SIR JAMES STEUART'S STATESMAN REVISITED IN LIGHT OF THE CONTINENTAL INFLUENCE1

The author assesses the influence Continental thought had on Sir James Steuart and places him in the Continental setting in order to understand his most controversial message, his theory of the state, and how it differed from that of his contemporaries, above all from Adam Smith's     

Zvi Griliches's contributions to the economics of technology and growth*

Zvi Griliches's contributions to the economics of technology and growth are identified. Included is a discussion of his contributions on: the determinants of differences in speed of adoption of innovations; the use of patents to measure technology; the private and social returns to R&D; and spillover effects from R&D. Griliches's own evaluation of his research contribution is compared to the evaluation of others in the field, using as evidence citation counts of his works collected from the online Web of Science. Griliches's most important contribution is his 1957 Econometrica hybrid corn paper that is a foundation of the economics of technological innovation. Remarkably, the trend in annual citations to the paper has continued to increase for over 40 years. Finally, we summarize Griliches's most recent views on the practice of economics and on the most important unanswered questions in the economics of technology and growth.     

The contractarian constitutional political economy of James Buchanan

Constitutional political economy was the field in which James Buchanan devoted the most effort and to which he made the largest contribution. Although his finely grained arguments cannot be easily summarized, the main developments and central line of reasoning can be covered in a single paper, because his research relied upon a single framework, which continually reappears and is further developed as his thinking matured. The goal of this paper is to analyze how his ideas emerged and were used to develop a very rich constitutional political economy.     

不确定性、经济选择方式与资源配置效率

在充分分析行为人信息处理能力局限性的前提下,结合心理因素提出了行为人选择中的非对称序贯决策与行为中的试验性动机,非对称序贯决策最基本的功能包括两个方面,一是行为人主观概率判断的改善,另一是基于不确定程度变化的风险有效控制;试验性动机最显著的特点是,行为人以可接受的成本为代价,通过试探性过程的实践学习,达到降低不确定性程度,并以此实现追求确定性收益最大化的目的。以试验性动机为前提的非对称序贯决策,在资源配置上虽不一定是最优的,但其与竞争性市场的结合却是相对有效的;同时,正是人类的这种试验性动机,构成了经济进步的原动力。     

The inheritance function

Even though inheritances are of great importance for economic inequality, little research has so far been done on the factors determining the size of the inheritances a person will receive during his lifetime, or when during his lifetime he is most likely to get his inheritance - if he gets one at all. This article provides an approach to these questions. Using Swedish data an inheritance function is estimated.     

福克纳小说中矛盾的女性情结探究

威廉·福克纳是美国南方文学的代表作家,他的作品向读者展示了一种无法释怀的矛盾情结,这种情结在他对女性人物的塑造上体现得淋漓尽致。对于女性,福克纳是充满了矛盾的情感。一方面,他表达了对女性的无法遏制的爱;另一方面,他又憎恨女性。这是他自己生活经历的写照。     

天帝与祖先:《尚书·金縢》解义

《尚书·金縢》记载,周公向祖先祈祷请代武王侍奉祖先并得到应允,由此周公获得先王之命而具备称王的合法性;武王则受命于天为天子,安顿四海生民。这一区分揭示了作为制度上的天子和王的根本区别:天子受命于天帝,王受命于祖先;天子与天联结的纽带为生民,王与祖先联结的纽带为继承而来的土地;天子广有四海,王权则直辖于王畿;天子最重要的品质是凝聚人心的德,而王最核心的品质则是恪守祖先成业的才。《金縢》所揭示的不同于王的天子制度及其成立的基础,乃周礼之核心,亦为殷周革命之要义。     

《儿子与情人》中的异化主题

D.H.劳伦斯（David Herbert Lawrence）,是西方文学中最具争议的作家之一。他的一生是与资本主义工业化社会现存秩序充满了矛盾的一生。《儿子与情人》是他的最重要的小说之一,在这部小说中,他真实地再现了当时资本主义制度下的英国自然,社会、人性、家庭及两性关系。异化主题贯穿了整篇小说。所以小说中的自然环境特别逼真,人物特别丰满,栩栩如生。综观这些环境,人物以及家庭关系,两性关系的异化,我们可以领悟劳伦斯在小说中传递的信息的精髓。     

Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy and the economics of happiness

Abstract

Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy is especially well-known in recent economic studies on happiness. However, his insightful contributions have not been taken up as they deserve, mainly because they were, and still are, too original. By reconstructing Scitovsky's analysis on the basis of all his relevant writings, this article integrates his most original concepts, such as novelty, consumption skill, endogenous preferences, pleasurable uncertainty, into conventional economics; it compares Scitovsky's analysis to the economic thought of his time and to current consumer theory and it reveals his contributions to happiness economics, such as an original interpretation of the Easterlin paradox.     

To be an independent thinker: an intellectual portrait of Staffan Burenstam Linder *

Abstract

The essay provides a portrait of the life and works of Staffan Burenstam Linder (1931–2000), one of Sweden's most renowned economists, the originator of the so-called Linder Thesis and of The Harried Leisure Class. It provides a critical account of all his major works and at the same time follows his career as an economist and a politician. The essay ends with an overall evaluation of his intellectual contribution.     

The rent disease: Achille Loria’s criticism to the capitalistic society

This paper is a reconstruction and a reconsideration of Achille Loria’s (1857–1943) economic and social thought, in particular his criticism of capitalism. Loria, a leader of the Italian and European economic science of his generation, was convinced that the true and most relevant conflict in the capitalistic society was that between rent and profit. Loria, following David Ricardo, considered this conflict much more radical than the profit-wages one, and therefore assigned to income redistribution a central place in his theory. Loria was an outstanding economist in the first part of his career (1780–1900), but underwent a sudden decline with the advent of the marginalist revolution, when his “classic” approach to political economy was considered obsolete and wrong. The paper claims that Loria’s system deserves to be reconsidered, and that his criticisms are particularly relevant in contemporary financial capitalism based again on rent seeking.     

What is extreme about Mises’s extreme apriorism?

There is something extreme about Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism, namely, his epistemological justification of the a priori element(s) of economic theory. His critics have long recognized and attacked the extremeness of Mises’s epistemology of a priori knowledge. However, several of his defenders have neglected what is (and what has long been recognized by his critics to be) extreme about Mises’s apriorism. Thus, the argument is directed less against Mises than against those contributions to the secondary literature that assert his methodological moderation while overlooking what the most prominent critics have found extreme about Mises’s apriorism. Defending Mises as a merely moderate apriorist because he held only a narrow part of the foundation of economics to be a priori is a straw-man defense against criticisms of his apriorism as epistemologically extreme.     

Frank Knight and pragmatism∗

Abstract

One of many controversies surrounding the work of Frank Knight involves the question of whether, or to what degree, his ideas were consistent with those of American pragmatism. Substantive textual evidence can be found to support almost any simple answer to the question. This paper argues that while Knight was quite (often aggressively) opposed to a particular set of pragmatic ideas alive in the scholarly and social debates of his day, this fact says more about Knight's historical context than it does about the broader relationship between his philosophical position and pragmatism. Knight was opposed to the social control pragmatism of his day, but at the same time his general philosophical position has much in common with the features of the pragmatic tradition that are most emphasized in the recent philosophical literature.     

克拉申语言习得理论的再认识

文章旨从克拉申的情感过滤假设出发,分析克拉申二语习得理论的优点和不足之处,给出自已的观点,以更有效地提高外语教学质量。     

杰克·韦尔奇的人本管理理念及其对中国企业的启示

杰克.韦尔奇是美国通用电气(GE)公司的总裁(CEO)和首席执行官,他统帅下的通用电气是全美最成功的企业,他本人被誉为20世纪最伟大的管理大师,全球第一CEO。他实施和创新的人本管理理念是其成功的重要经验,中国企业应当从中获取有益的启示。     

劳动力市场歧视成本分析

劳动力市场上存在着各种歧视,其中最为多见和敏感的是性别、各族和民族歧视。歧视的市场经济并非人们通常认为的样能够增加歧视者的收入,而是使歧视者和被歧视者同时蒙受损失,甚至歧视者为其偏好付出的成本更加高昂。     

The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

Technology and social change: William Fielding Ogburn revisited

This paper reviews William Fielding Ogburn's work on technology and social change. An overview of his basic theory is presented, as well as later refinements found in such works as Recent Social Trends in the United States, Technological Trends and National Policy, The Social Effects of Aviation, and other books and articles. It is suggested that while Ogburn is most widely remembered for his thesis of cultural lag, some of his later work on technology and social change is actually more important and deserves reconsideration and extension. One kind of extension might follow the lines of a systems approach rather than continuing the technological primacy strategy that Ogburn is normally considered to have used. The paper also surveys Ogburn's important work in the areas of technology, planning, and social policy, including materials on technology assessment. Ogburn's nontechnocratic approach to these questions, as well as his insistence that social scientists have a great deal to offer to the formulation of technological and social policies, are some of his most important contributions. Questions of technology and social change remain important contemporary issues, yet there is a surprising paucity of social science work on these crucial topics. Further study, extension, and reformulation of Ogburn's pioneering ideas offer fruitful means of embarking on new social science analyses of technology and society.     

The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

Mackinder and the Heartland Theory in Post-Soviet Geopolitical Discourse

This paper considers the ways in which Halford Mackinder's ideas are represented and mobilized in geopolitical discourses in post-Soviet Russia. Mackinder is broadly recognized as the most important proponent of ‘classical’ geopolitics, and his teachings about the Pivot of History and Heartland are referred to in virtually all geopolitical texts. Not all of this attention however is positive. We examine the very different ways in which Mackinder is deployed in this literature, and how he is re-signified to make his ideas relevant for contemporary Russia