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.     

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.     

Dissertation abstract: “Essays in applied economics on the intervention of a third player in agency relationships”

Agency theory has established that appropriate incentives can reconcile the diverging interests of the principal and the agent. Focusing on three applications, this dissertation evaluates the empirical relevance of these results when a third party interacts with the primary contract. The analyses provided rely on either laboratory or natural experiments. First, corruption is analyzed as a two-contract situation: a delegation contract between a Principal and an Agent and a corruption pact concluded between this Agent and a third player, called Briber. A survey of the recent microeconomic literature on corruption first highlights how corruption behavior results from the properties of those two agreements. We thereafter show that the Agent faces a conflict in reciprocities due to those two conflicting agreements. The resulting delegation effect, supported by observed behavior in our three-player experimental game, could account for the deterrence effect of wages on corruption. Second, health care is governed by contradictory objectives: patients are mainly concerned with the health provided, whereas containing health care costs is the primary goal of health care administrators. We provide further insights into the ability of incentives to balance these two competing objectives. In this matter, our theoretical and econometric analysis evaluates how a new mixed compensation scheme, introduced in Quebec in 1999 as an alternative to fee-for-services, has affected physicians’ practice patterns. Free switching is shown to be an essential feature of the reform, since it implements screening between physicians. Finally, the demand for underground work departs from the traditional Beckerian approach to illegal behavior, due to the dependence of benefits from illegality on competitors’ behavior. We set up a theoretical model in which the demand for underground work from all producers competing on the same output market is analyzed simultaneously. We first show that competition drastically undermines the individual benefits of tax evasion. At equilibrium, each firm nonetheless chooses evasion with a positive probability, strictly lower than one. This Bertrand curse could then account for the “tax evasion puzzle” i.e. the overprediction of evasion in models that ignore market interactions. We thereafter show that allowing firms to denounce competitors’ evasion is not likely to solve this curse—by providing a credible threat against price cuts, it fosters illegal work. Empirical evidence from a laboratory experiment confirms these predictions. Without denunciation, experimental firms often choose evasion whereas evasion benefits are canceled out by competition. When introduced, denunciation is rarely used by firms, but the threat makes evasion profitable. JEL Classification K42, I18, D21, C25, C91     

监管制度变迁对深圳证券市场效率的影响

本文回顾了十多年来我国证券市场监管制度的变化,运用统计分析和混沌理论来分析市场监管制度对深圳股票市场市场效率的影响.本文认为,深圳股票市场在经历了十年多的发展后市场效率在宏观上有所提高.对重大监管政策出台前后市场变动情况的统计分析表明,大量监管政策的出台在微观层面也有一定的改进.     

风险投资退出机制研究:来自广东的经验

股权退出机制使得风险资本能够实现循环投资,也是风险投资中潜在或外在的有关公司控制权的激励合约的组成部分之一。本文以广东为例,说明了退出机制差异造成了我国内外资风险投资机构的经营差距,而退出机制差异主要体现为国内资本市场体系不完善,进而提出了建设多层次资本市场的相关对策选择。