Applying Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to Environmental and Resource Economics

Many of the analyses undertaken byenvironmental and resource economics areintimately concerned with spatial variations.This article examines the contribution whichGeographical Information Systems (GIS) mayprovide in incorporating the complexities ofthe spatial dimension within such analyses. Thepaper introduces the reader to the types ofdata handled by a GIS and overviews thepractical functionality offered by suchsystems. A brief literature review issupplemented by a number of more detailedapplications illustrating various GIStechniques which may be of use to the appliedenvironmental or resource economist.     

Foreign direct investment in OECD countries: a special focus in the case of Greece

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is considered as an important instrument for economic development all over the world. The aim of this paper is to examine the FDI inflows determinants for 24 OECD countries. To this end we employ annual data from 1980 to 2012 for a series of potential FDI determinants that have been identified as the most important by the relevant literature. Our empirical strategy employs both the standard fixed effects panel as well as a dynamic panel approach. The empirical findings highlight the importance of market size, trade openness, unit labor cost, schooling, taxation, gross capital formation, institutional variables, and ROA/ROE as significant FDI determinants. In the case of the dynamic panel model those FDI inflows determinants are not uniform for all country groups. Additionally, the results indicate that corporate tax rates clearly affect FDI attractiveness. This finding is robust when testing different countries subgroups. The present study has important policy implications indicating the factors that host economies should place emphasis on in order to attract FDI inflows. Policy makers should not only pay attention to the corporate tax rate level but they should also design a simple, stable and transparent taxation system that minimizes the relevant business risk.     

从发展观的演变看阿马蒂亚·森对发展经济学的贡献

随着人类社会的发展,发展观也在变化,其总的演进趋势是由单纯注重国民收入的增长转变为“以人为本”的全面发展观。森的“能力方法”对实现这一演变起到了至关重要的作用。同时,森的发展观对我国的发展战略以及发展计划的制定有着重要的参考价值。     

Philosophy of Economics Rules: introduction to the symposium

ABSTRACT

Economists have long been criticized for their use of highly idealized models. In Economics rules: Why economics works, when it fails, and how to tell the difference [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015] Dani Rodrik responds to this criticism by offering an account of models that emphasizes the diversity of models in economics. Rodrik’s account presents a rare opportunity for economists and philosophers of economics to engage in a mutually beneficial exchange that could improve our understanding of the power and limits of economics, and the rights and wrongs of the dismal science. The symposium on Rodrik’s Economics Rules is the first attempt to seize this opportunity.     

Cost estimation of neonatal intensive care in Greece: the case of Athens maternity hospitals

Summary

This study aimed to estimate the hospitalisation costs for neonatal intensive care and to investigate any discrepancies with reimbursement by the social funds in Greece.

The study was based on a prospective selection of neonates admitted to the intensive care unit of two hospitals within a 3-month period in 2004. Data were collected and classified with respect to birthweight and gestational age. Microcosting recording of data was used. A National Health System hospital perspective was applied.

The study sample consisted of 99 neonates with mean cost per infant reaching €5,845 in contrast to the €3,952 reimbursed by the social security funds, showing a discrepancy between actual and nominal costs. Cost per infant was found to have an inverse relationship both with birthweight and gestational age. Personnel costs accounted for 59.9% of all resources consumed followed by enteral/parenteral feeding for 16.1% and pharmaceuticals expenses for 11.1%. The remaining covers the costs of consumables, diagnostic test and overheads (12.9%).     

Understanding the demand-side of economic change: a contribution to formal evolutionary theorizing

An outstanding fact of capitalist change in the last few centuries is the ongoing emergence of new consumption alternatives which accompany income and productivity growth in expanding economies. Far from satiating consumers, exponential economic growth seems to stimulate human desires by providing novelty and variety embodied in a persuasive flow of unsettling goods. Although this is a well-known fact characteristic of capitalist change, little attention has been paid by modern growth theorists to the understanding of demand-side phenomena related to the increasing significance of consumption activities in our societies. Against this background, in this article, we show that as soon as we start drawing the demand-side contour of economic change, new phenomena appear which enrich our understanding of economic growth and structural change. By using ‘replicator dynamics’ systems, consumption dynamics are formally linked to the ongoing generation of innovations in capitalist economies. Certain emergent properties concerning economic growth and structural change and several policy implications follow.     

Achievement Bias in the Evolution of Preferences

Currently, economists' models of the evolutionary selection of utility function parameters are generally based on two assumptions. First, it is assumed that utility parameters must serve Darwinian fitness, in the sense that individuals who maximize utility are also maximizing their biological survivability. Second, it is assumed that utility parameters accurately reflect well-being, in the sense that individuals who maximize utility also maximize their happiness. However, there is a large literature in anthropology, biology, and psychology suggesting that these two assumptions may not be warranted. Focusing on utility and happiness, the paper uses models of cultural selection to show that there is no guarantee that our evolved preference must be the preferences that maximize our happiness. Instead, there are plausible mechanisms of cultural selection that will allow immiserating preferences to persist in steady state equilibrium. These mechanisms are generally related to the concept of social achievement: those who achieve more in society will have a greater influence on the utility parameters of the next generation, and this influence is independent of the achievers' well-being. Thus, a preference is more likely to survive if it satisfies some mix of achievement goals and happiness goals, rather than just happiness goals alone. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

资源型城市经济可持续发展的理性思考

资源型城市在发展过程中，面临着经济结构畸形、资源面临枯竭、城市布局不合理、基础设施差以及生态破坏严重、环境污染加剧等问题，走可持续发展之路成为资源型城市发展的必然选择。要克服资源、经济、体制等方面的制约，通过经济政策、生态化改造、市场需求拉动等手段，加快城市转型步伐，促进经济多元化，把资源优势转化为经济优势，实现经济的可持续发展。     

比较经济学对中国经济理论发展的影响(1978～2005)

文章结合1978年以来中国经济理论的演进,论述了比较经济学在中国经济理论发展进程中所发挥的作用与影响。文章认为,比较经济学对中国经济理论发展的影响主要表现在以下三个方面:对中国经济理论范式转换的影响,对中国经济理论的方法论的影响以及对中国社会主义市场经济理论发展的影响等。分析表明:中国经济理论是在中国经济改革的实践探索中得到检验和发展的。在中国经济理论发展进程中和改革开放形成的中外学术交流的背景下,比较经济学在中国的传播促进了中国经济理论的发展。     

Anticipating Nelson and Winter: Jack Downie's theory of evolutionary economic change

An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change , by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter continues to have great influence on evolutionary economic thought. While their modeling techniques and the breadth of their vision for evolutionary theorising must be seen as seminal and effective innovation in economic theory, they were not the first inventors of such a theory. Close examination reveals that much of the economic theory was anticipated by Jack Downie whose book, The Competitive Process, was published in 1958. The extent of anticipation is remarkable, with not merely the two elements of population ecology, selection and mutation, but the way in which they are theorised to work being replicated by Nelson and Winter.     

The analysis of consumer demand in Greece. Model selection and dynamic specification

The paper analyses the pattern of consumer demand in Greece exploring systematically the questions of the functional form of demand that best fits the data, the appropriate dynamic structure and the empirical validity of the constraints of demand theory. A general dynamic Almost Ideal demand model for four categories of consumer non-durables for the period 1958–1994 is estimated. The maintained specification rejects the static AI, its counterparts implied by the partial adjustment and autoregressive disturbances models and, upon applying a non-nested test, the Rotterdam specification. However, it cannot reject homogeneity and symmetry nor the hypothesis of structural stability.     

Efficiency change,technological change and capital accumulation in Italian regions: a sectoral study

This paper examines the sources of labour productivity in the Italian regions during the period 1980–2004. Five economic sectors are investigated using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and taking into account productive specialisation and sector inefficiencies. Labour productivity change is decomposed into five components by means of Malmquist productivity indices: intra-sector efficiency change, composition efficiency change, input-biased technical change, magnitude component technical change and capital accumulation. Using bootstrap procedure, the components of labour productivity changes are statistically tested. Efficiency analysis shows that productive specialisation is not a source of inefficiency and efficiency gains can be obtained by sector-specific policies. Thus, it is possible to obtain improvements in efficiency in each sector of activity rather than reallocating resources among sectors. The results of the decomposition by sectors reveal heterogeneous sources of growth. The total economy has shown evidence of non-neutral technical change and, it has been found that agriculture, industry and construction experienced capital using technical change. The analysis of the decomposition of the labour productivity growth is complemented by an analysis of β-convergence.     

Institutional Change in Nepal: Liberalization,Maoist Movement,Rise of Political Consciousness and Constitutional Change

ABSTRACT

Contradicting the rest of the world’s promptness to discredit communism as an alternative and Francis Fukuyama’s (1992 Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man . New York: The Free Press, A Division of Macmilan Inc. [Google Scholar]) teleological account of ‘the end of history,’ Nepal witnessed a Maoist revolution between 1996 and 2006. Such a ‘deviation’ from what Fukuyama and others have viewed as the path of development raises questions about the linear progression of history and its implicit dualism of market vs. government. As several Original Institutional Economists have discussed, analytical dichotomies lead to a simplistic understanding of transformation that disregards the multilayered nature of society and, thus, concludes that history unfolds linearly to arrive at a predetermined and homogeneous end. This paper analyzes the social transformation of Nepal that preceded the Maoist revolution, through the lens of Feminist Institutionalism, utilizing a multidisciplinary approach to understand the complexity of the impacts of liberalism-protectionism political changes on Nepali institutions.     

论区域经济在国家和地区发展中的作用

区域经济是市场经济条件下国民经济增长的主要动力和源泉,其自身有突出的运行特点、发展规律。通过分析区域经济的内容及模式,可以正确制定促进国家和地区发展的政策和战略,在西部大开发当中,应当更加重视区域经济理论的指导作用。     

Just looking for a good game: competitive balance in the Korean Professional Baseball League

Rottenberg’s uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is about preferences that can vary across fans and sports. We provide the first evidence of the empirical power of the hypothesis in the Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL). In a panel data set, team-level aggregation over years shows that fans of this league attend in ways consistent with the hypothesis at the level of game uncertainty and consecutive season uncertainty, but only the first is statistically significant. KPBL fans appear to just be looking for a good game. This is consistent with the nearly complete concentration of post-season participation among a very few teams outside of the major population centre in Seoul and a lack of local team identification among KPBL fans. Our work adds to the diversity of league structures in the competitive balance literature since talent levels in KPBL are the result of parent company advertising choices rather than geographic identification. There are research questions and a policy implication.     

Calls for change. The scientific status of economic theory and the future of democracy: A review of three recent contributions

Abstract

After the last financial crisis, economic theory and economists have largely lost their credibility. Not having been able to foresee and explain the recession, they have clearly shown that a deep methodological reform of the discipline is necessary. With its restrictive assumptions and the self-referentiality of formal models, mainstream economics has indeed become highly unrealistic and therefore unable to face the deep and evident problems of capitalistic society. The books reviewed in this paper try to criticize economic theory from three closely related points of view: the technical drift that has endangered democracy and annulled the role of citizens in public choices, the sometimes obscure role of economists and the way through which articles of low scientific relevance are published, and finally the decisive role of the Nobel Prize in economics to legitimize the market turn begun in the 1970s. Considering such a discouraging picture, it is necessary to ask whether there is still hope for reforming economics and if, possibly returning to the classics of economic thought, it is still possible to carry out a struggle based on ideas and not on dogmatic prejudices.     

Institutional Approaches to Economic Development: The Current Status of the Debate

The recent publication of "Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History" (Chang 2011a) has stimulated a thought-provoking debate, and has brought forth a wide-ranging demonstration of the theoretical arsenal of the new institutional economics. The debate proves that, as of yet, no satisfactory theory of institutions has been articulated, nor is there an agreement on the relationship between institutional change and the politics of development. It also demonstrates the presence of two distinct lines of research: ideological and political, both of which rely on different theoretical legacies, and embody distinct economic worldviews. This scenario allows a summary of the argument in the most recent literature to be made on the relationship between institutions and development, as well as to relate the debate to the concept of development as a process of expansion of capacities.     

On the analogy between field experiments in economics and clinical trials in medicine

Randomized experiments, as developed by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), offer a novel, evidence-based approach to fighting poverty. This approach is original, in that it imports the methodology of clinical trials for application in development economics. This paper examines the analogy between J-PAL’s field experiments in development economics and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medicine. RCTs and randomized field experiments are commonly treated as identical, but such treatment neglects some of the major distinguishing features that make each experiment specifically apt for use in its respective field. The central claim of this paper is that the analogy between medicine and development economics is incomplete because the central dimensions of RCTs are not simply different but altogether lacking in J-PAL’s approach. This weakens both the political and the theoretical power of such experiments in development economics.