Do we really care about Biodiversity?

This paper addresses from an economic perspective the issue of global biodiversity conservation. It challenges the perception that the world really cares a great deal about biodiversity and is prepared to pay the full cost of maintaining this stock of natural capital. Despite the existence of a plethora of international agreements there still seems to be a global ‘deficit of care’ surrounding efforts to combat challenges such as those posed by global warming and biodiversity conservation. More light can be thrown on the degree of care by measuring both the actual expenditures and the stated willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation. However, actual expenditures are much lower than willingness to pay estimates recorded in the published literature. Using the criteria that the ‘right’ amount of conservation effort is one where the marginal economic benefits from conservation just equal the marginal costs of conservation, the paper explores the biodiversity conservation conundrum and concluded that, on the available evidence, the world does not care too much about this natural capital stock and bequests to future generations. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Mongolian nomadic culture and ecological culture: On the ecological reconstruction in the agro-pastoral mosaic zone in Northern China

After analyzing the grassland environmental characteristics and nomads vs. agrarian land use styles and their ecological and environmental influences in the arid and semiarid agro-pastoral mosaic zone in northern China, it was concluded that Mongolian nomadic culture is more close to the basic principles of the ecological culture in the modern sense. Mongolian nomadic culture has advantages over agrarian culture in ecology and environmental care, sustainable utilization of grasslands, and in sustainable human social economic development in the region. Generally speaking nomadic culture prevents desertification; whereas, agrarian culture facilitates desertification. Confliction between nomadic protection and agrarian destruction of grassland ecosystem is essentially focused on the problem of regional and even global ecological safety. Obviously, protection of ecological safety should be given priority because human social and economic existence, as well as development depend on and are decided by the vulnerable ecological safety in the arid and semiarid areas. Therefore expansion of cropping into the fragile ecosystem of arid lands was unfortunate. The long term sustainable management of these grassland ecosystems could benefit from reversal of policies that are exacerbating the problems of land degradation, and from the adoption of land use practices that have been successfully applied for centuries by Mongolian herders. Protection of grasslands and nomadic culture is far more important or even vital to the subsistence and sustainability of human and all other beings, compared to the protection of agrarian lifestyle and land cultivation. Protection of ecologic safety is protecting the premise and fundamental bases of economic and social development in the area. It is important to derive the rational elements of nomadic culture in construction of ecological culture, and in the ecological reconstruction in northern China. Based on analyzing and reasoning in line with the quintessence of nomadic culture summarized, some proposals on ecological reconstruction in the area are presented.     

Is Meta-Analysis a Noah's Ark for Non-Market Valuation?

This paper describes meta-analytical methods as they have been appliedto non-market valuation research. These studies have been used to reviewand synthesize literature and, more recently, in benefit transfer. Thissecond use imposes a higher standard on the consistency in economicconcepts being summarized and in the resources included in ameta-analysis. To meet this need, the paper proposes and illustrates astructural framework using a generalized method of moments estimator toestimate the parameters of a preference function with the benefitsestimates usually encountered in meta-analytic summaries.     

Evaluating Projects and Assessing Sustainable Development in Imperfect Economies

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the economy is convex, nor do weassume that the government optimizes on behalfof its citizens. We show that the same set ofaccounting prices should be used both forpolicy evaluation and for assessing whether ornot intergenerational welfare along a giveneconomic path will be sustained. We also showthat a comprehensive measure of wealth,computed in terms of the accounting prices, canbe used as an index for problems (2) and (3)above. The remainder of the paper is concernedwith rules for estimating the accounting pricesof several specific environmental naturalresources, transacted in a few well knowneconomic institutions.     

建湖县林农人工复合系统工程与生态经济效益浅析

建湖县运用生态学原理，充分发挥资源潜力，建立了几种林─农复合生态系统，结构合理，能流物流流通合理、利用充分，取得了很好的生态效益与经济效益。     

农村流动人口研究的社会网络视角

对社会网络理论的发展和应用进行了回顾,重点评述国内外关于流动人口的社会网络研究。国外利用社会网络视角系统研究流动人口的成果相对较少,而国内的流动人口研究主要集中于农村流动人口的网络结构分析和求职网络研究。多数研究只是对个体网络的基本特性作描述性分析,将社会网络作为研究对象而不是研究方法。对未来利用社会网络分析方法进行农村流动人口的研究提出了展望。     

整合与超越:新全球化时代经济学范式探微

世界正发生着从"旧全球化时代"向"新全球化时代"的重大转变.伴随这一时代转折,建立在传统工业文明基础上的经济学正面临着研究范式的挑战,因为它已经不能适应以高科技为先导,以科技成果的商品化、产业化、国际化为特征的新时代所遇到的各种复杂问题.其研究范式急需进行整合与超越,交往实践观为其提供了新的视域和新的理论范式.     

关于我国财政政策导向调整的研究

近年来我国实施的积极财政政策确实在很大程度上促进了经济和社会的发展。但是随着经济市场化程度的不断提高和经济环境的变化，这种积极财政政策也表现出诸多的不适应性。因此应适时调整财政政策导向以适应经济和社会发展的新要求。拟从我国近年来实施的积极财政政策的成效分析出发，阐述了当前调整财政政策导向的必然性，并提出了今后我国财政政策的调整方向。     

进城农民工社会保障的影响因素研究

缺乏明确的法律规定、不同制度模式之间难以互通互联及其自身的缺陷,是制约进城农民工参加社会保障的重要制度性因素;性别、城市工作年限、是否签订劳动合同、工资收入、所在城市等则是影响进城农民工参加社会保障的非制度性因素。从制度创新和强化执法等方面提出了政策建议。     

Feminist Ecological Economics and Sustainability

Synopsis New developments in feminist ecological economics and ecofeminist economics are contributing to the search for theories and policy approaches to move economies toward sustainability. This paper summarizes work by ecofeminists and feminist ecological economists which is relevant to the sustainability challenge and its implications for the discipline of economics. Both democracy and lower material throughputs are generally seen as basic principles of economic sustainability. Feminist theorists and feminist ecological economists offer many important insights into the conundrum of how to make a democratic and equity-enhancing transition to an economy based on less material throughput. These flow from feminist research on unpaid work and caring labor, provisioning, development, valuation, social reproduction, non-monetized exchange relationships, local economies, redistribution, citizenship, equity-enhancing political institutions, and labor time, as well as creative modeling approaches and activism-based theorizing.