中国的社会团体、公民社会和国家组合主义：有争议的领域

20世纪90年代中期以来学术界展开了一场争论：一派认为,应该用公民社会概念来研究中国团体;另一派通过调查研究认为,中国几乎所有团体的生活在本质上是国家组合主义。公民社会和组合主义都关注国家和社会之间的社团和其他机构。但不同的是：公民社会站在社会的角度,发展自治社团,维护“公共领域”的能力,以界定和制约国家权力;组合主义则相反,从国家的角度,为实现政府自己的目的,与选定的社团发展一种特殊的关系。在深入细致的实证研究基础上,学者们考察了中国不同类型社团的活动,得出了不同的结论,同时他们也超越了国家、社会和组合主义以及公民社会的框架,阐明了别的一系列重要的问题。     

Contestability in bus markets – evidence from the British de-regulated market

Following the 1985 Transport Act in Great Britain, reforms in the provision of bus services continue across Europe and other parts of the world to this day. The British experience, however, remains a key point of study in informing these continuing developments. This article looks at the issue of contestability in bus markets, and tests for the existence of the contestable market in Britain through an examination of fare levels, profit margins and technical efficiencies in 90 identifiable bus markets. The main conclusion is that there is evidence of the contestable market in Britain, however it can hardly be described as widespread, only found to be present in 15 of the 90 markets identified in the sample. The real issue however, particularly with regard to continuing reforms elsewhere in Europe, is the ability of regulatory authorities to maintain competitive and contestable (free) markets and the research suggests that in the face of market forces this is simply not possible. The only conclusion therefore is that contestability in the free market is not sustainable, and thus can only be introduced directly through franchising.     

Surplus Value Production and Realization in Marxian Theory – Applications to the U.S., 1990–2015

ABSTRACT

Marx's Capital shows that surplus value can be produced in one industry, yet realized as profit (and possibly revenue) by other industries over the course of circulation. This paper highlights the separation between surplus value production and realization in Marx's work, and develops a new method for estimating surplus value production at the industry level to trace out transfers of surplus value across industries. The framework is based on the ‘New Interpretation’ and links money value added to surplus value production at the industry level. Data on value added by industry for the U.S. are used to estimate surplus value production by industry. The analysis allows comparison of surplus value production and realization in each industry. The pattern of differentials between surplus value creation and realization across industries sheds light on the processes of capitalist competition and points to a source of instability for capitalist economies.     

The Ethics of Emissions Trading

This article defends three ethical arguments against emissions trading. The first argument alleges that emissions trading is morally objectionable, because it ‘commodifies’ the atmosphere. The second argument involves various objections to attaching prices to units of emissions – loosely speaking, the objection is to pricing that which is priceless or should not be priced. The third argument turns on the idea that if a large cut in emissions is to be made by society overall, everyone should ‘do their bit’ by making a particular kind of sacrifice rather than paying others to do it instead. Some general conclusions concern the limitations of confining the analysis to idealised emissions trading, the difficulty in separating ‘economistic’ thinking about policy delivery from policy choice and the need to focus questions of justice on consumers rather than on producers.     

Structural Economic Change and the Natural Environment in the Russian Federation

Many of Russia's contemporary environmental problems can be related, at least in part, to the activities of the Soviet period. However, the strength of this relationship can sometimes result in the environmental influences of post-Soviet society being ignored or understated. In recognition of this fact, this article examines the relationship between structural economic change and the natural environment in the post-Soviet period. The first part of the article is concerned with general economic trends and associated environmental consequences during the period 1990 to 1997. It then moves on to consider the environmental repercussions of structural changes within the country's industrial and agricultural sectors.     

Border Bargains and the “New” Sovereignty: Canada-US Border Policies from 2001 to 2005 in Perspective

From 2001 to 2005 Canada and the US dramatically altered the way each country views its border. In response to the attacks on New York City and Washington DC, Canada and the US entered into three important partnerships: the Smart Borders Agreement (SBA), the Container Security Initiative (CSI), and the Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP). These arrangements will be conceptualised here as “tacit bargains” whereby Canada provided the US with security in hope of renewed trust and economic accessibility. These “tacit bargains” required a concession of traditional state sovereignty so that stable and predictable relations between both countries could continue. While this process is ostensibly a violation of state sovereignty, the argument presented here is that these three “tacit bargains” represent a transition of “old” sovereignty to “new” sovereignty.     

Signalling,Disclosure And The Implications Of Financial Structure For Uk Corporate R&D ∗

This paper investigates the impact of R&D disclosure and finance variables on the level of R&D expenditures. The question addressed is: what is the impact of changes in disclosure requirements on the relationship between R&D expenditure and the financing of firms? The question is motivated by the possible signalling role that elective disclosure may have had prior to changes in accounting practices to ensure R&D disclosure.     

Does ethics improve stock market resilience in times of instability?

This paper compares the resilience of ethical (Islamic and socially responsible) indexes among five developed (US, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia) and three emerging markets (Brazil, India, South Africa) during the period following the 2008 subprime crisis. It relies on a multivariate CAPM-EGARCH model that accounts for sudden changes in volatility through the application of an iterated cumulative sums of squares (ICSS) algorithm on daily data over the sample period 2008–2014 to model time-varying volatility and ensure reliable estimates. The study confirms the lower systemic risk associated with Islamic indexes during the bearish period and reports that SRI, despite being more subject to systemic risk, offered higher alphas in highly integrated markets, while Islamic indexes performed better in less integrated ones. The evidence also reveals a very limited increase in the models’ predictability power from the integration of sudden changes in volatility into the EGARCH models during the full sample period. This limit is more marked during the bearish sub-period. Our findings have important implications for international investment and portfolio diversification perspectives in times of financial downturn.     

The Information Content of Guidance and Earnings

I compare the information content of quarterly earnings guidance and quarterly earnings by examining their associations with current and future stock returns when the two signals are bundled at earnings announcements. At the bundled announcement, I find a significantly stronger association between announcement returns and guidance news. From the day after the bundled announcement through the next earnings announcement, both signals generate abnormal return drifts of about 200 basis points. However, the timing of the post-announcement returns differs considerably. For guidance, about 50% of the post-announcement drift occurs at the next earnings announcement. In contrast, for earnings, about 20% of the preceding drift reverses at the next earnings announcement. Investor ignorance of the drift following guidance news coupled with a fixation on post-earnings announcement drift potentially explains this surprising difference in the timing of the post-announcement returns. Overall, this study indicates that bundled quarterly earnings guidance contains more information than quarterly earnings and that investors incorrectly overweight the earnings news and underweight the guidance news during the post-announcement period until the next earnings announcement.