EDUCATION,WORK, AND CRIME: A HUMAN CAPITAL APPROACH*

This article develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work and expected costs associated with incarceration. Older, more intelligent, and more educated adults should commit fewer street (unskilled) crimes. White collar crimes decline less (or increase) with age and education. Predictions for age–crime and education–crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self‐report data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports. The effects of education, training, and wage subsidies, as well as enforcement policies on criminal behavior are discussed.     

评佩蕾斯的技术革命、金融危机与制度大转型

自2000年互联网泡沫破灭后,世界经济就处于第五次发展巨浪从技术革命的导入期到拓展期的转折点上,它要求金融资本向生产资本移交经济的控制权,但金融资本却以信用泡沫回应这种客观要求。美国的次贷危机表明,自由市场意识形态已经成为经济增长的最大障碍,目前世界经济正面临与"大萧条"时期相类似的制度大转型。中国的改革开放是第五次发展巨浪导入期的直接结果,为了应对我国外向型经济发展模式的危机,我们必须深刻地认识这种制度大转型对中国经济前途的深远影响。     

A FEMINISATION OF POVERTY IN GREAT BRITAIN?

In most industrialised nations, women are over-represented in the ranks of the poor. Furthermore, it is often argued that this gender-based disadyantage has increased over time. In this paper the author tests this so-called "feminisation of poverty" hypothesis in Great Britain. Cross-sectional data from three years of the Family Expenditure Survey (1968, 1977 and 1986) are used. A poverty measure that is additively decomposable with population share weights, and is consistent with Sen's axiomatic approach to poverty measurement, is used to decompose the "total" amount of poverty into male and female "shares." Somewhat surprisingly, this decomposition lends no support to the feminisation of poverty hypothesis.     

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, INEQUALITY AND WORK SHARING

The effects of technological change on wage inequality are usually studied under the assumption of exogenous supplies of skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, in these studies there is no distinction between the stock (number of workers) and the flow (hours of work) dimension of labour services. In the present paper, we construct a model in which hours of work and technological change affect both the (relative) demand and supply of unskilled workers. The labour supply of unskilled workers (numbers of persons) is derived from a model of household labour supply in which households differ regarding the disutility suffered when both household members work. Combining together the (relative) supply and demand parts of the model we are able to establish technological change (either biased or neutral) as a plausible explanation of recent trends in wage inequality.     

OVERTIME WORK AS A SIGNALING DEVICE†

This paper provides an explanation for the empirically proven relationship between overtime and future benefits. We suggest an internal signaling model, in which a worker signals his value to the employer by supplying unpaid overtime. In our empirical analysis, we examine whether overtime has in fact a signaling component. Variations in collectively bargained hours between industries are exploited, as they imply different overtime thresholds for workers with the same number of actual hours. Using data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study for the years 1993–2004, a positive signaling value of unpaid overtime is found for West German workers.     

A RATIONAL CHOICE EXPLANATION FOR STALIN'S "GREAT TERROR"

There is no agreement about the reasons for Stalin's Great Terror of 1937–1939. This paper argues that the problem faced by Stalin was similar to the standard principal–agent problem: the country was run as one enormous firm with Stalin as the only residual claimant. The monetary incentive structure was inadequate and the threat of mass shirking by the agents was real. A simple model of a principal with two agents is developed to address the problem. Assuming that the agents can observe and can reveal each other's shirking, it is shown that, under some assumptions, an equilibrium exists with the following strategy profiles: unless someone's shirking is revealed, the principal is committed to randomly punishing one of the agents with positive probability; an individual agent never shirks and always reveals a co-worker's shirking. A case study of the period is used to check the plausibility of this hypothesis.     

DENG XIAOPING'S GREAT TRANSFORMATION

Editor's Note: The First Annual Arnold C. Harberger Distinguished Lecture, University of California, Los Angeles, November 17, I997     

努力开创无锡宣传思想工作新局面

宣传思想战线是党的一条重要战线,宣传思想工作是党的一项重要工作。在深入贯彻落实党的十六大精神,全面建设小康社会、率先基本实现现代化的新形势下,宣传思想工作要坚持以邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想为指导,以全面准确深入地学习宣传贯彻党的十六大精神为主线,以全面建设小康社会、率先基本实现现代化为目标,解放思想、实事求是、与时俱进、开拓创新,以科学的理论武装人,以正确的舆论引导人,以高尚的精神塑造人,以优秀的作品鼓舞人,统一思想,坚定信心,凝聚力量,振奋精神,为无锡改革开放和现代化建设提供强大的思想保证、精神动力和…     

平凡出大师——八十高龄山水名家李国华的传奇故事

艺术简历李国华著名岭南画派山水画家。1923年9月生于广州,从事绘画艺术近70年,师从黎雄才、赵少昂等名师,他早期的作品受岭南画派大师影响甚深。在70年的艺术道路上,他吸取众家之长,他以长期的写生实践,形成了具有自己独特、鲜明的个人风格。在过去的数十年,他寻幽探胜,足迹遍及祖国的大江南北,长城内外,进行大量写生和积累创作素材。李国华的国画作品,以水墨画为主,主要采取“前浓后淡”的强烈虚实对比技法,着重对光的运用,既有传统的笔墨,又有时代气息的现代风骨,虚实处理恰当,将自然风光表现得浑然一体。     

VOLUNTARY WORK AND WAGES

The effects of voluntary work on earnings have recently been studied for some developed countries such as Canada, France and Austria. This paper extends this line of research to Italy, using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU‐SILC) dataset. A double methodological approach is used in order to control for unobserved heterogeneity: Heckman and IV methods are employed to account for unobserved worker heterogeneity and endogeneity bias. Empirical results show that, when the unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account, a wage premium of 2.7 percent emerges, quite small if compared to previous investigations on Canada and Austria. The investigation into the channels of influence of volunteering on wages gives support to the hypotheses that volunteering enables the access to fruitful informal networks, avoids the human capital deterioration and provides a signal for intrinsically motivated individuals.     

MEASURING THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF VOLUNTEER WORK GLOBALLY: CONCEPTS,ESTIMATES, AND A ROADMAP TO THE FUTURE

ABSTRACT: This article explores alternative approaches for measuring the economic value of volunteer work, develops a methodology for producing global estimates of this value using existing data sources, and identifies a new data source that promises to yield significantly improved data on which to base such estimates in the future at both the global and national levels. Both volunteering through organizations and directly for individuals are considered. Different approaches to valuation, including the replacement cost, opportunity cost, and social benefits approaches and both observed and reported market proxies, are examined. Based on a number of criteria, the replacement cost method using observed market wages is recommended. Using this method, the article estimates that ‘volunteerland,’ if it were its own country, would have the second largest adult population of any country in the world, and would be the world's seventh largest economy. The article concludes by discussing a new International Labour Organization Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work that adopts the basic method for defining and valuing volunteer work outlined here and promises to generate a much more robust and coherent body of data on volunteer work than has ever been available both globally and nationally.