Welfare paradox in economic restructuring

It can be proved theoretically that, because of the previously existing price and structural distortion, a welfare paradox is possible in the former command economies during the transition period. This paradox refers to a situation in which a welfare gain is accompanied by a fall in the reported GNP figure.     

论公正及其与自由、平等的关系

尽管学术界对自由、平等和公正问题有许多研究和阐释,但较少将自由、平等与公正问题联系起来从总体上进行考察和研究,以致关于自由、平等和公正及其关系问题成了人们最说不清、道不明的问题。本文试图立足于当代人类社会现实及其走向,着重从与自由、平等相互关联的视角研究公正问题,力求纲要性地对公正及其与自由、平等之间的关系提供一些阐释和见解,最终论证这样一种基本观点:现代公正是一种综合性的价值要求,它要求社会自由和平等,也要求对自由和平等可能导致的社会问题给予适当解决。     

Conditioning as disintegration

Conditional probability distributions seem to have a bad reputation when it comes to rigorous treatment of conditioning. Technical arguments are published as manipulations of Radon–Nikodym derivatives, although we all secretly perform heuristic calculations using elementary definitions of conditional probabilities. In print, measurability and averaging properties substitute for intuitive ideas about random variables behaving like constants given particular conditioning information.
One way to engage in rigorous, guilt-free manipulation of conditional distributions is to treat them as disintegrating measures—families of probability measures concentrating on the level sets of a conditioning statistic. In this paper we present a little theory and a range of examples—from EM algorithms and the Neyman factorization, through Bayes theory and marginalization paradoxes—to suggest that disintegrations have both intuitive appeal and the rigor needed for many problems in mathematical statistics.     

Speculative attack against the Hungarian forint

In mid-January 2003 a severe speculative attack was launched against the exchange rate of the Hungarian forint. The attack was very unusual in the history of foreign exchange speculations, since it was aimed at enforcing the appreciation — and not the depreciation — of the currency targeted. The specific nature of this kind of speculation is closely related to Hungary’s accession to the European Union in general and to EMU in particular. Since the other Central and Eastern European acceding countries face similar problems and challenges, the Hungarian experience may involve some instructive lessons on monetary and economic policy for them too.