The Legislator as Political Entrepreneur: Investment in Political Capital

This paper applies the standard Austrian theory of capital investment to the standard interest group model of legislator behavior. Distinguishing between reputational capital and representative capital as interdependent forms of political capital, I argue that legislator behavior (specifically roll call voting) can be explained as entrepreneurial investment in political capital under uncertainty. I discuss several examples in which this approach can potentially add predictive power regarding legislative voting.     

Incentive Regulation of Prices When Costs are Sunk

We present a model featuring irreversible investment, economies of scale, uncertain future demand and capital prices, and a regulator who sets the firm’s output price according to the cost structure of a hypothetical replacement firm. We show that a replacement firm has a fundamental cost advantage over the regulated firm: it can better exploit the economies of scale because it has not had to confront the historical uncertainties faced by the regulated firm. We show that setting prices so low that a replacement firm is just willing to participate is insufficient to allow the regulated firm to expect to break even whenever it has to invest. Thus, unless the regulator is willing to incur costly monitoring to ensure the firm invests, revenue must be allowed in excess of that required for a replacement firm to participate. This contrasts with much of the existing literature, which argues that the market value of a regulated firm should equal the cost of replacing its existing assets. We also obtain a closed-form solution for the regulated firm’s output price when this price is set at discrete intervals. In contrast to rate of return regulation, we find that resetting the regulated price more frequently can increase the risk faced by the firm’s owners, and that this is reflected in a higher output price and a higher weighted-average cost of capital.     

Existence of Equilibria in Matching Models of Money: A New Technique

This paper develops a new technique for proving the existence and indeterminacy of monetary equilibria in money search models with divisible money. Our technique is substantially simpler than standard constructive proofs in the literature. This paper is based on the second half of Kamiya and Shimizu (2002). We are very grateful to the associate editor and an anonymous referee of this journal for their very detailed suggestions and comments. This research is financially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from JSPS and MEXT. The second author also acknowledges the financial support by Zengin Foundation for studies on Economics and Finance.     

应对国外反倾销：民间商会不能缺位

面对国外对中国出口商品愈演愈烈的反倾销之势,有效发挥民间商会组织的优势与职能,给企业以依托, 已是打赢反倾销战的关键。因此,应鼓励和加大民间商会的建设力度,利用其特点与优势,充分发挥其职能,以在应对国外反倾销中居于有利地位。     

中国农村土地制度改革模式探索

农村土地制度不仅是中国革命的根本性问题,在相当长时期内,仍将是中国现代化建设的最基础问题,尤其是当前解决"三农"问题的迫切性及中国建立和谐社会目标是否已经构成了土地制度新突破的能量呢?果真如此,那么,条件是否具备?时机是否成熟?本文通过对我国农村土地制度的局限性和存在的问题分析后认为,中国农村土地制度改革已经到了必须进行所有制变革的时候了.而考虑到中国具体实际和改革面临的阻力,笔者提出了改革的战略思路是:第一阶段实行土地股份所有,市场化经营;第二阶段实行农村土地农民个人所有制.     

Racing in two dimensions

In this paper we study an industry in which there is an ongoing sequence of R&D races between two firms. Firms are engaged in product innovation. Products are horizontally and vertically differentiated. There are two key characteristics/dimensions to products, and the level at which these are embodied in products can be increased by R&D. At each time firms can spend R&D on improving their product in one or both dimensions. We allow the possibility of economies scope — so R&D undertaken in one dimension can spillover to the other. The question we are interested in is whether a firm that is ahead in a single dimension but behind in another will focus all its R&D effort in the area in which it is ahead (product specialisation), or whether it will try to do R&D in both dimensions in the hope that it might get ahead in both and end up with a superproduct that dominates in both characteristics. The outcome of this R&D competition determines a Markov transition probability matrix determining the evolution of the industry. We show that when the R&D technology is characterized by constant returns then the only steady-state outcome is one in which the economy stays forever in a position in which one firm produces a super-product and the other gives up doing R&D altogether. This outcome is unaffected by the degree of economies of scope. When the R&D technology is characterised by decreasing returns, then the industry will visit all states and so will exhibit both product specialisation and superproduct dominance at various times. Now the extent of economies of scope matters and we show that the greater the extent of economies of scope, the less likely is the industry to exhibit product dominance, and the more likely it is to exhibit product specialisation.     

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。     

浙江沿海都市连绵区分析

本文在分析浙东北沿海都市连绵区形成阶段与发展水平的基础上,从地区经济、人口集聚与扩散的角度研究都市连绵区的形成机制,并探讨了都市化进程中的有关问题.     

A brief technology assessment of the Carbon Dioxide effect

Significant increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are occuring as a result of fossil fuel combustion. More than a four-fold increase over preindustrial levels may occur by the year 2100. Heating of the atmosphere, changes in precipitation patterns and global storm paths, and other resulting effects are sure to cause significant social changes. This article is essentially a methodological case study demonstrating a useful but inexpensive type of technology assessment. It summarizes current research findings on “the CO₂ effect,” and presents hitherto unpublished findings that resulted from a brief but systems-oriented approach. These findings suggest that most published forecasts of phenomena associated with a CO₂ buildup may be systematically low because various positive feedback relationships are not reflected.     

Current Account, Capital Formation and Terms of Trade Shocks: a Revisit of the Harberger-Laursen-Metzler Effect

This paper extends the Blanchard model of a closed-economy to a three-good (exportable, importable and non-tradable goods) open-economy model with capital accumulation and uncertain lifetimes to study the impacts of terms of trade shocks on the current account. The simulation results show that a model with uncertain lifetimes is more appropriate to describe a small open economy like Taiwan at the steady-state equilibrium than a model with infinite lifetimes. We find that the Harberger-Laursen-Metzler effect is discernible for temporary or permanent terms of trade shocks. Furthermore, the steady state is a saddle point and the speed of convergence of capital and consumption is quite low.