Mumbai’s Mysterious Middle Class

Mumbai forms the décor to an interesting set of relationships among economic liberalization, globalization, class restructuring and an unprecedented housing construction boom. The much talked about new Indian middle class is primarily an urban phenomenon and seems nowhere more salient than in India’s commercial capital and largest city. This article seeks to undo some of the mysteries that surround the new middle class: how it can be empirically defined, whether and how it is growing, how class restructuring in Mumbai conforms (or not) to Western arguments about social polarization, and how any such class restructuring can best be explained. The empirical analysis employs existing data from various sources on income and consumption in Mumbai (and India at large) and reports on selected findings from a recent survey by the author on housing, class and upward mobility among households in newly constructed homes in Greater Mumbai. Data on the distribution of household incomes show that the upper‐middle income classes have grown relative to the total, that the lower‐middle income classes have shrunk, and that the ranks of the poor have expanded slightly. Survey data among new home buyers in Mumbai suggest little upward mobility. Discourse about the ‘new middle class’ tends to focus on consumption rather than income and additional findings indicate that much of the growth in consumption is credit‐based.     

庆祝《经济社会体制比较》杂志创刊20周年座谈会纪要

2005年10月25日上午，《经济社会体制比较》（简称《比较》）杂志社在中央编译局举行活动庆祝《比较》杂志创刊20周年。出席座谈会的有中国经济体制改革研究会会长、前国家体改委副主任高尚全教授；中央编译局副局长俞可平教授、魏海生教授、张卫峰同志；中央编译局秘书长张海滨同志；《比较》杂志主编荣敬本教授、赵人伟教授；从杂志创刊以来一直给予大力支持的刘秉炎同志、詹汝琮同志、李洙泗同志；《比较》杂志编委、财政部财政科学研究所所长贾康研究员；《比较》杂志理事会副理事长兼秘书长、国资委监事会正局级监事张楠同志；《比较》杂志理事会副秘书长、广东省商业联合会会长助理成欣欣博士；理事单位代表：上海埃力生（集团）有限公司董事局主席吴国迪先生、中国智宝集团董事长杨志凌先生、中国集装箱控股集团公司董事长张炳华先生、中国水利水电第14工程局局长李跃平先生；中央编译局当代马克思主义研究所、世界社会主义研究所以及其他相关处室共计50余人参加了庆祝活动。本次活动共分两个阶段：第一阶段是座谈会发言；第二阶段是高尚全教授的主题演讲。高尚全教授的主题演讲我刊单独刊出。此文按发言先后顺序整理，刊载于此以飨读者。[编者按]     

Taxes,Tuition Fees,and Education for Pleasure

The fact that education provides both a productive and a consumptive (nonproductive) return has important and, in some cases, dramatic implications for optimal taxes and tuition fees. Using a simple model, we show that when the consumption share in education is endogenous and tuition fees are unconstrained, the optimal tax/fee system involves regressive income taxes and high tuition fees. A progressive labor income tax system may, on the other hand, be a second‐best response to politically constrained, low tuition fees. Finally, the existence of individuals with different abilities will also move the optimal income tax system toward progressivity.     

The rise and decline of European parliaments, 1188–17891

This article quantifies the activities of medieval and early modern parliaments. It traces the long‐term evolution of this European institution, and offers a first pass at analysing its impact on long‐term economic development. Starting in Spain in the twelfth century, parliaments gradually spread over the Latin west between 1200 and 1500. In the early modern period, parliaments declined in influence in southern and central Europe and further gained in importance in the Netherlands and Britain, resulting in an institutional ‘Little Divergence’ between 1500 and 1800. We discuss the background of this phenomenon in detail. Moreover, by analysing the effects of parliamentary activity on city growth we find that these differences in institutional development help to explain the economic divergence between north‐western and southern and central Europe.     

传统组景序列调查反映的中国古代游憩偏好

中国古代的大量组景序列实例提供了研究中国古代游憩偏好和游憩行为的大量史料.本研究已收集200套组景序列案例,包括中国、日本的实景以及绘画实例.其中已有明确定位的142组中国实景实例,分布在与北宋疆域大致相符的范围内.本研究采用随机选出的100套组景序列共812个单独景观进行分析,显示出自然景现在中国古代游憩欣赏中所占的重要比重,同时表明了中国传统游憩偏好不同于西方的几点特性.     

A Rational Expectations Equilibrium with Informative Trading Volume

A large number of empirical studies find that trading volume contains information about the distribution of future returns. While these studies indicate that observing volume is helpful to an outside observer of the economy it is not clear how investors within the economy can learn from trading volume. In this paper, I show how trading volume helps investors to evaluate the precision of the aggregate information in the price. I construct a model that offers a closed‐form solution of a rational expectations equilibrium where all investors learn from (1) private signals, (2) the market price, and (3) aggregate trading volume.