外国对华官方发展援助的演变及趋势

本随着各援助国对华援助战略的不断变化,国际对华官方发展援助的规模呈逐渐下降趋势,技术援助的比重大幅度上升,合作方式趋于多元化,发展援助领域逐步向政策层面转移,中国公民社会组织在国际对华援助中扮演越来越重要的角色.与此同时,中国与各援助国的合作关系也逐渐从原来的受援国-援助国的关系发展为在国际发展问题上开展对话和合作的关系.     

End-of-life care in United States: current reality and future promise--a policy review

Data collection and analysis of that data are vital to developing effective outcome measures when it comes to improvements in the cost and quality of delivered health care. The present state of end-of-life care in the United States is evaluated, focusing on statistics of disparities in access to and type of care provided across the country. Although only a few portions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act deal with end-of-life care reform, the multiple innovative efforts occurring at state and local levels are proving very effective in improving end-of-life care. Possible improvements and obstacles to those improvements, and the involvement of the profession of nursing are highlighted. The focus of this investigation is to determine if the evidence supports the following imperative: that the money spent for end-of-life care be spent in a manner that benefits the patient and complements his or her wishes.     

Heterogeneous human capital, uncertainty, and the structure of plans: A market process approach to marriage and divorce

The family has not been exempt from the multiple and rapidly occurring changes in the world today, particularly in market economies. The number of marriages has declined, age at first marriage has risen, the number of divorces has risen sharply, the fertility rate has declined, and the division of labor within families has changed, not always in ways that might be expected. This paper subjects these developments to a market process analysis, drawing on the voluminous work occurring in family economics. The Austrian theory of capital, with its emphasis on capital heterogeneity, is relevant. We place particular emphasis on the importance of the structure of human capital within marriage and how investments in such human capital have been affected by the uncertainty that these changes have produced. We also examine investments in marriage-specific human capital and in general human capital (particularly as they relate to childcare). This is then related to the incidence of divorce and the causes and spoils from divorce. The advent of no-fault divorce seems to have been seminal in this regard. We end with a brief glance at the future.

自由贸易区战略实施效果评估及展望

自由贸易区是中国深化国内改革、扩大高水平开放、深度参与国际规则制订的重要平台。"十三五"期间,中国的自由贸易区战略取得积极进展,与自贸伙伴的贸易与投资关系更加紧密,协定涵盖内容不断拓展,但与周边国家以及国际高标准的自贸协定相比仍有一定差距。中美博弈加剧、地缘战略竞争、逆全球化趋势、全球供应链重构等政治、经济因素对中国实施自由贸易区战略构成一定挑战。"十四五"时期,应加快推动自由贸易协定的谈判,优化全球布局,促进提质升级,激发合作动力,在提高风险防控的基础上,推动自由贸易区成为内外循环互促发展的新助力。     

拉美和加勒比海地区经济状况及前景

由于世界经济形势仍然有利于拉美和加勒比地区的发展,且该地区国家政府宏观经济政策调整渐显成效,2003年以来拉美和加勒比地区经济持续缓步增长.根据拉美经济委员会初步统计,2005年拉美和加勒比地区的国家经济在2003年和2004年分别增长了2%和5.9%的基础上进一步发展.国内生产总值增长了4.3%,人均生产总值增长了2.8%,呈现了连续三年经济恢复性发展的活跃势头.拉美经济委员会认为,拉美和加勒比地区国家经济正处于良好的发展周期.     

A systems approach to policy analysis and development planning: Construction sector in the Turkish 5-year development plans

In this study, we propose a new model for systems analysis ‘of’ policy and systems analysis ‘for’ policy with the example of construction sector in the Turkish 5-year development plans.Our proposed model—integrated development management model (IDMM)—is conceptually based on the principles of systems thinking and integrated management approach.We present and discuss the results of our work in which we extracted all construction-related policies and strategies from eight 5-year development plans and analyzed them using the IDMM. In the light of the analyses, we give several answers to the question: “Why did the development plans fail to meet their targets in Turkey?” We propose that any development plan has to have claritas–unitas–integritas–consonantia between the management levels (normative, strategic, and operational) and components (goals, structures, and behavior) of IDMM.The paper is the first work that brings the concepts of development planning and foresight together. In a complementary stance, the time of integrating foresight and development planning has come.     

海峡两岸经贸发展状况与趋势

自1979年年初祖国大陆提出"三通"倡议以后,海峡两岸经贸合作出现了较快的发展.两岸贸易额从1979年的0.77亿美元,到2006年达到1078.4亿美元,突破千亿大关,两岸贸易总额截至2006年底已达6036.9亿美元.从2003年起,大陆超越美国、日本,成为台湾地区最大的贸易伙伴,并且是台湾地区最大的出口市场.台商在大陆累计投资项目71847个,合同金额1010亿美元,实际投资439.1亿美元.     

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.     

A macro economy as an ecology of plans

Standard macro theories reflect a choice-theoretic orientation wherein aggregate variables are treated as acting directly on one another. Macro phenomena are thus reduced to the same order of simplicity as micro phenomena; macro variables differ from micro variables only by their larger size. In contrast, this paper treats the relationship between micro and macro as non-scalable. Macro phenomena emerge through micro interaction and are of a higher order of complexity than micro phenomena. Rather than reducing macro to micro through scalar multiplication, macro phenomena supervene on micro interaction and are not themselves objects of direct action. A macro economy is treated as a complex ecology of plans that constitute a non-equilibrium process of spontaneous ordering.     

The future of economics: A Delphi Study

In an attempt to forecast the shape of economics in the year 2001, a Delphi study was undertaken, involving over 200 professional economists from 18 different countries. The end result was a list of 28 breakthroughs thought likely to occur in the next 20 years. The paper describes each breakthrough in detail, the process by which consensus and dissent were communicated, and the method used to select the panel of experts surveyed. Although the overall outcome of the study can be interpreted from several perspectives, one inescapable impression that emerges is that the liberal tradition in economics is latent but not dead, or equivalently, that the present conservative drift in the discipline is likely to be shortlived.     

The shift to services employment: A review of the literature

This paper provides an overview of literature on the employment shift towards services. It follows the three dimensions of structural change: inter-industry productivity differences, the inter-industry division of labor (outsourcing), and shifts in final demand. It concludes that the third dimension gained importance over the last decades although differential productivity growth continued to contribute to the rise of service employment as well. Outsourcing of service tasks from manufacturing industries increased but cannot explain much of the rise in service-industry employment over time. The shift to services is not just a price effect nor is it mainly the effect of the outsourcing of service activities from manufacturing industries. The shift to services is real.     

2005年中国纺织品贸易回顾

为了遏制中国纺织服装产品出口,早在中国入世谈判期间,美国与欧盟就主张将<中国加入世贸组织工作组报告书>第242条款强加于中国.该条款规定,其他世贸组织成员在2008年12月31日前可对中国纺织服装产品实施特别保障措施.去年,美欧对中国纺织品发起的特保争端就是以第242条款为依据.同时,<中国加入世贸组织议定书>第十五条、第十六条也为进口国借助反倾销和保障措施阻挠中国产品出口提供了便利.除此之外,各类技术性贸易壁垒也会不断对中国出口纺织服装产品提出新的要求.而一些发展中国家担心在纺织品后配额时代,失去原有的欧美纺织出口市场,绞尽脑汁阻止中国纺织品出口.因此,中国的纺织品出口在短期内尚面临诸多挑战.     

From one to many central plans: Drug advertising inspections and intra-national protectionism in China

This paper provides the first micro-level evidence for the existence and patterns of intra-national protectionism in China. We demonstrate that drug advertising inspections are used by provincial governments to discriminate against firms from outside the province. We further reveal systematic patterns in the degree of discrimination across firms: those from neighboring areas, those from regions with more economic links to the destination province, those from provinces with a stronger presence in the market, and those with political ties to “allied” provincial governments are less likely to be targeted. Our findings highlight the unique politico-economic structure in China and confirm that giving local governments strong incentives to compete with each other may exacerbate the market distortions inherent in a partially reformed economy.     

The future of natural gas: A Darwinian analysis

Market substitution analysis has been a reliable tool for describing the dynamics of energy markets during the last 200 years. It is used here to project the evolution of the world energy system during the next 200 years. The exercise draws its interest from the extraordinary stability of socioeconomic processes, which becomes manifest when appropriate parameters are chosen to measure them and a Darwinian conceptual frame is used to organize them. We have worked out a thousand cases. In order to read the startling results correctly, one should remember Edison christened his 10-kilowatt dynamo “Jumbo.” Our energy system will grow beyond today's imagination requiring a rethinking of its structure to make it compatible with the context.     

Money and totality: A review essay

Moseley’s (2016 Moseley, F. 2016. Money and Totality: A Macro-Monetary Interpretation of Marx’s Logic in Capital and the End of the Transformation Problem. Leiden: Brill Publishers. [Google Scholar]) Money and Totality focuses on two important issues: (a) the nature and significance of Marx’s notion of the “circuit of money capital” and (b) the solution to the “transformation problem”. The former question, in particular, makes this book important not only for Marx specialists but also for other dissenting economists. Recall that in writings before the General Theory Keynes (1933a, 1933b), in particular, made allusion to the Marxian circuit via the concept of the monetary theory of production. However, these references did not survive in the published version in 1936. Nor was Keynes at all confident on this topic in debate the following year. It is therefore important to both Marx scholars and other heterodox economists to inquire exactly how the Marxian circuit was supposed to work. A starting point is to write out the scheme from Capital Vol. 2 (Marx, 1885/1976 Marx, K. 1885/1976. Capital: Vol. II. London: Penguin Books. [Google Scholar]) in full, M – C?…?P … C’ –?M’, and try to explain what the magnitudes (M’ – M) and (C’ – C), are supposed to represent. This is indeed one of Moseley’s main tasks in this thought-provoking book.