Economics, environment and equity

Although allocation of scarce resources among alternative uses to satisfy unlimited human wants in the positivist framework (a la Lionel Robbins)has been a focus of economists for a long time, awareness of resource scarcity in the ecological sense and discussion of the relevant issues in the context of distributive justice, as well as intergenerational equity, are of more recent vintage. A perspective encompassing judicious use of natural resources inevitably leads to a discussion which includes ecological, economic and ethical dimensions. This essay examines the contributions included in a recent book. Certain elements of today’s ecological crisis reveal its moral character. First among these is the indiscriminate application of advances in science and technology. Many recent discoveries have brought undeniable benefits to humanity Unfortunately, it is now clear that the application of these discoveries in the fields of industry and agriculture have produced harmful longterm effects. This has led to the painful realization thatwe cannot interfere in one area of the ecosystem without paying due attention both to the consequences of such interference in other areas and to the well-being of future generations. (Message of Pope John Paul II for the celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990.)     

Keynes, population, and equity prices

Keynes in 1937 examined the phenomenon of the Great Depression from a longrun perspective in contradiction to the "General Theory," where the focus was on the shortrun. "Some Economic Consequences of a Declining Population," Keynes' article, reveals the context in which the "General Theory" was written. In the "General Theory," the focus is on short-term fluctuations, i.e., business cycles, but Keynes fails to provide any theoretical explanation as to why the depression of the 1930s was so severe and intractable. In the 1937 article, the depression is seen as the result of the combined effects of a decline in longrun growth due to population growth decline and a shortrun cyclical decline, together producing severe economic consequences. What is important for the purposes of this discussion is the implication, within the context of the 1937 article, that not only was the stock market crash of 1929 related to population change (with its accompanying collapse in expectations) but that, in general, changes in the rate of growth of population are accompanied by stock price movements in the same direction. The remainder of the discussion is devoted to a simple empirical test of this relationship. The data used are population size (POP), defined as the total residential population in the US from 1870-1979, and the Standard and Poor 500 Stock index (SP) for the corresponding 109-year period. In addition, a 3rd series was constructed, a price deflated Standard and Poor index (RSP) with a base period of 1870, to account for possible inflationary distortion of the index. The empirical results do not invalidate the hypothesis that population growth rates affect equity markets. In fact, there seems to be strong evidence that they are related in a manner suggestive of Keynes' intutition, namely, that the stock market crash of 1929 was due to factors more fundamental than those often perceived from a shortrun perspective. According to Keynes (1937), population is the most important determinant of longrun movements in real per capita income (given the state of technology, the real rate of interest, the age structure of the population, and the size share of income). So the focus is on population and its effects on economic growth. Due to the fact that the stock market presumably discounts longrun economic conditions as reflected in equity prices, it would seem that if Keynes were correct in his theoretical speculations, longterm equity price movements should relate to population change. In this sense, the paper may be regarded as an empirical test of a proposition of Keynes. More generally, the paper is suggestive in several ways. The relationship between business cycles and stock market cycles has been understood to the point of being rather obvious, but the effects of population on both has been less clear. It does appear on the basis of the evidence presented that the malaise of the stock market during the past 16 years, especially in real terms, may be due to factors more fundamental than those often perceived.     

流域水环境管理的经济学思考——以太湖流域为例

目前我国水环境问题十分严峻,面临着水体污染、水资源短缺和洪涝灾害等多方面的压力。水体污染加重了水资源短缺,生态环境破坏导致洪涝灾害频繁发生。我国人均淡水资源拥有量仅为世界平均水平的四分之一,西北诸省有相当多的地区水资源拥有量在安全警戒线以下。     

WTO与我国外商投资企业的有关法律

改革开放之初，我国在吸引外资方面立法不健全，外国投资者的投资利益没有可靠保障。1979年7月1日，六届全国人大第二次会议通过了我国第一部利用外资的法律《中外合资经营企业法》。不久，全国人大、人大常委会、国务院又相继制定了《中外合资经营企业所得税法》及实施细则，《中外合资经营企业劳动管理规定》、《中外合资经营企业登记管理办法》等一批有关合资经营企业方面的法规。1983年，我国又制定了《合资经营企业法实施细则》，对合资经营企业的法律地位、组织形式、出资方式、设立与登记程序以及内部管理机构等做了进一步的规定。此…     

Culture and Economics: On Values,Economics and International Business

In his Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen compares the two basic approaches to evaluating institutions, transcendental institutionalism and realization-focused comparisons. Referring to Adam Smith's Impartial Spectator, he argues in favor of the latter and proposes the principle of open impartiality. However, this cannot solve the tension between universalism and contextualization of values that Sen has inherited from Smith. Based on recent Hegel scholarship, we argue that some of the difficulties can be resolved, considering the role Smith played in the development of Hegel's thinking. Hegel's concept of recognition plays an essential role in establishing the possibility of impartiality both on the level of consciousness and on the level of institutional intersubjectivity. Hegel's critique of Kant's formalist ethics (also considered as transcendental institutionalism by Sen) and his analysis of the civil society in the Philosophy of Right, especially his focus on associations and Estates, can serve as a model for making Sen's focus on public discourse theoretically more concise and pragmatically feasible. Hegel shows that universalistic attitudes can only emerge in specific institutional contexts.     

经济学、熵和可持续性

一引言经济学是一门在传统上讨论稀缺问题的学科。稀缺资源的配置(自然资源和劳动力)涉及到广泛的哲学问题——有关价值、偏好、效率以及权益的问题。近年来物理科学和生态科学的发展,导致了可持续性的看法,并随之带来了一个以往不被主流经济学家重点关注的新问题。Daly(1992a)     

Irreversible investment,ambiguity and equity default swaps

We study the impact of ambiguity on the pricing and timing of the option to invest. There is a funding gap to undertake the investment, which is covered by entering into an equity-for-guarantee swap. Our model predicts that the more ambiguity-averse the agents, the less the option value, the later the investment and the higher the guarantee cost and the leverage. If the entrepreneur is more ambiguity-averse than the insurer, the investment threshold slightly rises as the perceived ambiguity increases, and on the contrary, if the entrepreneur is less ambiguity-averse than the insurer, the investment threshold increases sharply as the perceived ambiguity rises.     

Equality,equity and incentives: An experiment

We study a fundamental conflict in economic decision-making, the trade-off between equality, equity and incentives, in a new experimental game that nests a voluntary contributions mechanism in a broader spectrum of incentive schemes. In a 2×2 design, we let subjects either vote on or exogenously encounter incentive settings while assigned unequal endowments are either task-determined or random. We find that earned endowments lead to less support for redistribution and less cooperation. Subjects' voting is influenced by egalitarian and equity concerns, in addition to self-interest. Cooperation rates respond rather continuously to incentives.     

Religiosity,Economics and Life Satisfaction

This paper uses a large individual data set from the Euro Barometer Survey (ICPSR 1993 Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Economic Research (ICPSR) 1993 Euro-Barometer Surveys Ann Arbor: University of Michigan  ) to estimate the influence of religious phenomena on self-perceived satisfaction of an individual, controlling for macroeconomic conditions, effects of his political stance, and other socio-economic variables. Our estimated ordered logit model results show that an individual's life satisfaction is positively related to measures of strong religious attachment in the sense of being willing to commit to attending religious services frequently. Our other findings include that no strong evidence exists for the hypothesis that leftists suffer more from income inequality.     

行为、意义与经济学

经济学“理性”假设只是关于人类行为的三种主要的理性假设之一 ,这些假设的目的是要理性地解释被观察到的各种“行为” ,从而对行为赋予意义。对于人类行为的另外两种理性化方法是 :行为学意义上的理性假设和现象学意义上的理性假设。在过去二十年里 ,由于大量的脑科学实验数据的积累 ,关于身体的现象学研究 ,呈现出与基于认知科学的行为学研究的合流趋势 ,构成了一个新的理解人类理性的框架。这篇文章旨在说明这一新的理解框架 ,并试图进一步界定经济学理性假设的适用范围。     

经济学家、经济学与中国改革

本文回顾了中国经济学家伴随中国改革成长的历程 ,历数诸多为中国建立现代市场经济制度 ,进行过艰苦的理论和思想探索的经济学家 ;并通过具体实例说明经济学家通过对于现代经济科学认识的深化 ,在改革的重大关头和事件上所发挥的重要作用。中国改革的深入 ,对于经济科学的要求愈来愈高 ,经济学的新课题层出不穷。因此 ,本文提出亟需加快我国经济科学学科建设的若干建议。