Unionism and the public sector

It is incorrect and misleading to speak of unionization as a ‘human right’. The only human right is ‘self-ownership’, i.e. to pursue goals with one's own abilities but with no force or fraud against others. Government cannot dispense rights, only privileges and protections to some at the expense of others. A minimal degree of coercion exercised by government is unavoidable. But labor unions are not governments. Government has granted significant privileges to unions in the private sector, but such are not appropriate for public sector unions.     

Profit,productivity, and profit-sharing

This study is an investigation of the effect of profit-sharing on labor productivity. When monitoring labor performance is costly for management, a regular wage/salary contract is insufficient to induce profit-maximizing behavior from the worker. The authors demonstrate that when this profit-maximizing behavior can be induced only through profit-sharing, a linear profit-sharing program will increase productivity and the welfare of both management and labor. The benefit from profit-sharing is increasing up to the point where the utility of additional income is offset by the negative utility of extraordinary effort (working harder or providing higher quality work). The income effect, i.e., the change in negative utility of extraordinary effort given a change in income, can potentially either increase or decrease the point at which the income-effort tradeoff-reaches zero.     

多元化战略、经济绩效与资本结构——关于上市公司股权融资偏好解释

我国上市公司存在十分强烈的股权融资偏好,学术界一般将其原因归结为股权融资成本偏低。笔者研究则表明,融资成本因素并不能全部解释上市公司股权融资偏好。本文从企业多元化经营战略角度来剖析股权融资偏好。研究发现:企业多元化程度越低负债率越低,企业经济绩效越好;企业有动力降低负债率,采用股权融资。研究还发现,企业多元化战略已经构成融资决策的有效约束,股权融资偏好是上市公司的理性选择。     

B2B电子商务模式的探讨

针对B2B模式将成为未来电子商务发展的主流,文章先从价值链角度分析了B2B电子商务模式对价值链上游的冲击,然后概括性地总结了目前主要的3种B2B电子商务模式,最后用“SWOT”战略评估方法分析了基于供应链管理的区域型B2B电子商务新模式。     

Institutionalism versus Orthodoxy

A bstract . Orthodox economics has been quite effective in exploiting equilibrium methodology; equilibrium as a heuristic device, as a theoretical norm, and as a prototype of the scientific method. Also, orthodoxy has contrived the dichotomy of equilibrium-anti-equilibrium to depict institutional thought as being muddled and unscientific. Institutionalists have not successfully countered these attacks, nor have they adequately articulated a comprehensive methodological alternative to orthodoxy. Institutionalists have paid too much attention to the methodological components of institutionalism and have neglected the articulation of a guiding, overall methodology. It is proposed that institutionalists recast the methodological debate by expanding the arena from equilibrium-anti-equilibrium analysis to the broader context of closed versus open systems analysis. This would both help expose the methodological weaknesses of orthodox economics, and demonstrate the relevance and power of institutionalism for socioeconomic investigation.     

The hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth in Asian countries - evidence using an asymmetric cointegration approach

ABSTRACT

This study examines the four commonly tested hypotheses in hydroelectricity consumption – economic growth literature for 12 Asian countries. Our results from a recently developed hidden cointegration technique uncover rich and significant relationships between negative and positive components of the variables under consideration. In particular, we find evidence to support the neutrality hypothesis in five countries (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, and Thailand), the growth hypothesis in four countries (India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), and both growth and conservation hypotheses in three countries (China, Malaysia, and New Zealand). These findings suggest that appropriate economic policies should be elaborated on the basis of the country’s specific hydroelectricity consumption–growth nexus. Finally, our new evidence suggests that the lack of stable relationship between hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth documented in previous studies for some of these countries could be due to the failure to properly account for the nonlinearity property in the data.