Minutes of Spring Council Meeting, 1965, of the Catholic Economic Association

This research compares perceived organizational support to work–family balance measures and policies in various work environments to determine whether the organizational context can be a mediating variable or whether the social economy sector, with its mission and management approach (participatory decision-making) might have an influence on organizational support to work–family balance. We studied the social economy sector and compared findings with three other sectors in the public service that have a public service mission but not the same democratic or participatory management mode: a metropolitan police service, social work, and nursing, all in the same city. Our research identifies many significant differences between the four sectors, essentially owing to the characteristics of the social economy sector. In addition to our quantitative research, we conducted interviews (36) in the sector and results indicate that the specificity of the social economy sector, i.e. mission and management mode, explain the overriding concern for work–life balance in the social economy sector.     

Social security and risk sharing

In this paper we identify conditions under which the introduction of a pay-as-you-go social security system is ex ante Pareto-improving in a stochastic OLG economy with capital accumulation and land. We argue that these conditions are consistent with realistic specifications of the parameters of the economy. In our model financial markets are complete and competitive equilibria interim Pareto efficient. Therefore, a welfare improvement can only be obtained if agents? welfare is evaluated ex ante, and arises from an improvement in intergenerational risk sharing. We also examine the optimal size of a given social security system as well as its optimal reform.     

城市化进程中农村社会保障体系的构建

随着中国城市化的发展,城乡居民的收入差距却逐渐拉大,一些制度性的不平等更加剧了城乡差距,其中城乡社会保障的差距是不容忽视的重要因素.城乡差距的扩大不利于中国城市化的健康发展.构建与现阶段社会经济发展水平相适应的农村社会保障体系是缩小城乡差距、加大对农村"反哺"力度的有效途径.新的农村社会保障体系应当包括农村养老保险、农村合作医疗、农村社会救助和农村教育扶持计划.加入农村教育扶持计划可以对政府的农村教育投入形成制度性的约束,以提高农村人口的受教育水平.     

Social security, public education and the growth-inequality relationship

We study how the relationship between economic growth and inequality depends upon the levels of funding of two of the largest government programs, public education and social security. We do this in the context of an overlapping generations economy with heterogeneous agents where the government collects a tax on labor income to finance these programs. We show that in our model an increase in government spending on social security reduces income inequality and can have a non-monotonic effect on growth. When the initial level of social security funding is low, as is the case in most poor economies, then its increase will enhance growth. When its funding level is high as is typical for developed countries, we show that its further increase can slow down growth while reducing income inequality. These results obtain regardless of whether the increase in social security funding is financed by a tax increase or by cutting the public education budget. We also find that the effects of increasing the level of public education expenditures or the overall size of the government budget (holding the budget composition fixed) are characterized by similar non-monotonic growth-inequality relationships.     

Urban gardens,agriculture, and water management: Sources of resilience for long-term food security in cities

Food security has always been a key resilience facet for people living in cities. This paper discusses lessons for food security from historic and prehistoric cities. The Chicago school of urban sociology established a modernist understanding of urbanism as an essentialist reality separate from its larger life-support system. However, different urban histories have given rise to a remarkable spatial diversity and temporal variation viewed at the global and long-term scales that are often overlooked in urban scholarship. Drawing on two case studies from widely different historical and cultural contexts – the Classic Maya civilization of the late first millennium AD and Byzantine Constantinople – this paper demonstrates urban farming as a pertinent feature of urban support systems over the long-term and global scales. We show how urban gardens, agriculture, and water management as well as the linked social–ecological memories of how to uphold such practices over time have contributed to long-term food security during eras of energy scarcity. We exemplify with the function of such local blue–green infrastructures during chocks to urban supply lines. We conclude that agricultural production is not “the antithesis of the city," but often an integrated urban activity that contribute to the resilience of cities.     

Positive arithmetic of the welfare state

This paper argues that social security enjoys wider political support than other welfare programs because: (i) retirees constitute the most homogeneous voting group, and (ii) the intragenerational redistribution component of social security induces low-income young to support this system. In a dynamically efficient overlapping generation economy with earnings heterogeneity, we show that, for sufficient income inequality and enough elderly in the population, a welfare system composed of a within-cohort redistribution scheme and an unfunded social security system represents the political equilibrium of a two-dimensional majoritarian election. Social security is sustained by retirees and low-income young; while intragenerational redistribution by low-income young. Unlike unidimensional voting model, our model suggests that to assess how changes in inequality affect the welfare state, the income distribution should be decomposed by age groups.     

Comprehensive evaluation of regional ecological security for land use: a case study of Yanchi County, Ningxia Province

As an abstract study conception, most researches of ecological security generally are macro-scale theoretical study with a regional, national or global perspective. Micro-scale research mainly concentrates on ecological risk, ecosystem health and ecosystem safety. In order to assess regional ecological security and to accomplish the transition from micro-scale to macro-scale research, a Driving-Function-State-Output-Respond model framework （DFSOR model） is put forward in this paper according to the analyses on regional population, society, economy resources, environment and ecological risks＇. In empirical research an index system is set out to evaluate ecological security of land use. The DFSOR model comprises five group of indicators： （1） driving indicators, which include social population pressure and economic pressure; （2）function indicators, which include human function, hydrodynamic function, wind function and gravity.function; （3） state indicators, which include soil resources, water resources and land use/land cover; （4） output indicators, which include production output and ecological risk output; （5） response indicators, which are composed of all sorts of policies and measures for improving production of ecosystem. The method and procedure for ecological security evaluation is put forward based on DFSOR model as well. In the case study, Yanchi, the ecotone between agriculture and animal husbandry, is chosen for the study. An index system is built to evaluate ecological security based on the evaluation of regional ecological risks which including sandification, water erosion, soil salinization, soil pollution and shortage of water. The comprehensive evaluation result shows the regional ecological security index of land use in the research area increase obviously. But it is still in the state of low-graded danger.     

论失地农民社会保障体系的构建

随着我国经济的飞速发展和城镇化进程的加快,失地农民的基本生活保障问题已成为影响构建和谐社会的重要因素。我国存在土地征用补偿标准不合理、农村土地所有权主体模糊和政策法律的缺失等问题,致使失地农民的社会保障问题严重滞后于城镇社会保障水平。基于上述分析,建议采取完善农地交易制度并提高土地征用补偿标准,建立合理的失地农民社会保障制度的框架体系,重视和加强对失地农民的教育和职业培训,并把对失地农民的安置工作列为对各级政府政绩考核的重要内容等措施,以期推动和谐社会背景下失地农民的社会保障事业的发展。     

Social Security Policy and International Labor and Capital Mobility

This paper studies the connection between social security policy and international factor movements within a two-country overlapping-generations model with production. Incentives for factor movements emerge because one country relies on private savings while the other country operates a social security system. The pattern of migration depends on the steady-state capital–labor ratios compared with the Golden Rule capital–labor ratios. Incentives to migrate do not vanish in the long run and one country might empty out. Capital always moves to the social-security country. Without compensation neither labor nor capital mobility represents a Pareto improvement for the economy.     

Elimination of Social Security in a Dynastic Framework

Much of the existing literature on social security has taken the extreme assumption that individuals have little or no altruism; this paper takes an opposite assumption that there is full two-sided altruism. When households insure members that belong to the same family line, privatizing social security can gain public support. In our benchmark model calibrated to the U.S. economy, privatization without compensation is favoured by 52% of the population. If social security participants are fully compensated for their contributions, and the transition to privatization is financed by a combination of debt and a consumption tax, 58% experience a welfare gain. These gains and the resulting public support for social security reform depend critically on a flexible labour market. If the labour supply elasticity is low, then support for privatization disappears.     

Housing, Land Prices, and Growth

We consider the effects of land for housingon the growth process within an overlapping generations model.Our original interest was to enquire whether the introductionof land into a growth model might account for a ``virtuous'circle in which saving-up for land (or housing) generates growthand higher land prices, generating further increases in saving,and so on. Such an account is sometimes proposed for high savingrates in East Asia, where mortgage markets are limited or absent.Our analysis does not support such a story. The user cost ofland reduces the resources available for consumption of reproduciblegoods, so that the introduction of intrinsically valuable landinto a growth model lowers the equilibrium stock of capital andraises the equilibrium interest rate. On the asset side, thepresence of land causes life-cycle savings to be reallocatedaway from productive capital towards land. The social optimumin such a model is for land to be nationalized and provided atzero rent. Land markets, far from generating saving and growth,are inimical to capital formation.     

Social Security, Optimality, and Equilibria in a Stochastic Overlapping Generations Economy

Social security institutions implement intergenerational transfers and distribute risks over time. To compare various social security designs, we study an overlapping generations model with demographic shocks. Production takes place through a neoclassical production function subject to productivity shocks. We give a near characterization of optimal allocations. We study rational expectations equilibria when contributions are mandatory, based on labor and capital income. We also describe the equilibria of an economy with a voluntary pay-as-you-go social security fund, and show that they have a long-run optimality property. An example with Cobb–Douglas production and utility functions illustrates the results.     

The dynamics of inequality and social security in general equilibrium

This paper analyzes the dynamic politico-economic equilibrium of a model where repeated voting on social security and the evolution of household characteristics in general equilibrium are mutually affected over time. In particular, we incorporate within-cohort heterogeneity in a two-period Overlapping-Generation model to capture the intra-generational redistributive effect of social security transfers. Political decision-making is represented by a probabilistic voting à la Lindbeck and Weibull (1987). We analytically characterize the Markov perfect equilibrium, in which social security tax rates are shown to be increasing in wealth inequality. A dynamic interaction between inequality and social security leads to larger social security programs. In a model calibrated to the U.S. economy, the dynamic interaction is shown to be quantitatively important: It accounts for more than half of the social security growth in the dynamics. We also perform some normative analysis, showing that the politico-economic equilibrium outcomes can be fundamentally different from the Ramsey allocation.     

Fertility,Intra‐Generational Redistribution,and Social Security Sustainability

Incorporating heterogeneity in preference to having children into an overlapping generations model of a small open economy, we examine the effects of changes in the size of pay‐as‐you‐go (PAYG) social security on fertility choices of individuals and population growth of the economy. It is shown that PAYG social security will raise population growth by increasing the number of individuals who have children and the number of children parents have if the system involves redistribution between retirees with different contributions, whereas, if it has no redistribution, PAYG social security does not affect the fertility decisions of individuals.     

Social Security Reform with Heterogeneous Agents

This paper analyzes the quantitative role of idiosyncratic uncertainty in an economy in which rational agents vote on hypothetical social security reforms. We find that the role of a pay-as-you-go social security system as a partial insurance and redistribution device significantly reduces political support for a transition to an economy with a fully funded system. We conclude that the status quo bias in favor of an unfunded social security system is stronger in economies in which agents of similar age differ significantly with respect to labor earnings and wealth because of idiosyncratic income uncertainty. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: H55, E62, H3     

Risks, Financing Constraints, and High Savings Ratio in the Rural Economy of China: A Model Incorporating Precautionary Savings and Liquidity Constraints

This paper makes an in-depth investigation on the phenomenon of high savings rate in the rural economy of China between 1978 and 2003. On the basis of precautionary savings theory, we construct a model incorporating the risks, liquidity constrains, and aging population to explain the existence of high savings rate in the rural economy of China. We measure risks with Gini coefficient and marginal propensity to save. We find that these risk indices are positively associated with the higher savings rate and the higher degree of prudence of rural households. Our findings pose an urgency of the reform of rural financial system and the improvement in social security system in the rural economy of China. Translated from Economic Science, 2005, (1) (in Chinese)     

土地生态安全协同演变的机理分析及动态评价——以淮安市为例

基于对土地生态安全研究中自然、经济、社会子系统协同演变的机理分析,构建土地生态安全协同演变概念模型,并明确该模型定量测算方法。在不同情况下土地生态安全发展度可以分为安全、敏感、波动、危险和灾害等5个级别,而土地生态系统的协同演变轨迹会分为协同发展、可改善的发展、可改善的退化、完全退化等4种模式。实证分析表明:1996～2005年淮安市土地生态安全处于敏感级别,各子系统之间的协同作用有所增强,但如果维持现状不变,2006～2010年土地生态安全发展度与协同度将处于下降通道。     

城镇土地收益分配机制理论研究

随着经济的发展,城市化的速度也在加快,相伴而生了很多与城市土地有关的经济社会问题。从分析城市土地收益分配的性质出发,从理论上界定各利益相关者取得收益分配的权利;在分析我国城市土地收益分配现存问题的基础上,提出改革城市土地收益分配制度的构思。     

城市居民最低生活保障标准多层次量化与调整机制研究

城市居民最低生活保障制度在解决城市贫困和维护社会稳定方面取得了明显效果,但是还存在着低保标准不科学、调整机制不稳定等问题,影响了该制度的可持续运行。通过ELES模型测算得到城市低保标准的理论值,构建了多层次低保制度并设计了与经济参量挂钩的调整机制,该机制将有利于满足城市低保人群最低水平的多层次需求,使受助者摆脱贫困陷阱,并推动城市低保制度的进一步完善。     

基于因子分析与聚类分析福建各县市经济发展研究

创建县域经济发展评价指标体系,以福建省67个县、县级市、市辖区作为样本,运用因子分析的统计方法进行实证分析,提出综合经济实力因子、社会保障实力因子、居民收入因子、农业发展实力因子与生活质量因子5个因子,同时基于因子得分矩阵对67个县、县级市、市辖区进行聚类分析。分析结果表明,反映经济发展整体水平、医疗卫生水平和工业生产规模的综合经济实力因子处于主导地位,同时,农业发展实力因子跟社会保障因子的作用也不能够忽视。研究县域经济利用因子分析与聚类分析的方法,所得到的结论客观可信,并且能够比较全面地反映影响县域经济发展的主要因素。