A Realistic Path to Implementing China’s Budget Law

The core issue for the implementation of modern budget law is to optimize the satisfaction of society’s demand for public goods. The form of implementation mechanism that will best achieve this goal has thus become a major topic in the field of legal research. To go beyond the Anglo-Saxon budget model and construct a realistic path for the implementation of China’s budget law, this issue needs to be explored from the perspective of Chinese citizens in a way that safeguards the fundamental interests of the people and is premised on upholding and improving the People’s Congress system, so as to achieve a balance between internal and external budget allocation relationships. There are three routes to implementing China’s budget law: the political, the social, and the judicial. Under the first, citizens’ political identity interests are represented by deputies who oversee the budgetary powers of administrative bodies through the People’s Congress. Under the second, citizens individually or collectively participate, influence or even decide the allocation of public economic resources through dialogue, negotiation, reasoning and argument with the responsible budgetary agency in the course of the budget’s compilation, examination and approval, execution and supervision. Under the third, the establishment of a system for budgetary litigation allows citizens to participate in and supervise the implementation of the budget law, individually or collectively. This provides judicial security for the law’s implementation. These three realistic implementation routes represent the dialectical unity of concerted institutional effort aimed directly at effective implementation of budget law. Judicial interpretations of budget law implementation indicate the importance and urgency of promoting national governance capacity through reform of the legal systems governing finance and taxation. This explains the significant role of finance and taxation law in national governance.     

中、日、韩人口经济制度的阶段比较

中日韩三个国家因为地理、历史原因具有很强的发展趋同性,具有共同的人口经济发展阶段特征,引领着东亚经济快速发展。在人口经济制度方面正在进行或即将进行第四个发展阶段。经过研究认为契约关系是中日韩在人口经济制度发展变革中共同的认同点。从战略发展来看,及时调整各利益集团的利益合理分配、推动公共活动效率透明化是实现这一地区完成人口经济制度巨大变革的关键措施。     

The European delay in transition to parenthood: the Italian case

A delay in the transition to parenthood is common to all European countries, but Mediterranean and North European young people follow different pathways of transition to adulthood, which are described in the article. Since 2003, we have conducted four social inquiries in Italian urban contexts involving male and female young people with and without children and the article is therefore focused on Italy. The principal purpose of this research programme is to interpret the determinants of the Italian phenomenon of delaying the birth of the first child. The interpretative axes for conceptualizing the problem are intergender and intergenerational comparisons. In particular, the results of these inquiries indicate that in Italy the delay of the parenthood transition is linked to the policy-makers' ‘delay’ in realizing that the decision to postpone having children is not strongly linked to any ‘crisis of family values’. The real problem is that since the beginning of the twentieth century, the present younger generation is the first to suffer from a general decrease in social opportunities as compared with the previous one. The mechanism is illustrated by Bourdieu: the new generation's members continue to form their life expectations on the basis of their parents' situations without considering the changes in conditions (e.g. inflation of study titles) that restrict their access to social resources. According to our results, the delay in the assumption of the parental role is an unintentional effect of a set of intentional actions aimed at creating and consolidating life conditions supporting self-realization. ‘Delayers’ continually try to resist the distressing sensations of precariousness, instability, vulnerability and uncertainty recognized by influential sociologists as distinctive features of contemporary life. Consequently, the delay in the family-building process takes on an active connotation: the attempt is to fill the gap in life chances related to gender and generational memberships. The last part of the article is dedicated to a comparison of European countries' social policies in support of parenthood.     

Intergenerational-Multigenerational Relationships

Abstract

Multigenerational and intergenerational relations are used interchangeably by the United Nations in official documents. However, the terms are not universally considered synonymous. This article explores the origin of terminology usage and how these terms are used differentially in the literature on intergenerational relationships. It also places the discussion within a global framework by linking it to the United Nations Second World Assembly on Ageing and the International Plan of Action on Ageing Madrid 2002.     

Time Series Models for Count or Qualitative Observations

Time series sometimes consist of count data in which the number of events occurring in a given time interval is recorded. Such data are necessarily nonnegative integers, and an assumption of a Poisson or negative binomial distribution is often appropriate. This article sets ups a model in which the level of the process generating the observations changes over time. A recursion analogous to the Kalman filter is used to construct the likelihood function and to make predictions of future observations. Qualitative variables, based on a binomial or multinomial distribution, may be handled in a similar way. The model for count data may be extended to include explanatory variables. This enables nonstochastic slope and seasonal components to be included in the model, as well as permitting intervention analysis. The techniques are illustrated with a number of applications, and an attempt is made to develop a model-selection strategy along the lines of that used for Gaussian structural time series models. The applications include an analysis of the results of international football matches played between England and Scotland and an assessment of the effect of the British seat-belt law on the drivers of light-goods vehicles.     

Grandmothers', Mothers' and Granddaughters' Perceptions of Grandparenthood

ABSTRACT

The aim of the present study was to assess the meaning of grandparenthood in grandparent-parent-grandchild triads, and to examine its congruence between generations.

Three types of relations were found: (1) the congruent-strongly connected relationship, characterized by a reciprocal and nurturing relation; (2) the congruentnon-connected relationship, characterized by an agreement among all members regarding the problematic and dissociated relations; (3) the non-congruent relationship, characterized by a lack of agreement regarding the nature of the relation.     

多项目管理在大型建筑企业工程项目中的应用研究

本文针对我国当前大型建筑施工企业的工程项目管理,对多项目管理的控制管理应用研究,通过建立项目办公室,管理区域市场,有效地协调分配现有的资源,解决需求的冲突,开发出可靠和可重复使用的系统。     

在国家创新系统内优化配置科技资源

科技资源、科技财力资源和科技人力资源是当今的“第一资源”. 因而如何优化配置科技 资源已成为决策者、管理者提高国家竞争力、企业竞争力的核心问题. 本文提出在“国家创新系 统”中优化配置科技资源的观点, 并从实践方面, 包括我国科研院所转制、中国科学院的知识创 新工程和科技中介机构建设等加以论证.     

Intergenerational and International Discounting

A discount rate for the consumption of future generations is typically composed of two parts. One is a "pure" time preference for immediate over postponed consumption, the other a declining marginal utility as consumption increases. The costs of greenhouse abatement, however, for at least the first 50 years, will be borne by the developed countries; the benefits will accrue to the presently undeveloped. Pure time preference always relates to one's own consumption; it has no relevance here. Consumption transfers over time will be from richer to poorer, from lower to higher marginal utility. It is a foreign aid program and it ought to have to compete with more direct foreign aid, which can benefit the very poor rather than their much-better-off descendants.