Economics,Democracy, and the Distribution of Capital Ownership

This article holds that widespread, practical access to capital acquisition is essential for sustainable widespread economic prosperity and democracy. The founders of the U.S.A. agreed that sustainable democracy required widespread ownership of land to provide a viable earning capacity sufficient to support robust participation in democratic government. The importance of widespread land ownership to individual prosperity and sustainable democracy was supported not only by the prevailing philosophical views of property, it was also apparent to the common man and woman. Compared to Europe, America offered widespread access to land ownership, higher wages, better work conditions, cheaper staples and greater individual freedom, equal opportunity, prosperity, and political participation. This conviction that widespread access to ownership is a necessary condition for widespread prosperity and sustainable democracy continued throughout most of the nineteenth century, but today public discourse reveals virtually no trace of this once universally held opinion. This article suggests that the disappearance of this conviction can be traced to an erroneous view shaped by neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics. According to this view, (1) the disappearance of the American frontier and industrialization made the goal of widespread capital ownership either impractical or of little or no economic significance and (2) by way of technological advance, sufficient earning capacity and consumer demand to promote growth and sustain democracy can be achieved, without widespread ownership, primarily through jobs and welfare. Although differing in many respects, both mainstream schools, along with Adam Smith’s classical economics, share one common but unstated economic assumption: the broader distribution of capital acquisition (in itself) has no fundamental relationship to the fuller employment of people and capital, the broader distribution of greater individual earning capacity, and growth. Contemporary thinking, shaped by these economic schools, also tacitly assumes that widespread capital ownership is not essential for the sustainable individual earning capacity needed to support robust democracy. This erroneous “ownership-neutrality assumption” (1) contradicts both the views of America’s founders and the colonial experience, and (2) provides theoretical justification for structuring capital markets and capital acquisition transactions to unfairly and dysfunctionally favor existing owners at the expense of broader ownership distribution, more widely shared prosperity, greater efficiency, ecologically friendly growth, and a vital democracy. America’s conscientious founders would be shocked by the diminished importance of the distribution of ownership in the mainstream analysis of prices, efficiency, production, growth, and democracy. Rather than enhancing democracy, they would view the “ownership-neutrality assumption” of mainstream economics as contributing to its deterioration and corruption. They would openly search for economic analysis built on an alternate assumption more consistent with their understanding of the requisite conditions for sustainable democracy. This article advances an economic analysis that suspends the ownership-neutrality assumption, replaces it with a “broader-ownership-growth assumption,” and suggests a voluntary market strategy for substantially broadening capital ownership, enhancing individual earning capacity, and providing the widespread economic prosperity needed for robust democracy.     

基于贝叶斯学习法则的住宅小区业主维权行为模式初探

贝叶斯学习模型被认为是传统优化学习模型,本文从个体学习行为角度切入,基于贝叶斯法则构建一个个体在有限策略集中进行决策的一般性行为调整模型,并针对城镇住宅小区内的资源配置,来解释业主群体在维权模式过程中的经验积累和认知演化过程。在明确的法制制度下,如果辅以行为个体的认知理解,则可以更好的给出政策建议:法律实施重在社会成员的信念调整,这是本文另一个主旨。     

《劳动合同法》背景下高校劳务用工人员劳动关系分析

随着高等教育大众化和全球化的不断深入发展,高校正式编制的教职工很难满足高校不断发展的用人需要,形成高校内部规模较大的编制外劳务用工队伍。在新劳动合同法背景下,如何正确处理高校劳务用工人员劳动关系,避免用工风险,已经成为高校的当务之急。本文分析了高校人员结构及劳务用工人员劳动关系的现状,指出高校在处理劳务用工人员劳动关系方面应把握的几个重要环节,为建立高校健康和谐的劳动关系提供了合理化建议。     

哈萨克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦两国伊斯兰金融法：比较、评析

伊斯兰金融是伊斯兰教关于金融问题的教义与现代金融相结合的产物,近年来也扩展到了中亚国家.哈萨克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦是确立伊斯兰金融制度的两个中亚国家,同时也是制定伊斯兰金融法律的中亚国家.本文在对哈萨克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦两国的伊斯兰金融立法情况进行概括的基础上,对其伊斯兰金融法体系进行了详细论述,即两国在伊斯兰金融立法方面形成了涵盖法典、法律和部门规章的多部规范性法律文件构成的伊斯兰金融法体系；并对其立法进行了评析,认为在伊斯兰金融立法路径方面两国完全不同,在立法模式上两国既相同又有差异.随着伊斯兰金融制度在中亚五国的全面扩散,伊斯兰金融法律制度也将在所有的中亚国家确立.     

针对广东地区进口机械加工设备安全性能的研究

对广东检验检疫局辖区内的进口机械加工设备进行了专项检测和调研。根据检测结果,从不同侧面分析了进口机械加工设备存在的问题以及解决方法,为今后的进口机械加工设备检验监管提供了技术依据,也为国内广大机械加工设备制造企业提供了借鉴。     

Evidence of Wagner's law from Indian states

In this paper, we test for Wagner's law for 15 Indian states. We consider nine panels of states based on geography and level of economic development. Using panel unit-root, panel-cointegration, and panel-Granger causality analysis, we unravel strong evidence of Wagner's law. However, we find that the Wagner's law relationship is consumption rather than capital expenditure driven. This is a fresh revelation and our results are robust to different model specifications.     

The case for property investment and the implications of a unitized property market

Abstract

It is well known that direct property investment has often provided a more attractive risk/return profile than gilts and yet it enjoys a comparatively small role in institutional portfolios. This paper begins by updating and confirming that position. It then considers why this should be the case and poses the question of whether the development of a unitized property market might alter institutions’ perceptions of property as an investment in such a way as to increase its portfolio importance.

Section 2 discusses the weighting attached to property in recent years and section 3 discusses the conventional methods of risk/return analysis which present property in a favourable light. The paper then asks why the weighting should be so low and begins (section 4) by looking at arguments that conventional methods of risk/return analysis are misleading when applied to property, leading to an overstatement of return and an underestimate of risk. If institutions are aware of these defects they may adjust their perceptions of risk/return appropriately. We are not, however, persuaded that this is the whole of the explanation. In section 5 we consider other disadvantages or costs of direct property investment which go unrecorded by conventional measures of risk but which might be important to institutions. We confirm there are peculiarities attaching to direct property investment but that these cannot wholly explain the high return that institutions seem to need to induce them to hold only a small proportion of their portfolio in property. We are left, therefore, with the conclusion that institutions’ perceptions of the merits of property investment are a significant factor. Thus, in section 6, we try to identify ways in which an active market in unitized property might encourage institutions to hold larger property portfolios in future.     

Property rights revisited

Over the last 20 years, a large number of papers have tried to quantify the effect of property rights on a wide range of variables like growth, trade and to a lesser extent, inequality. However, these studies have been inherently limited by measures of the security of property rights that are currently available. These suffer from any of a number of shortcomings, ranging from a lack of availability, objectivity, or the fact that they measure a broader concept like the rule of law. This paper tries to address this gap by proposing a new index of property rights. Specifically, we use a state-space model to combine all available indicators tracking the security of property rights into an index that covers 191 countries over the period 1994–2014. We compare it to the existing indicators by revisiting the link between inequality, democracy and property rights, using a panel threshold regression model with fixed-effects. Depending on the measure of property rights that is used, there can be considerable differences in the size, significance and even the sign of the estimated parameters. Specifically, in contrast with existing measures, we find that a strengthening of the security of property rights reduces inequality in highly democratic countries only via the government's redistribution channel.     

特征价格法在房地产价格指数中的应用

特征价格法（Hedonic method）是将房地产价格变动中的质量特征因素进行分解，以显现出各项特征的隐含价格。并从价格的总变动中逐项剔除质量特征变动的影响，达到仅仅反映纯价格变动的目的。本文通过双重Imputation过程估计缺失价格和剔除异常值的影响，解决了可比性问题，并增强了Hedonic模型的稳定性。