Jevons paradox and the loss of natural habitat in the Argentinean Chaco: The impact of the indigenous communities’ land titling and the Forest Law in the province of Salta

The Chaco Salteño in Argentina is part of the Dry Chaco ecoregion, the largest neotropical dry forest in the world, and represents an important hotspot for deforestation and natural habitat loss due to agricultural expansion. The purpose of this article is: i) to assess systematically the role of agricultural expansion, intensification and demographics on the loss of natural habitat and ii) to understand how institutional factors contribute to direct the impact of agricultural intensification towards land sparing or Jevons paradox. We use multivariate statistical methods to assess the effect of important institutional changes, including the promulgation of the Forest Law in the Province of Salta and the titling of communal lands to Indigenous Peoples (IPs), on the loss of natural forests, shrublands and grasslands in the Chaco Salteño. Our results show that the approval of the Forest Law in Salta has been ineffective at slowing down the loss of natural habitat and is associated with the emergence of Jevons paradox via the increase in agricultural productivity. Moreover, this new institutional context appears to have increased the pressures on IPs land and encouraged preventive clearing on these lands. Finally, we detect the decreasing importance of livestock heads as drivers of natural habitat loss.     

A new intellectual property metric for standardization activities

This study formulates a method to measure the effects of standardization to assist in evaluating innovation and R&D policies. Its main purpose is to examine standardization activities within R&D organizations. This allows for a more appropriate policy evaluation framework than examining such activities within standard development organizations does. The study also redefines the conventional notion of intellectual property (IP) normatively and introduces the term “integrated IP” to reflect our new concept of joining IP and standardization activities. Our new concept captures the “fuzzy” impact of standardization on R&D to improve innovation management. The study presents a vector equation expressing the new IP definition and uses it to model revenues arising from a standard-essential patent for strategic IP management with standardization. The model indicates the importance of patents commercially required for product differentiation for the purpose of innovation with standards.     

Macrodynamics of debt-financed investment-led growth with interest rate rules

This article demonstrates the diverse dynamic possibilities arising out of a simple macroeconomic model of debt-financed investment-led growth in the presence of interest rate rules. We show possibilities of convergence to steady state, and growth cycles around it as well as various complex dynamics. We investigate whether, given this framework, the financial sector can provide endogenous bounds to an otherwise unstable system. The effectiveness of monetary policy in the form of an interest rate rule targeting capacity utilization is examined under this context.     

诡辞为用:牟宗三对向秀、郭象《庄子》注的诠释路径

牟宗三先生将道家思想中言说道体或境界的独特方式"正言若反"称为"诡辞为用",即辩证的诡辞,其作用在于不将所说内容予以实体化和对象化加以固定,而是从作用上活泼泼地展现出来。这一方法首先见于牟先生所揭示的《庄子》对于《老子》之道的发展中,其次则体现在向秀、郭象对《庄子》的注解中,同时也是牟先生用以诠释向秀、郭象注庄的方法论。     

Comparing the patronage selection criteria of the elderly: chronological age versus dependency

This study investigates the impact of the degree of retailer international involvement (DRII), which we define as the number of geographic regions in which a retailer operates, on retailer performance. The data cover 16 international retailers over the period 1996–2012. The findings of the study show that DRII is negatively related to retailer performance. We also find that the cultural distance between the home and host country moderates the relationship between DRII and retailer performance.     

Small‐scale Inference: Empirical Bayes and Confidence Methods for as Few as a Single Comparison

Empirical Bayes methods of estimating the local false discovery rate (LFDR) by maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), originally developed for large numbers of comparisons, are applied to a single comparison. Specifically, when assuming a lower bound on the mixing proportion of true null hypotheses, the LFDR MLE can yield reliable hypothesis tests and confidence intervals given as few as one comparison. Simulations indicate that constrained LFDR MLEs perform markedly better than conventional methods, both in testing and in confidence intervals, for high values of the mixing proportion, but not for low values. (A decision‐theoretic interpretation of the confidence distribution made those comparisons possible.) In conclusion, the constrained LFDR estimators and the resulting effect‐size interval estimates are not only effective multiple comparison procedures but also they might replace p‐values and confidence intervals more generally. The new methodology is illustrated with the analysis of proteomics data.     

中国养老保险制度的困境与发展对策

中国养老保险制度的改革滞后于经济与政治体制改革。主要体现在保险的覆盖面 ,基金的征集、管理、运营等方面 ,对养老保险的可持续发展构成了严重的障碍。根据我国的国情及经济发展状况 ,在廓清理论框架的前提下 ,加大个人帐户的比重 ,提高养老基金的运作效率 ,在此基础上扩大养老保险的覆盖范围 ,使养老保险系统在我国经济与政治生活中发挥其应有作用     

奢侈消费辩证观:经济学、社会学双重视角评析

中国已经成为第三大奢侈品消费国.一边是内需不足,急于扩大消费,刺激内需,拉动经济;一边是炫耀式奢侈消费产生的社会弊病.自古以来,奢侈消费备受争议,中国正面临一次哈姆雷特式的抉择.本文对奢侈消费予以较为全面的评析,总结出中国式奢侈消费的特征,并提倡基于技术创新的新式奢侈.     

资源开发的“财富悖论”探究——基于收益分配视角

经济学中的经典假说"资源诅咒"往往表现为自然资源开发中区域经济层面的"资源地贫困"与微观经济层面的"采掘企业超额利润"同时存在的"财富悖论"现象.通过运用全部采掘业占工业总产值的比重来度量资源丰度、用城市家庭人均可支配收入增长来度量经济发展水平、使用2001年-2005年的省际面板数据对资源开发与地区经济发展水平之间的相关性及其传导作用机制进行实证检验,证实了我国内部地区层面存在"资源诅咒"效应.资源开发收益在企业微观层面的各利益主体之间和政府区域层面的资源区与受益区之间的收益分配不公,是导致资源开发的财富悖论不可忽视的原因.     

Note on the non-existence of sunspot equilibrium

In this note, we emphasize the role of consumers’ risk aversion in the non-existence of sunspot equilibria in incomplete market economies. We prove that there are no sunspot equilibria if the fundamentals of the underlying economy admit a unique equilibrium for any distribution of endowments. This substantiates Mas-Colell’s (Economic analysis of markets and games: essays in honor of Frank Hahn. MIT, Cambridge, 1992) conjecture. We also prove that, in a two-consumer economy, no sunspot equilibrium exists under the more relaxed condition that the underlying economy admits a unique equilibrium for the initial endowment. This is a generalization of Corollaries 1 and 2 of Hens and Pilgrim (Econ Theory 24:583–602, 2004).