Money as Social Exergy

Synopsis It has been proposed that open thermodynamic systems will act to dissipate available energy gradients by self-organizing into coherent structures that, with time, evolve and develop into nested hierarchies – panarchies – that adapt to internal and external changes according to a characteristic adaptive cycle. This paper seeks to apply these ideas in the purely societal realm by investigating the role of money in economic systems. Money represents the value embodied in goods; a value that is separate from the exact nature of those goods. We suggest that money thereby liberates the ‘free value’ of economic desire and that this free value has properties analogous to energy. The result is the self-organization of structures and systems (‘econosystems’) that dissipate this ‘free value’. Econosystems act at different scales, and nested levels of econosystems form a panarchy, having effects that can be observed. In particular, it appears that money facilitates the creation of relationships between econosystem actors, increasing the connectedness of the econosystems that envelop those actors. We have identified a phenomenon whereby freed social value (i.e. money) can aggregate, or pool, at a larger econosystem scale in structures such as banks. These pools act as gradients that actors at the neighborhood scale can exploit for self-organization in the econosystem. Thus, econosystem actors appear to be freed from thermodynamic constraints by using money as a means of self-organization. However, because of these pools of aggregated social exergy, connectedness is increased at the larger scale of the econosystem. The potential consequence of this dynamic is that money may act to push larger scale econosystems toward a state of heightened vulnerability to collapse, while freeing smaller scale actors from apparent constraints. In this way, we propose that money acts to skew information feedback loops between econosystem actors and larger scale structures such as economies and ecosystems.      

Endogenous structural change and crisis in a multiple time-scales growth model

The slow and endogenous twist of economic macro-structure makes up an important evolutionary feature of capitalist economies, and may be at the root of structural crisis. In this line, a Goodwinian growth model with increasing returns and profit-sharing that tries to picture a simple scenario of the seventies crisis is considered. It is shown that the exhaustion of the Kaldor-Verdoorn “productivity law” can entail, in a nonlinear framework, a “catastrophic” bifurcation from a “high” to a “low” growth path. Slow/fast dynamical systems then allow one to formalize a multiple time-scales dynamics where the growth path is shaped by the structural framework in which it takes place, but has also a long -un feedback. Structural change and crisis appear as long term and endogenous outcomes.     

The Economics and Bioeconomics of Folk and Scientific Classification

Synopsis This paper is the product of a collaboration between a biologist (Ghiselin 1997) who works on the philosophy of classification and an economist (Landa 1981, 1994) who works on the ‘Economics of Identity’: how and why people classify people based on identity in the context of a theory of ethnic trading networks. In developing the ‘bioeconomics’ (the synthesis of economics with biology) of classification, we crossed a number of disciplinary boundaries—anthropology, economics, sociology, biology, and cognitive psychology including evolutionary psychology’s ‘fast and frugal’ heuristics. Using a bioeconomics approach, we argue that folk classifications—the classifications used by ordinary persons—have much in common with scientific classifications: underlying both is the need for economy of information processing in the brain, for the efficient organization of knowledge, and for efficiency of information acquisition and transmission of information to others. Both evolve as a result of trial and error, but in science there is relatively more foresight, understanding, and planning.     

EPC技术在服装行业的应用研究

随着无限射频技术（RFID）在物体标识方面应用的成熟,人们提出了一个基于互联网的全球物联网,即EPC网络,旨在对每一件出厂的产品做到唯一识别,以便跟踪它的整个生命周期.本文分析了服装行业供应链的特点和信息化的需求,在此基础上研究了EPC在服装行业的应用,并对其未来的发展进行了展望.     

论制度变迁的成本约束

制度变迁的关键是成本约束，这是制度本身产生的根本性要求。制度变迁是成本和收益相权衡和比较的产物，制度设计和安排必须充分考虑到制度变迁的成本和收益，减少制度变迁的阻力，提高制度运行的效率。     

我国引进技术消化吸收与青少年成长教育类比分析及建议

消化吸收是我国技术引进后实现良性循环的重要环节,但目前一直存在效果不佳的问题。为了充分发挥技术引进的后发优势,通过应用相似系统理论,从我国青少年成长过程期间可能遇到的问题及预防措施来类比我国技术引进消化吸收工作中存在的不足,并给出相应的建议措施。     

生态经济理论与经济体制改革

经济体制改革的理论基础不仅仅是社会主义市场经济理论,生态经济理论也是其中之一,这是由生态经济理论原则及特点所决定了的。同时,改革的目标是建立社会主义市场经济体制,在新体制的建立过程中,也必须注意实现生态经济协调的几个问题。     

并行审计技术在企业中的应用探讨

文章通过分析企业计算机信息系统的发展对企业内部审计工作的影响,认为目前企业审计工作存在的主要问题是现有审计技术不能实现适时取证。在此基础上,文中阐述了并行审计的具体方法及在审计取证的不同情况下的应用。     

Fiscal federalism in rentier regions: Evidence from Russia

When does sub-national fiscal autonomy prompt regional growth and recovery and, under what conditions, does it have adverse effects? We argue that unearned income streams, particularly in the form of revenues from natural resource production or from budgetary transfers from the central government, transform regions dependent on these income sources into rentier regions. Governments in these regions can use local control over revenues and expenditures to shelter certain firms, i.e., natural resource producers or loss-making enterprises, from market forces. Using fiscal data from 80 Russian regions from 1996 to 1999, we test this hypothesis in both cross-sectional and panel specifications. Our results indicate that tax retention, which is a proxy for fiscal autonomy, has had a positive effect on regional reform and investment since the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, we also find that this effect decreases as rentable income streams to regions increase. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 814–834.     

Matching and anonymity

This work introduces a set-theoretic foundation of deterministic bilateral matching processes and studies their properties. In particular, it formalizes a link between matching and informational constraints by developing a notion of anonymity that is based on the agents’ matching histories. It also explains why and how various matching processes generate different degrees of “informational isolation” in the economy. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach to modeling matching frameworks by discussing the classical turnpike model of Townsend.This research is supported in part by the NSF grants EIA-0075506, SES-0128039, DMS-0437210, and ACI-0325846. We thank two anonymous referees for constructive comments that improved the exposition of the paper. We also thank the participants in seminars at the University of Aarhus, Purdue University, University of Texas at Austin, and at the XI Meeting on Real Analysis and Measure Theory in 2004, the spring 2004 Midwest Economic Theory Meeting, the summer 2004 North American and European Econometric Society meetings.