发展低碳经济的制度性思考

在地球能源日益紧张和枯竭的背景下,在人类生存环境日益恶化的状况下,提出发展低碳经济显得更加具有现实意义。发展低碳经济是能够使社会经济发展与生态环境保护达到双赢的一种新的经济发展方式。文章针对我国低碳经济发展的现状,发展低碳经济的制度性缺陷,从制度层方面提出了具体的发展低碳经济的若干建议,旨在对我国的低碳经济发展有所借鉴。     

Vacaciones y licencias en países desarrollados: los Estados Unidos a la zaga en cuanto a equilibrio entre vida profesional y vida familiar

Los autores comparan las normativas sobre vacaciones y licencias susceptibles de facilitar el equilibrio entre vida profesional y familiar de Australia, Canadá, República de Corea, Estados Unidos, Europa occidental y Japón utilizando un índice compuesto para clasificarlas. Los Estados Unidos figuran en último lugar: la concesión de vacaciones anuales al trabajador no es obligatoria y las licencias por motivos familiares se limitan a 12 semanas al año. Este bajo nivel de reglamentación podría deberse, según los autores, a una concepción mercantilista del empleo sumada a la creencia de que empleador y trabajadores tienen idéntica capacidad de negociación, visión no compartida por las demás democracias industrializadas.     

Accounting Regulation,Financial Development,and Economic Growth

It is argued that the sustainability of external debts depends on the stationarity of the current account balance. This study tests for the stationarity of current account deficits for a sample of sixteen Latin American countries, employing a new test, advocated by Breuer et al. (2002), that allows one to test for unit roots in heterogeneous panel data sets. This version of the augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test involves estimating ADF regressions within a seemingly unrelated regression (SURADF) framework. The benefits of creating a panel to overcome low test power are well known, but this particular test also offers key advantages over existing alternative panel data unit root tests. Unlike previous tests, this one identifies which members from within the panel are responsible for rejecting the null hypothesis of joint nonstationarity. In addition, the SURADF test does not presume disturbances that are independently and identically distributed. Using annual data covering the period 1979-2001, this study finds strong evidence in favor of current account mean-reversion for at least twelve Latin American countries.     

CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPEAN TRADE ORIENTATION AND FDI FLOWS: PREPARATION FOR EU MEMBERSHIP

At the June 1997 Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) the heads of state of the 15 European Union (EU) nations decided to expand to the East. At the Luxembourg IGC in December 1997, they invited the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, and Solvenia from Central and East Europe (CEE) and Cyprus from the Mediterranean region to begin admission talks in early 1998. Efficient involvement in international trade and the division of labor through foreign direct investment (FDI) are two of the most important prerequisites to economic transformation, modernization, and sustained economic growth. Thus, trade reorientation by the CEE nations from the former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) region to the OECD region in general and the EU in particu lar, as well as the volume and nature of inbound FDI are among the most reliable indicators of these countries' abilities to meet the EU admission standards. Trade reorientation by the CEE nations and FDI inflows between 1990 1995 have established a sound basis for effective economic transformation and modernization. It has also increased the ability of selected industries to compete in the EU Single Market. By 1997 the CEE nations were in a good position to generate sustained economic growth and to gradually meet the EU admission requirements.     

An Organisational Discussion of Incomplete Contracting and Transaction Costs in Conservation Contracts

Conservation in the agricultural sector is difficult to achieve. A primary complicating factor in achieving conservation is the large number of public good environmental services provided by large numbers of individuals acting under diverse economic and ecological conditions. The complexity of the problem implies that additional consideration must be given to transaction cost economics and the theory of incomplete contracting. Drawing on insights from organisational economics, this paper argues that conservation policy and research could be improved with explicit consideration of the effects of ‘holdup problems’, transaction costs and trust on the provision of conservation services. ‘Bottom‐up’ approaches are promising as they directly incorporate these organisational issues, and the paper concludes with an example of a ‘bottom‐up’ conservation programme, the Ontario Environmental Farm Planning programme.     

Flexible work practices and human resource management: a comparison of South African and foreign owned companies

This study compares the use of flexible work practices in wholly owned South African (SA) companies with that in foreign-owned companies. Data were obtained from questionnaire results of a study conducted by Horwitz and Franklin (1996) of flexible work practices in SA organizations. The questionnaire was used as part of a collaborative research project involving three countries (Brosnan et al ., 1996). It was found that SA-owned companies use certain flexible work practices to a lesser extent than foreign-owned companies. This was found to be the case particularly in the use of numerical forms of flexibility, such as sub-contractors/consultants and the use of temporary employees. Use of subcontractors/consultants and temporary staff agencies was found to be the greatest in partially foreign-owned companies. A larger proportion of foreign-owned companies have lower labour costs than do SA-owned companies. This has, however, not been as a result of the greater use of flexible work practices. Foreign-owned companies make more joint decisions with unions than do SA-owned companies when changing work practices.     

WHY FREE MARKETS SHOULD NOT BE BLAMED FOR THE CURRENT RECESSION

Interventionist thinkers are now claiming intellectual victory, blaming the free‐market system and its ideology for the current economic collapse. We find this thesis untenable, drawing on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Instead, we argue that the roots of our present downturn lie in the monetary system, whose institutional structure is far from any free‐market ideal. Moreover, several government policies have contributed to the problems.     

Planning Discourse versus Land Discourse: The 2009–12 Reforms in Land‐Use Planning Policy and Land Policy in Israel

Land policy and land‐use planning policy are two types of public policy pertaining to space. In general, land‐use planning policy deals with land‐use allocation and property rights, whereas land policy defines the land regime of a society. These differences have shaped a unique discourse for each of these policy types. The purpose of this article is to examine the differences and similarities between the land discourse and the planning discourse by analyzing two public campaigns conducted in Israel against two proposed reforms: the 2009 reform of the Israel Land Administration and the 2010–12 reform of the Planning and Building Law. The findings reveal substantive differences between the two campaigns, manifested in the nature of the leading players, the types of public activities they chose, and most notably in the discourses and the hierarchy of considerations they addressed. The findings raise profound questions regarding universal trends in spatial policy reforms; their influence on the activities of public coalitions and the discourses they adopted; possible future effects of these trends on the differences between the land discourse and the planning discourse; and the impact of these trends on the ability of groups and individuals elsewhere to influence spatial policies (such as planning and land policies).     

Assessing economic convergence in the EU: is there a perspective for the ‘cohesion countries’?

This article analyses the stochastic income convergence within the EU-15. The empirical analysis uses per capita GDP, in PPP and in constant prices of 2005 for the period 1950 to 2010. Apart from the traditional DF type tests we also account for possible structural changes. In this direction, we employ the Zivot-Andrews (1992) and the Lee-Strazicich (1999, 2003) testing procedures, for one and two breaks, endogenously determined. Furthermore, we apply the Carlino and Mills (1993) methodology proposed for the detection of β-convergence. The overall evidence supports the existence of two discrete clubs, the first by the ‘cohesion countries’ (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and the second by the remaining members. In particular, there is a clear evidence of convergence within each club, whereas between clubs there is a luck of catching-up effects. Furthermore, investigation of correlation between relative per capita GDP of each country and several factors that are often identified as growth stimulants, namely Total Factor Productivity, FDI, investment and openness confirm, with the exception of Greece, a strong association between these factors and the convergence process. However, progress in the convergence has not been uniform across countries and over time, reflecting the specific interactions between domestic and international factors and their impact on the convergence process of individual countries.