State and religion over time

State and religion, two of the oldest institutions known to mankind, have historically had a close relationship with each other, but the disestablishment of state religions has been one of the most drastic institutional transformations that has taken place in the modern era. We offer a systematic analysis of the development of secular states based on a political economy approach that is centered on the notion of legitimacy. Viewing religion as a legitimizing force for political leaders, we consider the factors affecting the cost and benefits of alternative sources of legitimacy, such as the differential abilities of religious and secular sources to legitimize political rulers and historical inertia that shaped the cost of monitoring legitimizing agents. To examine this argument empirically, we built a cross-national time-series dataset for the relationship between state and religion since the year 1000. We first use the data to examine the evolution of secularism over time and its variation across religious traditions. We then use regression analysis and an instrumental variables approach to identify the influences on the adoption of secular state, such as concentration in the religion market, religious differences between rulers and the general population, historical inertia of a state, and the prevailing political regime. We address endogeneity concerns regarding the relationship between religious concentration and state secularism by exploiting variation among territories in their geographic distance to religious “capitals” of the world as an instrument.     

The Theory of the State: The Position of Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels developed their position on the state in the context of their attempt to understand and analyze society in general, in particular, capitalist society. Over the course of five decades of examination, their argument was refined, partly due to their historic investigations, partly due to the work of others, specifically by Lewis Henry Morgan, and partly due to political developments, in particular the Paris Commune of 1871. Essentially, their concluding statement on the substance of the state was that this socially determined arrangement was constituted by the instruments of coercion, both physical and ideological, with which the dominant economic class coerced other social classes. In developing their ideas, Marx and Engels distinguished between the state and government, though they clearly saw a symbiotic relationship between these structures in class societies. In the course of their investigations, they differentiated their position from those of liberal, anarchist, and other socialist commentators.

Income and religion: a heterogeneous panel data analysis

A recent empirical literature has addressed the relationship between income and religion, but most of the studies are based on microdata. Macroeconomic analysis of the issue has largely ignored the potential heterogeneity between countries. Using retrospective data on church attendance rates for a panel of countries between 1925 and 1990, we apply heterogeneous panel data estimators and reveal that the effect of participation in religious activities on income per capita is mostly non-significant. This is consistent with some of the recent research that casts doubt onto the influence of religion on income, once causality is taken into account.     

Reading, writing, and religion: Institutions and human capital formation

In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We test this hypothesis econometrically, finding that the period of Muslim political collapse has a statistically significant effect on Muslim literacy while controlling for it eliminates the significance of the proportion of Muslims on Muslim literacy. This suggests that the “long hand of history” has played some role in subsequent differences in human capital formation through the persistence of institutions discouraging literacy.     

Institutional obstacles to African economic development: State, ethnicity, and custom

To account for the African growth tragedy and, in particular, for its causes rooted in governance problems, the institutional legacy that African countries inherited from pre-colonial and colonial times must be considered. Three aspects are examined here. First, the relationship between ethnicity and state performance is bi-directional: if strong ethno-regional identities prevent the emergence of modern citizenship, they themselves constitute an endogenous outcome of continuous state failures. Second, the persistence of informal rules and social norms causes legal dualism, which undermines the credibility of modern statutory law. Third, social customs and norms that hinder socio-economic differentiation and individual capital accumulation lower the performance of indigenous enterprises.     

亚洲金融区域主义的政治逻辑

本文探讨了合法性与权力在金融区域主义方面的因果效应。当前以G7为主导的全球体制中合法性的明显缺失和国家间权力格局的变化影响了东亚的政策决策。东亚国家寻求抗衡性的战略,也即在保持着与以G7为中心的全球金融体制合作关系的情况下,通过发展自身的区域性制度(或其他潜在方案)以避免对前者的过度依赖。上述观察意味着,除非现存全球金融体制解决了合法性问题,并且当前(有利于东亚的)权力转移发生逆转,亚洲新兴经济体不会将应对国际金融问题的全部希望寄于全球性的解决方案。     

Pure numbers effects, market power, and tacit collusion in posted offer markets

This paper studies the effects of seller concentration and static market power on tacit collusion in extensively repeated laboratory posted-offer markets. Contrary to the implications of some earlier research, we find that tacit collusion does not become pervasive with extensive repetition. In a ‘strong no-power’ design persistently competitive outcomes are observed in markets with three or four sellers. Even duopolies are frequently competitive in this design. Unilateral market power raises prices, as predicted. However, static Nash predictions fail to organize outcomes across power treatments, because tacit collusion moves inversely with concentration. Excess capacity appears to explain observed tacit collusion levels.     

试论中国国债的创新与发展

中国国债在国民经济发展中发挥了重要作用,为社会主义经济建设聚集了大量资金,为全面实施财政政策和货币政策提供了保证,应从改变国债利率、增加国债品种及优化国债期限结构等方面发展中国国债市场。     

Inclusive institutions,unequal outcomes: Democracy,state capacity,and income inequality

Although the relationship between democratic rule and income inequality has received important attention in recent literature, the evidence has been far from conclusive. In this paper, we explore whether the redistributive effect of democratic rule is conditional on state capacity. Previous literature has outlined that pre-existing state capacity may be necessary for inequality-reducing policies under democratic rule. In contrast to that intuitive view, this study argues that democratic rule and high state capacity combined produce higher levels of income inequality over time. This relationship operates through the positive effect of high-capacity democratic context on foreign direct investment and financial development. By making use of a novel measure of state capacity based on cumulative census administration, we find empirical support for these claims using fixed-effects panel regressions with the data from 126 industrial and developing countries between 1970 and 2013.     

Law, state power, and taxation in Islamic history

The ruler's power varied greatly in Islamic history over time and space. We explain these variations through a political economy approach to public finance, identifying factors affecting economic power and its constraints. An influential interest group capable of affecting the ruler's power was the legal community (‘ulamā’). This community could increase the ruler's ability to extract a surplus from the citizenry by conferring legitimacy, thereby lowering the cost of collecting taxes. It could also limit power through legal constraints on taxation. We show how changes in legitimacy and legal constraints affected the economic power of rulers in representative episodes of Islamic history and identify general trends and dynamic processes underlying the relationship between the state and the legal community.     

Breaking the mould: an institutionalist political economy alternative to the neo-liberal theory of the market and the state

The paper criticises the currently dominant neo-liberal discourseon the role of the state and proposes an alternative approachthat will allow us to overcome its shortcomings, especiallyits inadequate analyses of the role of institutions and politics.It argues that the central problem with the neo-liberal frameworklies not in its excessively anti-interventionist policy conclusions,as some of its critics believe, but in the very ways it envisagesthe modus operandi of the market, the state, institutions andtheir interrelationships. The paper then discusses how we mayconstruct the alternative approach of ‘institutionalistpolitical economy’.     

Assessing the Impact of State Trading Enterprises

State Trading Enterprises (STEs) are periodically subject to intense scrutiny for their suspected negative impact on the international trade of agricultural goods. Sound empirical assessment of the impact of STEs is scant, in spite of the ongoing and intense debate over their impacts, especially in the context of reform at the WTO. In this paper we use the case of world wheat trade between 2212 country pairs over a 35 year span to assess STE impacts. Using a gravity model, we estimate a Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood fixed effects model of world wheat trade to assess the role of both the presence of STEs and STEs with monopoly power. Further addressing estimation challenges, we also estimate zero-inflated versions of Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression models. We find consistent support for the hypothesis that monopoly export STEs are associated with higher exports for their host country. Similarly, import STEs appear to inhibit wheat imports, suggesting a protectionist function.     

Re-matching, information and sequencing effects in posted offer markets

This paper evaluates the effects of some standard procedural variations on outcomes in posted offer oligopoly experiments. Variations studied include the presence or absence of market information, the use of re-matched or fixed seller pairs and alterations in the order of sequencing. Experimental results indicate that such variations can have first order effects on outcomes. For this reason, we recommend that results in oligopoly experiments be carefully interpreted in light of the procedures selected.

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国家控股、超额雇员与劳动力成本

与以往很多直接检验股权性质与公司绩效之关系的研究不同,本文选择1999—2002年健康运营的上市公司为样本,从公司雇员角度研究了控股股东的所有制性质对上市公司社会性负担的影响。经验证据表明,国家控股公司比非国家控股公司雇佣了更多的员工,并且国家控股公司的超额雇员主要源自上市初的历史遗留冗员;超额雇员和高工资率共同导致国家控股公司承担了比非国家控股公司更高的劳动力成本。此外,还发现在国家控股公司中,国资部门控股公司的超额雇员最多、劳动力成本最高;并且相对其他公司而言,该类公司上市后可能继续超额雇员。因此,推进上市公司产权多元化改革和避免国家直接控股,对改善公司治理具有积极意义。     

论我国医疗市场结构及其影响

采用文献查阅和数据收集方法,选取具有代表性的四个地区作为研究对象,分别计算各地医疗市场的产业集中度水平,分析我国医疗市场的竞争或垄断程度。结果显示,我国医疗市场存在较高的垄断性：从产权角度看,国有医疗机构的比重过高;从市场份额上看,国有大医院的份额过多。高垄断性的市场结构导致我国医疗机构效率低下和医疗费用高昂。     

Counterintuitive number effects in experimental oligopolies

Recent theoretical research on oligopolistic competition suggests that under certain conditions prices increase with the number of competing firms. However, this counterintuitive result is based on comparative-static analyses which neglect the importance of dynamic strategies in naturally-occurring markets. When firms compete repeatedly, supra-competitive prices can become sustainable but this is arguably more difficult when more firms operate in the market. This paper reports the results of laboratory experiments investigating pricing behavior in a setting in which (static) theory predicts the counterintuitive number effect. Under a random matching protocol, which retains much of the one-shot nature of the model, the data corroborates the game-theoretic prediction. Under fixed matching duopolists post substantially higher prices, whereas prices in quadropolies remain very similar. As a result, the predicted effect is no longer observed, and towards the end the reverse effect is observed.

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Keynes on State and Economic Development

ABSTRACT

This article has two purposes. On the one hand, it develops Keynes’s concept of economic development. On the other hand, it presents Keynes’s ideas about the role of State, chiefly the State Agenda. Keynes believed that the stage of economic development would only be attained if the State Agenda was in practice. In turn, to Keynes the economic development would be a stage in which the economic problems of society have been surpassed, and the motto of the individual behavior has been changed from the love of money to the love of living.     

电力市场设计:理论与中国的改革

沿用最新的规制经济学和电力经济学的分析工具和分析框架 ,本文首先对电力市场设计中的核心基础理论———节点价格体系、双边契约机制和电力市场中的风险规避进行了详细的研究和分析。结果表明 ,采取节点边际价格体系以及相应的支撑体系 ,即两部清算机制和传输权市场等可以最优化短期经济调度 ,可以保证和促进行业发电、输电的长期投资 ,保证行业的持续健康发展。随后 ,在分析中国电力行业特殊的制度和经济约束条件的基础上 ,给出了中国电力市场机制改革的若干政策建议。