Opportunity is not everything

We experimentally investigate in village India how belief systems that hierarchize social groups affect the groups’ responses to economic opportunities. Earlier we found that making caste salient hurt low caste performance both absolutely and relative to the high caste's. To examine the possible role of mistrust, we manipulate the scope for discretion in rewarding performance. When offered a gamble in which success mechanically triggers rewards, making caste salient has no significant effect. Instead, it is in the case with scope for discretion that making caste salient creates a large caste gap in the proportion of subjects who refuse the gamble.     

中国转型经济中融资制度模式选择

融资制度模式选择有其内在逻辑,既不全是自发的随意的,又不全是受制于政府意图;既有历史继承性(受现存的融资制度的影响),又深受经济结构、经济发展水平等内在因素对融资制度需求的影响。中国转型经济中之所以依然将融资制度模式选定为银行主导型融资制度,有两个原因:历史继承和实体经济发展对融资制度的要求。     

加强诚信建设 促进干部作风的转变

诚信建设是干部作风转变的前提和重要途径，而转变干部作风则是诚信建设的必然要求。当前一些领导干部存在着诚信缺失的现象，诚信缺失是阻碍干部作风转变的根本性的问题，如果不解决这一问题，干部作风的转变就无从谈起。文章从公路部门的实际阐述了加强诚信建设对于干部作风转变的重要性和紧迫性，并提出了如何加强诚信建设推进干部作风转变的一些看法。     

Including the community in local regeneration? The case of greater pollok social inclusion partnership

This paper seeks to evaluate critically the extent to which there is community involvement in the construction and delivery of urban policy under New Labour, through a case study of the Greater Pollok Social Inclusion Partnership. The paper concentrates on the Scottish experience, but its lessons resonate more widely. Its key finding is that, for all the rhetoric of New Labour and community involvement, the degree to which it has occurred in practice is little different to the level of involvement under Conservative urban policy initiatives. The paper argues that the processes of community consultation and participation during the early stages of the Greater Pollok Social Inclusion Partnership were woefully inadequate. At best it was tokenistic, and at worst, local people were being 'exploited' to legitimise the policy process.     

Does social capital determine innovation? To what extent?

This paper deals with two questions: Does social capital determine innovation in manufacturing firms? If it is the case, to what extent? To deal with these questions, we review the literature on innovation in order to see how social capital came to be added to the other forms of capital as an explanatory variable of innovation. In doing so, we have been led to follow the dominating view of the literature on social capital and innovation which claims that social capital cannot be captured through a single indicator, but that it actually takes many different forms that must be accounted for. Therefore, to the traditional explanatory variables of innovation, we have added five forms of structural social capital (business network assets, information network assets, research network assets, participation assets, and relational assets) and one form of cognitive social capital (reciprocal trust). Based on the survey data administered from April to June 2000 to 440 manufacturing firms of diverse industries in a region in the southwest of Montréal, we have found that 68.5% of the firms have developed product or process innovations during the 3 years preceding the survey. Assuming that innovation is not a discrete event but a complex process, we have modeled the decision to innovate as a two-stage decision-making process: in the first stage, the firms deal with the decision about whether to innovate or not whereas, at the second stage, the firms that have decided to innovate must make a decision about the degree of radicalness of the innovation to undertake. In a context where empirical investigations regarding the relations between social capital and innovation are still scanty, this paper makes contributions to the advancement of knowledge in providing new evidence regarding the impact and the extent of social capital on innovation at the two decision-making stages considered in this study. Regarding the decision to innovate or not that firms must initially make, we have provided strong evidence that diverse forms of social capital influence this decision and, more importantly, that marginal increases in social capital, especially in social capital taking the forms of participation assets and relational assets, contribute more than any other explanatory variable to increase the likelihood of innovation of firms. As for the decision to be made at the second stage concerning the magnitude of radicalness to bring in the development of new product or process innovations, this paper contributes to the advancement of knowledge by supplying the strongest evidence that diverse forms of social capital determine the radicalness of innovation, and more importantly, that social capital taking the form of research network assets contributes more than any other explanatory variable to explain the radicalness of innovation. The second variable that exerts the strongest impact on the radicalness of innovation is the number of different advanced technologies employed by firms for production.     

从“有限理性＋社会人”的模式中恩考反腐倡廉工作——读《转型期防止腐败的综合战略与制度设计》后的思考

中国从计划经济向市场经济转变的过程中出现了政府职能的转变不能及时满足经济发展和社会发展的需要，从而导致了很多问题的出现。而腐败问题尤为突出，解决好了此问题为政府的职能转变将会有很大的推动作用。有很多学者对中国的腐败问题提出了自己的看法，本文对《转型期防止腐败的综合战略与制度设计》提出的对腐败问题的治理办法进行分析，运用西蒙的决策理论和人际学说的社会人的理论，提出用“有限理性＋社会人”的模式补充只重视制度建设来解决腐败问题的不足。     

Social impacts of new communications media the Japanese experience

The author maps the emergence of new communications media in Japan and discerns major trends. He classifies their major social roles as information request, social participation, and enhanced dialogue. Social experiments with such media are necessary to guage and improve their acceptability to their intended users. Furthermore, significant impacts on social activities are anticipated when a new medium gains acceptance.     

Services Policy Reform and Economic Growth in Transition Economies

Major changes have occurred in the structure of former centrally planned economies, including a sharp rise in the share of services in GDP, employment, and international transactions. However, large differences exist across transition economies with respect to services intensity and services policy reforms. We find that reforms in policies toward financial and infrastructure services, including telecommunications, power, and transport, are highly correlated with inward FDI. Controlling for regressors commonly used in the growth literature, we find that measures of services policy reform are statistically significant explanatory variables for the post-1990 economic performance of transition economies. These findings suggest services policies should be considered more generally in empirical analyses of economic growth. JEL no. F14, F43, O14, O40     

公开透明是预算法制化管理的基础

我国《预算法》自1995年实施以来已有12余年,其间,我国的政治、经济发生了很大的变化,现行《预算法》已不能完全适应政治、经济的发展需要。在此背景下,全国人大常委会预算工作委员会组织专家历时多年对《预算法》进行修订,完成了《预算法(修订草案)》并在全国范围内广泛征求意见。上海财经大学是被征询意见单位之一。上海财经大学公共经济与管理学院组织相关专家、学者在各自研究和分析的基础上召开了一次研讨会,对《预算法(修订草案)》提出了许多富有建设性的意见和建议。我们将这些意见和建议汇编成这个笔谈录,以期对我国《预算法(修订草案)》的完善提供一些有益的参考。