伪满洲国的街村财政

伪满洲国成立初期,出于治安上的需要,日本侵略者在地方基层实行保甲制度,通过组织反动保卫团、实行连坐制度等,疯狂镇压东北人民的反抗,其所需经费以强征所谓的保甲费为支撑。1937年后,由于伪满洲国的主要任务向"国家建设"转变,对于基层地方,发布街制和村制,仿照日本基层的町村制度实行所谓的"地方自治",并制定了统一的街村财政税收制度。但是街村制度并没有脱离保甲制度的藩篱,也没有真正为中国东北基层地方带来自治的福音,不过是对中国东北基层进行侵略和掠夺的变形而已。     

论我国知识产权融资许可制度之构建——以美国UCITA法的融资许可为借鉴

知识产权许可交易在经济发展中的重要地位决定了其融资机制必然成为知识经济发展的调节器,故应将其纳入法律规制。美国融资许可的法律规制具有通过设立知识产权融资许可制度来规制知识产权许可融资;采用私法手段;发挥知识财产被许可使用的积极作用等特点。我国应在借鉴美国规制经验的基础上,根据知识产权许可与融资的实践及国情,有的放矢地建立完善的规制机制。然而,我国现行融资制度并不利于知识产权许可交易。因此,应对我国知识产权融资许可法律规制作全新的制度建构,其主要内容包括:明确融资流程,并设立担保制度、被许可人融资合同义务条款限制解除制度、知识产权瑕疵责任制度、资金供给者违约救济制度等。     

论我国合作金融行业组织体系的法律重构

我国合作金融的发展亟需有效的行业组织。当前合作金融行业组织运行中的重重问题,要求从行业组织的模式和行业组织制度两个方面对我国合作金融行业组织体系进行法律重构。对于合作金融行业组织的模式,我国既要选择能满足行业组织成员自由选择需求和行业组织整体能力积聚需求的混合结构模式,又要在行业组织的具体组织形式上选择合作制组织形式,并由法律对这两种模式进行重构。对于合作金融行业组织制度,法律重构的重心主要在于对合作金融行业组织的设立、成员加入与退出、代表产生和多票权等制度进行设计。     

试论互联网金融的刑事风险与法律规制

随着互联网金融蓬勃兴起,刑事法律风险相伴而生。针对互联网金融引发的金融风险乃至刑事案件,公安机关要遵循保护创新、谦抑主义、罪刑法定等原则,秉承慎用刑事手段干预社会经济生活的准则,慎重介入,依法办案,妥善处置。目前,确有必要梳理现行互联网金融法律法规,并对触犯刑律的行为作出进一步的完善。     

论我国公共财政基本框架的构建

市场经济中普遍存在着市场失灵现象 ,要有针对性地从公共财政的支出体系、收入体系及预算管理体系等三个方面提出构建我国公共财政基本框架的思路。     

The Impact of the Housing Bubble on the Growth of Municipal Debt: Evidence from Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the recent Spanish housing boom and the subsequent burst on local public finances. Particularly, we investigate the effect of the rise and later fall in revenue from urban development on local government debt. Using a sample of the Spanish largest municipalities in the period 2003–2011, we find that debt was substituted by revenue from urban development during boom years and this substitution effect vanished after the burst of the boom. Our results also reveal that local public finances have worsened after the burst of the housing bubble since now they have larger current spending and smaller savings.     

Insurgent capitalism: Island,bricolage and the re-making of finance

Abstract

Drawing on recent discussions of the material cultures of markets and of financial innovation as bricolage, this paper explores the development of Island, a new share-trading venue set up in 1995. We examine Island's roots in a very specific conflict in the US financial markets and in the information libertarianism of ‘hacker culture’, and examine the material bricolage involved in Island's construction. The paper also outlines the processes that led to a dramatic ‘Latourian’ change of scale: Island was originally a ‘micro’ development on the fringes of US markets, but within little more than a decade key features of Island became close to compulsory, as the nature of North American and Western European share trading changed utterly.     

Feeding finance: a critical account of the shifting relationships between finance,food and farming

Abstract

Whether in the form of commodity index funds, farmland investment funds or commodities trading by agri-food companies, there is evidence of an increasingly close relationship between finance, food and agriculture. While these developments have received some critical attention of late, existing accounts of the ‘financialization of food’ are limited to the extent that they view finance as an external force with emphasis placed on the unnaturalness of its relationship with agriculture and its distortive effects on agricultural markets. Recognizing that finance and agriculture have a long history, this paper offers a more nuanced account of the place of financialization in the agricultural sector. Specifically, it examines how agriculture's emergence as an investment opportunity has reconfigured the terrain of agricultural interests and logics while creating new knowledge demands and agricultural visibilities. These dynamics are explored through a case study of the role of finance and processes of financialization in the recent demise of the Canadian Wheat Board as a state marketing agency. Through this discussion, the paper offers valuable insights into not only the reworking of agriculture as a particular type of financial space, but also the nature and limits of financialization itself as a way of engaging with the world beyond urban financial centres.     

High-frequency trading: networks of wealth and the concentration of power

The development of high-frequency trading (HFT) – automated trading of stocks, as well as bonds, options, and other investment instruments – provides a signal example of the political effects of computerization on a discrete social sphere. Despite the widespread rhetoric that computerization inherently democratizes, the consequences of the introduction of HFT are widely acknowledged to be new concentrations of wealth and power, opacity rather than transparency of information flows, and structural resistance to democratic oversight and control. Even as computerized tools undoubtedly provide individual investors with more power relative to what they had before, they also provide powerful actors with relatively more power as well, in some cases effectively excluding the majority of individuals from insight or meaningful participation whatsoever, especially with regard to the political impacts of market activities. Reports on recent financial crises, and the 2011 film Margin Call provide narrow windows into the operations of HFT and the challenges it poses to democracy; these in turn raise significant problems for the view that computerization inherently democratizes.     

Comments on “Are the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) justified?”

In “Are the Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Justified?” the authors conclude that the benefits delivered by the GSEs (as structured prior to conservatorship) are minimal and do not exceed their costs. While many of the arguments made in the article have merit and raise serious questions about the structure of the GSEs prior to 2008, the article overlooks several important benefits and costs. More significantly, no one is arguing for a return of the GSEs as they were structured prior to conservatorship. Rather than debate the merits of a model that has already been rejected by policymakers, we argue that the far more important question is what the housing finance market should look like in the future.