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1.
Virgil Henry Storr 《The Review of Austrian Economics》2010,23(3):293-298
In The Invisible Hook, Leeson argues that by devising a complex system of rules (called the “pirate code”) and procedures for electing their leaders,
pirate societies created governance structures where the leaders were strong enough to “control the governed” but were not
strong enough to break the constraints that bound them. There is, however, a “hidden catch” within The Invisible Hook. There are important differences between pirate crews and societies, between pirate captains and political leaders, and between
the pirate code and constitutions. Moreover, understanding these differences is critical for understanding how criminal bands
were able to accomplish a feat that still proves problematic for many societies. 相似文献
2.
Cass R. Sunstein 《Constitutional Political Economy》1991,2(3):371-394
Eastern Europe is now undergoing three distinct transitions: to markets, to democracy, and to constitutionalism. Under current
conditions, the transition to constitutionalism is a logical precondition for the transitions to markets and democracy. To
protect both of these, it is especially necessary to develop an “economic bill of rights” for inclusion in the new constitutions.
This bill of rights should include the rule of law, protection of private property, freedom of contract, occupational liberty,
the right to travel within and without the nation, and a prohibition on government monopolies; other similar provisions should
be considered as well. The new constitutions should not include general aspirations, duties, or positive rights. The eventual
development of an economic bill of rights—a precommitment strategy designed to promote prosperity and democracy—could constitute
a new and important contribution to the theory and practice of constitutionalism.
In light of the rapid changes in Eastern European constitutional affairs it should be noted that the final draft of this paper
dates from August 1991.
Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence, Law School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago; Co-Director,
Center on Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe, University of Chicago. I am grateful to Jon Elster and Stephen Holmes for valuable
discussion, and to Richard A. Epstein and Stephen Holmes for helpful comments on a previous draft. 相似文献
3.
Constitutional stability 总被引:7,自引:7,他引:0
Peter C. Ordeshook 《Constitutional Political Economy》1992,3(2):137-175
Political scientists in the pluralist tradition disagree sharply with public and social choice theorists about the importance
of institutions and with William Riker in particular, who argues inLiberalism against Populism that the liberal institutions of indirect democracy ought to be preferred to those of populism. This essay reconsiders this
dispute in light of two ideas unavailable to Riker at the time. The first, offered by Russell Hardin, is that if we conceptualize
constitutions as coordinating devices rather than as social contracts, then we can develop a more satisfying view of the way
in which constitutions become self-enforcing. The second idea derives from the various applications of concepts such as the
uncovered set. Briefly, although institutions such as the direct election of president are subject to the usual instabilities
that concern social choice theorists, those instabilities do not imply that “anything can happen” —instead, final outcomes
will be constrained, where the severity of those constraints depends on institutional details. We maintain that these ideas
strengthen Riker's argument about the importance of such constitutional devices as the separation of powers, bicameralism,
the executive veto, and scheduled elections, as well as the view that federalism is an important component of the institutions
that stabilize the American political system. We conclude with the proposition that the American Civil War should not be regarded
as a constitutional failure, but rather as a success.
I have benefitted from the comments of a number of people on earlier drafts of this essay, especially William Riker, Emerson
Niou, Kenneth Shepsle, Gordon Tullock, Thomas Schwartz, and Matthew Spitzer. 相似文献
4.
Robert Ashford 《Forum for Social Economics》2011,40(3):361-370
This article holds that widespread, practical access to capital acquisition is essential for sustainable widespread economic
prosperity and democracy. The founders of the U.S.A. agreed that sustainable democracy required widespread ownership of land
to provide a viable earning capacity sufficient to support robust participation in democratic government. The importance of
widespread land ownership to individual prosperity and sustainable democracy was supported not only by the prevailing philosophical
views of property, it was also apparent to the common man and woman. Compared to Europe, America offered widespread access
to land ownership, higher wages, better work conditions, cheaper staples and greater individual freedom, equal opportunity,
prosperity, and political participation. This conviction that widespread access to ownership is a necessary condition for
widespread prosperity and sustainable democracy continued throughout most of the nineteenth century, but today public discourse
reveals virtually no trace of this once universally held opinion. This article suggests that the disappearance of this conviction
can be traced to an erroneous view shaped by neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics. According to this view, (1) the
disappearance of the American frontier and industrialization made the goal of widespread capital ownership either impractical
or of little or no economic significance and (2) by way of technological advance, sufficient earning capacity and consumer
demand to promote growth and sustain democracy can be achieved, without widespread ownership, primarily through jobs and welfare.
Although differing in many respects, both mainstream schools, along with Adam Smith’s classical economics, share one common
but unstated economic assumption: the broader distribution of capital acquisition (in itself) has no fundamental relationship
to the fuller employment of people and capital, the broader distribution of greater individual earning capacity, and growth.
Contemporary thinking, shaped by these economic schools, also tacitly assumes that widespread capital ownership is not essential
for the sustainable individual earning capacity needed to support robust democracy. This erroneous “ownership-neutrality assumption”
(1) contradicts both the views of America’s founders and the colonial experience, and (2) provides theoretical justification
for structuring capital markets and capital acquisition transactions to unfairly and dysfunctionally favor existing owners
at the expense of broader ownership distribution, more widely shared prosperity, greater efficiency, ecologically friendly
growth, and a vital democracy. America’s conscientious founders would be shocked by the diminished importance of the distribution
of ownership in the mainstream analysis of prices, efficiency, production, growth, and democracy. Rather than enhancing democracy,
they would view the “ownership-neutrality assumption” of mainstream economics as contributing to its deterioration and corruption.
They would openly search for economic analysis built on an alternate assumption more consistent with their understanding of
the requisite conditions for sustainable democracy. This article advances an economic analysis that suspends the ownership-neutrality
assumption, replaces it with a “broader-ownership-growth assumption,” and suggests a voluntary market strategy for substantially
broadening capital ownership, enhancing individual earning capacity, and providing the widespread economic prosperity needed
for robust democracy. 相似文献
5.
How can constitutions be designed so that politicians who seek to serve “public interest” can survive and prosper? 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
James M. Buchanan 《Constitutional Political Economy》1993,4(1):1-6
Distributional politics in modern democracy involves the exploitation of minorities by majorities, and as persons rotate membership,
all parties in the “game” lose. This result emerges only becausedifferences in treatment are permissible. If the principle ofgenerality (analogous to that present in an idealized version of the rule of law) could, somehow, be introduced into politics, mutual
exploitation could be avoided. The analysis offers support for such policies as (1) flat-rate taxes, (2) equal per head transfers
or demogrants and (3) uniform regulation of all industries.
The argument here was initially presented as a Liberty Fund Conference talk in July 1992 under the title “Political Ethics
as a Criterion for Constitutional Design.” I am indebted to my colleagues Viktor Vanberg, and especially Hartmut Kliemt for
helpful comments on an earlier draft. 相似文献
6.
We analyse the optimality of information revelation of hidden attributes of “credence goods” via alternative labelling procedures.
When consumers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for the hidden attribute, producers can either self-label their
products, or have them certified by a third party. The government can impose self or third party labelling requirements on
either the “green” or the “brown” producers. Our benchmark model develops a condition that links the optimal imposition of
third party labelling to the relative market share of each type of the good under complete information. We extend our analysis
to incorporate asymmetric information and cheating by the producers. When corrupt producers can affix spurious labels, the
government needs to supplement the labelling policy with costly monitoring activities. We find that mandatory self-labelling
schemes generally dominate mandatory third party labelling, unless the “market share effect” greatly exceeds the “incentive-to-cheat
effect”.
相似文献
7.
In their recent article in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Bagus and Howden (2010) present “quibbles” with fractional-reserve free banking. Specifically, they raise what they call “unaddressed issues” in
this system, with a particular emphasis on Selgin (1988). We deem their arguments to be more substantial than “quibbles” and see them as part of a longstanding debate about fundamental
aspects of monetary theory. We respond to their objections and attempt to specify how debate between the two sides might proceed
more productively. 相似文献
8.
André Varella Mollick 《Empirical Economics》2011,41(3):769-785
We estimate the world elasticity of substitution between labor types on a very well-known data set. Using enrollment ratios
and government expenditures on education as instruments, the plausible elasticities varying from 2.00 to 3.21 for the “college-completed”
definition suggests imperfect substitution between skilled and unskilled labor. Considerably higher values are found for the
“secondary” and “primary-completed” definitions. Overall, the higher the threshold for defining skilled labor, the lower the
elasticity and less likely is the switch between types of labor. These findings complement micro-evidence and support stronger
links between productivity and output for the “college educated” labor definition. 相似文献
9.
Using a 1995–2004 panel data of Chinese urban residents, we investigate the dynamics of income distribution in cities. According
to Kernel estimates of the relative income distribution of Chinese cities, we find that: (1) the national across-city distribution
of per capita GDP exhibits an apparent unique-peak distribution in 1995 and an “emerging multiple-peak” one in 2004; (2) for
prefecture-level cities, income distribution has evolved to an “apparent multiple-peak” distribution from a unique-peak one;
(3) the income distribution of county-level cities maintains a unique-peak curve; (4) most of the income dynamics of urban
residents originates from prefecture-and-higher-level cities. We sample three representative provinces and study the urban
income dynamics respectively. The analysis suggests that within a single province, urban income distribution evolves from
unique-peak to twin-peak curve; while among provinces, income convergence is evident for urban residents. In addition, we
measure the incidence of poverty in cities based on our income dynamics analysis, and find that the ratios of people living
below absolute poverty line have been decreasing at cities of all levels. 相似文献
10.
The service industry in China is underdeveloped, in comparison with not only the past experience of developed countries at
the similar level of GDP per capita, but also other similar developing countries at present. We define this deviation of China’s
service industry from the development trend in other countries as the “development deviation puzzle,” and propose a conceptual
framework based on the “manufacturing cost disease” hypothesis to understand the reasons behind this puzzle. We test our hypothesis
using the data from the urban cluster in Yangtze River Delta. The results indicate that labor productivity growth in service
industry is driven by capital investment and the “development deviation puzzle” is indeed rooted in the “manufacturing cost
disease.” Our analysis suggests that, to correct the underdevelopment of service industry, the strategy of investment-driven
industrialization and urbanization must be changed. Expansion of producer services is important in increasing the intensities
of human capital and foreign investment. 相似文献
11.
We develop a model for economic growth applicable to a group of countries, constituting around half of the gross global production,
that have been consistently “catching up” to the US since 1960 or so. This group can be termed “the convergence club.” The
model has a theoretical basis developed in other publications (cited), but the present work is essentially empirical. It demonstrates
that there is a very strong correlation between “catchup” growth, with respect to the US, and an energy proxy (EP). The energy
proxy that works best is a linear combination of domestic electric power consumption petroleum (oil) consumption, per capita,
compared to the US levels. The results presented here do not constitute a theory of growth, but they are consistent with theory
presented elsewhere. On a practical level, we argue that consistent “catchup” trends over the past 40 years can safely be
extrapolated for a few more decades for scenario construction purposes. We also believe that the observed catchup trends can
be regarded as “potential” mid-term or long-term growth trajectories for transition economies and others that have recently
been adversely affected by conflict or mismanagement. 相似文献
12.
Jean-Pierre Aubin 《Journal of Evolutionary Economics》2003,13(2):95-124
Socio-economic networks, neural networks and genetic networks describe collective phenomena through constraints relating
actions of several actors, coalitions of these actors and multilinear connectionist operators acting on the set of actions
of each coalition. We provide a class of control systems governing the evolution of actions, coalitions and multilinear connectionist
operators under which the architecture of the network remains viable. The controls are the “viability multipliers” of the
“resource space” in which the constraints are defined. They are involved as “tensor products” of the actions of the coalitions
and the viability multiplier, allowing us to encapsulate in this dynamical and multilinear framework the concept of Hebbian
learning rules in neural networks in the form of “multi-Hebbian” dynamics in the evolution of connectionist operators. They
are also involved in the evolution of coalitions through the “cost” of the constraints under the viability multiplier regarded
as a price. 相似文献
13.
This paper's goal is to construct a positive theory of economic fairness. Using the theoretical schema developed by Hurwicz
and others, the paper makes precise the notions of an “institution,” “fairness fraiming,” and “institutional framing.” Four
fairness propositions yield an important corollary: the economic environment, the operative institution and history give meaning
to the often used FORMAL PRINCIPLE OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE (“equals should be treated equally, and unequals unequellay, in
proportion to relevant similarities and differences”). We support these four propositions and corollary by an analysis of
laboratory, survey, and anecdotal evidence. Finally we describe a number of areas for future research.
The authors would like to thank Allen Buchanan, James Buchanan, Joel Feinberg, Elizabeth Hoffman, David Schmitz, Linda Schnabel
Stizer, Vernon Smith, Richard Wagner, the participants in the Aspen Institute's Conference on “Local Justice and Fair Allocation”,
the members of the Industrial Organization Workshop of the Department of Economics at the University of Arizona, and panel
participants at the Public Choice Society Meeting for their help and comments at various stages of this paper's preparation.
Responsibility for errors is the authors' alone. 相似文献
14.
Summary. We study the core and competitive allocations in exchange economies with a continuum of traders and differential information.
We show that if the economy is “irreducible”, then a competitive equilibrium, in the sense of Radner (1968, 1982), exists.
Moreover, the set of competitive equilibrium allocations coincides with the “private core” (Yannelis, 1991). We also show
that the “weak fine core” of an economy coincides with the set of competitive allocations of an associated symmetric information
economy in which the traders information is the joint information of all the traders in the original economy.
Received March 22, 2000; revised version: May 1, 2000 相似文献
15.
Foreign aid provides a windfall of resources to recipient countries and may result in the same rent seeking behavior as documented
in the “curse of natural resources” literature. In this paper we discuss this effect and document its magnitude. Using panel
data for 108 recipient countries in the period 1960–1999, we find that foreign aid has a negative impact on institutions.
In particular, if the foreign aid over GDP that a country receives over a period of 5 years reaches the 75th percentile in
the sample, then a 10-point index of democracy is reduced between 0.5 and almost one point, a large effect. For comparison,
we also measure the effect of oil rents on political institutions. We find that aid is a bigger curse than oil. 相似文献
16.
The Economics of Non-Convex Ecosystems: Introduction 总被引:5,自引:2,他引:5
The word “convexity” is ubiquitous in economics, but absent fromeconomics. In this paper we explain why, and show what differenceit
makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non-convexities aretaken seriously. A simple proof is provided of the connectionbetween
“self-similarity” and “power laws”. We also provide anintroduction to each of the papers in the Symposium and draw outthe
way in which they form a linked set of contributions. 相似文献
17.
Günther Rehme 《Journal of Economics》2007,91(1):1-40
Many models show that redistribution is bad for growth. This paper argues that in a non-cooperative world optimizing, redistributing
(“left-wing”) governments mimic non-redistributing (“right-wing”) policies for fear of capital loss if capital markets become
highly integrated and the countries are technologically similar. “Left-right” competition leads to more redistribution and
lower GDP growth than “left-left” competition. Efficiency differences allow for higher GDP growth and more redistribution than one's opponent. Irrespective of efficiency differences, however, “left-wing” governments have higher
GDP growth when competing with other “left-wing” governments. The results may explain why one observes a positive correlation
between redistribution and growth across countries, and why capital inflows and current account deficits may be good for relatively
high growth. 相似文献
18.
Michael Wohlgemuth 《Constitutional Political Economy》2002,13(3):223-246
Hayek's view of democracy as a process of forming opinion is taken as a starting point for inquiring into issues largely neglected by Public Choice and Constitutional Economics. In an Austrian perspective, fallible individual knowledge, political entrepreneurs and dissenting minorities attain a distinctive role in the process of political competition. Based on the observation that political opinions consist of preferences and theories, the concept of opinion falsification is introduced. It is a spontaneous result of social interaction creating preference falsification - the disguise of true feelings, but also knowledge falsification – the discovery of false beliefs. Democratic constitutions can limit the scope of preference falsification and increase the potential for knowledge falsification, thus supporting Hayek's view that it is in its dynamic, rather than its static, aspects, that the value of democracy proves itself. 相似文献
19.
We study costly majority voting when voters rationally anticipate others have similar preferences. The correlation in preferences
lowers expected turnout because votes have a positive externality on those who abstain. We study the effects of the public
release of information (polls) on participation levels. Polls raise expected turnout but reduce expected welfare because they
stimulate the “wrong” group to participate resulting in a “toss-up” election. Our novel results highlight the adverse effects
of providing information about the electorate’s preferences and may explain why some countries bar opinion polls close to
an election date. 相似文献
20.
Coordinating activity among members is an important problem faced by organizations. When firms, or units within firms, are
stuck in bad equilibria, managers may turn to the temporary use of simple incentives—flat punishments or rewards—in an attempt
to transition the firm or unit to a more efficient equilibrium. We investigate the use of incentives in the context of the
“minimum-effort,” or “weak-link,” coordination game. We allow groups to reach the inefficient equilibrium and then implement
temporary, flat, “all-or-none” incentives to encourage coordination on more efficient equilibria. We vary whether incentives
are positive (rewards) or negative (penalties), whether they have substantial or nominal monetary value, and whether they
are targeted to a specific outcome (the efficient equilibrium) or untargeted (apply to more than one outcome). Overall, incentives
of all kinds are effective at improving coordination while they are in place, but there is little long-term persistent benefit
of incentives—once incentives are removed, groups tend to return to the inefficient outcome. We find some differences between
different kinds of incentives. Finally, we contrast our results to other recent work demonstrating greater long-term effectiveness
of temporary incentives.
相似文献