A Study of Productive Expenditure Bias in County-level Finance in China

中国县级决策者主要对上级负责 , 追求尽可能高的经济增长率 , 而非居民福利最 大化 , 导致其财政决策偏向生产性支出。基于2067个县(市)2001—2005年财政经济 数据的实证检验,为县级财政生产性支出偏向的存在提供了有力的证据。生产性支出 偏向严重地妨碍公共财政体制的建设和向公共服务型政府的转型。解决这一问题的根 本出路在于逐步增强县级政府满足本地居民需求的激励。

关键词: 财政支出结构 财政支出偏向 县级政府

Being responsible mainly to their superiors, decision-makers at the county level in China pursue the maximum growth rate rather than their residents’ welfare. This leads to a preference for productive expenditure in their fiscal decisions. An empirical test based on 2,067 counties (cities) provides robust evidence for the existence of productive expenditure bias at the county level. Such bias causes a serious impediment to the construction of a system of public finance and the transformation to public service-oriented government in China. An appropriate solution to this problem is to gradually enhance incentives for county- level governments to satisfy the demands of local residents.     

Corporate Governance and Firm Performance: A Sociological Analysis Based on Chinese Experience

Based on the 1997-2007 panel data of 676 listed companies and in-depth interviews with the senior executives, independent directors, fund managers and securities analysts of these companies, this paper tries to analyze the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance from a sociological perspective. The results show that the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance in the Chinese institutional environment is sharply different from the predictions of the agency theory. The empirical findings from China lend strong support to the new institutional argument that “best” corporate governance practices are socially “constructed” by various social forces and interests groups in specific social, political and cultural contexts, and how “good” a corporate governance practice is depends to a large extent on whether it fits in with the institutional environment in which it is embedded. There exists no universally “best” model of corporate governance across the world. Our empirical sociological study based on Chinese experience offers new perspectives and evidence for deconstructing the global myth of corporate governance.     

Does International Economic Integration Lead to a Cleaner Production in China?

In contrast to the Pollution Haven Hypothesis, the Trade‐Up Hypothesis holds that international integration helps improve firms' environmental performance in developing countries. Using firm‐level data from Shanghai, this article examines how international linkages, in the form of foreign direct investment or international trade, affect firms' environmental compliance and performance. We find that firms with international linkage via ownership exhibit better compliance with environmental regulation and emit less pollution than firms with no international linkage. We also find that firms with international linkage via market exposure are more likely to exhibit better compliance with environmental regulation than firms with no international linkage, but find no evidence that the former emit less pollution than the latter. This provides a piece of empirical evidence for the Trade‐Up Hypothesis.     

中国生育政策的系统模拟与比较选择--以浙江省为例

文章以浙江省为例,以分年龄、性别独生子女、非独生子女数据为基础,对未来46种生育政策方案、2665种方案组合,经过长时期、大跨度的模拟测算,多指标联合逐步淘汰法定量和定性的比较选择,结果表明,兼顾人口数量控制、年龄结构改善、经济社会发展需求、资源环境可持续发展的需要,现行生育政策可再稳定15～20年.     

中国高龄老人日常生活自理能力的个体因素和区域因素分析——HLM模型在老年健康领域中的应用

据联合国预测,到2050年,我国老年人绝对数将达4.4亿,占全国总人口的29.7%(UN,1998)。如此庞大且脆弱的人口群体,其健康状况的好坏并非单纯表现为一个生物或医疗问题,而且还是涉及我国长期人口安全及和谐社会构建的社会议题。众多学者将ADL(Activities of Daily Living)丧失视为老年人最主要的健康问题(宋新明等,2000),它不仅严重影响老年人自身的活动自由,而且还会给家庭以及社会带来繁重负担。本文的研究目的有三个方面:一是中国高龄老人ADL状况是否存在显著的省际差异?二是如果这种差异存在,究竟哪些微观个体因素和宏观区域因素是主…     

Personal Values as Mitigating Factors in the Link Between Income and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Using data from the first two rounds of the European Social Survey, we examine the link between income, reference income and life satisfaction across Western Europe. We find that whilst there is a strong positive relationship between income and life satisfaction, reference or comparison income exerts a strong negative influence. Interestingly, our results confirm the importance of personal values and beliefs not only as predictors of subjective well-being, but also as mitigating factors in the relationship between income, reference income and life satisfaction. While our findings provide additional empirical support for the relative utility hypothesis, they are also consistent with Rojas’ (J Econ Psychol 28:1–14, 2007) Conceptual-Referent-Theory (CRT), which is based on the premise that the salience of income and comparison income depends on one’s intrinsic values and personal beliefs.

A Note on the Invariance Law for Surrogate Dimension Reduction

In this article, we give an alternative and much shorter proof for the invariance law of surrogate dimension reduction for measurement error regression that was established by Li and Yin (2007 Li , B. , Yin , X. ( 2007 ). On surrogate dimension reduction for measurement error regression: an invariance law . Ann. Statist. 35 : 2143 – 2172 . [Google Scholar]).     

马克斯·韦伯文明史研究方法中的问题意识与逻辑链

人们对马克斯·韦伯的理解向来多有歧异.文明史研究的视角有助于解决这种歧异.文明史研究需要多学科、多维度视野,韦伯的文明史研究具有同样的特征.这也是韦伯的问题意识与方法上的广泛地批判借用所决定.在韦伯寻找对问题的解答中实际蕴涵了三条值得注意的逻辑链.这些逻辑链对于研究文明史中的转型问题具有重要意义.     

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公元11世纪后我国气候显著变冷,由此发生了农业生产、土壤、植被的显著恶化,游牧民族与汉族力量对比的适应性变化,中国人口和经济重心的适应性南移,以及在此基础上对中国传统政府统治模式所造成的巨大挑战。理解这一气候变化及其经济动态影响,乃是理解11世纪后两宋时期经济发展和政府治理出现新气象的重要理论前提和基础;对研究当代气候变暖具有一定现实意义。     

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