经济相互依赖、退出成本与国家间冲突升级——基于动态博弈模型的理论分析

经济相互依赖如何影响国家间的政治关系是一个颇受争议的话题。基于马克.克里森兹的退出模型,作者构建了一个五阶段动态博弈模型,从动态视角考察经济相互依赖如何影响不同级别的冲突,并着重对经济相互依赖如何抑制冲突升级的内在机制进行了理论研究,得出如下结论:随着经济相互依赖的加深,国家间发生低级别冲突的概率将会增加,但是低级别冲突升级为战争的概率下降,即经济相互依赖有助于抑制冲突的升级。最后利用1949～2008年中美间政治经济关系的现实对理论分析的结论做了进一步的说明。     

国际关系与国际法跨学科研究之路径

从本源看,国际关系与国际法关系紧密;从学科发展史看,国际关系理论与国际法学相辅相成。正由此,在两个学科的联结被割裂近半个世纪后,跨学科研究又在西方蓬勃兴起,甚至号称一个国际关系与国际法学派正在形成。相比之下,中国的相关研究刚刚起步,《当代国际法的发展:一种从国际关系理论视角的分析》一书正是起步阶段的一部探索性之作。该书是从国际关系理论的视角,对当代国际法与国际组织的实践进行的一种跨学科分析,试图为当代国际法的实践提供另一种途径的理论诠释。无疑,国际关系与国际法的跨学科研究必须克服很多困难,包括跨学科研究的难度、学科内的偏见以及学科之间的隔阂等。不过,正是由于跨学科研究本身能够给两个学科的进步带来的诱人前景,决定了其是一种具有强大生命力的研究路径,并将成为学科发展的必然趋势之一。     

Institutional quality, governance, and financial development

Using banking sector and stock market development indicators, we examine the effect of institutional quality on financial development in developed and developing countries. Empirical results are based on dynamic system generalized method of moments estimations and demonstrate that a high-quality institutional environment is important in explaining financial development, specifically for the banking sector. However, the stock market development-institution relationship is contingent one, characterized by a non-monotonic pattern. The results are robust to two measurements of institutions and governance indicators, as well as estimation methods.     

Subjective Well-Being Around Retirement

This paper studies the effect of both retirement and unemployment on life satisfaction, using subjective satisfaction indicators from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Moreover, we analyze how accurate individuals anticipate changes in satisfaction around retirement, as well as the correlation between the forecast error in life satisfaction and the labor market status. Being unemployed has a significant negative effect on life satisfaction; (in)voluntary retirement on the other hand has no significant effect on life satisfaction. A new finding is that unemployed individuals underestimate future life satisfaction. That is, their current labor market status has temporary negative effects on well-being, but, after 5 years, individuals are happier with their life than previously anticipated. We find no effects of (in)voluntary retirement on the forecast error.     

Shared ownership and pricing in a network switch

We observe that many wholesale switches in automated teller machine (ATM) networks are jointly owned by their members and that this tends to occur more frequently when the wholesale industry is highly concentrated. We also observe that network switches are ‘natural monopolies’, their costs being largely fixed and their demand exhibiting substantial network externalities. Motivated by these observations, we model the competition for members between wholesale switches and the role joint ownership can play in attracting members. The model analyzes both the adoption decision (which network a bank chooses to join) and the subsequent pricing of switch and ATM services. We compare competition between two solely owned switches with competition between one solely owned and one jointly owned switch. Our analysis shows that a more concentrated structure results under the latter and that retail prices are higher. This calls into question the leniency of antitrust policy toward jointly owned structures.