The impact of a gasoline tax on auto exhaust emissions

The EPA implements its policy of exhaust emission control by setting standards specified in terms of grams of pollutants per mile traveled. As a result, the tax must first restrain the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) if it is to have an impact on emission at all. EPA's choice of miles traveled as the medium through which its policy of pollution control must run is unfortunate, because travel is an activity that people resist giving up. This is reflected in a low long-run price elasticity of travel demand. Consequently, it takes substantial increases in the gasoline tax to make an impact on long-run travel demand. Simulation results show that under an alternative policy option, where EPA's standards are specified in terms of grams of pollutant per gallon of fuel burned, the same long-run reduction in exhaust emissions achievable today can be achieved (at an even higher level of confidence) with less than one-tenth of the increase in gasoline price required under the existing policy regime.     

尤瑟纳尔作品中的人性价值

玛格丽特·尤瑟纳尔是二十世纪杰出的法语作家,法兰西学院成立三百五十余年来第一位女院士,其作品以历史小说成就最高.传统的历史小说大多以曲折离奇的故事情节取胜,而尤瑟纳尔的作品不仅反映出了她让人折服的古典文化底蕴,而且充满了浓厚的思辨色彩,历史人物和事件只不过是作者对人生、对人类社会和历史进行哲理思考的跳板.本文重点分析了尤瑟纳尔三部有代表性的小说(<阿列克斯或徒劳的斗争>,<苦炼>,<亚德里安回忆录>)主人公所体现出的共同的人文主义精神:即对自由、真理和人生真谛不屈不懈的追求;也揭示了作者深邃崇高的思想境界.     

《水浒传》与百年"好汉山东"叙事

就山东的地域文化来说,占主流地位的是以孔孟为代表的儒家思想。但是,作为一种文化形象,体现着民间色彩的"好汉山东"形象却更为人们所认同、流传更广泛。这一现象的出现,与《水浒传》的传播有着极大关系。《水浒传》不仅在"好汉山东"这一地域文化形象的建构过程中起了重要作用,也以其特色鲜明的英雄叙事传统,深深地影响了百年"好汉山东"的文学想象与书写方式。     

Newspaper juries

This article reports on a field experiment on the effect of media information on people’s attitudes towards the justice system. For the duration of a year a Dutch local newspaper took small groups of readers, called ‘newspaper jurors’, to court sessions of criminal cases and subsequently reported on their experiences and perceptions. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined whether an attitude change in the general reader population of this particular local newspaper occurred as a result of the jury’s newspaper reports. Findings show that, after the treatment interval of 1 year, no attitude change in the general reader population could be identified that was absent in the control group.     

Rural urban income gap and critical point of institutional change

By employing an analytical framework based on institutional economics, this paper intends to investigate the rural urban income gap and its critical points for change. The level of rural urban income gap in 1978 broke the institutional equilibrium on which the traditional rural urban relationship relied, leading to overall reform in rural China. In the post-reform period, utilizing their superior influence on policy-making, urban residents have so far succeeded in maintaining urban biased government policies, deterring rural labor from migrating to cities permanently. The urban residents’ major lobbying mechanism is through their “vote” and “voice”, something in which their rural counterparts are lacking. However, farmers have a way to “get around” the urban biased policies which are unfavorable to them. This “voting with their feet” eventually will drive the policy change. When the rural urban income gap increases to the level of 1978, a critical point for institutional change will have been reached. The timing and conditions will be ripe for reform of the whole policy package on which the present rural urban divide has been built.     

The evolution of European legal integration

This article contributes to the development of theories on European integration by testing and exploring statistical models on the long-term development of legislative activity of the European Commission. Drawing on legal information gained from the European Union’s PreLex database and analyzing it with the help of statistical analyses, we map out growth patterns of EU law between 1976 and 2003. We construct time-series models and models based on non-linear regression. While the performance of models based on the traditional theoretical approaches, intergovernmentalism and neo-functionalism, is rather poor, the analysis suggests that nonlinear dynamic models might be an interesting avenue for future conceptualizations of the EU integration process. This article is based on a paper presented at the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union Second Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, “Implications of a Wider Europe: Politics, Institutions and Diversity”, 24–26 June 2004, Bologna, Italy. We would like to thank the seminar participants for useful comments.     

论商法中的经理权

商法中的经理权主要存在两方面的功能,一是明确了经理人对企业的管理权,强化了企业的管理能力和竞争能力的功能,二是安全功能.我国<公司法>中规定的经理职权并不是商法意义上的经理权,在我国公司法中真正与经理权制度相似的制度,是法定代表人制度,但它不是一种典型的商事法律制度.与商法中的经理人(强调其对内的管理权和对外的缔约权,其追求的目标是满足商事企业在经营过程中的效率与安全)也不相适应.因此,设计一个全面清晰的商事经理权制度对于解决我国当前面临的企业改制的难题以及对我国现代企业制度的完善具有非常重要的意义.     

Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments

COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how COMPSTAT operates and for understanding the implications of this reform. This article compares two different perspectives on organizations—technical/rational and institutional—to COMPSTAT's adoption and operation in three municipal police departments. Based on fieldwork, our analysis suggests that relative to technical considerations for changing each organization to improve its effectiveness, all three sites adopted COMPSTAT in response to strong institutional pressures to appear progressive and successful. Furthermore, institutional theory better explained the nature of the changes we observed under COMPSTAT than the technical/rational model. The greatest collective emphasis was on those COMPSTAT elements that were most likely to confer legitimacy, and on implementing them in ways that would minimize disruption to existing organizational routines. COMPSTAT was less successful when trying to provide a basis for rigorously assessing organizational performance, and when trying to change those structures and routines widely accepted as being "appropriate." We posit that it will take profound changes in the technical and institutional environments of American police agencies for police departments to restructure in the ways anticipated by a technically efficient COMPSTAT.     

走向谈判的工会:党巩固阶级基础的政治架构

在社会主义条件下,工会作为无产阶级执政党联结工人阶级的纽带,是党实现执政使命的重要组织资源。然而,在市场经济条件下,受传统体制的制度约束,工会组织亟待摆脱“制度性弱势”,完成党巩固阶级基础的“传动装置”的再启动。因此,需要在党的推动下实现工会制度创新,不断完善工会维权机制,提高工会组织的代表能力,赢得职工群众的信任,这有利于增强党在代表最广大人民根本利益层面的政治合法性。