners rather than hired hands; it may also assist in maintaining existing, and creating new employment. In the present changed circumstances in which the free market economy is breaking down under accelerating inflation and major firms are turning to the government to solve their liquidity problems, it is suggested that workers' co-operation has an important part to play in the regeneration of British industry and that it should be encouraged as a matter of public policy. There are two major requirements for the growth of the producers' co-operative sector: 1. There must be a demand for, and ideological commitment to workers' co-operation on the shop floor. While this can be helped by government action it must develop primarily by the self-education of workers through their trade unions. 2. The state must create a climate favourable to workers' co-operation in the economy by the provision of capital, advice and specialist educational and technical assistance.     

PUBLIC SERVICES IN THE AREA OF THE SOCIAL ECONOMY IN ARGENTINA

ABSTRACT*: The author describes the development of the public sector of the social economy in the last few years. The state-owned companies with significant participation in the economic activity of the country were privatized within the so-called State Reform Scheme (Law 23696), beginning in 1990. Privatizations are still being carried out, but the main activities that were formerly in the hands of the state (electricity, transport, public service) are now in the hands of the lucrative private sector (corporations, mainly of foreign origin). The policy regarding the transfer of these companies has not favoured the social economy sector.     

广东跨国企业人力资源战略分析

中国加入WTO已经10年,在这10年的时间里,跨国企业经历了一个在中国设立和发展的高潮,广东作为改革开放的前沿地带,也是跨国企业设立总部和开设分公司的必争之地。经济的全球化和成本转移,使得大部分跨国公司不断调整在中国的发展战略,与此同时,在全球企业管理模式的发展中,人力资源逐渐被提到更高的层次,企业在考虑其发展战略的同时,一定会将人力资源战略作为公司战略的一个重要组成部分甚至是关键部分来考虑。以广东的跨国企业来讨论,从业者素质的提高、劳动力市场的日渐成熟、来自本土企业对于人才的竞争、跨国企业自身员工发展的瓶颈和员工归属感需要,都对企业的人力资源战略提出了更高的要求。本文主要从跨国企业面临的情况分析,结合广东地区市场的特点,来探讨跨国企业的人力资源战略,提出解决和改进方案。     

Unbundling democracy: Political rights and civil liberties

Much recent political economy and political science literature views democracy in terms of political rights. This view, often referred to as electoral democracy, is particularly pronounced in the empirical literature. We reincorporate the role of civil liberties, which are at the core of modern democracy, in two ways. We identify four fundamental sources of potential differences in the evolution of political rights and civil liberties. We present systematic, robust and varied empirical evidence on the direct impact of two of these potential sources of differences using cross-national panel data and accounting for the modernization hypothesis. We obtain two noteworthy empirical results: civil liberties exhibit greater persistence than political rights in affecting subsequent outcomes; and, our main result, civil liberties are complementary to political rights when affecting subsequent outcomes, while the reverse is not the case. Consequently, one must incorporate civil liberties as a determinant of electoral democracy. More generally, both dimensions must be considered to understand the setbacks recently experienced by many democracies, despite their holding of free and fair elections.     

国有股权对上市公司绩效影响的U型曲线和政府股东两手论

在我国的上市公司中,本文发现国家持股规模和公司绩效之间呈现左高右低的非对称U型关系。总体而言,国家持股企业的表现不及非国家持股企业。同时,随着国家持股比例的上升,企业绩效起初随之下降;但是,当国家持股比例足够大时,随着国家持股比例的上升,企业绩效上升。这就是说,国家持股对企业的绩效具有两面性的影响。作为事实上的国有股东,政府存在着政治和经济双重利益,从而既通过政治干预攫取企业财富,又借助公司治理和优惠待遇来提升关联企业的价值。国有股减持应该避免U型曲线的底部价值陷阱。     

论我国高技术产业的发展

自20世纪90年代起,我国积极发展高技术产业,其规模不断扩大,已经成为经济增长的火车头.在提高科技持续创新能力、实现技术跨越式发展的原则下,推动各项高技术产业的发展.在高技术产业快速发展过程中,有市场增长速度高、固定资本形成快、高科技产品需求快速增长、研发人员总量大、劳动力成本低、产业聚集效应逐渐成形等诸多优势.但仍然存在若干发展问题与跨国公司主导我国高技术产业发展、高技术研发被跨国公司所控制等产业安全隐忧,产业安全问题应特别引起关注.     

科技型中小企业技术创新模式选择——基于宁波的调查

技术创新是科技型中小企业生存和发展壮大的基础.本文在对宁波市科技型中小企业技术创新现状调查的基础上,分析了科技型中小企业技术创新的基本内容、技术创新模式和途径的选择.     

THE SUPERIORITY OF MONETARY OVER BARTER EXCHANGE: EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

William Stanley Jevons suggested that monetary exchange is socially superior to barter exchange because agents' optimization is simplified by the use of money. We experimentally study how subjects perform under monetary and barter exchange and find that a majority of subjects achieve a higher utility level in the monetized economy. The individual choices are statistically analyzed in order to track important elements of suboptimal decision making like the tendency to under‐ or over‐react to price signals. Our laboratory findings indicate that, at a minimum, government may have a role in promoting a common unit of account.     

论法人清算期间的法律地位

现行法律、法规及司法解释对法人清算期间的法律地位的规定存在缺陷,没有有效地区分法人自愿解散与法人强制解散,导致立法相互矛盾与执法的不统一。在未来民法典中,应有效区分法人的自愿解散与强制解散,明确法人自愿解散进入清算期间仍具有法人人格;而法人强制解散进入清算期间,法人人格消灭,相当于非法人团体。同时需要进行相关制度创新。     

Happiness and its molecular fingerprints

Happiness and well-being are in part heritable, but modifiable traits. The promotion of well-being and happiness, much like the primary prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCD), will become increasingly important in a world that is facing an NCD epidemic due to demographic aging and urbanization. The costs for the often lifelong treatment of NCDs are already high and may increase further with the arrival of expensive personalized medicine. The effective promotion of happiness at the individual and population level in order to guide policy requires a causal and mechanistic understanding of its modifiable determinants. With more than half of the world’s population living in cities, it becomes, for example, important to understand how environmental, social, and lifestyle characteristics of urban life influence well-being. Yet, the correlation between many of these factors and the fact that they act in concert poses a large challenge in causal inference. The -omics biomarkers which form a pillar of personalized medicine are at the same time essential research instruments of modern-day observational epidemiology. The paper discusses how they can be applied to overcome the challenges researchers face in studies on the association of complex risk and protective patterns with specific well-being phenotypes and their relation to diseases. Important concepts are discussed in the context of well-being that were recently developed by epidemiologists to stimulate more investments into the understanding of the modifiable part of health (e.g., Exposome; Meet-in-the-Middle; Mendelian Randomization) to match the huge investments that went into genetic research.     

Class Debates in Intermediate Microeconomics: Social Economics and Pluralist Perspectives

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of class debates in an intermediate-level microeconomics course to introduce early to mid-career undergraduate students to socially embedded and pluralist perspectives, political-economic processes, and policy analyses. Using data from three semesters of class debates in an intermediate microeconomics course, we argue that this activity is a beneficial way to stimulate student interest in social economics, especially in the ethical, political economy, and economic justice aspects of economics and policy. We carried out three allied activities: participation in the debate, a learning self-assessment survey, and a five-page memo providing a balanced analysis of the policy conundrums surrounding the issue under discussion. We discuss three aspects of these class debates relevant to social economists: student attention to processes of knowledge construction, cognizance of power in socioeconomic life, and engagement with economic justice and ethics.     

The political economy of civil society

The dichotomy between intended and unintended outcomes of individual and collective action is central to political economy. It concerns the relationship of markets and states and their link to the constitution of society. As such, this dichotomy points to the patterns of connectivity that provide the social embedding of markets and states. The present paper argues that civil society is best understood as the principal locus of connectivity in which markets and states operate. Civil society so configured is neither separate from the body politic and commercial society nor subordinate to them but instead constitutes the primary objective structure of the social domain. It embeds the causal arrangements that determine the crisscrossing of both intended and unintended outcomes in specific contexts. Within the social domain, dispositions of the means-end type interact with non-instrumental dispositions. One important implication is that civil society is compatible with a range of different political economies and specific socio-economic arrangements. Based on a typology of three distinct paradigms of civil society, we argue that the proximity paradigm is conducive to the discovery of political economies that foster greater openness and specificity compared with the political and the economic paradigm. This paper suggests that the theory of civil society in general and the proximity paradigm in particular are indispensable heuristic tools to identity the unrealized capacities inherent in any given social configuration. A proximity heuristic is applied to the discussion of credit arrangements and policy. We conclude that a hierarchy of policy principles is necessary to preserve the primacy of social connectivity over means-end relationships and the conditions for context-specific arrangements and policy options.     

Macroeconomic conditions and well-being: do social interactions matter?

We investigate the role played by social interactions in the transmission of the effects of macroeconomic conditions on well-being. Using survey data for a representative sample of Italian individuals, we find that social interactions play a dual role. On the one hand, the well-being of people who spend more time with their friends or go out more often is less sensitive to macroeconomic fluctuations. On the other hand, social interactions are negatively affected by worsening macroeconomic conditions, thus playing a relevant role in the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to subjective well-being. More specifically, the negative impact of downturns on the frequency of going out and active participation in associations significantly contributes to the adverse effects of recessions on satisfaction with life and with individual life domains.     

Bioeconomy and the global economy: industrial policies and bio-innovation

The decades since the 1950s have witnessed major growth in the bioeconomy. Emergence of the bioeconomy as a broad, creative and rapidly expanding part of the global economy coincides with the maturation of the established drug discovery system. This paper presents research evidence focused on the relationships between changes in the bioeconomy and changes in the global economy. It argues that new forms of governance and regulation are key to strengthen industrial policies needed for emerging and developing countries to take account of the complex interactions in life science innovation between technology, markets, regulation and civil society, which could significantly impact on global distribution of the industry.