Amending budget bills in the Russian State Duma

Abstract

Do budget bills change during review in the Russian State Duma? If so, by how much and why? Portrayals of the contemporary Federal Assembly as a ‘rubber stamp’ parliament would suggest that budget initiatives undergo no amendment during the formal period of legislative review. There is, however, evidence of bill change. The article’s primary goal is to present this surprising evidence, focusing on changes to spending figures in the 2002–2016 budget bills. The article also discusses why such changes are made, assessing hypotheses concerning legislator influence, technical updating and intra-executive conflict.     

The two ways of FDI R&D spillovers: evidence from the French manufacturing industry

Using French firm-level panel data, this study investigates R&D spillovers from inward foreign direct investment (FDI) with respect to both horizontal and vertical linkages (backward and forward). Using a Crepon, Duguet and Mairesse (CDM) model, we estimate an R&D-augmented Cobb–Douglas production function to assess the impact of R&D spillovers on firm performance. The results emphasize that international spillovers (from foreign affiliates to local firms) have a greater effect on firm performance than reverse spillovers (from local firms to foreign affiliates) and are more likely to be backward than forward. Moreover, the effect of backward spillovers depends on a firm’s absorptive capacity and is amplified in the case of outsourcing relationships.     

哈马碧生态循环模式及其启示

斯德哥尔摩市哈马碧湖区创立的独特生态循环模式是可持续城市社区发展的典范,该模式确立了双倍生态友好的环境总要求,在土地利用、基础设施、建筑、能源、交通、给排水和废弃物综合管理等方面制定了严格而具体的环境保护目标,并以生态环境为中心实行一体化规划,各部门各行业采用创新性环境方案和生态友好技术,实现了废弃物回收利用的最大化和负面环境影响的最小化.这一模式本身及其工作方式,对我国建设生态循环城市和可持续城市社区,具有重要的借鉴意义.     

Impact of the adoption of information and communication technologies on firm efficiency in the Tunisian manufacturing sector

This paper aims at measuring the impact of information and communication technology use on the efficiency of the Tunisian manufacturing sector at the firm level within a simple theoretical framework. We are using a firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in Tunisia to investigate whether adoption of ICT influences efficiency in factor use. The analysis is conducted through the use of a parametric method to measure technical efficiency. We estimate a stochastic production frontier and the relationship aims to explain technical efficiency differentials in a single stage as suggested by Battese and Coelli [Battesse, G.E, Coelli, T.J. (1995). A model for technical inefficiency in a stochastic frontier production function for panel data. Empirical Economics, 20, 325–332].The results have confirmed the presence of positive returns to ICT capital. We have found that the impact of ICT on efficiency is strong. Our results also suggest that it is important to carefully control for human capital related characteristics of employment when studying the effect of ICT. The evidence shows that achieving benefits from investment in ICT requires complementary investments and changes in human capital. This means that the combined use of ICT and human capital in a firm would enhance its efficiency beyond the direct effects of these factors taken alone.     

Zivilrechtliche und rechtsökonomische Aspekte zum Dieselskandal der Volkswagen AG

The Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal is a case of market failure, because the harm from vehicle emissions to public health and to the environment was not internalised. This market failure has not been corrected by public regulation, nor by civil liability. There is also a regulatory failure, because the oversight of NOx emissions by the German automobile regulatory agency (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt) was overly lenient. There is also a corporate governance failure within Volkswagen which made the fraud of installing manipulative software possible. And finally, there is dysfunctional law in Germany, which does not allow for class actions or similar types of lawsuits. The new government has announced the introduction of a new procedure (Musterfeststellungsklage) which would avoid this outcome.     

Post-truth Politics,Bullshit and Bad Ideas: ‘Deficit Fetishism’ in the UK

Debates about economic policy in Britain have been dominated by claims that sovereign debt problems are due to loose fiscal policy and excessive spending rather than volatile capital flows and flawed monetary policy. There are strong grounds for believing that these stories are largely nonsense, yet they inform policy and are widely believed among mass publics, and have proved almost impossible to refute in everyday political discourse. The answer to this puzzle, we suggest, is that such claims are better thought of as bullshit (as conceptualised by Harry Frankfurt 2005) rather than outright falsehoods: in other words, as speech acts that are indifferent to the truth and proceed without effective concern for the veracity of the claim in question. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of political bullshit applied to economic policy debates since the financial crisis, and seek to explain its hold on the popular imagination. We assess what makes some particular brands of bullshit more successful than others, and argue that in a world of competing realities as well as competing theories, the power of rhetoric is more likely to settle an argument than evidence and logic.     

Benford's Law and Fraud Detection: Facts and Legends

Abstract. Is Benford's law a good instrument to detect fraud in reports of statistical and scientific data? For a valid test, the probability of ‘false positives’ and ‘false negatives’ has to be low. However, it is very doubtful whether the Benford distribution is an appropriate tool to discriminate between manipulated and non‐manipulated estimates. Further research should focus more on the validity of the test and test results should be interpreted more carefully.     

Introduction to judgment aggregation

This introduces the symposium on judgment aggregation. The theory of judgment aggregation asks how several individuals' judgments on some logically connected propositions can be aggregated into consistent collective judgments. The aim of this introduction is to show how ideas from the familiar theory of preference aggregation can be extended to this more general case. We first translate a proof of Arrow's impossibility theorem into the new setting, so as to motivate some of the central concepts and conditions leading to analogous impossibilities, as discussed in the symposium. We then consider each of four possible escape-routes explored in the symposium.     

当前我国企业资本结构优化中的问题分析

一直以来，由干我国企业大箩是国有企业，企业资金都由国家统一管理，因此企业的财务部门更多的时候只是纯粹的会计计账。然而随着现代企业制度的建立，企业实行“自主经营、自负盈亏”，企业原有的资本结构中的问题逐渐在市场经济中凸现，成为了影响企业发展的一个重要因素。因此，对于我国企业来说，优化资本结构，合理筹措资金，使各种资金来源和资本配比保持合理的比例，是企业提升核心竞争力，提高经营绩效的必要条件，也是企业财务战略管理的核心。