An Expansion of the Neoclassical Horizon in Economics: The Rent–Seeking Research Program Brings in the Nuances of Social and Political Control

Abstract . The terms of discourse in the Neoclassical school of economic theory have constrained its ability to develop the connections between the economic and the social and political spheres. Building on the logic of the rent–seeking research program a systematic connection is developed. A taxonomy of distribution is presented in which rent and profit ate identified as distributions to control over productive factors. The structure of control embodied in social and political institutions largely determines who controls these productive factors and therefore who receives the distributions to control: profit and rent. The distinction between profit and rent relates to opportunity cost. Profit is a distribution to control equal to opportunity cost and is therefore allocatively necessary. Rent is a return above and beyond opportunity cost and is not allocatively necessary. By clarifying the role of rent and profit in Neoclassical theory the interconnection between the social, political, and economic spheres is systematically integrated into the theory.     

“人民当家作主”之于民主——读《中国民主政治建设白皮书》

人民当家作主,以准确的政治学词语表述这一主张,即主权在民或人民主权。虽然"民主"一词现在无论是在理论界还是实践领域都是一个混乱得可能让人上当的词,但民主意味着主权在民这一点是没有争议的,存有争议的是如何解读这个术语。究竟"主权在民"意味着什么?如果厘清了何谓人民主权,是否它就意味着民主的全部?并且,通过什么方式能使当家人成为真正做主的人?这些问题都是至关重要的。本文试图通过对《中国民主政治建设白皮书》(以下简称白皮书)一些章节的解读,从"人民当家作主"这一角度入手评价我国民主政治中关于"人民主权"的含义和地位之理解。     

Social Network Analysis and the Sociology of Economics: Filling a Blind Spot with the Idea of Social Embeddedness

Today, social networks analysis has become a cross‐disciplinary subject with applications in diverse fields of social and economic life. Different network designs provide different opportunities to communicate, to receive information, and to create different structures of cultural capital. Network analysis explores modes and contents of exchanges between different agents when symbols, emotions, or goods and services are exchanged. The message of the article is that social network analysis provides a tool to foster the understanding of social dynamics, which enhances recent debate on a micro‐macro gap and on limitations of the cognitive and explanatory potential of economics.     

Paradigms and Novelty in Economics: The History of Economic Thought as a Source of Enlightenment

Over time, economics has experienced paradigm shifts, and there is every reason to think this will continue. In economics, as in the development of technological knowledge, paradigms do not emerge from nowhere, but build on precursors, possibly from other fields. Our understanding of current economic thinking can be enhanced by paying greater attention to the role of paradigms and by using concepts such as myth, plot structure, and cultural endowment, which are typically given greater attention by literary analysts than by economists, to study paradigms. Here we argue that together these can help us better understand how ideas from other times and fields may be combined with our own to generate better research and publications, and that a greater awareness of the history of economics may well be an excellent vehicle for enhancing that understanding.     

Revisiting the Concept of Schools of Thought in Economics: The Example of the Austrian School

The aim of this article is to explore defining characteristics of schools of thought in economics, with Austrian economics chosen to illustrate some of the themes raised. This article argues that a school of thought can be interpreted as an entity that comprises both a system of thought and its member practitioners. Furthermore, a school of thought presupposes the existence of two elements: coherence and distinctiveness. Despite the existence of Misesian and Hayekian strands and thus of plurality within the Austrian school, the article argues for the existence of a broader notion of coherence within the Austrian school at the level of epistemology, methodology, and agenda/objectives.     

价值多元化社会企业群众思想政治工作初探

在社会主义市场经济的新形势下,企业经营发展模式发生了根本性变化,职工价值观念多元化,利益分配多样化,各种矛盾复杂化,使企业思想政治工作面临着新的任务和新的挑战.面对新任务、新挑战,企业的思想政治工作需要与时俱进,进行新的探索和实践.     

价值多元化社会企业群众思想政治工作初探

在社会主义市场经济的新形势下,企业经营发展模式发生了根本性变化,职工价值观念多元化,利益分配多样化,各种矛盾复杂化,使企业思想政治工作面临着新的任务和新的挑战。面对新任务、新挑战,企业的思想政治工作需要与时俱进,进行新的探索和实践。     

政府吸纳社会:城市基层治理社会化的新视角

社会转型以及基层范畴的变动,使得当前基层治理被赋予新的内涵。作为对基层治理社会化的一种理论阐释,政府吸纳社会不同于行政吸纳社会,也不同于行政吸纳服务。通过对我国基层治理中政府吸纳社会模式的历史分析,当前"政府吸纳社会"模式在"场域"界限、目标体系、路径选择等方面推进基层治理社会化的实现和发展。政府吸纳社会在基层治理中的正式登场,其价值与限度表现为不应只是一种技术治理,更应体现社会公平的价值目标;不应只是当作一种政府管理体制,更应注重"参与式行动"治理;不应只注重基层社会的治理机制创新,还应该大力推进基层治理的重大理论创新。     

Value Capture as a Policy Tool in Transportation Economics: An Exploration in Public Finance in the Tradition of Henry George

Value capture is a means by which to finance capital infrastructure, particularly transportation services, in a way that allows for efficient economic performance, simple administration, financial justice, and social facility. Because American society needs to find new means to finance transportation capital investment, particularly public transit, value capture offers an essentially painless opportunity to achieve these goals. It has the ancillary benefit also of concentrating population densities in a way that makes public transit particularly viable. This study shows how value capture could have been used to finance a portion of the New York State Interstate Highway System, a nine-mile stretch of I-87 known as the Northway, from its southern terminus to the point where it crosses the Mohawk River in Albany County. This section is the most heavily traveled area of the Northway and has experienced the greatest contiguous development of any location along the Northway's 178 miles since its construction in the late 1950s. While the right of way and construction costs of this stretch were in the range of $128 million (current dollars), the additional land value that has been generated on its account within just two miles on either side has totaled $3.734 billion. This study shows that the capital finance of the Northway, at least in this area, could easily have been done by recapturing these windfall gains that fell to private landowners. One could argue that this added value, the direct result of public investment, should rightfully be returned to the public and should be recaptured to pay off the bonds that were issued to build the project, rather than left for opportunistic speculators to reap private gain. Value capture therefore offers a promising approach for funding future transportation development, leaving fees, that are presently used, to recover operating and environmental costs.     

Customer Orientation and Management Control in the Public Sector: A Garbage Can Analysis

Recent public sector reforms have increasingly tended to re-cast citizens as ‘customers’. This paper explores the implications of such customer orientation efforts for management control based on a field study in a Swedish central government agency. We extend prior research on this topic, informed by critical and institutional theories, with insights from the garbage can literature and focus on a key decision-making process involved in making extant management control practices more customer-focused. Our analysis nuances the predictions of critical scholars, suggesting that customer orientation initiatives will commodify public services and narrow the interests served by public sector organizations. In doing so, we draw attention to how conflicting institutional arrangements fostered a garbage can situation hampering radical change in management control practices. Our garbage can analysis provides a bridge between critical and institutional perspectives by re-instating a focus on decision-making. We show how the intricacies of decision-making may moderate the power embedded in novel management control practices and foster inertia and unintended outcomes. Our analysis also raises important policy implications pertaining to the possibilities of combining customer orientation efforts with rationing of public services.     

城市更新中公众参与的演进发展:基于深圳盐田案例的回顾

随着城镇化推进,空间资源日渐稀缺,城市更新必将成为下个阶段推动城市发展的重要战略选择。与新区开发不同,城市更新往往涉及更为复杂的利益主体和构成,在规划建设过程中更为依赖公众参与进行利益协调。基于公共政策相关理论,本文构建了公众参与的研究框架,以问卷调查和结构化访谈等方式收集一手数据,回顾剖析深圳盐田城市更新的实践案例,以探究城市更新中公众参与的发展过程与演进规律,最后提出相应政策建议。     

组织文化:会计师事务所质量控制的新视角

会计师事务所文化是联结会计师事务所人力资本和各项质量控制制度的一种机制,该机制的有效发挥将最终体现为会计师事务所整体执业质量的提高。基于新审计准则关于“会计师事务所应当建立以质量为导向的内部文化“的规定,本文探讨了会计师事务所组织文化对会计师事务所质量控制制度的建立、实施的影响及相互作用机理,并提出了培育质量导向的会计师事务所文化的若干建议。     

公共危机中平台型企业的社会责任治理 ——基于携程的案例研究

平台型企业作为实现新时代高质量发展的市场主体,其作用与影响力日益增强.在公共危机事件中,平台型企业积极履行社会责任,对保障行业稳定、引导社会舆论、降低危机负面影响等具有重要意义.采用单案例研究法分析了平台型企业在公共危机中的社会责任治理问题,从独立运营的企业主体、平台治理者、社会资源配置者三重维度研究了公共危机中平台型...     

近十年来我国企业家社会责任研究综述

目前,企业家社会责任已成为我国学术界与企业界关注的理论研究热点与实践考察焦点。企业家如何在商场中站稳脚跟、赢得声誉,在很大程度上取决于自身对社会责任的践行状况。文章在对近年我国企业家社会责任研究进行成果回眸、现状概述与趋势展望的基础上,试着给出了些许评述,以期能够唤起我国企业家践履社会责任的意识与行动。     

A Reconsideration of the Rationality Postulate: 'Right Hemisphere Thinking' in Economics

A bstract . The cardinal postulate of neoclassical economics is that individuals and entrepreneurs seek to maximize their unique positions in the world. Yet behind this postulate is an even more fundamental premise: that men are rational and can discern their own best interests. From Adam Smith on, it has been accepted that reasonable men act to maximize their own pecuniary advantage and in most economic models even the potential for irrationality is ignored. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly obvious from the research conclusions of other disciplines ( psychology, philosophy, political science, and sociology in particular) that the simplistic notion of " economic man ," posited so often in the economics literature, is more fancy than fact. There is an implicit recognition that the neoclassical assumptions may not be correct in the developing area of economic behaviorism. The economic behaviorists, however, adopt a more general definition of rationality, substituting what might be called a "modified rationality postulate" for the global rationality assumed in neoclassical theory. As a result, their conclusions do not differ greatly from those of the neoclassicists. Fortunately, ideas are now crystallizing in psychology which may enable us to shed light on decisions which previously would have had to be classified as non-rational, irrational, or unexplainable. Some of those ideas are explored.     

From Heterodoxy to Orthodoxy and Vice Versa: Economics and Social Sciences in the Division of Academic Work

The term “heterodox economics” has been in existence for several decades. Recent revival of heterodox economics can be regarded as a growing criticism of economists within the own profession of economics. Modern economics is designed as a one‐world‐capitalism without history and without regional specifications, without institutions, and without real human agents. Heterodox approaches have the aim to underline that different institutions matter, including religion, language, family structures and networks, systems of education, and industrial relations. Taking the discussion within a broader framework of the history of science acknowleges divergencies and convergencies between different approaches in economics that are also in permanent recomposition. The discussion comes up with the interpretation that recent academic developments provide chances for new modes of intellectual reintegration of formerly disparate areas.     

社会转型时期企业员工思想政治工作的对策探讨

思想政治工作是维护企业和社会稳定的重要手段。在社会转型和经济转轨时期,收入及分配问题、巨大的竞争压力和企业人文关怀的缺失严重冲击了员工的思想,影响了企业和社会的稳定。文章认为,应构建以＂四个结合＂为核心的＂四位一体＂的思想政治工作体制,促进员工思想和企业稳定。     

社会转型时期企业员工思想政治工作的对策探讨

思想政治工作是维护企业和社会稳定的重要手段。在社会转型和经济转轨时期,收入及分配问题、巨大的竞争压力和企业人文关怀的缺失严重冲击了员工的思想,影响了企业和社会的稳定。文章认为,应构建以四个结合为核心的四位一体的思想政治工作体制,促进员工思想和企业稳定。