Trust and Estate Planning: The Emergence of a Profession and Its Contribution to Socioeconomic Inequality1

This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by examining the impact of trust and estate planners on global wealth stratification. While many studies treat the professions as mirrors of inequalities in their environments, this article looks at the ways professionals participate in the creation of stratification regimes. Trust and estate planners do this by sheltering their clients' assets from taxation, thereby preserving private wealth for future generations. Using tools such as trusts, offshore banks, and shell corporations, these professionals keep a significant portion of the world’s private wealth beyond the reach of the state. Trust and estate planning thus contributes to creating and maintaining socioeconomic inequality on a global scale. The significance of the profession has grown as wealth itself has become more fungible, spurring innovation in legal, organizational, and financial strategies, and thwarting a myriad of laws and policies designed to limit enduring inequality in modern, democratic societies.     

The Sociology of International Migration: Where We Have Been; Where Do We Go from Here?1

Controversies about international migration expose the changing structure of and underlying assumptions about societal membership in many nations. The sociology of international migration has emerged as an increasingly important subfield over the past decade in large part because it has tended to move beyond more narrow economic and demographic problems and has begun to address this fundamentally sociological issue. In the future it will be particularly important that sociologists pay attention to how demographically changing societies define who is and is not a member. As such, legal status and the role of the state has become critically important.     

Bargaining over waiting time in ultimatum game experiments

While preference-based explanations play an increasing role in economics and sociology, the accurate measurement of social preferences deserves more attention. Most laboratory experiments measure social preferences by studying the division of “a cake that nobody had to bake” (Güth and Kliemt, 2003). This article reports results of the first ultimatum game experiment with bargaining over waiting time. The experiment was created to avoid effects of windfall gains. In contrast to donated money, time is not endowed by the experimenter and implies a natural loss to subjects. This allows for a better measurement of the inherent conflict in the ultimatum game. We implemented three anonymity conditions; one baseline condition, one condition with anonymity among subjects and one double-blind condition in which the experimenter did not know the division of waiting time. While we expected to observe less other-regarding behavior in ultimatum game bargaining over time, our experimental results rather confirm previous ultimatum game experiments, in which people bargained over money. The modal offer was half of the waiting time and only one offer was rejected. Interestingly, anonymity did not change the results significantly. In conclusion, our experiment confirms other-regarding behavior in the ultimatum game.     

基于公平关切线上与线下销售渠道演化博弈研究

公平关切影响决策行为,为分析公平关切对线上与线下销售渠道决策行为和竞争策略影响,构建线上与线下销售渠道博弈模型。基于博弈模型,对比分析四种公平关切情况对线上与线下决策变量和利润影响。进一步,为获得线上与线下稳定博弈结果,基于四种公平关切构建演化博弈模型,分析不同公平关切行为对销售渠道参与者决策行为影响。研究主要得到：一方采取公平关切时,会减少另一方收益;一方采取合作公平关切策略与另一方采取公平关切密切相关,也即当一方采取公平关切概率大于某一阀值时,另一方采取不公平关切;线上与线下经过长期演化博弈,演化稳定点为双方都采取公平关切。     

Evaluation of multi-objective optimization approaches for solving green supply chain design problems

This paper evaluates the applicability of different multi-objective optimization methods for environmentally conscious supply chain design. We analyze a case study with three objectives: costs, CO₂ and fine dust (also known as PM – Particulate Matters) emissions. We approximate the Pareto front using the weighted sum and epsilon constraint scalarization methods with pre-defined or adaptively selected parameters, two popular evolutionary algorithms, SPEA2 and NSGA-II, with different selection strategies, and their interactive counterparts that incorporate Decision Maker׳s (DM׳s) indirect preferences into the search process. Within this case study, the CO₂ emissions could be lowered significantly by accepting a marginal increase of costs over their global minimum. NSGA-II and SPEA2 enabled faster estimation of the Pareto front, but produced significantly worse solutions than the exact optimization methods. The interactive methods outperformed their a posteriori counterparts, and could discover solutions corresponding better to the DM preferences. In addition, by adjusting appropriately the elicitation interval and starting generation of the elicitation, the number of pairwise comparisons needed by the interactive evolutionary methods to construct a satisfactory solution could be decreased.     

法律经济学视野中的惩罚性赔偿

应用经济学分析工具论证了惩罚性赔偿制度的合理性与独创性。重点讨论了对合同关系中存在欺诈和重大过失的情形下适用该制度的可行性和积极意义,指出惩罚性赔偿制度在防止出现合同欺诈和重大过失方面具有其独特的遏制功能。在对现行的赔偿标准弊端进行分析的基础上认为可以借鉴国外相关立法,并参照我国现行个人所得税征收标准,建立起以分段函数作为指导的弹性的惩罚性赔偿标准。     

新制度经济学视角下的廉价政府建设研究

新制度经济学是用经济学的方法研究制度的科学,为廉价政府建设提供了新的视角。针对我国行政成本过高而行政效率偏低的现状,在廉价政府建设中,应以交易费用理论、产权理论、企业理论、制度均衡和制度变迁等新制度经济学理论为基础,采取精简政府机构,构建公共财政框架;推行公共服务市场化,推进政府管理机制创新;加强审计监督,置政府行为于法律规范和监督之下,科学决策,选择合理的制度变迁方式等方式建构廉价政府。     

会计信息质量的制度经济学分析

会计信息质量的失真直接影响到一个单位会计数据的真实性和准确性。会计信息失真、企业诚信缺失已经成为社会进步的一个障碍。运用制度经济学的交易费用、产权理论以及委托-代理关系来分析由于会计制度的不完善所带来的会计信息失真,提出相应的治理对策。     

新制度经济学的国家理论及其现代意义

新制度经济学国家理论在内容上包括国家起源理论、"诺思悖论"、国家在产权制度形成中的作用、国家与制度创新和国家与制度变迁的关系等。这一理论对中国政府改革与实践的启示意义是:政府与规则的创建密不可分;要从制度的需求和供给方面发挥国家在制度变迁中的作用;发挥政府的作用,努力消除"诺思悖论";充分发挥国家在制度创新中的作用;充分发挥国家在产权制度变迁中的作用。     

21世纪:通货紧缩与通货膨胀谁主沉浮

世纪之交 ,通货紧缩的现实 ,对通货膨胀提出了挑战 ;通货紧缩就是指价格水平的持续下降 ;由于高新科技的迅猛发展对价格水平运动具有两重作用 ,高新科技的迅猛发展并不必然导致劳动生产率的提高和价格水平的降低 ,甚至出现“劳动生产率悖论” ,成为促使价格水平上涨的一个动因 ,所以“技术型通货紧缩”否定不了通货膨胀 ;当前世界各国对付通货紧缩措施的实质都是通货膨胀的政策 ;从对 2 1世纪通货紧缩的展望来看 ,通货紧缩也不否定通货膨胀 ,通货膨胀远未投降 ,它只是披上了新的更加危险的外衣。从全球的经济现实来看 ,促使通货膨胀和价格水平上涨的的结构性因素及微观内生机制依然存在 ,通货膨胀并没有“寿终正寝” ,世纪性的物价上涨并未结束 ,通货膨胀依然是新世纪经济学的主要“敌人” ,人类驾驭和对付通货膨胀的道路仍很漫长。