Racial Identity Production Dynamics and Persisting Wealth Differentials: Integrating Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives into Stratification Economics

This study advances the analysis of factors contributing to the persistence of the black-white racial wealth gap using insights from Institutional Economics and Stratification Economics. The analysis challenges discourses trumpeting the emergence of a post-racial society in which previous barriers to attaining equal economic outcomes have been eliminated. It is argued that the post-racial rhetoric conveys inaccurate information to agents regarding the expected returns from investments in both capital assets and racial identity. Sub-optimal decisions by Black agents result, in part, from failure to take advantage of cultural knowledge about more advantageous investment strategies tied to indigenous cultural traditions.     

Wealth Privilege and the Racial Wealth Gap: A Case Study in Economic Stratification

The emerging subfield of stratification economics is a response to the orthodoxy’s resistance to recognizing the role of racial and ethnic disparities and its penchant for adopting cultural explanations for intergroup differences. With this view, the literature on the racial wealth gap and its particular embrace of the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) offers a clear example of this critique at work. Not only is the LCH incapable of explaining why the racial wealth gap is so much larger than the income gap, but its limitations restrict the range of explanations explored. As an alternative, this paper introduces the Wealth Privilege (WP) model. Unlike the LCH, the WP model can incorporate the effects of contemporary racism as well as the systemic sources that are a legacy of several centuries of racialized policies. Using evidence from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), this article offers empirical corroboration as well. Since the SCF queries households on their attitudes toward saving and investment, this article investigates the extent that cultural differences explain the wealth gap. To limit the problem of skewness, which is inherent in wealth studies, the analysis uses an inverse hyperbolic-sine transformation of household net worth. The OLS regression results show scant support for key features of the LCH while demonstrating the importance of asset ownership and family support, both crucial facets of the WP model. Two different decomposition methods, Blinder - Oaxaca and DiNardo - Fortin - Lemieux, corroborate these conclusions. As wealth is easily transferable across generations, the evidence supports the contention that household wealth serves as a source of economic stratification as it functions to preserve and even widen the racial wealth gap.     

Economics Imperialism and the New Development Economics as Kuhnian Paradigm Shift?

This paper addresses the evolving relationship between economics and other social sciences. It sets the present intellectual scene as one in which economics imperialism is rampaging across other disciplines. The designs of economics upon development studies are examined in terms of the Kuhnian notion of paradigm shift. Thereby the conclusion is drawn of the potential prospect of open debate around the economy and development, not least outside economics itself. But there is danger of economics imperialism, in the form of the post-Washington Consensus, foreclosing the analytical agenda at the expense of approaches based on the political economy of capitalism.     

网络:21世纪功不可没的财富资源

网络是21世纪的财富资源,网络的建立与普及将彻底地改变人类生存及生活的模式,给人们带来无尽的益处,谁掌握了信息,控制了网络,谁就将拥有整个世界。     

在冰与火之间的中国主权基金

日前,中国投资有限公司（中投公司）公布了2008年度财务报告,称2008年公司资本回报率达到6．8％。扣除汇金国内投资收益部分,全球投资组合的回报率为-2．1％,而中投2007年全球投资组合的名义年化收益率为0．2％。     

《福布斯》:掂量中国财富和人心

“2002年福布斯中国富豪榜”公布之后,顿时掀起了轩然大波,愤怒、怀疑甚至指责几乎成了大多数富豪的共同态度。富豪们为什么担心榜上有名呢,这种既有名又可以为企业打免费广告的事为什么不做呢?首先是因为胡润及其《福布斯》的统计未见得科学,其次,更深层次的原因在于富豪们脆弱的财富心理,“有财不外露”、“树大招风”的古老传统根深蒂固的流淌在他们血液里;此外,中国并不健全的财务税收制度,也是富豪们对富豪榜噤若寒蝉的重要因素。中国人是否有“仇富情结”呢?其实,中国人并不仇视富人,他们仇视的不过是非法致富的手段。注重自身财富的品质,赚取阳光下的利润,承担更多的社会责任,这样的财富和富豪理应受到尊重。     

Book Review: Disease and the Destiny of Nations

Book reviewed in this article: Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside, Aids in the Twenty‐First Century: Disease and Globalisation     

经济学的本质与特性：一个元经济学的问题

对于“经济学究竟是什么”这个元经济学的问题几个世纪以来一直困扰着经济学家与哲学家。这既是一个经济学问题,又是一个哲学问题。在梳理穆勒等经济学家对于经济学本质观点的基础上,以经济学的角度进一步分析经济学的科学性,特别是数学工具的运用对于经济学向自然科学方向迈进所做的贡献做出论述。经济学的人文性主要体现在其研究目的、研究过程受价值观与意识形态影响上。经济学具有科学性与人文性的特质,但是经济学的科学性似乎更加重要。