If ‘money matters’, what about the monetary base?

Crucial to the debates on monetarism is the money aggregate relevant to its key propositions, in particular those that relate to the determination of nominal national income and inflation. In his influential work on ‘market monetarism’, Scott Sumner has accorded a privileged position to the monetary base in the key monetarist propositions. This article argues that, on the contrary, in a modern economy the role of cash is so small, as well as so clandestine, that the monetary base does not play any direct role in the determination of national income and inflation.     

宫泽贤治的内心世界

宫泽贤治是日本著名作家、诗人和教育家。一生致力于文学创作和农业指导,他将自己改革农村的理想以文学形式表达出来,创作了大量独具特色的诗歌和童话,其作品充满了浪漫与幻想。他自幼目睹农民的悲惨生活,以温婉和柔情,表达对劳动人民的无限同情;以犀利的笔锋,写出对当时社会的讽刺与批判。他梦想创造一个充满艺术与梦想的极乐世界,以慈悲之心和无私奉献为众生谋求真正的幸福。本文试图通过宫泽贤治的作品,解读其内心世界之一二。     

A continuous-time portfolio turnpike theorem

We prove a continuous-time portfolio turnpike theorem. The proof uses the theory of martin-gales and is more intuitively appealing than the usual discrete-time mode of proof using dynamic programming. When the interest rate is strictly positive, the present value of any contingent claim having payoffs bounded from above can be made arbitrarily small when the investment horizon increases. Thus an investor concentrates his wealth in buying contingent claims that have payoffs unbounded from above at the very beginning of his horizon. As a consequence, it is the asymptotic property of his utility function as wealth goes to infinity that determines his optimal investment strategy at the very beginning of his horizon.     

梅帅元 山水文化“造梦人”

梅帅元坐着奔驰S320,以160公里的时速在京承高速路上狂奔。25年前的梅帅元,还在享受着作家的散漫不羁：骑一匹小马,别着一把藏刀,沿着云南红水河一路上行。这段古典骑士般的经历,被他写成小说一《红水河》。开上奔驰,不复再有古典和浪漫。当年的作家,现在的身份喧闹无比：实景演出创始人、国家一级编剧、制作人、策划人,技痒时做做导演,     

见刘难

一直喜欢刘震云。几年前,《一句顶一万句》出版后,我带着见习记者去采他,仿佛也不难。跟他聊了3个多小时,畅快!那之前,同事刚采过阎迮科。我感觉这两人风格截然两样:阎连科是个儒家,刘震云是个道家,从容、冲淡、通透。     

JAPANESE AND BRITISH MANAGERIAL COLLEAGUES—HOW THEY VIEW EACH OTHER

The mutual perceptions were obtained of 113 Japanese and 100 British managers working in the London offices of 18 Japanese companies. Eighteen semantic differential items were used to permit each respondent to report his auto stereotype of his own nationality of manager, his hetero stereotype of the other nationality, and his meta stereotype (his opinion as to how they would assess his own group). The degree of agreement between the auto stereotype of each group and the hetero stereotype held of it by the other group is discussed, and the accuracy of the meta stereotypes is examined. It is also shown that the 18 semantic items can be reduced to 3 principal components which, after rotation, are consistent in meaning between the two nationalities. The three rotated factors are interpretable as ‘approval’, ‘open style’ and ‘functional’. The factors permit a more concise comparison of the stereotypes.     

互联网公司免息贷

互联网热之下，腾讯、阿里巴巴、人人网们给基层员工们发放了慷慨的免息房贷红包。但看起来，这只是专属于高现金流高回报率行业的福利     

Unanticipated shocks and the maintenance and replacement of durable goods

This paper investigates how a durable-goods owner responds to a once-for-all unanticipated shock in a stationary state market. This problem is examined in the context of housing. The circumstances are determined under which a landlord will respond in each of the following five ways: (i) abandon his building immediately; (ii) run down his building optimally and then abandon; (iii) operate his building forever; (iv) demolish his building immediately, and reconstruct a new building on the site; and (v) run down his building, demolish it, and reconstruct a new building on the site. The analogous cases for other durable goods should be obvious.     

Thanks for the memories: baseball veterans' end-of-career salaries

It is well-established that a baseball player's salary is based on his performance, experience, star status, bargaining power, mobility and his team's ability to pay. This paper focuses on veteran players who are on the brink of retirement and on the determinants of their salaries. It is found that a veteran's end-of-career peak salary depends upon how his career performance, that his most recent performance is irrelevant unless he has spent his entire career with one team, and that the average veteran's salary peaks after 9 years in the Majors. A corollary inference is that general managers recognize and reward player performance over the long haul in comparison with others who have played at that player's principal position, and with a nod to how history will evaluate that player. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

De Moivre's Poisson Approximation to the Binomial

In his first work on probability, written in 1711, Abraham De Moivre looked at the problem of finding the number of trials required in a binomial experiment to achieve a probability of 1/2 of finding at least some given number of successes. He looked at two cases: when the probability of success  p  = 1/2 and when  p  is small but  n , the number of trials, is large. In the latter case, unlike other problems that he solved in probability, De Moivre never revealed his method of solution. We explore the solution that De Moivre originally suggests and find that his method does not work. We explore other numerical solutions and put forward the suggestion that De Moivre relied on a very cumbersome and tedious method of solution based on his earlier work on series in the 1690s. Since his method was neither quick nor mathematically elegant, he never revealed the method that he used to obtain his numerical solutions.     

Celebrating the Memory of Corrado Gini: a Personality Out of the Ordinary

Corrado Gini was one of the most brilliant and internationally recognized scientists of the Italian School of Statistics. This paper, written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death, recalls the key aspects of his life and his extraordinary scientific contributions. In describing his impressive mind, interdisciplinary interests, his long and significant academic life, his immense scientific production, and his commitment to official statistics, we must also take into account the particular historical period that Gini lived in. But the most relevant and honourable of his acknowledgements is the impact he undeniably had and still has on the international scientific community of statisticians and non‐statisticians.     

英孚：布局中国的辩证关系

染成黄绿色的头发一根一根地树立着,然而一身中规中矩的西服却非常笔挺,他就是英孚教育（English First）和中国区总裁比尔·费舍尔（Bill Fisher）。比尔长相酷似北欧人,但却是地地道道的美国人,比尔认为他对英孚的管理之道跟他的穿着打扮非常类似——中规中矩中坚持独立个性……     

Was Vilfredo Pareto Really a ‘Precursor’ of Fascism.?

A bstract . Vilfredo Pareto has been labelled a fascist and 'a precursor of fascism' largely because he welcomed the advent of fascism in Italy and was honored by the new regime. Some have seen in his sociological works the foundations of fascism. This is not correct. Even fascist writers did not find much merit in these works, and definitely condemned his economic theories. A s a political thinker he remained a radical libertarian till the end, and continued to express serious reservations about fascism, and to voice opposition to its basic policies. This is evident from his correspondence with his close friends. There are strong reasons to believe that, had he lived long enough, Pareto would have revolted against fascism.     

创业者婚姻指南

巴菲特说,他一生中最重要的投资并不是买入哪种股票,而是选择跟谁结婚。——还可以加上一句,当创业者面对婚姻危机冲击企业的困局时,最重要的决定是＂选择何时、何地、如何恰当地止损＂     

Searle, Rationality, and Social Reality

A BSTRACT . This paper makes a critical assessment of some contributions of John Searle of direct relevance to social science—his theory of rationality and his theory of institutions. The former is criticized for being able to account for how people can act for "external reasons," as opposed to their desires, only in cases where an obligation derives from a promise; a rival account is much more general. The latter is criticized on three grounds: (1) his theory of institutions can only account for a narrow range of social reality, that deriving from some kind of "enactment"; (2) his notion of "collective intentionality" is unnecessary to explain institutions and is introduced only so that Searle can stay within an individualistic, Cartesian theory of the mind, something of no interest to social scientists; (3) his account implies that if an institution exists, "we collectively accept it," whereas it may in fact not be accepted, but merely tolerated or submitted to.     

1980, 1985, 1990: A porter exegesis

Michael Porter's influential work in strategy is normally seen as a consistent and coherent body of work. An in-depth study of his major publications, however, shows that a considerable degree of evolution has taken place. Porter's views have changed to such an extent that the policy recommendations given in his 1980 and 1985 books are opposite to those in his 1990 book. This shift can be accounted for when the economic perspective behind these books is analysed. Porter appears to have changed his conception of competition from a static Industrial Organization perspective towards a dynamic perspective rooted in Austrian Economics. On the basis of this distinction Porter's different frameworks are evaluated. It is shown that some of the older frameworks can still be relevant today, while others have lost their importance.     

Economics, Sociology, and the "Professional Complex"

A bstract .   This article discusses the relationship between economics and sociology in the context of Parsons's analytical theory of action and systems and his criticisms of orthodox and institutional economics. The article also addresses his view of the importance of the professions to an understanding of the nature of advanced capitalism. The professions are discussed as both an illustration of his theoretical argument and a substantive problem that stimulated the development of his theory. The "professional complex" is an emergent phenomenon in capitalism that modifies its operation and points to the complexity of systems of social action that require to be analyzed without being reduced to one of their elements. This reductionism is evident in orthodox economic theory and also in the more sociologically-oriented approach of institutional economics. Parsons argues that each is a form of what, following Whitehead, he calls the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Although Parsons offers a significant critique of dominant approaches in economics, major flaws within his own theory create the appearance that he has simply carried over the deficiencies of orthodox theory into his own general statement of theory. These flaws contribute to major misunderstandings of Parsons's project and, therefore, indicate continuing problems in the relation between economics and sociology.     

Keynes' Investments

Abstract . It is well known that in The General Theory, Keynes is very critical of the stock exchange market, an institution, he says, that “cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism.” At the same time much of his income was derived from speculation in commodities, stocks and foreign exchange. Some questions raised by Keynes’ way of making a living are addressed. When did his market activities begin? Did he, as some detractors allege, take advantage of insider information? What principles of behavior did he follow in his buying and selling? What was his attitude toward his way of making a living? And, above all do the views expressed in The General Theory reflect the influence of Keynes’ market experience? It is suggested that there is, in fact, a close relation between Keynes’ financial experiences and some of his distinctive economic theories. His experiences, interpreted in the light of his Apostolic-Moorean beliefs, caused the deeply critical attiiude toward the whole financial system that one finds in The General Theory's chapter 12.     

Henry George's Political Critics

A bstract .   Twelve political criticisms of George were paramount after he formed his own political party in 1887: (1) his refusal to join with other reformers to link his proposals with theirs, or to absorb theirs into his own campaign; (2) his singular focus on ground rent to the exclusion of other forms of monopoly income, such as that of the railroads, oil and mining trusts; (3) his almost unconditional support of capital, even against labor; (4) his economic individualism rejecting a strong role for government; (5) his opposition to public ownership or subsidy of basic infrastructure; (6) his refusal to acknowledge interest-bearing debt as the twin form of rentier income alongside ground rent; (7) the scant emphasis he placed on urban land and owner-occupied land; (8) his endorsement of the Democratic Party's free-trade platform; (9) his rejection of an academic platform to elaborate rent theory; (10) the narrowness of his theorizing beyond the land question; (11) the alliance of his followers with the right wing of the political spectrum; and (12) the hope that full taxation of ground rent could be achieved gradually rather than requiring a radical confrontation involving a struggle over control of government.