无知之幕与经济公正——以起点公平为视角

"无知之幕"是罗尔斯公平契约论的核心概念。通过"无知之幕"形式性限制,公平的选择起点得以形成。契约主体处于相同的知识状态和同一的自我特性,人们必将选择某种正义原则。这一方法对类似于原初状态的市场经济具有重要方法论启示。通过教育公平的实施、经济法的法律保障和生产力的大力发展,我们可以塑造具有公平起点的市场主体,锻造市场经济的"无知之幕"程序,从而形式性地保证市场经济的公正。     

正义和社会之善

正义与道德有关,但是正义所涉及的不是个人道德,而是社会制度、政治体制和政府组织的正当性。与道德相比,正义与权力的关系更为密切。人们在对政治体制和社会制度作道义判断时,他们关注的主要是这个体制或制度如何对待身处其中的个人,其中最重要的问题就是体制或制度能否公正(正义)地对待所有的人。本文讨论了三个与“正义”有关的社会方面:法制秩序、社会契约和实在政治群体。     

管理者与社会正义

党的十七大报告提出：“必须在经济发展的基础上,更加注重社会建设,着力保障和改善民生,推进社会体制改革,扩大公共服务,完善社会管理,促进社会公平正义,努力使全体人民学有所教、劳有所得、病有所医、老有所养、住有所居,推动建设和谐社会。”     

正义与平等——当代西方社会正义理论综述

社会正义是当代西方规范性政治哲学的讨论主题.正义的核心是平等,正义理论所寻求的是对社会成员的平等关注.然而,平等关注的含义却极具争议,尤其当它涉及收入或财富分配时.对平等关注的不同解读产生了不同的分配理想.本文将从两个基本问题的角度,即"什么之平等"以及"平等本身是否可欲",来概括介绍西方社会正义领域的主要理论和观点.     

社会公平与正义的现实观照:基于罗尔斯正义理论

公平与正义是人类社会发展的永恒主题。罗尔斯正义理论在批判吸收前人正义思想的基础上,以新契约论观点对正义作了系统的论证,提出了"作为公平的正义"基本范畴。其正义理论中平等自由原则、差别原则、最少受惠者利益最大原则等对当前我国建设社会和谐具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

人文自然对正义原则的兼容与补充

正义的原则是人类长期遵循与追求的原则。正义的实现是社会安定与和谐的前提条件。然而,随着世界的全球化过程的发展,不同文化与文明之间的交流日广,同时冲突也日益加深。不同文明体系有不同的正义原则,不同立场有不同立场的正义标准,于是正义的原则不再能够防止冲突,反而成为冲突各方发动战争、激化矛盾的旗帜。针对这种情况,老子的人文自然的原则就可能有重要的启示意义和补充作用。     

天下无不散之筵席--家族企业"分家"之研究

家族企业已成为目前世界上比较普遍的企业类型,在世界范围内80％以上的企业属于家族企业。世界500强企业中,有40％由家庭所有或经营。美国家族企业占96％,创造美国64％的GDP,雇佣美国劳动力50％以上;意大利的家族企业高达99％;法国90％是家族企业,且家族企业的产值占总产值的65％。在亚洲,除中国大陆之外所有经济发达的地区,家族企业都在数量上和规模上占据主导地位。而自改革开放以来,中国内地的家族企业也如雨后春笋般涌现。20世纪最后的20年,中国的民营企业中的90％为家族企业。中国家族企业经历了从无到有、从小到大、由弱到强、由无序到规范的历史发展过程。     

"一次性消费":现代社会之痛

环顾四周，我们生活在一个被一次性消费品包围的世界里，从20世纪50年代起，西方经济的复苏使人们的消费观念发生了变化，基于对便利的需要，一次性消费品逐渐充斥于人们高消费、高节奏的生活中。     

The Distributional Impact of Public Goods Provision: A Veil of Ignorance Approach

The veil of ignorance approach is used to consider the redistribution implied by different tax-benefit systems. Assuming a (hypothetical) ex-ante situation in which individuals lack any knowledge about their future income, redistribution from rich to poor can be seen as a form of insurance. Taking redistribution and insurance as synonymous, the analysis derives cases of redistributionally neutral systems of taxation and public good provision.
JEL classification : H 23; D 30;, H 41     

The Veil of Uncertainty Unveiled

A central assumption of constitutional economics is that in the process of constitutional decisionmaking the players' uncertainty about their post-constitutional positions (veil of uncertainty) serves the useful purpose of making unanimity and fairness at the constitutional level more rather than less probable. The paper argues that this assertion is false if the conventional assumption holds true that social contracts are threatened by a prisoners' dilemma incentive structure. By means of a simple two-person game-model it is shown that, if players are fully aware of all their partial interests, agreement on a Pareto-efficient rule will be the iterated dominance equilibrium of the game played at the constitutional level. A veil of uncertainty cannot do better. It may, however, induce disagreement or discrimination, if the prisoners' dilemma violates the cardinal property often assumed. This raises the question why the choice of rules which typically takes place in full knowledge of the players' post-constitutional positions poses so many problems although, from a theoretical point of view, unanimity seems so easy to achieve. Finally, it is examined, if there is any salutary role the veil of uncertainty is able to play in view of a post-constitutional prisoners' dilemma.     

再读《牧师的黑面纱》

<牧师的黑面纱>是霍桑具有影响力的短篇小说之一,小说中的黑面纱是罪恶的象征.笔者从善与恶、罪与非罪的角度对胡珀牧师和他的黑面纱进行分析研究,指出牧师佩戴黑面纱是因为他觉察到了自己道德上的不足和缺陷,这是他达到灵魂的拯救和安宁的一种方式.     

“新中国60年”和“改革开放30年”的历史叙述

最近几年,在以电视为媒介的大众文化中,逐渐形成了两种关于“新中国60年”和“改革开放30年”的叙述策略。前者通过把20世纪50～70年代叙述为“激情燃烧的岁月”,使得革命历史不被作为异质性的存在,而缝合了七八十年代之交的历史断裂;后者则把90年代中期的下岗事件书写为一种个人的创伤体验,通过成功地治愈伤口而完成对当下社会的认同。这样两种策略不仅使得七八十年代之交的“伤痕”获得修复,而且对于90年代中期出现的“改革共识”的破裂也做出了适当的回应。也就是说,一种日渐显影的主流意识形态不仅使得50～70年代的革命历史和80年代以来的现代化历史被顺畅地组接在一起,而且使得改革开放内部的裂痕也获得某种程度上的修复。因此,缝合断裂和治愈伤口成为主流意识形态确立文化领导权的重要方式。     

Foundations of The Economics of Time and Ignorance

The Economics of Time and Ignorance grew out of the need to reinvigorate the Austrian School in light of the challenges of contemporary economics. It did this by re-examining the foundations of the Austrian tradition and by making explicit many of its hidden assumptions and implications. The book also attempted to make Austrian economics more of an open system than it had been in the conservationist decades of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The degree to which it has been successful is examined in this essay.     

Apportionment Behind the Veil of Uncertainty

Apportionment of representatives is a basic rule of everyday politics. By definition, this basic rule is a constitutional stage problem and should be decided behind the veil of uncertainty. To bring apportionment closer to quotas, we introduce f‐divergence for utilitarianism and Bregman divergence for consistent optimization. Even in our less restricted condition, we find that we must use α‐divergence for optimization and show that the minimization of α‐divergence induces the same divisor methods that correspond to the maximization of the Kolm–Atkinson social welfare function (or the expected utility function), which is bounded by constant relative risk aversion.     

Condorcet Jury Theorem or Rational Ignorance

We analyze a symmetric model of an election in which voters are uncertain about which of two alternatives is desirable for them. Each voter must incur some cost to acquire information about the alternatives. We show that by focusing on unbiased voting strategies, general symmetric signal structures can be degenerated to a two‐signal model. In addition, we show that for any sequence of unbiased voting equilibria, if the second‐order derivative of the information cost function at no information is zero, then the probability of electing the desirable alternative converges to one, that is, the Condorcet Jury Theorem is valid. Otherwise, this probability converges to some value less than one; that is, the “rational ignorance” hypothesis is valid.     

Ignorance Is Bliss as Trade Policy

Consider domestic consumers that purchase from foreign firms. A presumption would be that consumers prefer being informed when quality is uncertain and exogenous. However, in a multifirm framework based on previous models, consumers can be worse off if they are informed of the quality. Further, in the Salop-circle model, consumers may prefer not learning even though expected high-quality output is greater with learning. Moreover, the possibility that consumers prefer uncertainty increases with the probability that products are of low quality. Essentially, the benefit of screening quality (better matching) can be less than its cost (higher prices from market segmentation).     

中国经济发展的“失衡”：漠视社会成本

社会成本是企业的外生成本，是企业不愿承担的，包括自然资源、生态环境、人力资源及道德等各方面的成本。中国现阶段社会成本居高不下的原因就是对社会成本的重视不够，仍走“以高投入促增长”的老路子，忽视了经济增长背后的巨额社会成本。加强对社会成本的认识，了解其包含的内容，制定控制社会成本的各项措施，是中国转变经济增长方式，实现可持续发展的关键环节。