反思与探究:“孙大午案”的剖析及司法理念的重塑

"孙大午案"折射出司法者对非法吸收公众存款罪持宽泛理解的态度,通过本案可看出法体系整体性思考的重要性,以及前置法——刑法阶层性思维的必要性。非法吸收公众存款罪中的"存款"应仅限于"银行信用"范畴,通过引入"既存的实质性联系"标准对"不特定"的内涵进行限定,从而实现前置法与刑法之间的衔接。进一步,刑法具有二次性违法的特征,司法过程切忌价值先行。     

The South African National Credit Act fails to protect homeowners against various interest rates hikes

Where a credit provider makes a proper financial assessment and finds that the low-income consumer will be able to satisfy in a timely manner all the obligations under all the credit agreements to which the consumer is a party he will in all probability conclude the credit agreement with the consumer. Obviously the affordability assessment made by the credit provider will depend on the prevailing interest rates at the time. There has been several interest rate hikes since June 2006 to December 2008 in South Africa that has had a detrimental impact on low-income home owners. Due to the various interest rate hikes and the prevailing high interest rates many consumers have lost their mortgaged homes. The South African National Credit Act of 2005 has failed to take into its purview cases such as these, and as a consequence there is no sort of consumer protection available for the low-income group who become over-indebted, because of the constant rising interest rates on their mortgage loans.     

民间借贷：现状、影响及合法性探讨

近年来我国的民间借贷市场空前活跃,其在市场规模、表现形式、投资方向及借贷利率等方面呈现出新的特点。民间借贷在为中小企业解决融资难题、发挥积极作用的同时,也对借贷企业的健康发展、国家金融秩序及社会稳定造成了一定的负面影响。对民间借贷进行规制应先探讨民间借贷的合法性,这对推进民间借贷的规范化和法制化具有一定的理论和实践意义。     

浅议商业银行借贷中的利息法律问题

商业银行借贷作为当今社会中最具代表性和广泛性的借贷形式,普遍地影响着国家对于各类借贷法律问题的研究和规则制定,其中利息问题在各类借贷关系中扮演着重要的角色.民间借贷,非法集资等当下敏感的话题都和利息有着千丝万缕的联系,也都和目前法律主要规制的利息形式——商业银行借贷中的利息,广泛地相互影响着.论述商业银行借贷和民间借贷中利息问题的相互关系,以及商业银行借贷中利息法律问题的特点等,初步揭开商业银行借贷中利息的面纱,可为我国在这一领域的法律发展,提出一定的完善方向.     

从法律适用的角度看民间借贷

中国民间借贷法律适用的重点在于身份和利率,但是法律法规缺乏系统性,罪与非罪的界限模糊。笔者建议从四个层次综合解决民间借贷问题:第一,收集、整合现有的法律法规;第二,化消国民对于民间借贷法律适用的疑虑;第三,运用司法解释配合法律适用;第四,发展新的民间借贷模式。     

NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING INVESTMENTS AND VIOLENT CRIME IN SEATTLE, 1981–2007*

Despite significant advances in the study of neighborhoods and crime, criminologists have paid surprisingly less attention to the extralocal forces that shape violence. To address this issue, we draw on an emerging body of work that stresses the role of home mortgage lending—a resource secured via interaction with external actors—in reducing neighborhood violence and extend it by addressing concerns that the lending–violence relationship is spurious and confounded by simultaneity. We explore the longitudinal relationship between residential mortgage lending and violence in Seattle with a pooled time series of 118 census tracts over 27 years, and we instrument our endogenous predictors (home mortgage lending and violent crime) with changes in their levels from prior periods. Employing Arellano–Bond difference models, we assess both the effect of mortgage lending on violent crime as well as the effect of violent crime levels on mortgage activity. We find that infusions of home mortgage lending yield reductions in subsequent violent crime; yet the impact of violent crime on subsequent lending is not significant. Results underscore the importance of incorporating external forces such as home mortgage lending into explanations of neighborhood violence.     

试析民间借贷的法律规制

近年来,我国一些地区民间借贷日益活跃,借贷案件大量出现。以稳定经济发展。建设和谐社会的角度出发,规范民间借贷,促进民间借贷有序发展就显得非常重要。文章提出应从完善民间借贷相关法律法规,妥善处理民间借贷纠纷来加强对民间借贷的监管。     

The Changing Relationship Between Housing and Inequality, 1980–2010

Inequality in both income and wealth has grown rapidly in the United States since the 1970s. Over the same period, homeownership rates increased in step with expansionist government policies and the development of subprime and other exotic loan products, and housing affordability challenges emerged as the most prevalent housing problem for owners and renters alike. The subprime lending and foreclosure crises of the 2000s stretched households financially, threatening the traditional economic benefits of homeownership, bringing into stark relief the ways in which housing and inequality mutually influence one another, and implicating homeownership, housing affordability, and subprime lending in the widening gap between the rich and the poor. This article examines the changing roles of homeownership, housing affordability, and subprime lending in contemporary U.S. inequality by, first, describing trends in county inequality and housing characteristics and, second, modeling inequality as a function of the previous decade's housing characteristics over the period of 1980–2010. We build upon past models of county inequality by more explicitly considering causal order, place characteristics, and state and regional fixed effects. The results confirm that homeownership, affordability, and subprime lending not only reflect existing inequalities but also perpetuate those inequalities over time. Homeownership promotes equality, affordability problems undermine it, and subprime lending has the potential to ameliorate inequality in certain contexts, but these effects shift significantly over time, particularly as a result of widespread foreclosures and economic recession. Our analysis establishes the importance of housing in explaining contemporary inequality, highlights how place characteristics and causal ordering may improve county inequality models, and provides a foundation for future studies examining inequality in light of the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis.     

借贷羊群行为:中小企业融资困难成因分析——基于博弈学习模型框架

关于中小企业融资难的问题,学者一般都是从信息不对称的角度来分析的,然而从另外一个角度:银行借贷羊群行为来分析,利用行为博弈学习理论来分析中小企业贷款困难的原因,通过计算机模拟银行借贷决策过程发现:当中小企业还贷率低时,银行给中小企业的贷款也低,而且由于其他银行的博弈学习行为降低了中小企业从其他银行得到贷款的机率,而当中小企业提高还贷率时,银行会增加给中小企业的贷款率。通过对银行借贷行为分析可知,中小企业要想提高贷款率,关键是提高银行博弈学习策略魅力值,提高企业的还贷率。     

Means of production versus means of coercion: can Russian business limit the violence of a predatory state?

In their most recent works, North and his coauthors (North, D. C., J. J. Wallis, S. Webb, and B. R. Weingast. 2012. In the Shadow of Violence: Politics, Economics, and the Problems of Development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; North, D.C., J. J. Wallis, and B. R. Weingast. 2009. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) name the formation of organizations capable of effectively restricting violence in society as a necessary condition for transition from developing societies to societies with sustainable economic growth. However, the mechanisms of emergence and conditions for the operation of such organizations in contemporary developing countries remain unclear. We follow the logic of formation of such organizations using the case study of collective actions of the Russian business community aimed at restricting “state violence” against business. We seek to identify the conditions leading to a shift in the choice of strategies from attempts at informal agreements with extortionists controlling means of coercion to cooperation of businessmen and trace the further evolution of organized forms of collective action. Finally, we assess to what extent the created organizations can be efficient and self-supporting in the long term.