Economic grounds for affirmative action: The evidence on architects and engineers in South Florida

Using data developed for, and presented to, the US District Court, this study evaluates the performance of women-, African-American-, and Hispanic-owned firms vis-à-vis firms owned by neither women nor minorities in three different South Florida markets: architecture, structural engineering, and civil engineering. After controlling for the influence of experience, size, and location, three of the most commonly used determinants of firms' earnings, the empirical results suggest that the three markets do not convert firms' characteristics into economic outcomes in the same manner for women and Hispanic owners as for owners who are neither women nor minorities.     

经济学视角下的制度变迁:内生性、驻存与演进

制度变迁的效率假说隐含地将经济体简约为一个绝对理性的最大化行为者,这种做法存在缺陷。就长期而言,制度变迁的本质是内生的,但也受到外部冲击的影响。制度演进过程既体现出路径依赖的特征,又不乏偶然性和机遇。经济因素或政治因素都可能导致内卷化,即长期陷入某种低效率或无效的制度安排。有效制度的演进可以通过多种途径而实现:它往往得益于一些偶然事件的影响或冲击,但也可能因经济行为者如利益集团的推动而出现。     

An analysis of crop choice: Adapting to climate change in South American farms

This paper explores how South American farmers adapt to climate by changing crops. We develop a multinomial logit model of farmer's choice of crops. Estimating the model across 949 farmers in seven countries, we find that both temperature and precipitation affect the crops that South American farmers choose. Farmers choose fruits and vegetables in warmer locations and wheat and potatoes in cooler locations. Farms in wetter locations are more likely to grow rice, fruits, potatoes, and squash and in dryer locations maize and wheat. Global warming will cause South American farmers to switch away from maize, wheat, and potatoes towards squash, fruits and vegetables. Predictions of the impact of climate change on net revenue must reflect not only changes in yields per crop but also crop switching.     

公民身份与全球化时代的族群关系——南非排外暴力问题的社会学研究

近年来,随着移民问题的凸显,针对外国移民的排外暴力成为全球化时代族群关系的一种新形式。本文运用和拓展公民身份理论,对南非的排外暴力问题进行分析和解释。作为南非二元身份制度的重要组成部分,外籍黑工这一带有歧视性的身份名词,是种族隔离时期白人政权对外籍黑人移民进行限制与排斥所衍生的社会结果。在后种族隔离时代,公民身份制度在整合南非黑白种族关系的同时,却也固化了本国民众与外籍黑工之间的关系不平等,对外籍黑工形成了身份区隔和社会排斥,进而演化成为底层民众针对外籍黑工的大规模排外暴力冲突。在南非西开普省的马普社区,社区公共论坛为底层民众与外籍黑工提供了一个对话协商的群际接触平台,推动了公民身份制度变迁,促进了排外暴力问题的化解和外籍黑工的社会融入。     

Dissertation Abstract: “Rationality, Minds, and Machines in the Laboratory: A Thematic History of Vernon Smith’s Experimental Economics”

This dissertation aims at elucidating the history of Vernon Smith’s experimental economics by focusing its attention upon the three themes of rationality, minds and machines that assumed significance at different (albeit overlapping) stages of the development of Smith’s experimental economics with the help of his published and unpublished papers.Chapter 1 is devoted to the scrutiny of the form of rationality incorporated into the portions of Smith’s laboratory experiments whose results have usually been taken as corroborations of his “Hayek Hypothesis.” By bringing into the foreground Smith’s definite position on demand theory and its concrete instantiations on many different occasions, we make the case that Smith has consistently imposed by means of the induced value theory certain narrowly defined preference structures that have definite implications for the form of rationality instantiated in the laboratory.     

环境污染及治理的经济学分析

本文从经济学角度来分析我国转型时期的环境污染及治理问题，主要运用外部性原理分析环境污染的原因，指出“市场失灵”和“政府失灵”是导致环境污染的经济根源。然后．分析了环境污染与经济发展的辩证关系。最后，针对我国的国情，提出了当前治理环境污染的对策性建议。     

平台-社群商业模式构建及其动态演变路径——基于海尔、小米和猪八戒网平台组织的案例研究

伴随着海尔、小米通过向大众赋能促使大众与企业进行价值共创的平台组织模式,以及猪八戒网等向大众赋能的众包模式在全球范围内逐渐兴起,诸如管理权矛盾、创新不足、利润下滑等企业自身束手无策的问题频频出现,这是否意味着可以从企业的合作方,即大众的角度分析和解决这类困境?本文通过海尔、小米和猪八戒网的多案例研究,从社群价值出发,构建了基于个体需求价值和隐性冗余价值的平台-社群商业模式。首先,基于隐性冗余价值的碎片化、内隐性和差异化特征,推导出大众社群化、价值共创化的必然趋势。其次,总结出由社群价值密度、社区专业化、社群迭代率和社群聚合度四个维度构成的社群组态,并由此归纳出社群生态。最后,通过对海尔、小米和猪八戒网三个企业商业模式面临问题的分析,建立了以社群价值的最优区分转变为“导火索”,继而引发社群生态特点的变化,从而最终引发平台-社群商业模式动态变化的商业模式演变路径。基于此路径,揭示了类似平台化企业商业模式出现问题的原因。     

On the Economics and Scope of Implicit Pension Debt: An International Perspective

This paper examines the concept and scope of unfunded public pension liabilities, or implicit pension debt (IPD), from an international perspective. First, the paper discusses the importance and public finance background of IPD. Second, it presents and compares different methods for estimating IPD. Third, it provides international estimates of IPD based on accrued-to-date or termination liability methods with consistent assumptions across all countries using the World Bank's ``Pension Reform Options Simulation Toolkit' (PROST) computer model. The policy conclusions stress the need for standardized international reporting of this indicator.     

Economics,Sociology, History: Notes on Their Loss of Unity,Their Need for Re-integration and the Current Relevance of the Controversy between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller

We are experiencing a situation of increasing criticism of the state in which economics is being represented nowadays. One of the remarks is that economics has become too formalized and too abstract and that the state of discipline has become increasingly unable to express many phenomena of “real life” with its concrete socioeconomic specifica. Criticism has found a way to get cumulated in different terms of economic pluralism. The claim for fostering interdisciplinary research which we also find nowadays reflects the diagnosis that our islands of shared knowledge have become too fragmented. When reflecting what is going on in recent times a view back to the end of the nineteenth century may help to contextualize recent debate. Looking at the debate between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller which was later classified as the first battles in social sciences helps to sort up arguments which are still on the agenda, inductive versus deductive methods or empirism versus abstract theorizing.     

Perspectives on Economics in the School Curriculum: Coursework,Content, and Research

This review describes the conditions for teaching economics in the kindergarten through twelfth grade (K–12) curriculum in U.S. schools. The first section presents data on course-taking in economics in high schools and state mandates for economics instruction. It discusses the value of the infusion approach to teaching economics either in place of a separate course or as a complement to it. The second section describes the economic content that is taught to students as presented in content guides and standards. The final section presents research findings on (1) test instruments for measuring outcomes from economics instruction, (2) the effect of teacher coursework and training on the student economic understanding, and (3) how instructional materials complement or substitute for instructor selection and training.     

The Reconstruction of South East Europe,the Stability Pact and the Role of the EU: An Overview

In the aftermath of the Kosovo crisis, the international community agreed on a Stability Pact to provide a framework that will contribute to the long-term security and stability of the whole region of South-East Europe (SEE). The idea is to bring the region closer to the European integration process through new institutional relations with the European Union (EU), as well as through the provision of assistance for reconstruction and development. As a contribution to the Stability Pact, the EU has announced the upgrading of its regional approach to the countries of the so called Western Balkans: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia (FYROM), and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montenegro). Under the new Stabilization and Association Process all these countries could in principle become eligible to start negotiations for a new type of association agreement with the EU. The new Stabilization and Association Agreements would offer the countries in the region improved prospects for international trade with the EU, which would potentially provide increased export revenues to finance the reconstruction of the region from its own resources. However, in keeping with the previous regional approach, strict conditions have been laid down for countries to open negotiations on the new association agreements, including progress in democratization and economic reform. In addition, the new policy framework also emphasises the need for the development of intra-regional cooperation between the countries concerned. The paper presents a discussion and evaluation of the new policy approach towards regional cooperation and prospects for European integration in the context of the problems of economic reconstruction, democratic transition and consolidation in South East Europe.     

经济学的二重性和在政策分析中的角色

经济学具有二重性,即兼具科学性质和人文性质.作为科学的经济学只涉及解释手段的选择,不考虑目的的选择问题.这是因为:手段的效果可以通过事实经验地证明,而目的包含价值观和伦理因素,无法转换为纯粹经验的描述.虽然不符合实证原则,但是作为人文的经济学是作为科学的经济学的前提,作为人文的经济学讨论目的的选择.在目的选择的过程中,伦理、价值判断、政治哲学等因素起着决定性的作用.社会实现稳定和谐的最终基础是道义与共识.     

The Dowry Gift in South Asia: An Institution on the Intersection of Market and Patriarchy

Abstract

Dowry refers to marriage gifts that are instrumental to the negotiation of the marriage contract. Historically, the dowry gift was constituted by law across the Roman empire. While dowry has become largely irrelevant in Europe in contemporary times, it is still pervasive across the Brahmanical Hindu societies of South Asia. Moreover, what was traditionally token gifts from friends and well-wishers has taken on the form of “new dowry” since the colonial period. “New dowry” is heavily composed of cash and market goods, including land and is frequently accompanied by violence against new brides when their families fail to make larger dowry gifts with higher market value. This article examines the evolution of “new dowry” through a Polanyian lens. Unlike the neoclassical Beckerian approach which takes an ahistorical outlook to marriage as a “market” for matching partners and dowry as a market price, the substantivist lens à la Polanyi investigates the historical evolution of “new dowry” through the advent of market processes in the colonial period and the countermovement of legal reform in the post-colonial period.     

Deliberation,learning, and institutional change: the evolution of institutions in judicial settings

Institutional change entails institutional design, assessment, and modification, which necessarily take place within the constraints and opportunities afforded by existing institutional arrangements. Viktor Vanberg has made major contributions to our understanding of how institutions evolve. We wish to contribute to this symposium in honor of Vanberg by analyzing how institutions for the management of water institutions in Southern California evolved primarily through the use of the courts as settings for deliberation, learning and institutional change.

中国生产性服务业区域发展差异的分解——基于劳动分工理论和Shapley值分解方法

中国的生产性服务业发展呈现出明显的区域性特征,并对制造业的发展产生较强的阻碍作用。基于上述背景,本文将生产性服务业的发展定义为由于横向分工和纵向分工效应导致的生产性服务业的出现和发展。在此基础上,建立了一个涵盖教育和创新的生产性服务业发展模型,得出了促进生产性服务业发展的内生机制。另外,本文利用2001—2007年的面板数据估计出生产性服务业的面板协整方程,然后以协整方程为基础利用Shapleyvalue对生产性服务业的区域差异进行了分解。夏普里值的分解结果表明：省际地理固有因素、制造业市场的交易效率对于生产性服务业的发展差异起到了非常重要的因素,其贡献程度分别达到了30．36％和26．87％,排在第3到第7位的分别为城市化水平、交通、信息、金融和教育市场的交易效率,2001—2007年其平均贡献率分别达到了22．36％、19．10％、15．23％、10．83％和7．54％。最后,本文提出政策建议。