Optimal design of trade institutions

We model an economy with social institutions that facilitate trade and induce three types of costs: establishment costs, access costs, and use costs. Use costs are specific transaction costs related to the use of these trade institutions. We assume that a trade institution is economically completely determined by the costs it imposes and by the effects on the trades it facilitates. We extend the Pareto efficiency concept to include various modes of organization of social institutions: the costs and benefits of these organizations are expressed in the trades they facilitate.Within this setting we discuss a valuation equilibrium concept, in which all agents use a common conjectural price system that assigns to every trade institution the price vector that would prevail under it. This feature of the equilibrium is important in securing the second welfare theorem, and is new to the analysis of economies with costly trade. Since the use costs can be nonlinear, there are non-convexities that prevent the second welfare theorem from obtaining in a finite economy, but we show it for large economies.Received: 3 April 2002, Accepted: 30 April 2003, JEL Classification: D59, D70, H49Robert P. Gilles: donewhile visiting the Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), grant B46-390, is gratefully acknowledged.Dimitrios Diamantaras: Part of this research wasSupport from Temple University via a Fuller research fellowship is gratefully acknowledged.The authors would like to thank Suzanne Scotchmer, Andreu Mas-Colell, Marcus Berliant, Shlomo Weber, Hans Haller, Dhanajay Gokhale, Julian Manning, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and discussions of previous drafts of this paper. A previous version of this paper was circulated as Equilibria of economies with costly trade.     

Corporate social performance, financial performance and institutional ownership in Canadian firms

This study examines the relationship of corporate social performance (CSP) to financial performance (FP) and institutional ownership. We perform our empirical analyses on a large-sample of publicly held Canadian firms and use a novel independent measure of CSP. Based on tests utilizing four years of panel data, we found no significant relationship between a composite measure of firms’ CSP and FP. However, we found significant relationships between individual measures of firms’ CSP regarding environmental and international activities and FP. Our findings indicate a significant relationship between firms’ composite CSP measure and the number of institutions investing in firms’ stock. In addition, we found significant relationships between firms’ CSP ratings regarding their international activities and product quality and the number of institutions investing in firms’ stock. These findings, while subject to the limitations inherent in the use of specific CSP measures, provide mixed support for the business case for CSP.     

中国政府金融监管制度的演进与特点（1900～1949）

中国的金融监管始于20世纪初,经历了清末、北洋政府和南京国民政府等不同时期;金融监管体制经历了"单一监管——双头监管——单一监管"的变迁过程;其变迁方式表现为以强制性变迁为主,诱致性变迁为辅,且二者之间为一种逆向交替关系。     

地方公共服务、要素流动与要素空间配置——基于本地交易成本的均衡分析

通过"两区域、两要素与两部门"模型研究发现,即使存在区域内与区域间两类交易成本,增加公共服务仍有利于吸引要素流入,并产生要素空间聚集效应;增加公共支出以改善区内贸易条件对要素流动及其空间分布具有不同的影响;我国地方公共支出规模与全要素生产率之间存在明显的长期因果关系.     

新企业所得税法的立法精神制度创新和实施问题

《中华人民共和国企业所得税法》(以下简称“新企业所得税法”)按照科学发展观和建立现代法人税制的要求,以统一法律、公平税负、完善税制、促进发展为立法精神和指导思想,在纳税主体制度、税率制度、税基制度、税收优惠制度、反避税制度、征收管理制度等方面进行了多项制度创新。其颁布实施必将为各类企业的发展提供统一、公平、规范的税收法治环境,促进我国市场经济体制走向成熟,推动中国经济又好又快发展。     

市场分割的制度基础与概念内涵——基于组织社会学制度理论的视角

中国的市场分割是中国经济转型在特定阶段出现的一种市场结构或状态。从组织社会学制度理论的视角看中国市场分割可以发现:中国的市场分割存在着行为权力的分割现象,市场分割不仅源于制度和政策的差异,同时也有制度与政策执行中的差异。市场分割中的地区性行政垄断、地方保护主义行为及非整合状态,反映出现阶段的中国经济体制中存在的问题。     

Efficiency change and growth in productivity: the Asian growth experience

This paper focuses on identifying the sources of productivity growth in ten Asian economies including China, Japan, the NIEs and the ASEAN-4. We calculate productivity growth and its components using distance-function-based Malmquist productivity indexes following Färe, Grosskopf, Norris, and Zhang (1994a). Hong Kong and Singapore are found to have the capabilities to shift the grand frontier of the APEC economies. But the productivity divergence might have occurred since the 70’s. The FDI contributes to the Asian growth either through catching-up or through technological innovations when a sufficient learning capacity is available in the host economy.     

OECD organisational discourse, peer reviews and sustainable development: An ecological-institutionalist perspective

As part of the recent ‘ideational turn’ in research on international organisations, the study of organisational discourse has gained popularity. Yet ecological economics has thus far paid little attention to the role of organisations as sites for the discursive battles over the meaning of sustainable development. For an international organisation without regulatory powers, such as the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), discourse is the main vehicle for policy influence, but it also plays a key role in (re)defining the organisation's identity and authority. The OECD's organisational discourse has been strongly dominated by ‘modern mainstream economics’, and has given little room for marginalised discourses. This paper compares, from the perspective of institutionally oriented ecological economics (IOEE), and borrowing from critical discourse analysis, the experience from attempts to integrate the concept of sustainable development within two OECD peer review mechanisms - the Economic Surveys and the Environmental Performance Reviews. The extent to which the respective conceptions of sustainable development in the two reviews are in line with the principles of IOEE and the reasons for the apparent failure of sustainable development discourse to gain foothold within the organisation are analysed.     

依靠技术创新促进造船模式的转换

本文认为转换造船模式是船厂技术创新的主旋律,转换造模式需要进行体系技术创新,并提出了推行现代生产设计、实施托盘管理、建立团队组织、深化相关新技术的应用、加强职工培训等建议.     

Managerial efficiency under risk for broiler producers in Saudi Arabia

Managerial efficiency for broiler producers m Saudi Arabia is generally difficult lo achieve. High investment costs coupled with relatively high average production costs and the consequent incompetent market prices, have resulted in projects either working at less than full capacity or being shut down completely. The aim here is to determine the most efficient production alternatives (actions) available to managers under business risk considerations. The ordinary stochastic dominance approach was used to solicit the most efficient production alternatives for broilet producing projects of all sizes in the Central Region of Saudi Arabia. For small-and medium-sized projects, the efficient production alternatives concentrated on marketing risk. For large projects, the efficient actions concentrated on both marketing and production risks. For the three sizes of projects, the two production alternatives that proved to be the most efficient, were the one that contains creating morc marketing strategies and the one that adopts good veterinary care systems. On the other hand, the production alternative that deals with selecting good breeds of chicks appeared to be most efficient for small and large projects only.