Social networking and individual outcomes beyond the mean field case

We study individually optimized continuous outcomes in a dynamic environment in the presence of social interactions, and where the interaction topology may be either exogenous and time varying, or endogenous. The model accommodates more general social effects than those of the mean-field type. We address endogenous networking by assuming that each individual chooses the weights she attaches to the characteristics and the decisions of other agents. This amounts to choosing the elements of a row of a weighted adjacency matrix. Endogenous social networking thus involves simultaneity between decisions and patterns of directed social interactions.     

Social norms and individual savings in the context of informal insurance

This paper develops a theory of informal insurance in the presence of an intertemporal technology. It is shown that when an insurance agreement suffers from enforcement problems, constraints on individual savings behaviour can enable the group to sustain greater cooperation. This result provides a motivation for a variety of social norms observed in traditional societies which discourage ‘excessive’ accumulation of wealth by individuals. The paper also shows that social norms that discourage savings are more likely to benefit poorer communities and thus, paradoxically, cause them to fall further behind even as it serves a useful purpose.     

Political hierarchy and urban primacy: Evidence from China

This paper studies the distributional effects of a centralisation reform of China’s political hierarchy on regional urbanisation. Initiated in 1983, the reform, implemented over a 20-year period, transferred the decision-making powers of county-level governments to prefecture-level governments. We use a difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the heterogeneous urbanisation of counties in response to this centralisation reform. The distributional effects include greater urban primacy and a more marked core–periphery structure at the prefecture level. Further analyses reveal that the results are driven by the reallocation of fiscal resources and industrial production based on both productivity advantages and political favouritism.     

The evolution of morality and the end of economic man

1871 saw the publication of two major treatises in economics, with self-seeking economic man at their center. In the same year Darwin published The Descent of Man, which emphasized sympathy and cooperation as well as self-interest, and contained a powerful argument that morality has evolved in humans by natural selection. Essentially this stance is supported by modern research. This paper considers the nature of morality and how it has evolved. It reconciles Darwin’s notion that a developed morality requires language and deliberation (and is thus unique to humans), with his other view that moral feelings have a long-evolved and biologically-inherited basis. The social role of morality and its difference with altruism is illustrated by an agent-based simulation. The fact that humans combine both moral and selfish dispositions has major implications for the social sciences and obliges us to abandon the pre-eminent notion of selfish economic man. Economic policy must take account of our moral nature.     

浅谈高校教师师德建设

近年来,我国高等教育规模快速发展,办学规模不断壮大,加上我国经济处于转型期,部分教师追求名利、育人意识淡泊、敬业精神不够等等,使得师德建设长期流于形式,在实际教学过程中处于严重缺位的状态。高校作为人才培养基地,为更好地培养"德才兼备"的人才,师德建设势在必行。     

Bearing many children,morality, and ecology

The relationship between high fertility and population growth on the one hand, and environmental quality on the other, is explored. The author suggests that efforts to decrease the size of the global population will cause more problems than they solve. In contrast, he states that a global population of about 10 to 12 billion by the year 2050 is probably inevitable. Population should level off at that number and be capable of sustaining itself on this planet, providing the political problems the world faces can be resolved by then.     

注册会计师职业道德教育问题的思考

道德失衡的现状、注册会计师职业准入标准的内在要求使注册会计师职业道德教育成为必然，职业道德教育涵盖“专业胜任能力教育、政策法规教育、职业价值、道德意识和道德责任教育”。其教育方法，既要应用“榜样示范、舆论引导”的方法，又必须与经济理性挂钩，通过价值评估法，改变注册会计师的观念。从而改变他对行为后果的评价，促使其最终选取与委托者目标一致的道德行为。在全社会营造“爱岗敬业、诚实守信、廉洁自律、客观公正、坚持准则、提高技能、参与管理、强化服务”等注册会计师职业道德意识和观念，以树立良好的注册会计师职业道德风尚。     

"经济道德人"人性假设视域中的教师发展

基于不同的人性假设,教育管理者会采取不同的策略促进教师发展,以"经济道德人"人性假设为基点,教育管理者促进教师发展的策略主要为:尊重并促进教师物质利益和精神利益的最大化、肯定和发扬"道德人"人性说,培养教师道德情感和信念等,希望对实际情况有所帮助.     

Soviet subsidization of Eastern Europe: The primacy of economics over politics?

The level and distribution of Soviet subsidies to various East European countries, which Marrese and Vaňous attribute in their book Soviet Subsidization of Trade with Eastern Europe: A Soviet Perspective to political considerations, are explained here as, for the most part, the normal outcomes of the economic integration of a bloc with relative resource endowment differing from those obtaining in the rest of the world. The statistical methods used by Marrese and Various to calculate the subsidies are also criticized.     

On the morality of capitalism: In light of the market socialist alternative

The highly unequal distribution of property return under contemporary capitalism is morally legitimate if property incomes are earned in some meaningful economic sense. But no such sense would exist if some appropriate plan of market socialism could achieve at least as high a level of economic efficiency as contemporary capitalism, while significantly equalizing the distribution of property return. This article discusses various plans of market socialism and various institutional characteristics of capitalism which bear importantly on this matter.     

电子商务时代会计职业道德问题及对策研究

建立以诚信为基础的市场经济是社会公众的共同愿望。会计从业人员职业道德水平的高低，是关系到国家财经法规制度能否贯彻执行、经济秩序能否维护、经济发展能否顺畅的大问题。随着我国市场经济不断深化，电子商务时代的发展，会计从业人员职业道德出现了一定偏差，严重影响了会计行业的发展，并引起了社会和政府广泛关注。针对现状笔者对会计职业道德失范原因进行了分析，研究了加强会计人员思想素质教育，提高会计职业道德建设的水平。     

社会保障税与社会保障制度优化

社会保障税是指定用于社会保障的工薪税。本文分析了工薪税的税收归宿和劳动供给弹性的影响。当劳动供给弹性较小时 ,税收主要由劳动力负担 ,而且可能会增加就业压力 ;工薪税在劳动同质程度较高时可以取得较好的再分配效应。本文还描述了社会保障制度优化的理论过程。社会保障制度优化是指现收现付计划和强制储蓄计划的最优搭配 ,它以“黄金律”条件下的隔代帕累托改进为标准。就同代收入再分配而言 ,将收入再分配计划的目标定为提高受益人的受教育水平 ,而不是直接为其提供免费的社会福利 ,将有助于缓解收入再分配的代价。     

电子商务时代会计职业道德问题及对策研究

建立以诚信为基础的市场经济是社会公众的共同愿望.会计从业人员职业道德水平的高低,是关系到国家财经法规制度能否贯彻执行、经济秩序能否维护、经济发展能否顺畅的大问题.随着我国市场经济不断深化,电子商务时代的发展,会计从业人员职业道德出现了一定偏差,严重影响了会计行业的发展,并引起了社会和政府广泛关注.针对现状笔者对会计职业道德失范原因进行了分析,研究了加强会计人员思想素质教育,提高会计职业道德建设的水平.     

论加强高职大学生的职业道德教育

高职院校培养学生良好的职业道德是体现高职教育特色,提高高职院校办学质量的重要举措.高职院校职业道德教育,必须从学生成长成才阶段的实际情况出发,把社会对人才的要求与高职学生成长的特点结合起来,建立完善的教育内容体系,通过多渠道多途径使之得以实施.思想政治理论课是大学生思想道德教育的主阵地,实习实训、专业知识课等都承载着职业道德教育的任务.     

Federalism and individual liberty

This paper explores the relationship between federalism and individual liberty. It is shown that a complete treatment of the relationship between federalism and individual liberty should consider two countervailing effects. On the one hand, a federalist structure enhances individual liberty by enlarging the choice set of the citizens. On the other hand, however, a federalist system leads to institutional diversity, a fact that per se leads to higher exit costs, which a citizen must bear if he or she decides to change jurisdictions. This effect on individual liberty is a negative one, since a consequence of every increase in the exit costs is a decrease of individual liberty. The optimum range of diversity of jurisdictions is shown to lie where the two effects counterbalance each other.     

Choice and individual welfare

We propose an abstract method of systematically assigning a “rational” ranking to non-rationalizable choice data. Our main idea is that any method of ascribing welfare to an individual as a function of choice is subjective, and depends on the economist undertaking the analysis. We provide a simple example of the type of exercise we propose. Namely, we define an individual welfare functional as a mapping from stochastic choice functions into weak orders. A stochastic choice function (or choice distribution) gives the empirical frequency of choices for any possible opportunity set (framing factors may also be incorporated into the model). We require that for any two alternatives x and y, if our individual welfare functional recommends x over y given two distinct choice distributions, then it also recommends x over y for any mixture of the two choice distributions. Together with some mild technical requirements, such an individual welfare functional must weight every opportunity set and assign a utility to each alternative x which is the sum across all opportunity sets of the weighted probability of x being chosen from the set. It therefore requires us to have a “prior view” about how important or representative a choice of x at a given situation is.