从自然资源经济学到可持续经济学

随着物质生活水平的快速提高,人类也面临着诸如森林退化、土地荒漠化、物种多样性丧失以及温室效应恶化等生存环境问题。可持续发展问题日益受到人们的关注,通过经济学的视角来研究可持续发展的可持续经济学得到了快速的发展。本文从经济学的角度界定了自然资源的概念,回顾了经济学对自然资源的研究历程,对自然资源经济学的起源、发展进行了评述;论证了自然资源经济学和可持续经济学的关系,指出在可持续发展问题研究中融合自然资源经济学和环境经济学的必然性,以自然资源经济学和环境经济学为重要元素的可持续经济学是可持续问题经济研究的高级阶段,文章进一步探讨了可持续经济学的分析框架、发展现状及存在的问题。     

Canadian economics research on immigration through the lens of theories of justice

We assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy. In the process, we highlight the contributions of economists working in Canada and Canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area. We identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non‐traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation. More research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker (TFW) programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems.     

Influencing the perception of what and who is important in ecological economics

In a recent article using citation analysis Hoepner et al. (2012) make strong claims to have identified the most influential works, authors, journals and institutions in a hypothetical field they call environmental and ecological economics. This paper shows that their work is biased by its framing, far from the non-subjective approach they claim and highly sensitive to minor data errors. More than this the exercise can be seen as another example of how ecological economics is susceptible to suppression by a dominant mainstream economic perspective which attempts to override, belittle and dismiss a whole range of alternative thought, including that which is heterodox, interdisciplinary, from the natural sciences and based in the non-economic social sciences. Ecological economics is not the same as agricultural, resource or environmental economics, and if it were it would be pointless. Neither can it be understood or treated as a subfield of resource and environmental economics, as done by Hoepner et al. (2012). I argue that the study promotes a limited perspective on social, environmental and economic problems that includes an implicit political and ideological framing. What is most influential, important or high quality in ecological economics is certainly not defined by such work.     

Taking Time for the Environment: On Timing and the Role of Delays in Environmental and Resource Economics

Ecosystem transformation and climate change evolve over long time scales. The effects of the economic decisions on the natural environment are also of a long-run character because they relate to investment decisions and capital stocks. At the same time, the economy is short-sighted and subject to different kinds of market failures. The time it takes to notice the changes and adequately address the associated problems affects the dynamics and inertia of the process. We discuss some recent contributions and new research questions that deal with time and timing in environmental and resource economics.     

“Business and Government” Then and Now

Socio-environmental conflicts are widespread, and global economic growth will likely increase them in the coming decades. While political ecology, the analysis of common pool resources, and ecological economics, among others, have provided praiseworthy insights into such conflicts, institutional approaches to these phenomena are still scarce. Classical institutional economics has occasionally been put to work on environmental issues, but proposed frameworks remain relatively underdeveloped. We wish to contribute to institutional research on environmental issues by building upon Bruno Théret’s interpretation of John R. Commons’s transactional model and applying the framework to a case of socio-environmental conflicts. First, we briefly sketch the landscape of institutional contributions (especially those that follow the classical institutionalist tradition) to the analysis of environmental issues. We explain why Commons has largely been ignored on these issues. Then, we analyze some of the key concepts of Commonsian economics that are of particular interest to our theoretical elaboration. Following this, we depict Commons’s transactional scheme and propose an application to a case of socioenvironmental mining conflict in Peru. Our framework could complement existing ones and shed light on the institutional dynamics of natural-resource management through conflict.     

A Machine Learning Analysis of the Recent Environmental and Resource Economics Literature

We use topic modeling to study research articles in environmental and resource economics journals in the period 2000–2019. Topic modeling based on machine learning allows us to identify and track latent topics in the literature over time and across journals, and further to study the role of different journals in different topics and the changing emphasis on topics in different journals. The most prevalent topics in environmental and resource economics research in this period are growth and sustainable development and theory and methodology. Topics on climate change and energy economics have emerged with the strongest upward trends. When we look at our results across journals, we see that journals have different topical profiles and that many topics mainly appear in one or a few selected journals. Further investigation reveal latent semantic structures across research themes that only the insider would be aware.

     

The place of Austrian economics in contemporary entrepreneurship research

We review the place of Austrian economics in contemporary entrepreneurship and management research, focusing on the contributions of Israel Kirzner. We show that Kirzner’s central concept of entrepreneurial discovery has been vastly influential in theoretical and applied work on entrepreneurship, even though Kirzner’s larger research program has not been well understood. We also describe and assess a number of methodological, ontological, and cognitive critiques of the opportunity-discovery approach and review the most important alternatives, including the judgment-based view associated with Knight (1921) and more recent contributors. We conclude that the entrepreneurship and management literatures provide a useful example of how Austrian economics—Kirznerian economics in particular—can play an important role in shaping mainstream discussions, debates, and research programs in the social sciences.     

On the divergence of evolutionary research paths in the past 50 years: a comprehensive bibliometric account

In the last two decades, there has been a noticeable increase in published research on evolutionary economics. The general perception is that formalization lags behind appreciative work. Notwithstanding, this general reading has yet to be supported by real data analysis. This work presents a survey on evolutionary economics, aimed at exploring the main research paths and contributions using bibliometric methods. The documentation is based on an extensive review of the abstracts from articles published in all economic journals over the past 50 years gathered from the Econlit database. Evolutionary contributions have apparently not converged to an integrated approach. Two rather extreme main research strands emerged: ‘History of Economic Thought and Methodology’ and ‘Games’. Whereas formal approaches have a reasonable and increasing share of published papers, purely empirical-related works are relatively scarce, representing a meagre and stagnant percentage of published works. This highlights the need to redirect the evolutionary research agenda.     

Relating the philosophy and practice of ecological economics: The role of concepts, models, and case studies in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research

We develop a general and unifying methodology for ecological economics which integrates philosophical considerations on the foundations of ecological economics with an adequate operationalization. We argue that the subject matter and aims of ecological economics require a specific combination of inter- and transdisciplinary research, and discuss the epistemological position on which this methodology is based. In accordance with this understanding of inter- and transdisciplinarity and the underlying epistemological position, we develop an operationalization which comprises simultaneous analysis on three levels of abstraction: concepts, (generic) models and case studies. This provides a systematic and integral view on ecological economics, and thus allows one to see the relationship between contributions to the field that have so far been perceived as very heterogeneous and largely unrelated. At the same time, this methodological framework may provide orientation for the further development of ecological economics.     

循环经济与主流经济学的分歧与统一

关于自然资源和环境的观点,循环经济与主流经济学并不矛盾.早在古典经济学时代自然资源和环境就被视作同土地和劳动一样具有稀缺性的生产要素,资源价值补偿一直是主流经济学研究的内容之一,而且循环经济的理论发展和实践推广也依赖主流经济学的研究方法和计量工具,因此二者的一致性远远大于分歧.     

Giving is a Question of Time: Response Times and Contributions to an Environmental Public Good

Does it matter whether contribution decisions regarding environmental public goods are arrived at through intuition or reflection? Experimental research in behavioral economics has recently adopted dual-system theories of the mind from psychology in order to address this question. This research uses response time data in public good games to distinguish between the two distinct cognitive processes. We extend this literature towards environmental public goods by analyzing response time data from an online experiment in which over 3400 subjects from the general population faced a dichotomous choice between receiving a monetary payment or contributing to climate change mitigation efforts. Our evidence confirms a strong positive link between response times and contributions: The average response time of contributors is 40 % higher than that of non-contributors. This suggests that reflection, not intuition, is at the root of pro-environmental contributions. This result is robust to a comprehensive set of robustness checks, including a within-subjects analysis that controls for potentially unobserved confounds and recovers the relationship at the individual level.     

James Andreoni and the quest for others in our utility functions

Over the past 30 years, James Andreoni has produced a body of work like few others in public economics. Motivated by a personal need to understand the determinants of prosocial behavior, and by offering a rare blend of insights from formal theory, controlled experiments, and field data, Andreoni has succeeded in elucidating the broader relevance of prosocial motives and their far‐reaching economic implications. This article offers an overview of his work on prosociality, highlighting some of his seminal contributions and placing them in a historical context. We argue that James Andreoni has had a unique role in the quest to ensure that others have a place in our utility functions.     

Margaret G. Reid: Life and achievements

Feminist critics of mainstream economics, and of the neoclassical paradigm in particular, have focused primarily on exposing and questioning the gender biases and androcentric claims to neutrality, objectivity and rationality of the most male-dominated discipline among the social sciences. The scientific method and mathematical sophistry so cherished in the discipline have also come under severe attack from several quarters. However, despite the intellectual ferment and some practical gains for women that these criticisms have engendered, even today the substantial contributions several women scholars have made to the field of economics are not well known or fully acknowledged. This paper traces and highlights Margaret Reid's contributions to the development of some core theories in economics. While several of her male colleagues whose work she had inspired or contributed to have been awarded the Nobel Prize, the discipline of economics still owes a huge debt to Reid and to several other women economists.     

Tony Atkinson and his Legacy

Tony Atkinson is universally celebrated for his outstanding contributions to the measurement and analysis of inequality, but he never saw the study of inequality as a separate branch of economics. He was an economist in the classical sense, rejecting any sub‐field labelling of his interests and expertise, and he made contributions right across economics. His death on 1 January 2017 deprived the world of both an intellectual giant and a deeply committed public servant in the broadest sense of the term. This collective tribute highlights the range, depth and importance of Tony's enormous legacy, the product of almost fifty years’ work.     

Harnessing the political economy of environmental policy: David Pearce’s contribution to OECD

During 34 years, David Pearce made major contribution to OECD work on environmental economic issues, with a particular focus on cost–benefit analysis, economic instruments, biodiversity and distributive issues. This article provides a brief review of David Pearce’s contributions. This work was particularly useful in enhancing the political economy of environmental policy which is at the core of OECD work. The opinions expressed in this paper reflect the author’s perception of this long history of the development of environmental economics at OECD; it does not necessarily reflect the views of the OECD and its member countries. Many thanks to Jonathan Fisher, Nick Johnstone and Michel Potier for their comments on an earlier draft.     

Francesco Forte’s Contributions to <Emphasis Type="Italic">Essentials of Fiscal Sociology</Emphasis>

Francesco Forte has made major contributions to many areas of economics with the result that his theoretical work and applications have opened new areas of inquiry. This paper connects Forte’s work with the work of Jürgen Backhaus on fiscal sociology. Positioned at the crossroads of economics and sociology, the answers to these questions helped fill the void which gave rise to the field of fiscal sociology. Fiscal sociology is primarily a study of taxation and fiscal policies which illuminates core issues in the sociology of contemporary capitalism. It includes the causes of poverty and inequality in rich countries and adds to our understanding the basis for the inequality between rich and poor countries. Our paper reviews several of Forte’s papers on Pareto’s fiscal sociology and the failure of European planning for less-developed regions. The paper highlights Forte’s contributions to economic theory focusing on Pareto’s sociological theory and the influence of the European Union on regional development.     

论人口、资源与环境经济学学科构架的理论基础

人口、资源与环境经济学是一门正在形成中的横跨生态学、经济学、社会学、战略学和法学的新兴学科。构建这一学科体系的理论基础是什么?人口、资源与环境之间及其经济运行过程是否具有内在的本质的联系?至今还未获得令人满意的答案。提出由物质本源论构建起人口、资源与环境经济学的广义物质变换理论基础;由社会发展构成要素论构建科学发展观的认识论基础;由广义经济学和人口、资源与环境之间的转换、循环、代谢与平衡理论构建人口、资源与环境经济学的学科理论体系的理论思路。试图揭示人口、资源与环境问题的实质,以期从根本上解决构建人口、资源与环境经济学学科的理论基石问题。     

Economic Institutions and the Satisfaction of Human Needs

This article examines John Kenneth Galbraith’s contributions to the field of economic development. Galbraith’s works on economic development were numerous, but they remain largely ignored by his critics and fans alike. He approached the economic development problem with a keen understanding of both the economic and political forces shaping the development debate. Galbraith’s contributions to development economics were always focused on how to get the job done. Doing so required different strategies in an exceedingly diverse community of nations. His work remains relevant. The literature is only now beginning to recognize that this holistic approach to development is a necessary alternative to single-causation theories of world poverty. Galbraith’s approach to development problems is consistent with (and perhaps inspired by) original institutional economics (OIE) in the tradition of Thorstein Veblen and Clarence Ayres.     

“第九届(2020年)数量经济学国际学术会议(中国·长春)”预告

“第九届(2020年)数量经济学国际学术会议(中国·长春)”将于7月3日—5日在中国长春举办,会议英文名称为:The Ninth International Symposium of Quantitative Economics,2020(Changchun,China)。本次会议重点关注数量经济学理论、方法的最新进展及其在经济学各领域的应用,欢迎交流经济学、管理学和金融学各个领域的研究成果。会议将致力于为经济学、管理学和金融学研究不同领域的专家学者提供高水平学术交流的国际化平台,会议期间将分别设立中英文会场和不同专题的论文报告专场,并在会议前后邀请部分海内外知名学者开设“吉大数量经济学国际讲习班”。欢迎广大学者和研究生踊跃投稿参会,鼓励向会议协办期刊投稿,同时也欢迎各出版机构参会介绍和征订教材学术著作。