Gordon Tullock and experimental public choice

In this paper, I discuss Gordon Tullock’s views on Experimentation in Economics, his own research experiment, and his influence on the field of experimental public choice. I argue that Tullock can credibly claim to have been an early supporter of the method and that his work is cited more often than that of other public choice scholars active in the same period. His work on rent seeking forms the basis of an extensive experimental literature and studies on trust, demand revelation and voter turnout have been strongly influenced by Tullock’s work.     

Fond memories of professor Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock made lasting contribution to the economic notion of cost, while his criticism of the adversarial process in common law has generated recurring research into the efficiency of alternative legal systems.     

Gordon Tullock as a teacher and mentor

Gordon Tullock was involved in this former graduate student’s life as a dissertation advisor, writing instructor, mentor, and person offering lifelong encouragement. Although my direction was not in public choice, Gordon Tullock has remained a positive influence on everything I have done.     

Gordon Tullock and the Virginia School of Law and Economics

In 1999 Gordon Tullock became Professor at the George Mason University Law School. Tullock’s arrival at George Mason brought the economics department and the law school close together. The work that resulted during those years consolidated the methodological foundations for a different way of thinking about the economic analysis of law—the “functional” approach to law and economics. The functional law and economics approach espoused by the Virginia School was not attacking any of the results of the Chicago School or the Yale School, but rather proposing a methodological shift. This paper presents some of the results developed by this school and illustrates Tullock’s controversial positions on trials and on the common law system, through anecdotes, Tullock’s own work and related scholarly contributions.     

Gordon Tullock and Richard McKenzie. The New World of Economics.

The authors extend the literature on the efficacy of high school economics instruction in two directions. First, they assess how much economic knowledge that California students acquired in their compulsory high school course is retained on their entering college. Second, using as a control group some college students from the state of Washington, where there is no mandate for high school economics instruction, the authors evaluate the impact of California's high school economics mandate on students’ economic literacy when they enter college. The testing instrument is the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL).     

Tullock on the organization of scientific inquiry

In (Tullock, The organization of inquiry, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1966), Gordon Tullock sets out to establish how knowledge is developed and dispersed in science, to such a high degree of reliability, despite the lack of formal organizational structure. He contrasts this against the unreliability of the “non-sciences”. In this essay, I review his perspective and consider the validity of his proposed reforms.     

On interpreting probability distributions fitted to times of first adoption

This paper attempts to interpret the standard statistical distributions in the innovation diffusion context. A simple rule is provided for classifying a statistical distribution as being an internal, an external, or a mixed influence model. Two distributions, suitable as flexible mixed influence models, are used to analyze several well-known data sets.     

From scholarly idea to budgetary institution: the emergence of cost-benefit analysis

Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is typically portrayed as a technique for promoting efficiency in government. We don’t deny that CBA can be used in this manner, but instead focus on a different property of CBA, namely, its evolution from scholarly musings into a framing institution within which budgetary processes operate. The evolution of CBA into institutional status, moreover, shows the value of bringing a polyarchical perspective to bear on fiscal organization, wherein budgetary outcomes emerge through structured interaction among participants. CBA is a product of interaction within a political ecology, as distinct from being the product of some person’s optimizing choice.

On the physical quality of life index and evaluating economic welfare between nations

This paper tests for the statistical relationship between the Physical Quality of Life Index and an index of per capita gross national product for 150 nations and concludes that both provide essentially similar welfare rankings. We utilize principal components methodology to estimate PQLIs for 150 countries and find that, due to intercorrelation between the variables in the PQLI, the first principal component explains about 95% of the generalized variance.     

On market-mediated emissions and regulations on life cycle emissions

We analyze the use of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a regulatory tool using biofuel regulations as an illustrative example. A regulatory context calls for a consequential LCA (CLCA) of a policy as opposed to an attributional LCA (ALCA) of a product. In performing CLCA, issues of scale, price effects, technology and policy in the counterfactual state of the world, strategic behavior, policy horizon etc. need consideration. This appears to increase both uncertainty in estimates and the cost of performing LCA. We suggest heuristics for determining vulnerability to harmful indirect effects at an early stage in the policy process and discuss alternative policies to limit harmful indirect effects without engaging in the full effort of computation and selection of a central estimate for uncertain outcomes.     

浅谈中国民营企业的寿命

椐报道,中国民营企业的平均寿命只有3.5年.为什么中国民营企业普遍寿命不长?如何延长它们的寿命?这是中国民营企业普遍关注的问题.本文就中国民营企业短命的原因以及如何延长其寿命作出探讨.     

浅谈中国民营企业的寿命

根椐报道，中国民营企业的平均寿命只有3．5年。为什么中国民营企业普遍寿命不长？如何延长它们的寿命？这是中国民营企业普遍关注的问题。本文就中国民营企业短命的原因以及如何延长其寿命作出探讨。     

On the persistence of income shocks over the life cycle: Evidence,theory, and implications

How does the persistence of earnings change over the life cycle? Do workers at different ages face the same variance of idiosyncratic earnings shocks? This paper proposes a novel specification for residual earnings that allows for an age profile in the persistence and variance of labor income shocks. We show that the statistical model is identified, and we estimate it using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data. We find that shocks to earnings are only moderately persistent (around 0.75) for young workers. Persistence rises with age, up to unity, until midway through life. The variance of persistent shocks exhibits a U-shaped profile over the life cycle (with a minimum of 0.01 and a maximum of 0.05). These results suggest that the standard specification in the literature (with age-invariant persistence and variance) cannot capture the earnings dynamics of young workers. We also argue that a calibrated job turnover model can account for these nonflat profiles. The key idea is that workers sort into better jobs and settle down as they age; in turn, magnitudes of wage growth rates decline, thereby decreasing the variance of shocks. Furthermore, the decline in job mobility results in higher persistence. Finally, we investigate the implications of age profiles for consumption–savings behavior. The welfare cost of idiosyncratic risk implied by the age-dependent income process is up to 1.6 percent of lifetime consumption lower compared with its age-invariant counterpart. This difference is mostly due to a higher degree of consumption insurance for young workers, for whom persistence is moderate. These results suggest that age profiles of persistence and variances should be taken into account when calibrating life-cycle models.     

高等职业院校中文教学生活化课堂构建浅议

教育就是不断塑造人、提升人、培养人的生活过程.高等职业院校基础课堂的生活化改革是教育改革的方向和趋势.本文针对中文教学课堂的现状,分析其回归生活的现实意义,勾画构建生活化课堂教学的现实模式.     

试论我国寿险资金投资股票市场的风险防范

1 寿险资金投资股市的必要性1.1 急速增长的保费收入要求寿险公司扩大投资范围从2000年以来我国保费收入一直保持着高速的增长,其中寿险保费收人也增长迅猛,其平均增长率保持在28%左右.     

周国城:人生书画,书画人生

周国城，1950年出生于浙江杭州，喜画梅兰竹菊和水墨荷花。书法、绘画、篆刻作品多次入选全国、省、市展览与专集，并多次获奖，现为中国书法家协会会员，西冷印社社员，广州市美术家协会副主席，广州市书法家协会副主席，广州市文史研究馆馆员，广州书画研究院院长，国家一级美术师。     

发展环境哲学是历史发展的必然

在中国和其他各国,环境哲学像一轮旭日,在日益深重的环境危机中喷薄而出。这是世界可持续发展的必然选择。环境哲学概述“哲学”是一个外来词,其英文为philosophy。它由“philo”和“sophy”这两个词根组成,前者的意思是“爱”,后者的意思是“智慧”,连起来说,哲学是一门爱智之学。这是西方的传统。中国哲学则特别重视情感的陶冶。“爱智”二字,按中国的传统来理解,环境哲学就是“爱”与“智”相结合的学问。智慧具有的力量,需要爱的热情来激发。很多环境问题的产生,不是因为我们不聪明,而是因为我们对环境缺乏爱心、感情淡漠。所以环境哲学…