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.     

Unemployment insurance: The role of electoral systems and regional labour markets

Levels of insurance against unemployment vary considerably across countries. Replacement rates, the ratio relating income from unemployment to what people earned when they were employed, are higher in countries with proportional electoral systems than in countries with majoritarian systems. Also, replacement rates are positively correlated with per capita income and negatively correlated with the countries' unemployment rates. I develop an electoral competition model that replicates these stylized facts.     

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。     

Taxation of Mobile Factors as Insurance under Uncertainty

This paper considers the effects of the taxation of mobile factors, i.e., capital, under uncertainty. The wages earned by residents of a jurisdiction are uncertain due to random shocks. Since the uncertain wages in a jurisdiction depend on the amount of mobile capital employed in the jurisdiction, and since taxation alters the quantity of capital employed, taxation affects the riskiness of uncertain wages. In particular, the taxation of capital moderates the fluctuation of uncertain wages, thereby providing insurance. For this reason, jurisdictions use distortionary capital taxation even if lump‐sum taxation is available. In addition, this insurance effect counteracts the tendency toward too low tax rates on capital arising from tax competition, and possibly improves the efficiency of tax competition.     

发展中国农业保险的对策分析

目前中国农业保险发展滞后,其原因主要有农民收入不高、农业保险保费收入低、农业保险的法律法规不够完善及农业保险组织体系不够健全,应提高农民收入、完善农业保险法律法规、建立健全农业保险组织体系,以促进中国农业保险业的发展。     

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.      

Biological Adaptation in Human Societies: a ‘Basic Needs’ Approach

The groundzero premise (so to speak) of the biological sciences is that survival and reproduction is the basic, continuing, inescapable problem for all living organisms; life is at bottom a survival enterprise. It follows that survival is the paradigmatic problem for human societies as well; it is a prerequisite for any other, more exalted objectives. Although the term adaptation is also familiar to social scientists, until recently it has been used only selectively, and often very imprecisely. Here a more rigorous and systematic approach to the concept of adaptation is proposed in terms of basic needs. The concept of basic human needs has a venerable history – tracing back at least to Plato and Aristotle. Yet the development of a formal theory of basic needs has lagged far behind. The reason is that the concept of objective, measurable needs is inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions that have dominated economic and social theory for most of this century, namely, valuerelativism and cultural determinism. Nevertheless, there have been a number of efforts over the past 30 years to develop more universalistic criteria for basic needs, both for use in monitoring social wellbeing (social indicators) and for public policy formulation. Here I will advance a strictly biological approach to perationalizing the concept of basic needs. It is argued that much of our economic and social life (and the motivations behind our revealed preferences and subjective utility assessments), not to mention the actions of modern governments, are either directly or indirectly related to the meeting of our basic survival needs. Furthermore, these needs can be specified to a first approximation and supported empirically to varying degrees, with the obvious caveat that there are major individual and contextual variations in their application. Equally important, complex human societies generate an array of instrumental needs which, as the term implies, serve as intermediaries between our primary needs and the specific economic, cultural and political contexts within which these needs must be satisfied. An explicit framework of Survival Indicators, including a profile of Personal Fitness and an aggregate index of Population Fitness, is briefly elucidated. Finally, it is suggested that a basic needs paradigm could provide an analytical tool (a biologic) for examining more closely the relationship between our social, economic and political behaviors and institutions and their survival consequences, as well as providing a predictive tool of some value.     

Does the Company Lawyer Have Your Back? A Brief Look at the Need for Personal Private Liability Insurance

There are four traditional uses of private personal liability insurance dating from the 1970s to the present (Hayes 1979; Sommers 2005) which pertain either to individuals or corporations. There is insurance to cover damage to rental cars, umbrella insurance to cover any injury to a guest at one’s home, insurance bought by corporations to cover potential corporate responsibility for actions of company representatives and insurance including misadventures with financial information and morally hazardous behavior as well as corporate required actions which are later deemed to be wrong or inappropriate. Employees need to find out if the employee manual provides for coverage for legal liabilities resulting out of performing job responsibilities. Due to a need to reduce company costs, many companies are reducing or eliminating coverage for employees for many types of actions. Private personal liability insurance gives you the peace of mind to know what you are covered for and for how long. Employee rights versus corporate budgets are at the core of this discussion.     

社会保障税的税制思考

开征社会保障税势在必行。作为筹集社会保险资金的主要途径,社会保障税具有强制性和固定性,在社会、经济发展过程中起着特殊的作用。社会保障税的设计要充分考虑劳动者和政府的利益。结合一些国际经验和我国的实际情况,对符合我国国情的社会保障税制基本框架作一些研究和探索。