Money and the rule of law in ecuador

The rule of law is defined and its implications in the monetary sphere are elaborated. When national monetary arrangements fail to comport with the rule of law, “dollarization” is desirable. That policy provides for more stable money and expectations about its future value. The salutary effects of Ecuador's “dollarization” program of 2000 are reviewed. In addition, a manifesto for economic reform in Ecuador is presented. Its elements are: financial integration, fiscal transparency and control, tax simplification and reform, supermajority voting, deregulation, and privatization.     

如何推进重庆农村信息化建设

农村信息化建设是社会主义新农村建设的重要内容。重庆作为全国首个城乡统筹信息化试验区,其农村信息化工作相对滞后,其中地域特殊、基础薄弱是制约重庆农村信息化的重要因素。加强基础设施建设、增加资金投入、培养人才是推动重庆农村信息化建设的有效途径。     

Choosing one’s own informal institutions: on Hayek’s critique of Keynes’s immoralism

In the main, Hayek favored rules that apply equally to all and located such rules in tradition, beyond conscious construction. This led Hayek to attack Keynes’s immoralism, i.e., the position that one should be free to choose how to lead one’s life irrespective of the informal institutions in place. However, it is argued here that immoralism may be compatible with Hayek’s enterprise since Hayek misinterpreted Keynes, who did not advocate the dissolving of all informal rules for everybody. By avoiding this misinterpretation, immoralism can be seen as institutional experimentation at the margin, which Hayek himself favored.

对《中共中央关于全面推进依法治国若干重大问题的决定》的几点思考

党的十八届四中全会通过的《中共中央关于全面推进依法治国若干重大问题的决定》就依法治国提出许多新的思想观点,从实现中华民族伟大复兴中国梦的高度阐述依法治国的重大意义,把习近平总书记的系列重要讲话精神首次作为依法治国的指导思想,从依据宪法法律治国理政和依据党内法规管党治党两方面阐明了党依法执政的新内涵,提出了"人民是依法治国的主体和力量源泉"的新论点,全面阐述了依法治国的重大任务。     

Financial markets and firm size: The role of employment protection laws and barriers to entrepreneurship

This article provides evidence on the institutional determinants of firm size for the period 1980–1998. Using a comprehensive longitudinal database across 29 industrial sectors in 15 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, we study how labour regulations and barriers to entrepreneurship (BE) affect industrial organization in the presence of capital market frictions. We show that strict employment protection laws (EPL) and high BE negatively affect firm size in sectors that are more dependent on external funds. Our findings demonstrate that the interaction between market regulations and financial market imperfections help to explain some of the differences in firm structure across countries.     

Predicting FDI inflows: Exploring a nonlinear relationship between peace years,oil wealth,and the rule of law

Despite previous studies investigating the impacts of various factors such as peace years, natural resources, and the rule of law on foreign direct investment (FDI), empirical findings remain inconclusive. Therefore, this study investigates the interplay between these factors in shaping host country conditions that facilitate FDI inflows. Using generalized additive models, we examine the simultaneous effects of peace years, oil wealth, and the rule of law on FDI inflows in a sample of non-OECD countries from 1970 to 2009. Our results reveal that established peace is a critical factor in attracting FDI inflows for both oil-exporting and non-oil-exporting countries. However, the effects of the rule of law vary depending on oil wealth. Oil-exporting countries receive more FDI inflows when they have a weak rather than a strong rule of law, while non-oil-exporting countries tend to receive more foreign investments when they have a moderately strong rule of law. We argue that countries with oil wealth combined with a moderately weak rule of law provide an environment that is conducive to multinational corporations (MNCs) in extractive industries seeking monopoly rents. Conversely, countries without oil wealth should create stable yet efficient environments that protect property rights and promote labor market flexibility to appeal to non-resource-seeking MNCs.     

A sticky trait: Social trust among Swedish expatriates in countries with varying institutional quality

Social trust is linked to many desirable economic and social outcomes. Using new data from a representative sample of 2668 Swedish expatriates, we examine the robustness of high social trust in countries with different levels of institutional quality. The results suggest that individual trust decreases with length of stay in countries with high corruption and low rule of law. The effect is relatively small and driven by expatriates who were aged 30 years or below upon arrival to the new country. While other studies have found that trust among migrants adapts to destination country trust levels, we find that after the (approximate) age of 30, high trust is a sticky personality trait. The results are robust to controlling for a large array of individual characteristics (including age) and support the view that social trust is sensitive to events that occur early in life.     

The empirical estimation of the cost-minimizing jury size and voting rule in civil trials

Since the early 1970s, the literature examining the court system has placed much emphasis on the importance of the jury size and voting rule when analyzing the jury decision-making process. In addition, researchers have also used deductive reasoning to theoretically determine the cost-minimizing jury size and voting rule with regards to Type I and Type II errors. In this paper, we take this analysis one step further by empirically estimating the cost-minimizing jury size and voting rule in civil jury trials.     

论商法的私法本质

商法在本质上是私法,与民法一起构成完整的私法体承。笔者从公法、私法的区别入手,阐明商法的私法本质,并从商法的公法化趋势阐明,现代商法虽然具有了某些公法性质,但这并不改变商法的私法本质。     

Money and the rule of law

Contemporary monetary systems permit those in positions of authority to exercise discretionary power in the pursuit of monetary policy objectives. We argue there are strong prima facie reasons why this is normatively problematic. Engaging the literature on the rule of law, we argue that a general and nondiscriminatory rule ought to apply to monetary institutions for the same reasons such a rule ought to apply to other important institutions. We recognize that this prima facie case may be overcome by sufficiently strong consequentialist concerns, but show that these concerns are ungrounded: discretionary monetary authorities, both in theory and practice, perform poorly. We thus affirm the importance of the rule of law for monetary policy as a requisite for both non-arbitrary governance and macroeconomic stability.     

Foreign direct investment under a weak rule of law

We have developed a self‐enforcing contract model to show that better economic fundamentals can help an area or a region under a weak rule of law – but with order – to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs), whereas lowering taxes does not necessarily help. Using a cross‐region Chinese dataset, we find evidence consistent with our theoretical analysis. Regional variations in tax rates and the perceived quality of formal contracting institutions are not correlated with regional FDI inflows, but leadership characteristics are. Most conventional economic factors have the predicted effects on FDIs. The finding that FDI is lower in locations where domestic private firms have better access to finance and where the air quality is poor is also new to the literature.     

浅谈政府职能转变与社会主义新农村建设

党的十六届五中全会做出的建设社会主义新农村的伟大战略决策，为解决“三农”问题指明了道路，为全面建设小康社会提出了具体任务。社会主义新农村建设主导在政府。只有进一步转变政府管理理念，完善政府行为方式，提高政府行政能力，才能为社会主义新农村建设提供有力的政治保障和动力支持。     

新常态下推进依法治校的对策研究

依法治校是贯彻落实十八届四中全会精神,推进学校治理体系和治理能力现代化的需要,具有十分重要的意义。在新常态下推进依法治校可概括为：牢固树立推进依法治校理念,健全完善科学民主决策体制,健全完善学校各项规章制度,推进校务和党务公开,推进广大党员干部师生树立法制意识,依法健全校内纠纷解决机制。     

Constitutional craftsmanship and the rule of law

Is “rule of law” anything more than a fictional allusion? After all, “law” is an abstract noun, and abstract nouns can’t rule. Only people can rule. The conceptual framework of constitutional political economy invokes a central distinction between choosing rules and playing within those rules. Claims on behalf of a rule of law require a sharp distinction between the enforcement of agreed-upon rules and arbitrary changes in those rules. This paper explores whether there are constitutional arrangements under which it could reasonably be claimed that governance reflects a deep level operation of a rule of law despite the surface level recognition that it is men who rule. With the exercise of rulership being a social process and not a matter of individual action, the network pattern through which rules are enforced takes on particular significance. In particular, polycentric architectures are generally more consistent with rule of law than monocentric architectures.     

Communicative action and the radical constitution: the Habermasian challenge to Hayek, Mises and their descendents

This paper evaluates Jurgen Habermas's typology of action andhis recent call for a radically democratic rule of law. Thetheory of action that Habermas develops, however, differs significantlyfrom the science of action (praxeology) of the Austrian school.As such, it represents a methodological challenge to Austrianpraxeology. Additionally, Habermas's criticism of the welfarestate is shown to be somewhat consistent with Hayek's criticisms,but his alternative to the welfare state challenges the politicalvision of many Austrian economists. This paper attempts to demonstratethat both Habermas's and the Austrian school's efforts sufferfrom similar weaknesses and epistemological pretences.     

我国城市规模分布Pareto指数测算及影响因素分析

This paper estimates the Pareto exponent of the city size (population size and economy size) distribution, all provinces, and three regions in China in 1997, 2000 and 2003 by OLS, comparatively analyzes the Pareto exponent cross section and times, and empirically analyzes the factors which impacts on the Pareto exponents of provinces. Our analyses show that the size distributions of cities in China follow the Pareto distribution and are of structural features. Variations in the value of the Pareto exponent of city population size distribution are significantly explained by industrialization, industry structure and regional transportation infrastructure, and variations in the value the Pareto exponents of city economy size distribution are significantly explained by industrialization and regional transportation infrastructure. __________ Translated from Shuliang Jingji Jishu Jingji Yanjiu 数量经济技术经济研究 (The Journal of Quantitative & Technical Economics), 2007, (4): 43–52     

政府规模、法治水平与服务业发展

本文利用跨国横截面数据,计量检验了政府规模、法治水平与一国服务业比重之间的关系。我们发现,以一国法治水平来衡量的契约维护制度的质量,与其服务业比重显著正相关;政府规模与其服务业比重显著负相关;其中法治水平对服务业比重的影响在中低收入国家更重要。进一步检验表明,统计上无法发现私人财产保护制度对服务业比重的显著影响,而政府支出规模和政府投资规模对服务业比重都有负向的影响。     

Trade,trust and the rule of law

Well-functioning institutions, both formal (i.e. rule of law) and informal (i.e. trust), facilitate economic exchange. To investigate the nature of the relationship between formal and informal institutions, we analyze bilateral trade patterns in a sample of 16 European countries between 1996–2009. Our results show that trust and rule of law are substitutes, as the positive effect of trust on trade is conditional on the quality of the rule of law. When the rule of law of the importing country increases relative to that of the exporter, the effect of trust on trade decreases. The decline in the effect of trust on trade is less for importers than for exporters, a result that can be attributed to the risk of non-payment that exporters run.     

大国经济研究的回顾与展望——1990-2010年国内文献述评

中国是典型的发展中大国,自20世纪90年代以来,我国学者对大国经济的研究经历了提出问题、初步探索、形成热点三个阶段,主要从大国经济崛起的典型化事实出发,研究了大国特征和大国优势、大国模式和大国战略、大国治理和大国体制等问题,提出了一些有价值的思想观点。但是,现有研究存在对象不够明晰、内容比较分散和理论深度有待拓展等问题,基于这种状况,未来的研究将在广度和深度上拓展,并形成科学的理论体系。应该积极寻求大国经济研究的微观基础和理论范式,揭示超大规模国家经济的特征和特殊规律,并通过在系统化研究、核心原理研究和学科体系研究等方面取得突破,为大国经济学的创立奠定基础。