The Social Ontology of Virtual Environments

This paper analyzes the ontological structure of institutional and other social entities in virtual environments. The emphasis is on institutional reality, which consists of entities (objects, events, etc.) like money, contracts, and chess pieces, which are constituted in part through collective agreements. It is studied how institutional entities are constructed in virtual environments, how they relate to institutional entities in the real world, and how they are recognized by users.     

Explaining Collective Intentionality

A BSTRACT . The Construction of Social Reality contains interesting suggestions about the ways in which phenomena of we-intentionality derive from beliefs and desires of social agents. This explanatory trust is in deep tension with Searle's general view that we-intentionality is a primitive phenomenon. I propose that we preserve the explanations and reject the general view, and argue for the proposal.     

小茶叶，大商机

具有保健功效的普洱茶除了可以饮用之外还具有收藏价值，所以被喻为能喝的古董，自然成为收藏有和茶叶爱好者的心头爱。     

Risky IPTV Investment

IPTV （Internet Protocol television） is a frequently mentioned word recently, since Shanda changes its main business to IPTV, which isrecognized as a new technology and at- tractive business in the future. Shanda is the most active Chinese online game pioneer, it has produced one trail box, which will be used as the host while traditional TV station as terminal of the IPTV. Shanda hopes that the box＇s development and the family entertainment service operation will boost its revenue and help to recover the investors＇ confidence. It is estimated that Shanda has spend about $450 millions on IPTV in the last year, including production research and sales channel establishment. However, it is reported that the box is of poor quality. Even the internal trial members complained about the box＇s unsatisfactory performance. In addition, the price of the box is about 6,000 RMB each （equivalent US $ 800）, it is too expen-sive to most Chinese consumers.     

Does aid affect inequality?

We show that there was a negative correlation between pro-poor aid and inequality in the period before the mid-2000s. This article provides an explanation for this observed relationship. Using panel data on 34 countries for the period 1996–2014, we test the hypothesis that pro-poor aid has an inequality-reducing effect. To demonstrate that the negative correlation is not spurious, we use dynamic panel techniques with alternative specifications. We show that the share of pro-poor aid has a negative effect on inequality. In addition, we show that the interaction term between the poverty rate and the change in pro-poor aid has a significant effect. These empirical results are consistent with our theoretical predictions. The results imply that aid can reduce inequality by altering the allocation of aid, rather than by increasing the amount of aid.     

A ONE‐SECTOR GROWTH MODEL WITH CONSUMPTION STANDARD: INDETERMINATE OR DETERMINATE?

In a representative agent, one-sector growth model in which the discounting is decreasing in the consumption standard measured as the current average consumption flow, Drugeon (1998) establishes local indeterminacy. This paper extends Drugeon's setup in the discount rate. In our setup, the consumption standard is a habit stock that a weighted average of the whole history of average consumption flows in the past. Local indeterminacy emerges only when the speed of habit formation tends to infinity; otherwise, local indeterminacy cannot appear, no matter how large the habit affects the discount rate.     

Henry George Under the Microscope: Comments on "Henry George's Political Critics"

The annual supplement of the AJES for 2008 titled Henry George: Political Ideologue, Social Philosopher, and Economic Theorist had as its first and longest essay "Henry George's Political Critics" by Professor Michael Hudson. It offered a multitude of criticisms, most of which Prof. Hudson seemed to agree with. All purported to be criticisms of George as a political strategist, though some seem more to originate from Hudson's disagreement with theoretical positions George was bound to take. The purpose of this short paper is to show that Professor Hudson's long article fails to do what it seems intended to do. That is, it fails to show that trade unionists and especially socialists were "natural allies" of the Georgist movement, that it was George's fault that that they were not, and that George "allied" his movement irrevocably to "capital," rejecting its "natural allies."