Prudence and Constitutional Rights

ABSTRACT . In The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Tullock argue for institutional safeguards to ensure maximal benefit for all members of a community against the potential tyranny of the majority. I extend this idea by introducing prudential concerns and argue that they ought to be factored into the decision making that constructs such safeguards. Specifically, I see the safeguarding of prudential concerns for all members of society as a matter that should be secured from the random fate of the political process by constitutional provisions.     

公私权关系及其在《宪法》中的体现

现代国家的宪制主要解决了两大问题:一个是国家的合法性问题,即国家的权源问题;另一个是国家的合理性问题,即国家治理的技能问题。而且,宪制的发展与变革也是从"君权神授"的"君主国"国体逐渐向"天赋人权"的"共和国"国体演变的。由此,本人感觉有必要就我国的公私权关系及其在《中华人民共和国宪法》中的体现作一下研究探讨。     

Prudence and precautionary saving

Households save income for various reasons, including the need to plan for the future, the intention to leave a bequest, and the desire to guard against unforeseen expenditures and income fluctuations. Although it is widely believed that prudent individuals engage in precautionary saving, the extent of such saving is not well understood. This paper develops a model of saving with an explicit role for the Leland-Kimball measure of prudence. Estimation of the model using household-level data from Italy suggests an average value of relative prudence near 4 or 5, with approximately 15 to 36 percent of total saving being precautionary. The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

从《致加西亚的信》说起

阿尔伯特·哈勒德的《致加西亚的信》写于100多年前,这本用时仅一小时写就的小册子,演绎出一个典型而生动的故事:当罗文上校接过美国总统的信时,他不知道加西亚在哪里,他只知道自己唯一要做的事是进入一个危机四伏的国家并找到这个人。他二话没说,没提任何要求,而是接过信,转过身,     

试论审计应有的职业谨慎

风险作为市场经济的重要特征之一越来越渗透到社会经济的各个角度，民间审计作为市场经济的产物自然也受到风险的影响。面临不断升级的“诉讼爆炸”，审计职业界的“生存危机”感绝非危害耸听。研究审计风险成因、制定防范措施、积极有效地迎接挑战，是民间审计求生存、谋发展的必然选择。而在众多的风险预防措施中，提倡审计应有的职业谨慎，以引起职业界的广泛关注，不失为一种明智之举。本拟就审计应有的职业谨慎的涵义、假设及其在实践中的具体应用，通过理论联系实际，发表一些看法。     

Comments on "Echoes of Henry George in Modern Analysis"

A bstract .   These comments were presented at a session entitled "Echoes of Henry George in Modern Analysis" held at the 2002 meetings of the Southern Economic Association.     

Prudence and Pragmatism in the Fiscal Stance

In this article, Simon Price argues that the government is pursuing a remarkably conservative fiscal policy. Not only has demand management been left almost entirely to the MPC, but since 1997 spending has been held down while the overall tax burden has been raised. Consequently, the relative size of the national debt is declining at a rapid rate. There are rules that are intended to govern debt policy, but they are based on less sound principles than the government argues, and may be inconsistent. Oddly, despite the emphasis on these rules, the government has announced a path for spending that makes it clear that it is in fact planning not to follow them. The government may be planning to reduce the national debt at an excessive rate. This may make sense in the short run, but is more problematic in the medium to long term. This is not to say fiscal policy should be immediately relaxed; the current low levels of private sector saving may well justify a temporarily tight fiscal stance.     

Comments on Warren Samuels's "Why the Georgist Movement Has Not Succeeded"

A BSTRACT . The 16^th Amendment and the formation of the European Union were major political/economic reforms that should be seen as affirmations of the fundamental principles and teachings of Henry George. That these are not matters of interest to the self-defined Georgist movement reveals an excessively narrow focus of that movement and suggests its members' unfamiliarity with much of George's teachings.     

Henry George Under the Microscope: Comments on "Henry George's Political Critics"

The annual supplement of the AJES for 2008 titled Henry George: Political Ideologue, Social Philosopher, and Economic Theorist had as its first and longest essay "Henry George's Political Critics" by Professor Michael Hudson. It offered a multitude of criticisms, most of which Prof. Hudson seemed to agree with. All purported to be criticisms of George as a political strategist, though some seem more to originate from Hudson's disagreement with theoretical positions George was bound to take. The purpose of this short paper is to show that Professor Hudson's long article fails to do what it seems intended to do. That is, it fails to show that trade unionists and especially socialists were "natural allies" of the Georgist movement, that it was George's fault that that they were not, and that George "allied" his movement irrevocably to "capital," rejecting its "natural allies."     

Constitutional Confusion: Slavery,Abortion, and Substantive Constitutional Analysis

A comparison of two U.S. Supreme Court cases about fundamental rights, one on slavery, the other on abortion, sheds light on constitutional law and the principles undergirding liberal constitutional democracy. The Dred Scott case in 1857 denied constitutional rights to enslaved Africans and their descendants living in the United States. The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 created a constitutional right to abortion that denied constitutional personhood to human beings prior to birth. Both cases involved applications of what legal scholars call “substantive due process”—that is, a substantive interpretation of the constitutional requirement that governments provide persons with “due process of law” that moves beyond procedural formalism. Although many constitutional scholars deny the legitimacy of substantive due process as a legal doctrine, this article proposes that the judicial system cannot ultimately avoid substantive moral questions in constitutional interpretation. In both cases examined here, the crucial question was about who counts as part of the people whom the Constitution protects, and that question could not be answered in purely formal terms. Both Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade erred not by engaging substantive moral questions but rather by denying, in different ways, the natural rights of human persons.     

Comments on William D. Nordhaus's, "Irving Fisher and the Contribution of Improved Longevity to Living Standards"

A bstract    This essay discusses Fisher's contributions to life extension and to human capital theory.     

Comments on John Geanakoplos's "The Ideal Inflation-Indexed Bond and Irving Fisher's Impatience Theory of Interest with Overlapping Generations"

A bstract    A comment on the article by John Geanakoplos in this volume.
It is refreshing to hear an account of Irving Fisher's views on risk and indexation juxtaposed with an account of our modern concerns with the same issues. It is interesting for me to hear this, partly since it shows that many of the issues we worry about today were concerns 70 or more years ago, and thus perhaps that these issues are indeed as deep and fundamental as we now think they are. But I found this history-of-thought presentation most interesting because it clarifies, by starting with simple notions that were on Irving Fisher's mind and moving forward, some of the critical issues concerning the innovations of indexation and Social Security reform.