Income inequality, democracy and growth reconsidered

Persson and Tabellini (Persson, T., Tabellini, G., 1992a. Growth, distribution and politics. Eur. Econ. Rev. 36, 593–602; Persson, T., Tabellini, G., 1992b. Growth, distribution and politics. In: Cukierman, A., Hercowitz, Z., Leiderman, L. (Eds.), Political Economy, Growth, and Business Cycles. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 3–22; Persson, T., Tabellini, G., 1994. Is inequality harmful for growth? Am. Econ. Rev. 84, 600–621) as well as Alesina and Rodrik (Alesina, A., Rodrik, D., 1992. Distribution, political conflict, and economic growth. In: Cukierman, A., Hercowitz, Z., Leiderman, L. (Eds.), Political Economy, Growth, and Business Cycles. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 23–50; Alesina, A., Rodrik, D., 1994. Distributive politics and economic growth, Q. J. Econ. 109, 465–490) have argued that income inequality reduces economic growth rates among democracies because it promotes distributional struggles. In this paper I question the supportive evidence for a number of reasons. Measures of income distribution and democracy are unreliable and permit only very tentative conclusions. Changes in data sources or recoding of some influential cases affect results. It is questionable whether equality effects on growth apply only within democracies, as a median voter interpretation of this relationship should make one expect. The general idea that distributional struggle hurts the growth prospects of nations, however, receives some empirical support.     

新四军反对国民党军需控制的经济斗争

国民党从编制、军需供给、停发军费和枪弹等方面对新四军实行军需控制和经济压制,新四军通过据理力争、向国民党地方政府筹措、各地办事机构多方面筹措、以根据地为依托、在战斗中克敌资我等举措多方获得军需,从而奠定了新四军发展、壮大的基础。     

世界正当秩序之建构——评邓正来《谁之全球化？何种法哲学？》

本文旨在探讨邓正来先生所提出的建构世界正当秩序的话语争夺问题。本文认为，此种以话语争夺为基础的路径必然要预设一种超国家的权威，或者说一种全球层面上的政治决断论；而如果不采取此种立场的话，那么从更为现实的角度上看，也必须预设一种国家的资格理论，也就是说，与罗尔斯的“正派的国家”和康德的“共和制”一样，对参与全球治理的主体资格作出某种限定，从而保证在一种理性对话的过程中解决冲突、达成共识。     

女性文学阶段的全面展现——评《我的光辉生涯》

本文依据美国女性主义批评家伊莱恩.肖沃尔特的理论,分析了澳大利亚早期小说《我的光辉生涯》的特点—跨越了女性文学的三个阶段。小说中的丛林少女西比拉为追求男女平等、独立人格与自我实现进行的不懈努力和奋斗给当今的妇女树立了一个光辉的典范。     

Meanings of the term ‘sustainable development’ in Finnish corporate disclosures

There is an on-going discursive struggle over how the social and environmental problems related to modern societies should be understood and resolved. Sustainable development has become a pre-eminent concept in these discussions and businesses are increasingly employing the term in their communications. However, sustainable development means “different things to different people in different contexts” [Bebbington, J. (2001). Sustainable development: A review of the international development, business and accounting literature. Accounting Forum, 25(2), 128–157; see p. 129]. Thus, there have been recent calls in the literature to analyse what the companies are actually saying in their disclosures [Thomson, I., & Bebbington, J. (2005). Social and environmental reporting in the UK: A pedagogic evaluation. Critical Perspectives on Accounting; Kolk, A. (1999). Evaluating corporate environmental reporting. Business Strategy and the Environment, 8, 225–237]. Subscribing to the social construction of reality, this study critically assesses how the term ‘sustainable development’ is constructed in the disclosures of Finnish listed companies.

Overall, in the disclosures, sustainable development is constructed as a win-win concept, which allows society to enjoy economic growth, environmental protection and social improvements with no trade-offs or radical restructurings in the social order. However, behind the usual business rhetoric, there is very little evidence of anyone actually walking this talk. Accordingly, this research calls for further discussion on companies’ role in achieving sustainable development and on the business interpretation of sustainable development in general.     

The Modeling Process for Stage Models

The purpose of this paper is to present and test a modeling procedure because researchers have struggled for decades to develop stages-of-growth models that are both theoretically founded and empirically validated. This article presents the concept and hypothesis of stages, the history of stage models, and a procedure that may serve as a useful tool in modeling stages of growth. Based on previous research and lessons learned from case study experience of the government sector in Norway, a procedure for the stages of growth modeling process is suggested and demonstrated. The procedure is used for developing a stage model for e-government interoperability. This article provides new insight into issues and challenges faced when engaging in stages of growth research. The paper proposes a new approach to stages of growth modeling. The utility of the suggested procedure is to improve theory building and empirical validation. The contribution to academia is the modeling process that can be applied in future developments of stages of growth. The contribution to practice lies in the stage hypothesis of organizational development over time.     

Agrarian class struggle and state formation in post‐colonial Pakistan, 1959–1974: Contingencies of Mazdoor Kisan Raj

State formation in post‐colonial societies is often explained with reference to the roles of elites. In Pakistan, landed elites continue to dominate the rural political economy through informal and formal institutions, but the history of its largest peasant movement shows how agrarian class struggle can change the institutional forms and functions of power. The Hashtnagar peasant movement achieved lasting de facto land and tenancy reforms in north‐western Pakistan in the 1970s through forcible land occupations that were regularized by state intervention. I argue that although divisions among elites were important, the state intervened in favour of peasants due to the rising organizational power of tenants and landless labourers under the centralized leadership of the radical Mazdoor Kisan Party. Agrarian class struggle weakened the informal power of landed elites and gave rise to institutions of peasant power. However, other fractions of the ruling class sought to undermine their landed opponents while co‐opting the militancy of the peasant movement by strengthening state institutions to intervene in favour of upwardly mobile tenants. The latter were separated from poorer peasants and the landless, thus demobilizing the movement.     

Collective rent seeking and division of labor

The article analyzes division of labor within multiple groups engaged in collective rent seeking through time. Each agent seeks membership in one of two subgroups within each group, conveniently labelled a leader-subgroup and a follower-subgroup. The within-group generated payoffs are used as input in the between-group competition for the other groups' payoffs and an external rent. Within-group egalitarian allocation, but not relative-effort allocation, alleviates leadership struggle if the rent is large or the group is moderately more decisive than the other groups. The group employing a more egalitarian sharing rule than the other groups alleviates its leadership struggle more successfully. The Folk theorem is used to show the conditions under which leadership struggle gets intensified or alleviated.     

从《老人与海》看海明威对生命的诠释

死亡在这篇中篇小说中是一个不可避免的话题。没有人可以逃脱这个话题，但是海明威对于死亡的阐释是死亡是生命的结束。但是死亡也是生命强有力的体现。读者从叫做桑地亚哥的老渔夫杀死马林鱼，他打算回家，然而这时却遇上了鲨鱼，老人与鲨鱼进行了搏斗，结果大马林鱼还是被鲨鱼吃光了。但是老人是真正的胜利者，因为这个过程已经体现了生命的价值。 小说赞颂了老渔夫的精神无所畏惧危险和困难，做出伟大的努，我们应该像他，不满意当前的形势，应该是直面困难的。只这样，我们可能得到更加巨大的成功和胜利。生活是充满目难和失望的探险。但是只要人有勇敢和信仰接受挑战。这个人能到达真正的胜利。可能这是海明威在《老人与海》中对生命的诠释。