2012年1月12日星期四

how to write an essay


guide to write a basic essay

http://lklivingston.tripod.com/essay/index.html



http://lklivingston.tripod.com/essay/body.html

Write the Introduction and Conclusion


Add the Finishing Touches

"Nothing can substitute for revision of your work. By reviewing what you have done, you can improve weak points that otherwise would be missed. Read and reread your paper."

2011年9月11日星期日

Kaldor–Hicks efficiency

Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, named for Nicholas Kaldor and John Hicks, also known as Kaldor–Hicks criterion, is a measure of economic efficiency that captures some of the intuitive appeal of Pareto efficiency, but has less stringent criteria and is hence applicable to more circumstances. Under Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, an outcome is considered more efficient if a Pareto optimal outcome can be reached by arranging sufficient compensation from those that are made better off to those that are made worse off so that all would end up no worse off than before.

规范法经济学的其中一个最重要的概念应当是“效率”。效率的含义是什么?对于经济学家而言,效率是一个工具概念。在普通道语言中,效率的一词通常是不特定的、发散的。为了理解经济学中关于效率的概念,我们会解释什么是帕雷托原则(Pareto principles)以及一个相关的概念卡尔多-希克斯效率。
除了解释效率的概念,我们将会进一步总结一下对这个概念的批评。虽然,很多经济学家在操作过程中,都假定“效率”的概念是没有争议的,但是,事实上,无论是经济学学科的内部还是外部都是充满争议的
在规范经济学有几个模糊的表达,但是,很多大多数规范经济学都是以效用作为一个基础的或者对于商品的衡量的概念。经济学家可能不同意效用的本质,效用与社会福利的关系,以及公共政策中福利的角色。但是,大多数经济家会赞同一个抽象的观点:在其他条件不变的情况下(ceteris paribus),更多的效用是一件好事情。
历史上,经济学中关于效用的解释与英国大哲学家边沁有关。边沁用快乐来定义“效用”。边沁认为,法律和政策应该用快乐的累积(hedonic calculus)来衡量,最好的政策产生最大多数的快感(hedons)——单位快乐。但是,边沁的理论并没有为经济学科学提供一个可以操作的依据。因为没有一个可以度量快感的方法。这个假设被经济学和心理学的研究所逐步削弱,他们用“幸福”(happiness)这个可以操作的概念来取代了快感的标准。
当代经济学用偏好函数来表述效用—— 即个体对于状态的主观评价。如果个体I 偏好于状态X(state of affair X),较之于状态Y,那么X 要较之于Y带来更多的效用
我们如何测量偏好?经济学提出了两种不同的理论,一种是基数效用理论,一种是序数效用理论。序数效用理论是把个体对于不同状态(states of affairs)的喜好的排序,序数函数告诉我们,个体I 对于可能的X的偏好大于可能的Y的偏好,但是,它没有告诉我们,X较之于Y 的好的程度。基数效用函数通过一个真实的数据来表述每个状态。如果,我们假定效用函数用“单位效用”表述,那么I 的效用就可以用分值来表述,比如说,在P状态,I的效用为80个单位效用,在Q状态下,I 的效用为120个单位效用。
基数效用和序数效用的区别对于功利主义(utilitarianism)来说是非常重要的,最少在某些解释方面。作为一个评判的理论,功利主义utilitarianism可以被认为这样一个约定的规范:一个行动是最优的,如果它带所带来的效用在所有的可能行动中是最大的。由于技术上的原因,功利主义需要基数和个体之间的比较。但是,不管是基数还是序数都存在问题。甚至对于个体的基数效用的比较都是困难的。(为什么?)
在不同个体之间的效用比较就更加困难。我们如何比较某甲源于观赏漂亮的照片所获得效用与某乙在做义工所带来效用。这些例子表明,个体之间的效用比较的不可通约性(incommensurability)。这意味着,偏好不可能用相同的尺度进行比较。基数效用和序数效用的面对的困境终结了福利经济学的历史。
帕雷托原则在这种情况下产生了。假定我们所获得个体效用信息是序数但是,不可以比较的。换言之,个体可以对事情状态进行排序,但是我们(分析家或者政策制订者)不能比较个体之间的效用。弱的帕雷托原则建议,P状态好于Q状态,如果每个人都把P排在Q的前面。弱的帕雷托原则似乎并没有得到很多的改进,因为对于全体一致的情况是很少见的。
强的帕雷托原则建议:P状态好于Q状态,如果至少有一个人把P排在Q前面,而没有人把Q排在P前面。或者更通俗地说,强的帕雷托认为,其中一个人受益而没一个人受损,这种状态就是好的。不同于弱的帕雷托原则,强的帕雷托原则可以产生相对稳定的结论。
因为帕雷托效率假定不存在负的外部性,作为一个规范的概念有很多的局限性,如果甚至一个人将会受损,如果从状态P到状态Q,这种转换不是帕雷托效率的。这样,如果帕雷托效率仅仅是一个规范的标准对于法律经济学来说,结果将会变成对于很多法律问题都似乎什么都没有什么,也就没有办法提供建议了。比如,很多环境法的问题(特别是考虑交易成本的情况下)
卡尔多西克斯标准是规范经济分析一个扩展。它的基本思路是,我们考虑一个存在外部性的环境,比如,污染损害了第三方利益。我们假定市场没有办法得到帕雷托效率结果。这个假定是准确的,因为高的交易成本的存在。在污染这个例子中,关涉到很多人的利益,产生了大量的交易成本。有可能与现实不同的情况是,我们可以假定零交易成本的情况。然后,我们问,什么样的结果会产生?如果受到外部性侵害的个体进入到帕雷托效率的谈判,对于他们的损失进行补偿,结果是卡尔多效率的(如果没有交易成本将会是帕雷托效率)。卡尔多标准扩展了规范法经济学,把交易成本和外部性等因素纳入统一分析。

2009年3月20日星期五

Do not let the ‘cure’ destroy capitalism

Do not let the ‘cure’ destroy capitalism
By Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy
Published: March 19 2009 20:04 Last updated: March 19 2009 20:04
Capitalism has been wounded by the global recession, which unfortunately will get worse before it gets better. As governments continue to determine how many restrictions to place on markets, especially financial markets, the destruction of wealth from the recession should be placed in the context of the enormous creation of wealth and improved well-being during the past three decades. Financial and other reforms must not risk destroying the source of these gains in prosperity.Consider the following extraordinary statistics about the performance of the world economy since 1980. World real gross domestic product grew by about 145 per cent from 1980 to 2007, or by an average of roughly 3.4 per cent a year. The so-called capitalist greed that motivated business people and ambitious workers helped hundreds of millions to climb out of grinding poverty. The role of capitalism in creating wealth is seen in the sharp rise in Chinese and Indian incomes after they introduced market-based reforms (China in the late 1970s and India in 1991). Global health, as measured by life expectancy at different ages, has also risen rapidly, especially in lower-income countries. Of course, the performance of capitalism must include this recession and other recessions along with the glory decades. Even if the recession is entirely blamed on capitalism, and it deserves a good share of the blame, the recession-induced losses pale in comparison with the great accomplishments of prior decades. Suppose, for example, that the recession turns into a depression, where world GDP falls in 2008-10 by 10 per cent, a pessimistic assumption. Then the net growth in world GDP from 1980 to 2010 would amount to 120 per cent, or about 2.7 per cent a year over this 30-year period. This allowed real per capita incomes to rise by almost 40 per cent even though world population grew by roughly 1.6 per cent a year over the same period.Therefore, in devising reforms that aim to reduce the likelihood of future severe contractions, the accomplishments of capitalism should be appreciated. Governments should not so hamper markets that they are prevented from bringing rapid growth to the poor economies of Africa, Asia and elsewhere that have had limited participation in the global economy. New economic policies that try to speed up recovery should follow the first principle of medicine: do no harm. This runs counter to a common but mistaken view, even among many free-market proponents, that it is better to do something to try to help the economy than to do nothing. Most interventions, including random policies, by their very nature would hurt rather than help, in large part by adding to the uncertainty and risk that are already so prominent during this contraction.Government reactions have demonstrated the danger that interventions designed to help can exacerbate the problem. Even though we had well-qualified policymakers, we have gone from error to error since August 2007.The policies of the Bush and Obama administrations violate the “do no harm” principle. Interventions by the US Treasury in financial markets have added to the uncertainty and slowed market responses that would help stabilise and recapitalise the system. The government has overridden contracts and rewarded many of those whose poor decisions helped create the mess. It proposes to override even more contracts. As a result of the Treasury’s actions, we face further distorted decision-making as government ownership of big financial institutions threatens to substitute political agendas for business judgments in running these companies. While such dramatic measures may be expedient, they are likely to have serious adverse consequences.These problems are symptomatic of three basic flaws in the current approach to the crisis. They are an overly broad diagnosis of the problem, a misconception that market failures are readily overcome by government solutions and a failure to focus on the long-run costs of current actions.The rush to “solve” the problems of the crisis has opened the door to government actions on many fronts. Many of these have little or nothing to do with the crisis or its causes. For example, the Obama administration has proposed sweeping changes to labour market policies to foster unionisation and a more centralised setting of wages, even though the relative freedom of US labour markets in no way contributed to the crisis and would help to keep it short. Similarly, the backlash against capitalism and “greed” has been used to justify more antitrust scrutiny, greater regulation of a range of markets, and an expansion of price controls for healthcare and pharmaceuticals. The crisis has led to a bail-out of the US car industry and a government role in how it will be run. Even one of the most discredited ideas, protectionism, has gained support under the guise of stimulating the economy. Such policies would be a mistake. They make no more sense today than they did a few years ago and could take a long time to reverse.The failure of financial innovations such as securities backed by subprime mortgages, problems caused by risk models that ignored the potential for steep falls in house prices and the overload of systemic risk represent clear market failures, although innovations in finance also contributed to the global boom over the past three decades.The people who made mistakes lost, and many lost big. Institutions that made bad loans and investments had large declines in their wealth, while investors that funded these institutions without proper scrutiny have seen their wealth cut in half or much more. Households that overextended themselves have also been badly hurt.Given the losses, actors in these markets have a strong incentive to correct their mistakes the next time. In this respect, many government actions have been counterproductive, shielding actors from the consequences of their actions and preventing private sector adjustments. The uncertainty from muddled Treasury policy on bank capital and ownership structure, the willingness of the government to change mortgage and debt contracts unilaterally and the uncertain nature of future regulation and subsidies help prevent greater private recapitalisation. Rather than solving problems, such policies tend to prolong them.The US stimulus bill falls into the same category. This package is partly based on the belief that government spending is required to stimulate the economy because private spending would be insufficient. The focus on government solutions is particularly disappointing given its poor record in dealing with crises in the US and many other countries, such as the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and failure effectively to prosecute the war in Iraq.The claim that the crisis was due to insufficient regulation is also unconvincing. For example, commercial banks have been more regulated than most other financial institutions, yet they performed no better, and in many ways worse. Regulators got caught up in the same bubble mentality as investors and failed to use the regulatory authority available to them.Output, employment and earnings have all been hit by the crisis and will get worse before they get better. Nevertheless, even big downturns represent pauses in long-run progress if we keep the engines of long-term growth in place. This growth depends on investment in human and physical capital and the production of new knowledge. That requires a stable economic environment. Uncertainty about the scope of regulation is likely to have the unintended consequence of making those investments more risky. The Great Depression induced a massive worldwide retreat from capitalism, and an embrace of socialism and communism that continued into the 1960s. It also fostered a belief that the future lay in government management of the economy, not in freer markets. The result was generally slow growth during those decades in most of the undeveloped world, including China, the Soviet bloc nations, India and Africa. Partly owing to the collapse of the housing and stock markets, hostility to business people and capitalism has grown sharply again. Yet a world that is mainly capitalistic is the “only game in town” that can deliver further large increases in wealth and health to poor as well as rich nations. We hope our leaders do not deviate far from a market-oriented global economic system. To do so would risk damaging a system that has served us well for 30 years.The writers are professors of economics and the University of Chicago and senior fellows at the Hoover Institution. Gary Becker was awarded the 1992 Nobel prize in economics and Kevin Murphy was awarded the Clark Medal in 1997. To join the debate go to www.ft.com/capitalismblogCopyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

2009年3月16日星期一

Capitalism Beyond the Crisis

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22490
Capitalism Beyond the Crisis
By Amartya Sen
1.
2008 was a year of crises. First, we had a food crisis, particularly threatening to poor consumers, especially in Africa. Along with that came a record increase in oil prices, threatening all oil-importing countries. Finally, rather suddenly in the fall, came the global economic downturn, and it is now gathering speed at a frightening rate. The year 2009 seems likely to offer a sharp intensification of the downturn, and many economists are anticipating a full-scale depression, perhaps even one as large as in the 1930s. While substantial fortunes have suffered steep declines, the people most affected are those who were already worst off.
The question that arises most forcefully now concerns the nature of capitalism and whether it needs to be changed. Some defenders of unfettered capitalism who resist change are convinced that capitalism is being blamed too much for short-term economic problems—problems they variously attribute to bad governance (for example by the Bush administration) and the bad behavior of some individuals (or what John McCain described during the presidential campaign as "the greed of Wall Street"). Others do, however, see truly serious defects in the existing economic arrangements and want to reform them, looking for an alternative approach that is increasingly being called "new capitalism."
The idea of old and new capitalism played an energizing part at a symposium called "New World, New Capitalism" held in Paris in January and hosted by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the former British prime minister Tony Blair, both of whom made eloquent presentations on the need for change. So did German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who talked about the old German idea of a "social market"—one restrained by a mixture of consensus-building policies—as a possible blueprint for new capitalism (though Germany has not done much better in the recent crisis than other market economies).
Ideas about changing the organization of society in the long run are clearly needed, quite apart from strategies for dealing with an immediate crisis. I would separate out three questions from the many that can be raised. First, do we really need some kind of "new capitalism" rather than an economic system that is not monolithic, draws on a variety of institutions chosen pragmatically, and is based on social values that we can defend ethically? Should we search for a new capitalism or for a "new world"—to use the other term mentioned at the Paris meeting—that would take a different form?
The second question concerns the kind of economics that is needed today, especially in light of the present economic crisis. How do we assess what is taught and championed among academic economists as a guide to economic policy—including the revival of Keynesian thought in recent months as the crisis has grown fierce? More particularly, what does the present economic crisis tell us about the institutions and priorities to look for? Third, in addition to working our way toward a better assessment of what long-term changes are needed, we have to think—and think fast—about how to get out of the present crisis with as little damage as possible.
2.
What are the special characteristics that make a system indubitably capitalist—old or new? If the present capitalist economic system is to be reformed, what would make the end result a new capitalism, rather than something else? It seems to be generally assumed that relying on markets for economic transactions is a necessary condition for an economy to be identified as capitalist. In a similar way, dependence on the profit motive and on individual rewards based on private ownership are seen as archetypal features of capitalism. However, if these are necessary requirements, are the economic systems we currently have, for example, in Europe and America, genuinely capitalist?
All affluent countries in the world—those in Europe, as well as the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, and others—have, for quite some time now, depended partly on transactions and other payments that occur largely outside markets. These include unemployment benefits, public pensions, other features of social security, and the provision of education, health care, and a variety of other services distributed through nonmarket arrangements. The economic entitlements connected with such services are not based on private ownership and property rights.
Also, the market economy has depended for its own working not only on maximizing profits but also on many other activities, such as maintaining public security and supplying public services—some of which have taken people well beyond an economy driven only by profit. The creditable performance of the so-called capitalist system, when things moved forward, drew on a combination of institutions—publicly funded education, medical care, and mass transportation are just a few of many—that went much beyond relying only on a profit-maximizing market economy and on personal entitlements confined to private ownership.
Underlying this issue is a more basic question: whether capitalism is a term that is of particular use today. The idea of capitalism did in fact have an important role historically, but by now that usefulness may well be fairly exhausted.
For example, the pioneering works of Adam Smith in the eighteenth century showed the usefulness and dynamism of the market economy, and why—and particularly how—that dynamism worked. Smith's investigation provided an illuminating diagnosis of the workings of the market just when that dynamism was powerfully emerging. The contribution that The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, made to the understanding of what came to be called capitalism was monumental. Smith showed how the freeing of trade can very often be extremely helpful in generating economic prosperity through specialization in production and division of labor and in making good use of economies of large scale.
Those lessons remain deeply relevant even today (it is interesting that the impressive and highly sophisticated analytical work on international trade for which Paul Krugman received the latest Nobel award in economics was closely linked to Smith's far-reaching insights of more than 230 years ago). The economic analyses that followed those early expositions of markets and the use of capital in the eighteenth century have succeeded in solidly establishing the market system in the corpus of mainstream economics.
However, even as the positive contributions of capitalism through market processes were being clarified and explicated, its negative sides were also becoming clear—often to the very same analysts. While a number of socialist critics, most notably Karl Marx, influentially made a case for censuring and ultimately supplanting capitalism, the huge limitations of relying entirely on the market economy and the profit motive were also clear enough even to Adam Smith. Indeed, early advocates of the use of markets, including Smith, did not take the pure market mechanism to be a freestanding performer of excellence, nor did they take the profit motive to be all that is needed.
Even though people seek trade because of self-interest (nothing more than self-interest is needed, as Smith famously put it, in explaining why bakers, brewers, butchers, and consumers seek trade), nevertheless an economy can operate effectively only on the basis of trust among different parties. When business activities, including those of banks and other financial institutions, generate the confidence that they can and will do the things they pledge, then relations among lenders and borrowers can go smoothly in a mutually supportive way. As Adam Smith wrote:
When the people of any particular country have such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence of a particular banker, as to believe that he is always ready to pay upon demand such of his promissory notes as are likely to be at any time presented to him; those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them.[1]
Smith explained why sometimes this did not happen, and he would not have found anything particularly puzzling, I would suggest, in the difficulties faced today by businesses and banks thanks to the widespread fear and mistrust that is keeping credit markets frozen and preventing a coordinated expansion of credit.
It is also worth mentioning in this context, especially since the "welfare state" emerged long after Smith's own time, that in his various writings, his overwhelming concern—and worry—about the fate of the poor and the disadvantaged are strikingly prominent. The most immediate failure of the market mechanism lies in the things that the market leaves undone. Smith's economic analysis went well beyond leaving everything to the invisible hand of the market mechanism. He was not only a defender of the role of the state in providing public services, such as education, and in poverty relief (along with demanding greater freedom for the indigents who received support than the Poor Laws of his day provided), he was also deeply concerned about the inequality and poverty that might survive in an otherwise successful market economy.
Lack of clarity about the distinction between the necessity and sufficiency of the market has been responsible for some misunderstandings of Smith's assessment of the market mechanism by many who would claim to be his followers. For example, Smith's defense of the food market and his criticism of restrictions by the state on the private trade in food grains have often been interpreted as arguing that any state interference would necessarily make hunger and starvation worse.
But Smith's defense of private trade only took the form of disputing the belief that stopping trade in food would reduce the burden of hunger. That does not deny in any way the need for state action to supplement the operations of the market by creating jobs and incomes (e.g., through work programs). If unemployment were to increase sharply thanks to bad economic circumstances or bad public policy, the market would not, on its own, recreate the incomes of those who have lost their jobs. The new unemployed, Smith wrote, "would either starve, or be driven to seek a subsistence either by begging, or by the perpetration perhaps of the greatest enormities," and "want, famine, and mortality would immediately prevail...."[2] Smith rejects interventions that exclude the market—but not interventions that include the market while aiming to do those important things that the market may leave undone.
Smith never used the term "capitalism" (at least so far as I have been able to trace), but it would also be hard to carve out from his works any theory arguing for the sufficiency of market forces, or of the need to accept the dominance of capital. He talked about the importance of these broader values that go beyond profits in The Wealth of Nations, but it is in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was published exactly a quarter of a millennium ago in 1759, that he extensively investigated the strong need for actions based on values that go well beyond profit seeking. While he wrote that "prudence" was "of all the virtues that which is most useful to the individual," Adam Smith went on to argue that "humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit, are the qualities most useful to others."[3]
Smith viewed markets and capital as doing good work within their own sphere, but first, they required support from other institutions—including public services such as schools—and values other than pure profit seeking, and second, they needed restraint and correction by still other institutions—e.g., well-devised financial regulations and state assistance to the poor—for preventing instability, inequity, and injustice. If we were to look for a new approach to the organization of economic activity that included a pragmatic choice of a variety of public services and well-considered regulations, we would be following rather than departing from the agenda of reform that Smith outlined as he both defended and criticized capitalism.
3.
Historically, capitalism did not emerge until new systems of law and economic practice protected property rights and made an economy based on ownership workable. Commercial exchange could not effectively take place until business morality made contractual behavior sustainable and inexpensive—not requiring constant suing of defaulting contractors, for example. Investment in productive businesses could not flourish until the higher rewards from corruption had been moderated. Profit-oriented capitalism has always drawn on support from other institutional values.
The moral and legal obligations and responsibilities associated with transactions have in recent years become much harder to trace, thanks to the rapid development of secondary markets involving derivatives and other financial instruments. A subprime lender who misleads a borrower into taking unwise risks can now pass off the financial assets to third parties—who are remote from the original transaction. Accountability has been badly undermined, and the need for supervision and regulation has become much stronger.
And yet the supervisory role of government in the United States in particular has been, over the same period, sharply curtailed, fed by an increasing belief in the self-regulatory nature of the market economy. Precisely as the need for state surveillance grew, the needed supervision shrank. There was, as a result, a disaster waiting to happen, which did eventually happen last year, and this has certainly contributed a great deal to the financial crisis that is plaguing the world today. The insufficient regulation of financial activities has implications not only for illegitimate practices, but also for a tendency toward overspeculation that, as Adam Smith argued, tends to grip many human beings in their breathless search for profits.
Smith called the promoters of excessive risk in search of profits "prodigals and projectors"—which is quite a good description of issuers of subprime mortgages over the past few years. Discussing laws against usury, for example, Smith wanted state regulation to protect citizens from the "prodigals and projectors" who promoted unsound loans:
A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it.[4]
The implicit faith in the ability of the market economy to correct itself, which is largely responsible for the removal of established regulations in the United States, tended to ignore the activities of prodigals and projectors in a way that would have shocked Adam Smith.
The present economic crisis is partly generated by a huge overestimation of the wisdom of market processes, and the crisis is now being exacerbated by anxiety and lack of trust in the financial market and in businesses in general—responses that have been evident in the market reactions to the sequence of stimulus plans, including the $787 billion plan signed into law in February by the new Obama administration. As it happens, these problems were already identified in the eighteenth century by Smith, even though they have been neglected by those who have been in authority in recent years, especially in the United States, and who have been busy citing Adam Smith in support of the unfettered market.
4.
While Adam Smith has recently been much quoted, even if not much read, there has been a huge revival, even more recently, of John Maynard Keynes. Certainly, the cumulative downturn that we are observing right now, which is edging us closer to a depression, has clear Keynesian features; the reduced incomes of one group of persons has led to reduced purchases by them, in turn causing a further reduction in the income of others.
However, Keynes can be our savior only to a very partial extent, and there is a need to look beyond him in understanding the present crisis. One economist whose current relevance has been far less recognized is Keynes's rival Arthur Cecil Pigou, who, like Keynes, was also in Cambridge, indeed also in Kings College, in Keynes's time. Pigou was much more concerned than Keynes with economic psychology and the ways it could influence business cycles and sharpen and harden an economic recession that could take us toward a depression (as indeed we are seeing now). Pigou attributed economic fluctuations partly to "psychological causes" consisting of
variations in the tone of mind of persons whose action controls industry, emerging in errors of undue optimism or undue pessimism in their business forecasts.[5]
It is hard to ignore the fact that today, in addition to the Keynesian effects of mutually reinforced decline, we are strongly in the presence of "errors of...undue pessimism." Pigou focused particularly on the need to unfreeze the credit market when the economy is in the grip of excessive pessimism:
Hence, other things being equal, the actual occurrence of business failures will be more or less widespread, according [to whether] bankers' loans, in the face of crisis of demands, are less or more readily obtainable.[6]
Despite huge injections of fresh liquidity into the American and European economies, largely from the government, the banks and financial institutions have until now remained unwilling to unfreeze the credit market. Other businesses also continue to fail, partly in response to already diminished demand (the Keynesian "multiplier" process), but also in response to fear of even less demand in the future, in a climate of general gloom (the Pigovian process of infectious pessimism).
One of the problems that the Obama administration has to deal with is that the real crisis, arising from financial mismanagement and other transgressions, has become many times magnified by a psychological collapse. The measures that are being discussed right now in Washington and elsewhere to regenerate the credit market include bailouts—with firm requirements that subsidized financial institutions actually lend—government purchase of toxic assets, insurance against failure to repay loans, and bank nationalization. (The last proposal scares many conservatives just as private control of the public money given to the banks worries people concerned about accountability.) As the weak response of the market to the administration's measures so far suggests, each of these policies would have to be assessed partly for their impact on the psychology of businesses and consumers, particularly in America.
5.
The contrast between Pigou and Keynes is relevant for another reason as well. While Keynes was very involved with the question of how to increase aggregate income, he was relatively less engaged in analyzing problems of unequal distribution of wealth and of social welfare. In contrast, Pigou not only wrote the classic study of welfare economics, but he also pioneered the measurement of economic inequality as a major indicator for economic assessment and policy.[7] Since the suffering of the most deprived people in each economy—and in the world—demands the most urgent attention, the role of supportive cooperation between business and government cannot stop only with mutually coordinated expansion of an economy. There is a critical need for paying special attention to the underdogs of society in planning a response to the current crisis, and in going beyond measures to produce general economic expansion. Families threatened with unemployment, with lack of medical care, and with social as well as economic deprivation have been hit particularly hard. The limitations of Keynesian economics to address their problems demand much greater recognition.
A third way in which Keynes needs to be supplemented concerns his relative neglect of social services—indeed even Otto von Bismarck had more to say on this subject than Keynes. That the market economy can be particularly bad in delivering public goods (such as education and health care) has been discussed by some of the leading economists of our time, including Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. (Pigou too contributed to this subject with his emphasis on the "external effects" of market transactions, where the gains and losses are not confined only to the direct buyers or sellers.) This is, of course, a long-term issue, but it is worth noting in addition that the bite of a downturn can be much fiercer when health care in particular is not guaranteed for all.
For example, in the absence of a national health service, every lost job can produce a larger exclusion from essential health care, because of loss of income or loss of employment-related private health insurance. The US has a 7.6 percent rate of unemployment now, which is beginning to cause huge deprivation. It is worth asking how the European countries, including France, Italy, and Spain, that lived with much higher levels of unemployment for decades, managed to avoid a total collapse of their quality of life. The answer is partly the way the European welfare state operates, with much stronger unemployment insurance than in America and, even more importantly, with basic medical services provided to all by the state.
The failure of the market mechanism to provide health care for all has been flagrant, most noticeably in the United States, but also in the sharp halt in the progress of health and longevity in China following its abolition of universal health coverage in 1979. Before the economic reforms of that year, every Chinese citizen had guaranteed health care provided by the state or the cooperatives, even if at a rather basic level. When China removed its counterproductive system of agricultural collectives and communes and industrial units managed by bureaucracies, it thereby made the rate of growth of gross domestic product go up faster than anywhere else in the world. But at the same time, led by its new faith in the market economy, China also abolished the system of universal health care; and, after the reforms of 1979, health insurance had to be bought by individuals (except in some relatively rare cases in which the state or some big firms provide them to their employees and dependents). With this change, China's rapid progress in longevity sharply slowed down.
This was problem enough when China's aggregate income was growing extremely fast, but it is bound to become a much bigger problem when the Chinese economy decelerates sharply, as it is currently doing. The Chinese government is now trying hard to gradually reintroduce health insurance for all, and the US government under Obama is also committed to making health coverage universal. In both China and the US, the rectifications have far to go, but they should be central elements in tackling the economic crisis, as well as in achieving long-term transformation of the two societies.
6.
The revival of Keynes has much to contribute both to economic analysis and to policy, but the net has to be cast much wider. Even though Keynes is often seen as a kind of a "rebel" figure in contemporary economics, the fact is that he came close to being the guru of a new capitalism, who focused on trying to stabilize the fluctuations of the market economy (and then again with relatively little attention to the psychological causes of business fluctuations). Even though Smith and Pigou have the reputation of being rather conservative economists, many of the deep insights about the importance of nonmarket institutions and nonprofit values came from them, rather than from Keynes and his followers.
A crisis not only presents an immediate challenge that has to be faced. It also provides an opportunity to address long-term problems when people are willing to reconsider established conventions. This is why the present crisis also makes it important to face the neglected long-term issues like conservation of the environment and national health care, as well as the need for public transport, which has been very badly neglected in the last few decades and is also so far sidelined—as I write this article—even in the initial policies announced by the Obama administration. Economic affordability is, of course, an issue, but as the example of the Indian state of Kerala shows, it is possible to have state-guaranteed health care for all at relatively little cost. Since the Chinese dropped universal health insurance in 1979, Kerala—which continues to have it—has very substantially overtaken China in average life expectancy and in indicators such as infant mortality, despite having a much lower level of per capita income. So there are opportunities for poor countries as well.
But the largest challenges face the United States, which already has the highest level of per capita expenditure on health among all countries in the world, but still has a relatively low achievement in health and has more than forty million people with no guarantee of health care. Part of the problem here is one of public attitude and understanding. Hugely distorted perceptions of how a national health service works need to be corrected through public discussion. For example, it is common to assume that no one has a choice of doctors in a European national health service, which is not at all the case.
There is, however, also a need for better understanding of the options that exist. In US discussions of health reform, there has been an overconcentration on the Canadian system—a system of public health care that makes it very hard to have private medical care—whereas in Western Europe the national health services provide care for all but also allow, in addition to state coverage, private practice and private health insurance, for those who have the money and want to spend it this way. It is not clear just why the rich who can freely spend money on yachts and other luxury goods should not be allowed to spend it on MRIs or CT scans instead. If we take our cue from Adam Smith's arguments for a diversity of institutions, and for accommodating a variety of motivations, there are practical measures we can take that would make a huge difference to the world in which we live.
The present economic crises do not, I would argue, call for a "new capitalism," but they do demand a new understanding of older ideas, such as those of Smith and, nearer our time, of Pigou, many of which have been sadly neglected. What is also needed is a clearheaded perception of how different institutions actually work, and of how a variety of organizations—from the market to the institutions of the state—can go beyond short-term solutions and contribute to producing a more decent economic world.
—February 25, 2009
Notes

2009年1月20日星期二

行为经济学和实验经济学的基础—2002年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者思想介评

2002年诺贝尔经济学奖已经在10月9日公布。两位获奖者分别为美国普林斯顿大学的丹尼尔.卡尼曼(Daniel Kahneman)和乔治.梅森大学的弗农.史密斯(Vernon Smith)。瑞典皇家科学院在宣布他们的主要贡献时指出,丹尼尔,卡尼曼是“因为将心理学研究结合到经济学中,特别是关于不确定条件下的人类判断和决策”;弗农.史密斯是“因为将实验室实验作为经验经济分析的一种工具,特别是在可选择的市场机制研究方面。”这说明行为经济学和实验经济学作为经济学重要分支的地位得到确认和加强。本文主要对二者的思想进行介绍,并作简单评论。
  一、行为经济学的基础
  20世纪中叶,爱德华(Edwards)提出将行为决定作为心理学研究的主题,并确定了研究的程序,西蒙(Simon)提出了基于有限理性的信息处理和决策方法。但是真正对此展开深入研究的是丹尼尔.卡尼曼和阿莫斯.特韦尔斯基(Amos Tversky)。尽管卡尼曼的研究还坚持认知心理学的传统,但主要还是经济学的。他的大多数论文发表在经济学杂志上,其引用率在经济学领域一直非常高。如果说在经济学和心理学传统规则中存在联系障碍,目前许多研究致力于在二者之间建立起联系方法:一种是实验的方法,另一种是理论建模的方法。
  1.不确定条件下的判断:启发法和偏见
  卡尼曼和特韦尔斯基发现,不确定条件下的判断与传统经济理论对理性的假定存在系统差别。他们早期的大多数研究强调的一个基本观念是,人们一般不能完全分析包含经济和概率判断的情形。在这些情况下,人类决策依靠某些捷径或启发法,这些方法有时存在系统性偏差。
  —个基本的偏差是个人似乎运用小数法则,将同样的概率分布归结为小样本和大样本中的经验平均值,从而就违反了概率论中的大数法则。例如在一个著名的实验中发现,参与实验者认为在给定的一天中在大医院和小医院中出生的小孩中男孩的比例高于60%的概率相等。一般情况下,人们似乎没有意识到随着样本的增大,随机变量对平均数的偏离是不断下降的。更精确地说,根据统计上的大数法则,随机变量大样本独立观察平均值的概率分布在随机变量的期望值附近集中,并且样本平均值的偏差随着样本规模的增大会趋近于零。根据心理学的小数法则。人们相信小样本的平均值也会向随机变量期望值附近集中分布。
  小数规则的一个例子是,如果一位投资者观察到一位基金经理在过去两年中的投资业绩好于平均情况,就会得出这位经理要比一般经理优秀的结论。然而真实的统计含义非常微弱。一个相关的例子就是赌徒谬误,许多人都希望随机的第二次抽彩与第一次没有关系,即使抽彩从统计上看是相互独立的。在投掷硬币游戏中,如果前几次大多数出现正面,那么很多人就相信下一次投掷很可能出现反面。最近的研究描述了小数规则对经济决定的重要作用(Rabin,2002)。
  小数法则与典型法,即卡尼曼和特韦尔斯基发现的作为人类判断重要因素的启发法相关。他们在几个重要实验中阐明了这种启发法的功能。参与实验者要求根据描述对一群人进行归类,比如说分成“商人”和“议员”。从给定的人群中随机找出一个进行描述,其特征包括“对政治感兴趣,喜欢参与争论,热衷于出现在媒体中”,大多数人会认为这是个议员,即使选定的人群中商人的比例更高这一事实使该人更可能是一个商人。他们进一步检验了这一观察到结果。他们做了一个实验。在这个实验中,某些参与实验者拥有关于人群组成比例的明确信息。一个方案是要被分类的人群是从30%工程师和70%律师组成的一群人中抽取的;另一个方案中比例相反。结果表明这种差别对参与实验者的判断没有影响。
  施莱佛(Shleifer)认为,小数法则和典型法可以解释金融市场上的某些反常(Shleifer,2000)。例如对股票价格的过度敏感可能是投资者对利好新闻短期刺激过度反应的结果。
  概率判断另一个共同偏见是有效性,人们通过简化特定事例判断概率。结果是人们更倾向于明显的或便于记忆的信息(Tversky and Kahneman,1973),认知心理学的一个一般发现是,与不熟悉的信息相比,熟悉的信息更便于记忆,也相信其更加真实,相关。这样,熟悉和有效就对精确和相关起到提示作用。因此,媒体中某些信息极少重复,如果不考虑精确性,人们就会更容易认为其有效并因此而产生错误认识。
  这一人类判断的证据表明,人们的推理向概率论的基本法则提出了系统挑战。卡尼曼的研究阐明了这一点,向传统经济论基础之一的经验有效性提出了非常严肃的质疑。
  2.不确定条件下的决策:预测理论
  有证据表明,不仅不确定条件下的判断,而且决策也与传统经济理论产生了系统背离。特别是,不确定条件下的许多决策与预期效用理论的预测发生了分歧。
  莫里斯.阿莱首先对不确定条件下决策的冯.诺伊曼—摩根斯坦一萨维奇(Von Neumann—Morgenstern—Savage)预期效用函数提出了质疑,并提出了“阿莱悖沦(Allais Paradox)”。例如许多人宁可选择3000美元的固定收益,而不愿意以80%的概率获得4000美元,20%的概率一无所获。然而,在同样一群人中,有人宁愿以20%的概率获得4000美元,而不愿以25%的概率获得3000美元,尽管两种情况下概率下降的幅度相同,都是0.25。这种偏好对所谓的预期效用理论替代公理提出了挑战。卡尼曼提出了偏离预期效用预测的大量例证。
  一个令人兴奋的发现是,比起绝对条件下的结果,人们通常对结果偏离某些非连续偏好水平的方式更敏感。这种更侧重变化而不是水平的现象可能与认知心理学有关,即认为人类对外部条件,比如温度的变化要比其水平值更敏感。
  然而,与偏好水平相关,对同样大小的收益和损失产生的影响,人们似乎认为损失的影响更大一些。特韦尔斯基和卡尼曼估计,适当损失造成的负面影响大概是同样收益正面影响的两倍,即人们的偏好更倾向于(局部)厌恶损失。对一次小的赌博来说,人们宁愿选择保持现状,也不愿以50%的概率赚取12美元,50%的概率损失10美元。根据传统经济理论,这与大额收益与损失下的隐含偏好不同。对于巨额损失,人们明显是个风险喜好者,这个一般发现与风险厌恶的传统假定明显不符。例如,卡尼曼和特韦尔斯基发现,在10个人中,7个人会选择以25%的概率损失6000美元,也不愿选择以25%的概率损失4000美元,25%的概率损失2000美元。因为两种抽签下预期损失的货币值相同,第二种情况只不过是第一种情况的平分。在传统的风险厌恶假定下,这两者应该没有差别。
  卡尼曼和特韦尔斯基给出了他们的解释。他们认为,预期效用理论是公理,而他们的预测理论只是一个描述(Kahneman and Tversky,1979)。这是通过经验观察以归纳的方式提出来的,而不是在一系列公理的基础上演绎出的。后来,他们认为两种理论实际上都是必需的:预期效用理论刻画理性行为,而预测理论描述实际行为(Tversky and Kahneman.1986)。尽管预期效用理论在某些明显的简单决定问题中对现实选择给出了一个精确描述,但是现实生活中的决定问题非常复杂,这需要关于行为的更加丰富的模型。
  预测理论提出了几个在传统经济理论中表现反常的规则:人们在购买小额物品时宁可驱车很远节省几个美元,而不愿在大额购买中驱车同样路程节省更多货币。
  总之,卡尼曼及其同事的经验研究表明了不确定条件下的几个选择规则,并且在预测理论中体现出来的思想对解释这些规则做出了重要贡献。卡尼曼的研究给经济学家提供了新的视角,并且在随后的模型建立中通过改变对实际决策者所犯一般错误的决策分析提供了工具。预测理论的进一步拓展,即著名的累计预测理论(Tversky and Kahneman,1992)指出了传统版本的缺陷。而且累计预测理论还要求对大量结果进行预测,并与随机领域一致。
  相对于预期效用理论,预测理论向精确描述不确定条件下个人行为迈出了重要一步。现在它已经形成了这个领域应用经验研究的基础。
  二、实验经济学的基础
  直到最近以来,经济学还被看作是一门不可实验的科学。主流观点认为,经济学家“不能从事化学家或生物学家的控制下的实验,因为他们不易控制其他重要因素。他们像天文学家和气象学家一样,一般只能限于以观察为主。”但是几年之后,主流观点发生了变化,尽管经济学实验存在各种各样的困难,但是“经济学家越来越依赖实验来解释经济行为”。
  最早的实验经济学研究,有人认为至少可以追溯到1738年伯努利(Bernoulli)所进行的有关“匹兹堡悖论”的实验(余剑梅,1999)。但是近期的研究主要是从张伯仑(Chamberlin)1948年的实验开始,其目的是要检验完全竞争的新古典理论(Chamberlin,1948);1994年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者泽尔滕(Reinhard Selten)等曾利用实验方法研究寡头市场的价格形成(Sauerman and Selten,1959);纳什等人曾经利用实验方法检验博弈论的预测力(Kalish、Milnor、Nash and Nehrig,1954);另外,西格尔(Siegel)和富莱克(Fouraker)也曾作过讨价还价实验的研究(Siegel and Fouraker,1960;Fouraker and Siegel,1963)。
  然而,对实验经济学主要的开拓研究主要还是弗农.史密斯开始的。他不仅自己在这个领域做出了重要的贡献,还带动了一批学者进行这项研究,开创了独立的研究学派。他的贡献主要集中于竞争性市场机制的实验、不同拍卖形式的检验以及实验经济学方法等。
  1.市场机制
  史密斯关于实验经济学最早的研究是受张伯仑启发。张伯仑认为其实验结果是对完全竞争市场标准新古典模型的歪曲,因此放弃了这种实验。史密斯认为,参与实验者面临的实验环境越接近真实市场,实验的结果就可能越好。这样,他在一个复式口头拍卖(double oral auction)实验中,把参与实验者随机分成两组:潜在的买者和卖者。给每个卖者一单位商品,并且秘密告诉他该商品的保留价格(reservation price)。假设保留价格为v,如果卖者卖出的价格p大于v,那么他就能够赚取p—v的报酬。同样,也秘密告诉每个买者一个w的保留价格,如果他购买商品的价格p小于w,那么他就可以得到w—p的报酬。基于这样一种保留价格分配,史密斯画出了供给和需求曲线,并在二者的交叉点确定了竞争均衡的价格。每个买者和卖者并不知道这一点,更不可能计算出理论上的均衡价格。但是,使他惊奇的是,他发现实际交易价格非常接近理论上的均衡价格。史密斯以后又进行了一系列类似实验以检验这一结果是否只是一种巧合。这些实验不但没有推翻最初的结果,反而使其得到进一步证实。在普洛特(Plott)和史密斯的合作研究中,他们不仅得出了同样的一般结论,而且还增加了一条:市场制度确实很“重要”。他们还特别比较了在交易达成过程中买卖双方可以连续不断交换价格信息情况下和双方只能邮寄价格情况下的结果。后一种情况的结果表明,实际交易价格只不过以比较慢的速度收敛于理论上的均衡价格。
  在几乎每一个市场实验中,对假设的检验都要求控制实验主体的偏好,但很困难。因为卖和买一般受买卖双方对收益和损失主观评价的影响,而这种主观评价是不可观测的。张伯仑首先提出了这个问题,并给出了一种解决办法,即给每个参与实验者提供一个“准确”的货币刺激。这种所谓的“诱导价格法(induced—value method)”经过史密斯的进一步发展,已经成为实验经济学的标准工具。
  为了阐明这种方法,考虑一个市场上购买同质商品的主体。假定实验者希望这个主体表达某种需求函数D,即在任何给定的价格下,该主体愿意购买的商品的准确数量q=D(p)。但是实验者不清楚该主体的效用函数u(W)。史密斯的方法是通过对参与实验者在价格p下的购买量q支付R(q)-pq的报酬归纳期望得到的需求函数,其中R是适当选择的报酬函数。根据经济理论,该主体选择的购买量q根据其从不断增加的q中得到的边际收益等于边际成本,即R’(q)=p确定。只要未知的效用函数递增且凹,其需求就会与期望得到的需求函数一致。因为在任何相应价格下,报酬函数R的反函数就恰好等于期望得到的需求函数,即任何相应价格p下,(R’)-1(p)=D(p)。该方法已经在实验经济学中得到广泛应用。
  2.对拍卖理论的检验
  拍卖理论作为微观经济理论和博弈论最成功的发展之一出现于20世纪60年代早期。史密斯对拍卖理论的假设进行了实验检验,他最先使用可控制实验作为新拍卖设计的“风洞”,因为这些设计在实际运用之前很难进行精确的理论预测。
  史密斯拍卖实验的研究集中于单一物体出售中运用某种拍卖形式的理论预测。这些拍卖传统上分为四种类型:
  英式拍卖:竞标者不断提高竞标价格,直到没有人再出更高价格为止,出价最高的竞标者获得该商品;
  荷式拍卖:出售者在确定的时间从某个高价开始逐渐向下降价,直到有人喊出“购买”为止;
  第一价格密封拍卖:众多买方以书面投标方式竞买拍卖品,出价最高者将以其出价水平获取拍卖品;
  第二价格密封拍卖:这一方式同第一价格密封拍卖类似,出价最高者获取商品,但其支付价格并非自身出价,而是所有出价者中仅次于该出价水平的第二出价。
  微观经济理论也区分了私人价值和共同价值拍卖。在两种情况下,对每个购买者来说价值是作为随机变量对待的。在私人价值下,这些估价在所有的潜在竞标者中相互独立——购买者的估价是其对物品的纯粹个人估价。相反,在共同价值拍卖中,对购买者来说价值也有共同成分,例如某些相关市场的再出售市场价值和条件。
  经济理论在私人价值情况下做了三个预测;(1)英式拍卖和第二价格密封拍卖等价;(2)荷式拍卖和第一价格密封拍卖等价;(3)如果所有购买者都是风险中性的,那么四种拍卖形式等价。
  史密斯做了许多实验以从经验上检验这些理论预测。为了出现私人价值,给每个竞标者指定一个随机的、相互独立的竞价v,这是每个竞标者的私人信息。如果竞标者赢得了拍卖并且支付了价格pt它就会赚p—v的货币收入。对于上面的预测(1),史密斯发现英式拍卖和第二价格密封拍卖确实产生了相同的实验结果;对于(2),与理论预测相反,荷式拍卖和第一价格密封拍卖并没有产生相同的结果;至于(3),他发现假定购买者具有相同风险态度的模型应被放弃。他还发现,英式拍卖和第一价格密封拍卖的平均价格要高于第二价格密封拍卖;后者的平均价格又高于荷式拍卖。
  在所有这些结果中,最没有预料到的结果就是荷式拍卖和第一价格密封拍卖不等价。史密斯给出了两个理论解释:(1)在荷式拍卖中,效用不仅仅依赖于货币结果,还依赖于“等待的不确定性”;(2)在荷式拍卖中,竞标者低估了与等待相关的不断增加的风险(Smith,1991)。
  3.作为“风洞”的实验室
  史密斯等人为了研究放松管制、私有化和公共物品供给制度机制的绩效,开始运用实验室作为“风洞”。这些机制非常复杂,现存的理论根本无法给出准确预测,这就使得实验方法特别有效。在一系列研究中,他研究了公共物品供给的激励相容机制设计。在这些实验中,史密斯检验了经济理论者提出的机制的有效性。史密斯还利用计算机对小型飞机时间通道的分配和能源市场的选择性组织进行了实验。
  4.实验经济学方法论
  史密斯除了对市场和拍卖结果的研究外,还在实验经济学的方法论方面做出了重要贡献。它的实验经济学方法论主要来自心理学中使用的实验方法。为了超过决定成本的歪曲效应,他强调给参与实验者足够货币刺激的重要性。它的方法还强调按照重复路径设计实验的重要性,以便于参与实验者熟悉和明白实验情景。但是其方法与心理学还有很多差别。心理学家主要是对个人行为感兴趣;史密斯设计实验主要是为了分析市场结果。
  史密斯的实验经济学研究方法不仅对经济学家产生了重要影响,而且还影响了其他社会科学。目前这一方法已经运用到多数裁定原则的委员会过程等政治领域。
  三、结语
  丹尼尔.卡尼曼运用回答问题、形成判断和做出选择思维过程的认知心理学研究,有助于我们更好地理解人们怎样做出经济决策。其他的心理学家在同样问题上也做出了重要贡献。但是卡尼曼和特韦尔斯基关于不确定条件下决策的研究更具影响。卡尼曼还对行为经济学的其他领域做出了重要贡献。目前,卡尼曼已经成为行为经济学和行为金融学领域最具影响的人物。其研究对其他学科也产生了重要影响,不仅在其他社会科学领域广泛运用,而且还在自然科学,例如人类学和医学中被广泛运用。
  弗农.史密斯是经验经济学研究最有影响的代表人物。与卡尼曼不同,他不是从对理性决策的传统经济理论提出挑战开始,而是从检验关于市场绩效的可选择性假定开始,特别研究了不同市场制度的重要性。卡尼曼的调查和实验主要集中于个体决策;而史密斯的实验集中于个体和特定市场环境的相互作用。史密斯也强调方法论问题,发展了可行的实验方法,并且建立了形成良好实验的标准。查理斯.普洛特进一步发展了史密斯的实验方法,并且开拓了对新领域的实验研究。通过史密斯取得的成就,许多经济学家认识到实验方法可以成为经济学的一个重要研究工具。
  新制度经济学家已经把认知科学作为其研究的一个领域(John Drobak and John Nye,1997)。1993年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者道格拉斯.诺思在20世纪90年代的时候对传统经济学的理性假说产生了怀疑,试图解释意识形态如何对人类行为发生作用(North,1997)。这说明认知科学、心理学与经济学研究的结合已经引起经济学家的高度关注。
  目前该领域研究的一个趋势是心理学传统和实验经济学的融合。这项新的研究对经济学和金融学的所有领域都非常重要。经验证据表明,特定的心理现象——例如有限理性、受限的自利行为和不完全自我控制——是一系列市场结果背后的重要因素。虽然行为经济学的理论还不是很多,但是通过其发展,最终有可能取代传统经济理论的一些要素。金融经济学要深入研究市场投机消除系统非理性对资产价格影响的程度。
  尽管卡尼曼和史密斯的研究在许多方面不同,但是他们的共同科学贡献已经对经济学的发展方向提出了挑战。过去经济学仅限于在相对简单的人类决策理性模型上理论化,还局限于对现实资料的经验研究。卡尼曼和史密斯的最初研究刚开始时,曾受到某些经济学家的怀疑,他们花费大量时间进行了更深入的研究,其理论已经完全渗透到经济学领域。由于他们取得的成就,许多或大多数经济学家开始把心理学研究和实验方法看作现代经济学的重要组成部分。
  
作者:李增刚 来源:《经济评论》2002第6期

2009年1月9日星期五

类馅饼----中央首次全国范围为困难群众发放生活补贴

中央首次全国范围为困难群众发放生活补贴
http://finance.QQ.com  2009年01月09日14:45   中国新闻网   我要评论(7820)
中新网北京1月9日电 (记者张希敏)中国民政部副部长姜力在今天召开的视频会上说,为妥善安排困难群众的基本生活,中央财政下拨九十多亿元人民币,为七千四百多万城乡困难群众发放一次性生活补贴。
姜力指出,民政部会同财政部对此次发放生活补贴的对象范围确定为全国城乡低保对象、农村五保对象、享受国家抚恤补助的的优抚对象等人。补贴标准为:农村低保对象和农村五保对象每人一百元,城市低保对象每人一百五十元,享受国家抚恤补助的优抚对象、建国前入党的农村老党员和建国前未享受离退休待遇的城镇老党员每人一百八十元。
民政部、财政部要求,各级民政部门和财政部门精心组织、全力以赴,确保春节前将补贴资金全部发放到位,并加强对资金的发放管理工作,做到资金发放公正、公平、透明,确保专款专用。

2009年1月8日星期四

FB jjgzz

散文《在哪里》忙碌的公仆在哪里?在包厢里。重要的工作在哪里?在宴会里。干部的任免在哪里?在交易里。工程的发包在哪里?在暗箱里。该抓的工作在哪里?在口号里。需办的急事在哪里?在会议里。该刹的歪风在哪里?在通知里。扶贫的干部在哪里?在轿车里。宝贵的人才在哪里?在悼词里。优质的商品在哪里?在广告里。破烂的危房在哪里?在农村里。豪华的大楼在哪里?在机关里。动听的词汇在哪里?在汇报里。辉煌的数字在哪里?在总结里。巨大的成绩在哪里?在水分里。可喜的进步在哪里?在创意里。

2008年9月15日星期一

中国经济奇迹可以解释

中国经济奇迹可以解释
http://view.QQ.com  2007年06月22日21:31   第一财经日报  陈志武  我要评论(3854)
陈志武 耶鲁大学管理学院金融经济学教授
郭宇宽(以下简称郭):当前中国主流经济学界很多人有个观点,中国这些年的经济增长是一个让世人瞠目奇迹,颠覆了国际上通行的历史经验,您怎么看?
陈志武(以下简称陈):我觉得有这种观点是视野太狭隘造成的。中国这些年的经济增长绝不是历史上绝无仅有的,举例来说,美国上世纪30年代左右开始经济大萧条,西方社会在上世纪30年代普遍出现经济危机,而苏联的经济从30年代初到50年代一直保持高速增长,他们那时GDP增速比中国现在的增长速度还要高。
但他们后来爆发出来的问题也是众所周知的,不能简单着眼于当前的经济增长率,特别是围绕GDP而得出想当然的结论。这种教训历史上很多国家都犯过,到上世纪五六十年代,大家普遍得出一个结论:计划经济国家的经济状况,比信奉自由市场的西方国家好得多,于是从50年代一直到70年代,很多国家,尤其是拉美、非洲、亚洲、东欧等地区的发展中国家,几乎普遍都采用计划经济发展模式,后来的结果大家都可以看到。
郭:可很多“中国主流经济学家”都宣扬中国的经济发展的成绩是“西方主流经济学”所无法解释的,好像有要搞出个“东方主流经济学”的意思。
陈:我不认为经济学可以分出东方西方,经济学解释的普遍规律,就像物理学不能分出个东方物理学,西方物理学一样,为了更好的解释纷繁复杂的经济现象,经济学需要发展,但如果有人认为目前的经济学理论唯独解释不了中国经济,那只能说明他们对经济学理论没有学透彻。
郭:还有一种观点认为因为中国经济增长前所未有的强劲,未来的诺贝尔经济学奖获得者会出在中国,你同意么?
陈:我不那么乐观,至少目前我没有看出苗头,我们有一种误解好像诺贝尔经济学奖是哪里经济搞上去了,就颁给谁,要按这种标准,诺贝尔经济学奖应该颁给比尔盖茨,或者巴菲特——论赚钱谁也比不上他,可在美国要说经济学界,谁也不会把他们包括在内,诺贝尔经济学奖是给与在经济学理论上有突破的人,他们提供的一个理论给与我们一个突破性的思维视角,和分析方法,就好像交易成本理论,信息不对称理论,有这些理论我们一下子看世界就看的更加清晰了,这才是经济学家的贡献。
如果说中国这个正在变局中的土地给经济学研究者提供了很丰富的研究样本我同意,但几十年来中国经济学没有给世界贡献出什么有原创性的思想方法和理论,诺贝尔奖没颁给中国人并不是有什么偏见,我们要谦虚一些,更加努力。
郭:有一个论据是,西方经济学家相对而言更加看重自由市场和竞争,但中国在这些方面显然不符合他们的标准却一样经济高速增长。一些西方经济学家对中国经济的预测频频出问题说明什么?
陈:中国对世界来说信息还很不透明,局外人判断很容易出偏差,而且经济学家的作用不在于预测明天中国股市能到多少点,那不是经济学家该干的事情。
至于对规律的判断,西方的经济学家从来没有说过,自由市场和竞争是经济发展的充份必要条件。经济增长如果用一个社会生产函数来刻画的话,我们可以看到它会是一个多变量的方程,不仅有制度的变量,还有资本,劳动力,技术等一系列变量。这些变量之间也会互相影响,在数学中可以用交叉偏导来刻画,一个特别强的变量可以对一个特别弱的变量产生弥补作用,我们应当看到中国在经济起飞的开始,就具备了相当丰富的劳动力供应,这个因素如此强劲,以至于在总的生产函数中弥补制度缺陷带来的损失。你看不是用西方常用的经济学基础知识就很好解释么?(笑)
回到现实中国在市场不够完善的情况下经济增长很快,并不说明市场不够完善也是经济增长的原因,就好像我们不能从阿炳的二胡拉得好,他又是个瞎子,就总结出把人眼睛搞瞎了有助于二胡拉得好。中国的各要素中间那个少有国家具备的强劲要素就是中国的劳动力发挥了作用,不仅有大量年轻人,而且由于文化和历史的原因,特别吃苦耐劳,能够忍受的劳动时间和劳动条件的恶劣程度都远超过其它国家,有一个上世纪末的统计,中国人愿意工作的时间不仅远远超过美国和印度这样的国家,甚至远远超过日本。这个强劲的因素弥补了我们在市场体制发育不足方面的缺陷,拉动了经济增长。但这并不能掩盖我们体制的不足,就是茅于轼先生的书里说的,谁在阻碍中国人致富?这个问题值得我们思考,按照中国老百姓的勤劳付出程度,我们不该仅是现在这个样子,原因在于与观察我们周围就会发现,大家都在流汗,但很多人在做无效功,还有很多人专门在努力抵消别人做的功。
郭:有人认为和前苏联相比中国选择了一条最稳妥的渐进改革路径,比前苏联更加高明,你怎么看?
陈:首先我们要明白改革路径的选择不仅是一个经济发展效率的选择,而是涉及非常复杂的政治博弈的决策,我们目前还很难下一个判断哪种改革路径更高明。但有一点可以分析的,是中国和苏联面临的具体环境有很大不一样,两个国家都面临一个共同的问题,如何冲破僵化的旧体制的束缚,但两国领导人面临的资源禀赋不一样,手里的牌也不一样,中国当时国内教育水平比不上苏联,但劳动力实在太充沛了,这样就有一个条件,可以在国内体制不做重大变化的条件下,先把外资吸引进来,理由是拿外国人的钱和技术帮中国人发财,当国内经济发育起来,社会呼声强烈了以后,保守力量也衰落了以后,水到渠成的再搞政治体制改革,至少那一代中国领导人中的英明者设想的是这样,这应该说是有政治智慧的。而前苏联就不行,他自己就劳动力稀缺,除了出卖自然资源很难吸引到外资,而那时苏联人均GDP已经达到8000美元了,门槛相当高,靠吸收外资来推动改革没有可能,所以只能走一条,短时间内更加艰险的道路,大刀阔斧的从自身推进政治体制改革,这是历史的选择。
郭:你认为中国眼前这种模式下的这一轮经济增长,多大程度上可以持续?
陈:我们正在面临很大的危机和挑战,前一段时间我在谈到中国和印度发展模式比较时,认为我们现在很多人乐观的太早,从金融发展对社会、经济影响的角度来分析,印度内在的经济增长潜力比中国大的多。
中国前些年的经济增长主要依靠众多廉价劳动力,为世界其他国家提供制造业和其他相关行业的服务,生产鞋、服装、玩具、家用电器等。从国外转移到中国来的生产技术含量并不高,即使是电脑生产,表面看来高科技的含量很高,但这些技术实际上已经非常标准化,成为简单的生产内容,利润率也并不高,并且会越来越低。我们也要承认这些年通过改革开放,的确使中国制造业的技术含量上升到了一个新台阶,同时,中国民营企业和国有企业的管理水平也上升到新的高度。这些转变为中国经济增长走出以简单的制造业来创造工作机会、增加收入的模式,创造了越来越好的条件和基础。
但是相比之下,如果我们不抓住现在的机会,大力把改革推向深入,如果中国不在契约执行架构、信息提供架构、权力制衡架构等方面做更进一步调整,如果对行政权力的制约没有实质性进展,产权制度继续保留目前的公有制为主导,不从公有制转变到私有制,如果仍然不能为市场交易提供更可靠的法治架构和信息架构,当前的模式走下去出问题是一定的。

2008年9月12日星期五

转移支付

转移支付(transfer payment)  政府或企业无偿地支付给个人或下级政府,以增加其收入和购买力的费用。政府或企业的一种不以取得商品或劳务作补偿的支出,是一种收入再分配的形式。转移支付包括政府的转移支付、企业的转移支付和政府间的转移支付。  ①政府的转移支付。大都具有福利支出的性质,如社会保险福利津贴、抚恤金、养老金、失业补助、救济金以及各种补助费等;农产品价格补贴也是政府的转移支付。由于政府的转移支付实际上是把国家的财政收入还给个人,所以有的西方经济学家称之为负税收。  ②企业的转移支付。通常是指企业对非赢利组织的赠款或捐款,以及非企业雇员的人身伤害赔偿等等。转移支付在客观上缩小了收入差距,对保持总需求水平稳定,减轻总需求摆动的幅度和强度,稳定社会经济有积极的作用。通常在萧条来临时,总收入下降,失业增加,政府拨付的社会福利支出也必然增加。这样,可以增强购买力,提高有效需求水平,从而可以抑制或缓解萧条。当经济中出现过度需求时,政府减少转移支付量,可以抑制总需求水平的升高。当然,对于过度膨胀的需求而言,这种抑制作用是微乎其微的。  ③政府间的转移支付。一般是上一级政府对下级政府的补助。确定转移支付的数额,一般是根据一些社会经济指标,如人口、面积等,以及一些由政府承担的社会经济活动,如教育、治安等的统一单位开支标准计算的。政府间的转移支付主要是为了平衡各地区由于地理环境不同或经济发展水平不同而产生的政府收入的差距,以保证各地区的政府能够有效地按照国家统一的标准为社会提供服务。  转移支付的模式主要有三种,一是自上而下的纵向转移,二是横向转移,三是纵向与横向转移的混合。规范转移支付制度的原则是:公平原则、效率原则和法治原则。在1994年实行分税制体制改革前,我国做了大量的财政转移支付的工作,1994年实行分税制体制改革后才从西文引进了转移支付的概念。我国中央财政是从1995年开始正式实施过渡期转移支付办法。根据国际货币基金组织《政府财政统计手册》中的支出分析框架,政府转移支付有两个层次,一是国际间的转移支付,包括对外捐赠、对外提供商品和劳务、向跨国组织交纳会费;二是国内的转移支付,既有政府对家庭的转移支付如养老金、住房补贴等,又有政府对国有企业提供的补贴,还有政府间的财政资金的转移。一般我们称的财政转移支付,是指政府间的财政资金转移,是中央政府支出的一个重要部分,是地方政府重要的预算收入。在西方国家,财政支出的重要分类就是分购买支出和转移支出。  我国目前仍实行的不是很规范的转移支付制度。主要制约因素:一是各级政府的职责和事权尚未明确划分,财政支出的划分与事权是紧密联系的,难以确定标准的收支概念;二是我国的中央财政仍十分困难,使转移支付制度缺乏充足的财力支持;三是既得利益调整的力度过大,困难很大;四是由于体制、经济结构、自然环境和人口状况等因素影响,地区间经济发展水平相差很大、发展能力存在极大差别,致使通过转移支付实现地区均衡难以在短期内实现;五是基础性数据统计、收集有很大难度。

2008年8月17日星期日

Schumpeter,Joseph Alois----熊彼特







February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950)[1]


美籍奥地利经济学家,当代资产阶级经济学界主要代表人物之一。熊彼特以“创新理论”解释资本主义的本质特征,解释资本主义发生、发展和灭亡的结局,并以此而闻名于经济学界。按照熊彼特的观点,所谓“创新”就是建立一种新的生产函数,也就是说把一种从来没有过的关于生产要素和生产条件的新组合引入生产体系。在他看来,“企业家”的职能就是实现创新,引进新组合。所谓“经济发展”就是指整个资本主义社会不断地实现这种新组合。他所说的创新、新组合或经济发展,包括下列五种情况:引进新产品;引用新的生产方法;开辟新市场;控制原材料的新供应来源;实现企业的新组织。 (引自《政治经济学大词典》/张卓元主编,经济科学出版社,1998.12,第878-880页)







his Most important work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumpeter#Most_important_work

his major work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumpeter#Major_Works

economist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Economics can be seen in action at this bazaar in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Greek for oikos (house) and nomos (custom or law), hence "rules of the house(hold)."[1]
Current economic models developed out of the broader field of political economy in the late 19th century, owing to a desire to use an empirical approach more akin to the physical sciences.[2] A definition that captures much of modern economics is that of Lionel Robbins in a 1932 essay: "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."[3] Scarcity means that available resources are insufficient to satisfy all wants and needs. Absent scarcity and alternative uses of available resources, there is no economic problem. The subject thus defined involves the study of choices as they are affected by incentives and resources.
Areas of economics may be divided or classified into various types, including:
microeconomics and macroeconomics
positive economics ("what is") and normative economics ("what ought to be")
mainstream economics and heterodox economics

2008年8月4日星期一

盖茨:让资本制度更具创造性

盖茨:让资本制度更具创造性


比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)近日在《时代周刊》发表文章《让资本主义制度更具创造性》称,世界需要一个更具创造性的资本主义制度来充分利用公司为贫困人群服务的能力。
在经济面临极大不确定性时,人们很容易忘记这样一个事实,那就是资本主义制度令几十亿人的生活得以改善。人们有很多需要,但他们无法以能影响市 场的方式表达这些需要,因此他们陷入贫穷、蒙受本可预防的灾难并且永无机会充分利用生命。在帮助人们走出困境的问题上,政府和非赢利组织负有不可推卸的责 任,但如果它们试图独力做到这一点,那将耗费太长的时间。拥有让技术创新为贫困人群服务能力的主要是公司,而我们需要一个更具创造性的资本主义制度来充分利用这些能力,以拓展市场力量能够触及的范围, 使更多公司从事于令更多人境况好转的工作并从中获利。资本主义制度已给世界带来了如此之多的好处,我们现在要做的是采取新的方式将更多人带入这一制度。距离达到这一目标还需要进行很多工作,但好消息是创造性的资本主义制度已经与我们同行。一些公司已经在贫困人群中找到了全新的市场,那就是手机 等能够改变人们生活的技术;其他一些公司则发现了怎样同时做到“做好事”和“把事做好”的窍门。拿我自己的现实生活来举个例子吧。几年以前,我跟我的好 友、U2乐队主唱波诺(Bono)坐在一家酒吧闲聊,说实话,我觉得他当时有那么一点儿犯傻。天色已晚,我们喝了几杯酒,波诺兴致高昂地向我鼓吹一项计 划,内容是让公司帮助消除全球性的贫困和灾难。他不停地拨打一些公司高管的私人电话,还把手机塞给我,让我听他们睡意十足但却热情洋溢的回应。那天晚上看似疯狂,但在波诺的坚持努力下,“红色运动”不久之后宣告诞生。到了今天,已有Gap、贺曼和戴尔等公司出售红色品牌的产品,并将部 分盈利捐献出来与艾滋病作斗争,甚至连微软也于最近签约红色运动。这是一件伟大的事情,许多人的生命因此得到了拯救。过去一年半的时间里,红色运动为全球 抗击艾滋病、结核病和疟疾基金带去了一亿美元,为贫困国家的近8万人提供了救命药品,帮助160多万人进行了HIV检测。这就是创造性的资本主义制度。创造性的资本主义制度不是什么新的、重大的经济理论,也不是对制度本身的抨击。它是一个关键问题的答案——如何最有效地传播资本主义制度的优势,向制度外人们提供生活质量上的重大改善?世界正在变好汽油零售价格超过每加仑4美元,人们正面临抵押贷款的支付困境,在这样的形势下谈论创造性的资本主义制度似乎有些奇怪。毫无疑问,当前经济正面 临着实际困境,人们认为这种困境很深,应当加以及时的关注。创造性的资本主义制度不是对经济周期相关的短期上行或下行趋势的答案,而是对太多人生活质量无 法改善的长期事实的回应。过去100年里,很多国家中人们的预期寿命大为延长,越来越多的人投票选举、表达自己的观点和享受经济自由所带来的乐趣。即使面 临这样或那样的问题,我们仍处于人类历史上的一个巅峰时期。世界正变得远远好于以前。现在的问题是,世界变好的速度不够快,而且不是对每个人来说都在变好。有10亿人每天的生活费不足1美元,他们吃不到营养足够丰富的食物、喝不 上干净的水或者用不上电。疫苗和微芯片等令人啧啧称奇的技术创新令许多人的生活变得更好,但对于那些贫困人群来说却形同陌路。这就是政府和非赢利组织应当 涉足的领域。在我看来,人性中有两个伟大的动力,那就是“自利”和“他利”。资本主义制度在“自利”方面起到了帮助性的、持续性的作用,但代表的只是那些有 支付能力的人;政府扶持和慈善事业则将“他利”导向那些没有支付能力的人。只有政府和非赢利组织履行了它们的职能,提供更多、更有效的扶持,世界才能在消 除仍旧存留的重大不公平问题上继续取得成功,如艾滋病、贫困现象和教育等。但是,如果我们将市场力量导向补充政府和非赢利组织工作的方向,那么这些问题得 到改善的日子将更快到来,并且延续更长时间。我们需要这样一个体系——它能以远好于今天的方式吸引改革者和公司。

2008年7月29日星期二

CSSCI来源期刊(2008-2009年)

(528种)
选刊说明 本目录根据中文社会科学引文索引指导委员会第七次会议确定的选刊的原则和方法遴选并报教育部批准确定。CSSCI来源期刊遴选的原则和方法是:根据中国社会科学研究评价中心提供的各学科期刊总被引次数、2004-2006三年他引影响因子及其加权值数据,对拟入选CSSCI来源期刊进行了定性评价,删除了属于一号多版、自然科学类以及编辑不规范等不符合CSSCI选刊标准的期刊,在考虑地区与学科合理布局的基础上遴选新年度来源期刊。本次确定528种期刊为2008-2009年CSSCI来源期刊。各学科类按类名汉语拼音顺序排列,每类期刊按总被引次数与2004-2006三年他引影响因子的加权值高低顺序排序。

学科分类(25类)
法学 21种
高校综合性社科学报 67种
管理学 29种
环境学 5种
教育学 37种
经济学 72种
考学 7种
历史学 26种
马克思主义 12种
民族学 13种
人文、经济地理 7种
社会学 9种
体育学 10种
统计学 4种
图书馆、情报与文献学 20种
外国文学 6种
心理学 7种
新闻学与传播学 15种
艺术学 19种
语言学 22种
哲学 12种
政治学 39种
中国文学 15种
宗教学 4种
综合性社科期刊 50种


备注】根据中文社会科学引文索引指导委员会第七次会议精神并凡属于一刊多版、一号多版的期刊,由于违背了2005年9月新闻出版总署发布的《期刊出版管理规定》文件规定,一律不予入选,对于已经入选的期刊,一经查实立即予以剔除。

法 学(21种)
序号
期刊名称
期 刊 信 息
1
法学研究
北京市东城区沙滩北街15号(100720) (010)64035471
2
中国法学
北京市西城区兵马司胡同63号(100034) (010)66188780
3
中外法学
北京大学法学楼5218室(100871) (010)62751689
4
政法论坛(07年10月后不再有副题名:中国政法大学学报)
北京市海淀区西土城路25号(100088) (010)58908281
5
法商研究
武汉市洪山区政院路1号(430073) (027)88386912
6
法学
上海市万航渡路1575号(200042) (021)62071924
7
法律科学:西北政法大学学报
西安市长安南路西北政法学院(710063) (029)85385160
8
法制与社会发展
长春市前进大街2699号(130012) (0431)85166050 85168640
9
法学评论
湖北武昌珞珈山(430072) (027)68752955
10
现代法学
重庆市沙坪坝区西南政法大学(400031) (023)65382256
11
环球法律评论
北京市东城区沙滩北街15号(100720)
(010)64014045
12
比较法研究
北京市海淀区西土城路25号(100088) (010)58908258
13
知识产权
北京海淀区蓟门桥西土城路6号(100088) (010)58515818 58515666
14
法学家
北京市海淀区中关村大街59号(100872) (010)62511292 82509250
15
法学论坛
济南市经十路9号(250014)
(0531)82923347
16
行政法学研究
北京市海淀区长春桥路6号国家行政学院(100089) (010)68929072
17
法学杂志
北京市丰台区成寿寺四方景园1区6号楼(100078)
(010)67640120
18
中国刑事法杂志
北京市石景山区鲁谷西路5号(100040) (010)68630197 68630206
19
政治与法律
上海市淮海中路622弄7号(200020) (021)53060606-2489
20
当代法学
长春市前进大街2699号(130012)
(0431)5166068
21
华东政法大学学报 (原名:华东政法学院学报,07年更名)
上海市万航渡路1575号(200042) (021)62071670
高校综合性社科学报(67种)
序号
期刊名称
期 刊 信 息
1
中国人民大学学报
北京市中关村大街59号(100872) (010)62511499
2
北京大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
北京大学学(100871) (010)62751216
3
北京师范大学学报(社会科学版)
北京市新街口外大街19号(100875) (010)58807848
4
复旦学报(社会科学版)
复旦大学(200433) (021)65642109
5
南京大学学报(哲学·人文科学·社会科学)
南京市汉口路22号(210093) (025)3592704
6
南开学报(哲学社会科学版)
天津市卫津路94号(300071) (022)23501681
7
吉林大学社会科学学报
长春市前进大街2699号(130012) (0431)5166970
8
中山大学学报(社会科学版)
广州新港西路135号(510275) (020)84111990
9
厦门大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
厦门大学(361005)(0592)2182366
10
清华大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
北京市海淀区(100084) (010)62783533
11
上海财经大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
上海市武东路321号乙(200434) (021)65904892
12
武汉大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
湖北武昌珞珈山(430072) (027)68754203
13
华中师范大学学报(人文社会科学版)
武昌桂子山(430079) (027)67868127
14
西安交通大学学报(社会科学版)
西安市咸宁西路28号(710049) (029)82663982 82667978
15
求是学刊
哈尔滨南岗区学府路74号(150080) (0451)86608815
16
南京农业大学学报(社会科学版)
南京市卫岗1号(210095)(025)84396306
17
浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版)
杭州市天目山路148号(310028) (0571)88273210 88925616,
18
南京师大学报(社会科学版)
南京市宁海路122号(210097)(025)83598341
19
西北师大学报(社会科学版)
兰州市安宁东路967号(730070) (0931)7971692
20
四川大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
四川省成都市望江路29号文科楼156室(610064) (028)85412440
21
东北师大学报(哲学社会科学版)
长春市人民大街5268号(130024) (0431)85099325 85098026
22
华东师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
上海市中山北路3663号(200062) (021)62232305
23
陕西师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
西安市长安南路陕西师范大学(710062) (029)85308849
24
湖南大学学报(社会科学版)
长沙岳麓山(410082)(0731)8822900
25
西南大学学报(人文社会科学版。原:西南师范大学学报)
重庆市北碚区西南师范大学学报(400715) (023)68252538
26
湘潭大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
湖南省湘潭市(411105)
27
北京工商大学学报(社会科学版)
北京市海淀区阜成路33号北京工商大学(100037) (010)68984614
28
暨南学报(哲学社会科学版)
广州市石牌(510632) (020)85220281 85224092
29
西北大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
西安市太白北路229号(710069) (029)88302822
30
郑州大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
郑州市科学大道100号(450001) (0371)67781275
31
山西大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
太原坞城路92号山西大学(030006) (0351)7018311
32
兰州大学学报(社会科学版)
兰州大学(730000) (0931)8912706 2312707
33
首都师范大学学报(社会科学版)
北京西三环北路105号(100037) (010)68902450
34
河南师范大学学报(哲社版)
新乡市建设路河南师范大学(453007)(0373)3326281
35
天津师范大学学报(社会科学版)
河西区卫津路241号(300074) (022)23541014 23540081
36
上海交通大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
上海市华山路1954号1000号信箱(200030) (021)62933089
37
武汉大学学报(人文科学版)
湖北武昌珞珈山(430072) (027)68754203
38
中国农业大学学报(社会科学版)
北京海淀区清华东路17号(100083)(010)62736933
39
华南农业大学学报(社科版)
广州市五山华南农业大学(510642)(020)38675026
40
天津大学学报(社会科学版)
天津市南开区(300072)
41
山东大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
济南市山大南路27号(250100) (0531)88364645
42
华中科技大学学报(社会科学版)
武汉市珞瑜路1037号(430074) (027)87543816
43
安徽大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
安徽合肥安徽大学(230039) (0551)5107719 5107157
44
重庆大学学报(社会科学版)
重庆市沙坪坝正街174号(400030)(023)65102306
45
东南大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
南京四牌楼2号(210096) (025)83791190
46
福州大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
福建省福州市工业路523号(350002) (0591)87892444
47
湖南师范大学社会科学学报
湖南长沙岳麓山(410081) (0731)8872209 8872471
48
福建师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
福州市仓山区(350007)
49
武汉理工大学学报(社会科学版)
武汉市武昌区和平大道1040号50号信箱(430063)(027)86553823
50
内蒙古大学学报(人文社会科学版)
呼和浩特市赛罕区大学西路235号(010021) (0471)4992004
51
北京交通大学学报(社会科学版)
北京市海淀区西直门外上园村3号(100044)(010)51682711
52
中国地质大学学报(社会科学版)
中国武汉市鲁磨路388号(430074)(027)67885186
53
北京林业大学学报(社会科学版)
北京市海淀区清华东路35号(100083)(010)62337919
54
杭州师范学院学报(社会科学版)
杭州市下沙高教园学林街16号(310036)(0571)28865871
55
同济大学学报(社会科学版)
上海市四平路1239号(200092)(021)65983944
56
烟台大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
山东烟台(264005)(0535)6902703
57
大连理工大学学报(社会科学版)
大连市凌工路2号(116024)(0411)84708305
58
深圳大学学报(人文社会科学版)
深圳大学(518060) (0755)6536133
59
齐鲁学刊
山东·曲阜(273165) (0537)4455347
60
湖北大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
武汉市武昌区学院路11号(430062)(027)88663900
61
东北大学学报(社会科学版)
沈阳南湖东北大学(110004)(024)83687253
62
河北大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
河北省保定市五四东路180号(071002) (0312)5079412
63
华南师范大学学报(社会科学版)
华南师范大学学报杂志社(广州石牌)(510631) (020)85211440
64
宁夏大学学报(人文社会科学版)
宁夏银川西夏区文萃北街217号(750021) (0951)2061793 2061735
65
上海师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
上海市桂林路100号(200234) (021)64322304
66
海南大学学报(人文社会科学版)
海南省海口市(570228) (0898)66279237
67
云南师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)
昆明市一二·一大街298号(650092) (0871)5516038 管 理 学(29种)
序号
期刊名称
期 刊 信 息
1
管理世界
北京市海淀区大钟寺8号3层(100098)(010)62112235 62111169
2
科研管理
北京市海淀区中关村东路55号8712信箱(100080) (010)62555521
3
中国软科学
北京市西城区三里河路54号270室(100045)(010)68598270 68598286
4
科学学研究
北京中关村东路55号8712信箱(100080)(010)62622031
5
外国经济与管理
上海市武东路321号乙(200434) (021)65904367
6
南开管理评论
天津市南开区卫津路94号南开大学商学院(300071) (022)23505995
7
管理科学学报
天津南开区卫津路92号天津大学(300072)(022)27403197
8
研究与发展管理
上海市邯郸路220号复旦大学管理学院(200433)(021)65643679
9
中国管理科学
北京海淀区中关村东路55号(100080) (010)62542629
10
管理工程学报
杭州市古墩路浙江大学紫金港校区(310058) (0571)88206832
11
科学学与科学技术管理
天津市河东区新开路138号科技创新大厦(300011) (022)24437122 24324911
12
预测
合肥工业大学290信箱(230009) (0551)2901500
13
管理科学
哈尔滨市南岗区法院街13号(150001) (0451)86414056
14
科学管理研究
呼和浩特市新城西街47号汇通饭店415室(010010) (0471) 5883717
15
中国科技论坛
北京海淀区玉渊潭南路8号,北京3814信箱(100038) (010)58884593 58884595
16
中国行政管理
北京西安门大街22号,中南海1745信箱(100017) (010)83083324 63099125
17
管理评论
北京市中关村东路80号7号楼112室(100080)(010)82680674
18
经济管理
北京月坛北小街2号(100836) (010)68019057 68039094 68768091
19
软科学
成都市人民南路4段11号5楼(610041) (028)85221835
20
公共管理学报
哈尔滨市南岗区法院街13号(150001)0451-86402009 0451-86402009
21
经济体制改革
四川省成都市青羊宫省社科院(610072) (028)87016562
22
科技进步与对策
武汉市洪山路2号湖北科教大厦D座5楼(430071) (027)87277556 87277066
23
管理现代化
北京市朝阳区安华西里一区13号楼(100011)(010)64249510 64263335-3212
24
科技管理研究
广州市连新路171号,广东国际科技中心307(510033) (020)83568469
25
中国人力资源开发
北京市西城区百万庄子区38号(100037) (010) 88363164 88364504-3163
26
管理学报
武汉市洪山区珞喻路1037号(430074)027-87542154
27
宏观经济管理
北京市西城区三里河国家发展改革委(100824) (010)68391537 68539228
28
华东经济管理
安徽合肥市望江东路115号(230059)(0551)3425621
29
现代管理科学
南京市北京西路70号22号楼(210013)(025)83206820图书馆、情报与文献学(20种)
序号
期刊名称
期 刊 信 息
1
中国图书馆学报
北京中关村南大街33号(100081) (010)88545141
2
大学图书馆学报
北京大学图书馆302室(100871) (010)62759056
3
情报学报
北京市复兴路15号(100038) (010)68598273
4
图书情报工作
北京市中关村北四环西路33号(100080) (010)82623933
5
情报理论与实践
北京2413信箱10分箱(100089) (010)68961793
6
图书情报知识
武汉市珞珈山武汉大学信息管理学院(430072) (027)68754437-8502
7
图书馆
长沙市韶山北路169号(410011) (0731)4174148
8
现代图书情报技术
北京中关村北四环西路33号(100080) (010)82624938
9
情报资料工作
北京张自忠路3号(100007) (010)64057499
10
图书馆建设
哈尔滨市长江路218号(150090)(0451)85990515
11
情报科学
长春市人民大街5988号(130022) (0431)85095200
12
图书馆论坛
广州文明路213号(510110) (020)83825705
13
图书馆杂志
上海市淮海中路1555号上海图书馆(200031) (021)64455503
14
国家图书馆学刊
北京市中关村南大街33号(100081)(010)88545737
15
图书馆工作与研究
天津市南开区复康路15号(300191) (022)23368221
16
情报杂志
西安市雁塔路南段99号(710054) (029)85529749
17
图书馆学研究
长春市新民大街1162号(130021)(0431)85642935
18
图书与情报
兰州市南滨河东路488号(730000) (0931)8270072
19
档案学研究
北京市宣武区永安路106号(100050) (010)63018706 63020081
20
档案学通讯
北京张自忠路3号(100007) (010)64035109 教 育 学(37种)
序号
期刊名称
期 刊 信 息
1
教育研究
北京市北三环中路46号(100088) (010)82014985
2
高等教育研究
武昌喻家山华中科技大学(430074) (027)87543893
3
北京大学教育评论
北京大学教育评论编辑部(100871)(010)62751216 62754971
4
电化教育研究
兰州市安宁东路967号西北师范大学(730070) (0931)7971823
5
华东师范大学学报(教科版)
上海市中山北路3663号(200062) (021)62232305
6
比较教育研究
北京新街口外大街19号北京师范大学国际与比较教育研究所(100875)(010)58808310
7
清华大学教育研究
北京清华大学文南楼403室(100084)(010)62788995
8
教师教育研究
北京师范大学(100875) (010)58807942
9
教育与经济
武汉华中师范大学教科院(430079) (027)67865330
10
中国电化教育
北京复兴门内大街160号(100031)(010)66490924
11
教育研究与实验
武昌桂子山华中师大三号楼(430079) (027)67868275
12
教育发展研究
上海市茶陵北路21号(200032) (021)64038952 34311989
13
教育理论与实践
山西省太原市解放路东头道巷9号(030009) (0351)5604632 5604616
14
课程·教材·教法
北京市海淀区中关村南大街17号院1号楼(100081) (010)58758977
15
中国远程教育
北京市海淀区西四环中路45号(100039) (010)68182520
16
全球教育展望
上海市中山北路3663号(200062) (021)62232938
17
中国高等教育
北京市海淀区文慧园北路10号(100082) (010)62243806
18
开放教育研究
上海市大连路1541号1301室(200086) (021)65631403
19
教育科学
大连市黄河路850号(116029) (0411)84258254
20
外国教育研究
长春市人民大街5268号(130024) (0431)5098501
21
学位与研究生教育
北京中关村南大街5号(100081) (010)68912292
22
复旦教育论坛
上海市邯郸路220号(200433)(021)55664241
23
现代教育技术
北京清华大学电教中心(100084) (010)62782405
24
中国高教研究
北京西单大木仓胡同35号教育部中国高等教育学会(100816)
25
现代大学教育
湖南长沙市岳麓山中南大学(410083)(0731)8876856
26
中国教育学刊
北京西单大木仓胡同35号(100816) (010)64845699
27
中国特殊教育
中国北京北三环中路46号(100088) (010)62003358 62003367
28
江苏高教
南京市草场门石头城9号(210013) (025)83718422
29
教育学报
北京市新街口外大街19号北京师范大学英东教育楼教育学院(100875) )(010)58805288
30
高教探索
广州市小北路155号(510045) (020)83566017
31
高等工程教育研究
湖北武汉华中科技大学(430074) (027)87542950
32
中国大学教学
北京西城区德胜门外大街4号(100011) (010)58581864
33
国家教育行政学院学报
北京大兴(102617)(010)69260513
34
远程教育杂志
浙江省杭州市教工路42号(310012)(0571)88065047
35
教育与现代化
安徽合肥金寨路96号中国科技大学(230026)(0551)3602252
36
教育科学研究
北京市朝阳区北四环东路95号(100101)(010)84649579
37
思想理论教育导刊
北京西城区德外大街4号(100011)(010)58581398 经 济 学(72种)
序号
期刊名称
期 刊 信 息
1
经济研究
北京市阜外月坛北小街2号(100836) (010)68034153
2
中国工业经济
北京市阜外月坛北小街2号(100836) (010)68032678
3
世界经济
北京市建国门内大街5号(100732) (010)85195790
4
金融研究
北京市西城区成方街32号2号楼(100800) (010)66195402 66195205
5
会计研究
北京市复兴门外三里河财政部(100820) (010)68528922
6
中国农村经济
北京市建国门内大街5号(100732) (010)85195650
7
国际经济评论
北京市建国门内大街5号15层(100732) (010)85195773
8
经济科学
北京大学法学楼4层(100871) (010)62751488
9
中国农村观察
北京市建国门内大街5号(100732) (010)85195649
10
世界经济文汇
上海市邯郸路220号(200433)(021)65643136
11
经济学动态
北京市阜外月坛北小街2号(100836) (010)68051607
12
经济社会体制比较
北京市西城区西斜街36号(100032) (010)66179690
13
农业经济问题
北京市中关村南大街12号(100081) (010)68918705
14
财贸经济
北京市阜外月坛北小街2号(100836) (010)68034659
15
财经研究
上海市武东路321号乙(200434) (021)65904345
16
国际金融研究
北京市复兴门内大街1号(100818) (010)66594062 66594110
17
改革
重庆市江北区桥北村270号(400020) (023)67767553
18
南开经济研究
天津市卫津路94号(300071) (022)23508250
19
经济理论与经济管理
北京市中关村大街31号(100080) (010)62510762
20
经济学家
四川成都外西光华村55号(610074) (028)87352023 87352177
21
数量经济技术经济研究
北京市建国门内大街5号(100732) (010)85195717
22
世界经济研究
上海市淮海中路622弄7号472室(西区)(200020) (021)63845104
23
经济评论
武汉市武昌珞珈山(430072) (027)68754563
24
审计研究
北京市西城区西直门外南路5号(100044) (010)64066070
25
中国社会经济史研究
厦门大学399信箱(361005) (0592)2186377 5710386
26
财经科学
成都市外西光华村街55号(610074) (028)87352248
27
国际贸易问题
北京市朝阳区惠新东街10号对外经济贸易大学129信箱(100029) (010)64492403
28
上海经济研究
上海市淮海中路622弄7号501室(200020) (021)53060606-2501
29
财经问题研究
大连市黑石礁东北财经大学杂志社(116025) (0411)84710514 84710524
30
产业经济研究
南京市铁路北街128号(210003)(025)83495926
31
当代经济科学
西安市雁塔西路76号西安交大169信箱(710061) (029)85222048 82657048
32
财经论丛:浙江财经学院学报
杭州市文一西路83号(310012) (0571)88922750
33
宏观经济研究
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2008年7月9日星期三

2008年6月29日星期日

THE FINANCIAL CRISES OF CAPITALISM

THE FINANCIAL CRISES OF CAPITALISM


By Samuel Brittan
Thursday, June 05, 2008


“He believed in individual choice exercised through the market place, and that people must accept the consequences of the choices they made . . . At the same time he was well aware that there were many people who needed protection from the unintended but indisputable negative aspects of a market economy” such as unemployment, financial hardship in illness, and lack of access to the essentials of life if certain market prices rose to unaffordable levels.
This was the belief of Peter Thorneycroft, an unjustly forgotten UK Conservative party politician prominent in the 1950s and 1960s, summarised by Stanley Crooks in a belated and well merited biography (George Mann Publications, £25), enlivened by some of Thorneycroft's own engaging sketches and watercolours.
The simple creed just stated served Thorneycroft well enough as president of the board of trade in Winston Churchill's first postwar cabinet. But it required supplementation when, as chancellor of the exchequer in 1957, he was hit by a run on the pound; a badly divided official Treasury was in no position to give it. The resulting confusion and lack of support from Harold Macmillan, the prime minister, led to his resignation.


Today there is more of a consensus on what might be called, to coin a phrase, “steering the economy”, focusing on ideas such as central bank independence, inflation targets, long-term budgetary guidelines and floating exchange rates. The consensus may not be all it is cracked up to be. But the embarrassment to supporters of a market economy now lies in a different direction, namely the instability of credit and banking.
It does not matter how many times the more sensible economic liberals have stressed the importance of stable monetary and financial conditions as part of the background conditions necessary for markets and prices to work satisfactorily. Any failures on the financial side are sure to bring the opponents of capitalism out of their burrows. Pundits who until recently conceded that “capitalism is the only game in town” are now rejoicing at what they hope is the longed-for death agony of the system.
Recent events have also caught many mainstream economists with their pants down. They have too readily assumed that central banks can make at least short-term nominal interest rates what they like and have concentrated on esoteric exercises on the path they should follow.
The beginning of wisdom is to recognise that financial booms and busts have been a feature of capitalism from the very start. Indeed they are as deep-rooted as human gullibility and greed. This is impressively documented in Charles Kindleberger's Manias, Panics and Crashes, the last edition of which appeared in 1989. He has a table listing more than 30 such events, starting with the South Sea bubble of 1720 and ending with the New York Stock Exchange crash of 1987. Although some analysts have tried to discern a periodicity in their occurrence, I can only see an irregular succession with some crises succeeding each other at intervals of about a decade so beloved by old-fashioned business cycle theorists, but others coming hot on the heels of their predecessors after only a couple of years. Their frequency tempts one to parody Churchill: capitalism is a bad system, but the others are worse.
Kindleberger does not claim to have a rigorous theory of such crises, but he does discern a pattern. Basically some event – or events – changes the economic outlook. New opportunities for profit are seized and overdone “in ways so closely resembling irrationality as to constitute a mania”. Once the excess is realised “the financial system experiences a sort of distress, in the course of which the rush to reverse the expansion process may become so precipitous as to resemble panic”. In a panic the reverse movement takes place “with a crash in the prices of commodities, houses, buildings, lands, stocks, bonds – in short whatever has been the subject of the mania”.
The mention of commodities alerts us to what is different about the present panic, perhaps ominously so. The author has no panacea; nor does he claim that these crises are harmless. But he does not believe that policy is impotent and he strongly supports central bank lender of last resort operations, if possible at an international level. He does not discuss regulatory reform very much: perhaps he suspects that it is mostly an attempt to bolt the stable door after all the horses have fled.
One striking feature of recent events is how slow they have been to hit the real economy. Although the credit crunch was first discerned last August no major area has yet recorded a downturn in activity, as distinct from a growth slowdown. This suggests not that the crisis is coming to an end but that it is slow-burning. The ominous feature is the one I have already hinted at in my reference to the continued trend rise in commodity prices, which could well be part of a long-term shift in the terms of trade against the industrial west, as well perhaps as part of a shift in political and economic power. Here is an area where it will be necessary to adapt to market movements rather than to attempt to reverse them by ill-considered intervention.



没有金融危机 就没有资本主义


作者:英国《金融时报》专栏作家塞缪尔·布里坦(Samuel Brittan)
2008年6月5日 星期四


“
他相信通过市场进行的个人选择,相信人们必须接受自己选择的后果……与此同时,他非常清楚,有很多人需要保护,以免遭受市场经济无可否认的非故意负面因素的影响”,比如说失业,疾病导致的财务窘境,以及某些市场价格升至无法承受的水平时,无法获得生活必需品。
这是斯坦利•库鲁克斯(Stanley Crooks)在一本姗姗来迟、评价中肯的传记(乔治•曼恩出版社出版,售价25英镑)中对彼得•霍尼戈夫(Peter Thorneycroft)信仰的总结。霍尼戈夫是一位不幸被遗忘的活跃于上世纪五、六十年代的英国保守党政治人物。霍尼戈夫亲手绘制的一些素描和水彩画增加了本书的生气。
上述简单信条在霍尼戈夫出任温斯顿•丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)战后首任内阁的贸易委员会主席期间颇有裨益。


但需要补充的是,在1957年出任财政大臣期间,霍尼戈夫遭遇了英镑贬值;意见严重分歧的英国财政部无力解决危机。由此产生的混乱以及缺乏首相哈罗德•麦克米伦的支持(Harold Macmillan),最终导致了霍尼戈夫辞职。
时至今日,人们已经对所谓的“调控经济”有了更多共识,专注于央行独立、通胀目标、长期预算方针和浮动汇率等理念。
这种共识或许没有它所标榜的那样好。不过,市场经济支持者如今面临的窘境出自不同方向,即信贷和银行体系的不稳定。
比较明智的经济自由派人士多次强调,作为市场和价格满意运行必需的背景条件,货币政策和金融状况的稳定至关重要。但这一切都无济于事。金融层面的任何偏差,都必将令资本主义的反对者卷土重来。那些不久以前还承认“资本主义是城里唯一游戏”的批评人士如今都在欢呼雀跃,希望这是自己所期盼的资本主义制度的垂死挣扎。
近期事件也让很多主流经济学家颇为尴尬。他们过于轻易地就假定,央行至少能将短期利率维持在自己乐见的水平,并在他们应走的路线上进行秘密操作。
智慧之起源,就在于认识到金融盛衰从一开始就是资本主义的特色。的确,它们和人类轻信与贪婪的本性一样根深蒂固。查尔斯•金德尔伯格(Charles Kindleberger)的《癫狂、恐慌与崩溃》(Manias, Panics and Crashes)对此作了出色的记载。该书的最后一个版本在1989年出版。金德尔伯格在一份表格中列出了30多起次类事件,从1720年的南海泡沫开始,到1987年纽约证交所(New York Stock Exchange)的崩盘结束。虽然一些分析师试图找到这些事件发生的周期性,但我看到的只是无规律的周而复始,一些危机彼此之间的间隔约为10年——传统商业周期理论家最喜欢的周期,而另一些危机在上一次危机过后短短几年就接踵而至。这种频率让人不由得想借用丘吉尔的话:资本主义是个差劲的体制,但其它体制更糟。
金德尔伯格并未声称建立了关于此类危机的严格理论,但他确实发现了一种模式。大体而言,某个事件——或某些事件——会改变经济前景。人们抓住获取利润的新机会,“以一种近乎无理性的方式”过度利用,“以至于形成了一种癫狂”。过度一旦成为现实,“金融系统就会遭遇危难,在此过程中,匆忙扭转扩张进程的行动可能会变得过急,以至类似于恐慌”。在恐慌中,逆转行动的发生“伴随着价格的暴跌,涉及大宗商品、住房、建筑、土地、股票及债券——简言之,任何容易受到癫狂的事物”。
对大宗商品的提及,就当前恐慌的不同之处向我们发出了警告,也许这是不祥之兆。作者没有万能药,也没有宣称这些危机无害。但他的确相信,政策对此无能为力,并强烈支持央行作为最终贷款人的操作,如有可能,最好在国际层面上进行。他没有过多探讨监管改革:也许他怀疑那多半属于亡羊补牢之举。
最近这些事件的一个显著特点是,它们对实体经济的影响极其缓慢。尽管信贷危机早在去年8月就已为人所察觉,但迄今尚未出现主要经济领域活动的下滑——下滑与增长放缓是有区别的。这并不意味着危机即将结束,而是意味着这是一场“慢热型”的危机。而不祥的一面是我曾经提到的大宗商品价格持续上涨趋势,它很可能是西方工业国贸易条件长期恶化的组成部分,可能也是政治和经济实力转移的一部分。在这个领域,我们必须适应市场变动,而不是进行考虑欠佳的干预,企图逆转市场走向。
译者/管自力 管婧
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