Creating markets in no-trust environments: The law and economics of smart contracts

Smart contracts, self-executing agreements based on blockchain technology, have the capacity to create trust in what we term no-trust contracting environments. We argue that using them in such environments is the path to unleash the full potential of smart contracts. Compared to the contract enforcement mechanisms characterized by traditional contract law or relational contracts, smart contracts can offer a superior solution for facilitating trade.Several lawyers and economists have debated whether smart contracts might offer the prospect of cheaper, faster and better transactions. As we discuss below, contract law scholars caution that they neither replicate the relational context essential for the day-to-day practice of contracting nor offer a superior solution to problems addressed by traditional contract law, such as contract validity and legality. We clarify and systematize the current thinking on the legal nature and reliability of smart contracts, and address the concerns of contract law scholars. While doing that, we suggest a step forward in characterizing contracting environments, contract enforcement mechanisms and the trust relationship underlying contracts.     

“为己利他”行为机理对两类差序性行为的解释——一些来自行为实验的证据

一系列的行为实验表明,受试者除了关注自身的物质收益之外,还重视公平和互惠,这体现了行为者的社会性和道德性。同时,这种互惠和公平并非是平面性的而是立体性的,不是等序性的而是差序性的,这体现了人类行为的道德差序性和社会差序性。显然,这些实验结果与主流博弈理论的逻辑推论间存在很大差异。     

适应新的形势变革教学方法 --对马克思主义政治经济学教学改革的思考

针对我国社会主义经济理论及实践的发展和高等院校马克思主义政治经济学的课程特点,及其在"两课"的课程体系中占有的重要地位,应深入探讨其教学改革,充分调动学生的学习积极性,提高教学效果.     

The ‘make or buy’ decision in private environmental transactions

A theoretical framework combining the two branches of TCE, i.e., the governance branch (Williamson 2005) and the measurement branch (Barzel 2005) may explain the choice of the governance structure for private environmental transactions. Four case studies, i.e., the market for pure air in polluted cities, the contractual arrangement between La Esperanza and the Monteverde Conservation League, the case of the French mineral water bottler Vittel and the case of land ownership by land trusts are briefly developed in order to support the theoretical framework. Special attention is devoted to the presence (or not) of a 3-D (defined, defended and divestible) property rights system in interaction with the juridical system (civil law vs. common law) and its influence on the way environmental property rights are likely (or not) to be re-arranged. Lessons and policy implications are drawn in order to foster research on these challenging issues.

Essence of Negotiation: Understanding Appeasement and “The Great Munich Stereotype”

The relative merits of rational choice and behavioral approaches to the study of negotiation continue to be hotly debated. This article tests qualitative postdictions (assertions or deductions about something in the past) from these paradigms as well as the alternative approach of new institutional theory against the extensive record of negotiation process, contractual form, and contract implementation from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. I find the incomplete relational form of the peace treaty to be consistent with the behavioral and new institutional concepts and find that only behavioral theory can explain how unilateral German moves unraveled the treaty during the 1930s. But the historical record further reveals that the close fit between the behavioral paradigm and these events is more than coincidence. I also discuss the role of conference participants, particularly John Maynard Keynes and Walter Lippmann, in establishing the basis for modern behavioral science. The behavioral paradigm emerged from efforts to understand and fix serious policy mistakes such as those made in the peace negotiations. The study of human error was intended to serve as the basis for broad‐based organizational solutions. Finally, I discuss the impact of “the Munich stereotype” on such recent events as the planning for the American invasion and reconstruction of Iraq; such examples suggest continued imperfections in the system of organized intelligence that has actually evolved in the United States.     

Refugee Camp Economies

This paper describes the economy of a refugee camp. Key distortionsto the economy of Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda arenoted and the findings are used to construct a generic modelof a refugee camp economy. Camp economies are influenced byhost country policies, such as restrictions on refugees’movement and work, as well as by the physical and economic isolationof the site. Moreover, market outcomes interact with the natureof humanitarian assistance and the special demographic compositionof the refugees to determine the prices and quantities thatcharacterize the market. An awareness of the dynamics of therefugee camp economy has important implications for practitionersand scholars alike.     

Nudge Nudge, Think Think: Two Strategies for Changing Civic Behaviour

This paper reviews two contrasting approaches governments use to engage the citizen to promote better public policy outcomes: nudging citizens using the insights of behavioural economics, as summarised by Thaler and Sunstein (2009) or giving citizens the space to think through and debate solutions, as indicated by proponents of deliberative democracy. The paper summarises each approach, giving examples; then it compares and contrast them, illustrating their relative strengths and weaknesses. The paper concludes by suggesting that the approaches share some common features and policy-makers could useful draw upon both.     

建立我国排污权交易法律制度的设想——从经济法理念与法经济学角度分析

排污权交易制度是经济法与环境法中一项新兴的法律制度,其中包容了经济法学、环境法学、法经济学等多门学科理论知识。阐述排污权交易制度所体现的经济法理念——可持续发展理念,以及从科斯定理等法经济学角度分析,有利于探讨在我国建立排污权交易法律制度的可能。     

The EROI of agriculture and its use by the Via Campesina

Via Campesina supports peasant and small farmer agriculture both in the South and in the North. Its basic doctrine is that of ‘food sovereignty’. It is a movement that defends an ‘ecological neo-Narodnism’. Among the analytical tools used by this international peasant movement is the comparison between the energy efficiency of traditional small farm agriculture and modern industrial agriculture. This article briefly recalls the history of agricultural energetics, and then looks at the use of the concept of EROI (energy return on energy input) by Via Campesina when it claims that ‘industrial agriculture is no longer a producer of energy but a consumer of energy’, and that ‘peasant agriculture cools down the Earth’. The absence in Marxism of a tradition of analysis of energy flows is also reviewed here, since it is of interest in order to bring together the classic economic concept of decreasing returns with the more recent notion of a declining EROI. The article also draws on work analysing how environmental activists use concepts from ecological economics, while at the same time ‘activist knowledge’ contributes to ecological economics in a two-way communication between activism and science.