中国在朝鲜半岛的地缘安全战略分析

朝鲜半岛地处东北亚核心地带,是我国重要的战略侧翼。作为与中国山水相连、唇齿相依的邻邦,朝鲜半岛在中国的地缘安全战略中一直具有极其重要的意义。冷战结束以来,朝鲜半岛的地缘政治环境发生了重大变化,原来由美苏主导的两极格局趋向多极化,在某种程度上形成了大国相互竞争的局面,处于较弱地位的朝韩两国也不由自主地被纳入了周边大国的战略轨道,半岛形势空前复杂化。而两次朝核危机的爆发更使朝鲜半岛局势的发展跌宕起伏,波折不断。面对错综复杂的半岛形势,中国从"维护朝鲜半岛的和平与稳定"这一战略目标出发,确立了以"对话和合作"为基本特征的安全战略,并积极推动朝核问题的和平解决,为缓和半岛紧张局势,维护东北亚地区和平与稳定发挥了不可替代的作用。     

Crises and unpredictability in developing countries

Developing countries have suffered most of the financial crises in the context of the process of economic and financial globalisation. Both current and previous crises have revealed that unpredictability is a feature common to all the episodes which occurred during the process of globalisation. Although certain alarms went off, any of those external financial crises were actually predicted by the advanced methods in use for prediction and country risk analysis. Taking into consideration the information above, the aim of this paper is to check the ability to foresee external financial crises in developing countries of both the country risk index published by Euromoney and the Credit Ratings variable included therein. We have focused on the external financial crises that took place between 1992 and 2011, that is, in a full globalisation era. The results are negative. It appears that neither the index nor the sovereign ratings are able to reflect early enough the vulnerabilities that arise previously to the setting off the crisis episodes. This leads us to conclude that the existing models of country risk have limits. Thus, it would necessary to develop new instruments to measure this risk, considering uncertainty as an essential feature of the current economic and financial environment.     

The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.     

Economic voting in a crisis: The Irish election of 2011

The paper explores a question raised by the 2011 Irish election, which saw an almost unprecedented decline in support for a major governing party after an economic collapse that necessitated an ECB/IMF ‘bailout’. This seems a classic case of ‘economic voting’ in which a government is punished for incompetent performance. How did the government lose this support: gradually, as successive economic indicators appeared negative, or dramatically, following major shocks? The evidence points to losses at two critical junctures. This is consistent with an interpretation of the link between economics and politics that allows for qualitative judgements by voters in assigning credit and blame for economic performance.     

Testing the Hollowing-Out Thesis

In recent years, many economists have argued that governments are discarding pegged exchange rates in favor of alternative exchange rate regimes such as monetary unions and currency boards on the one hand, or floating exchange rates on the other. Capital mobility, such economists argue, has made pegged exchange rates costly to maintain for long periods, and thus the pegging option is being “hollowed-out.” Few, however, have tried to present evidence that capital mobility has a direct effect on exchange rate regime choices. I present two sets of tests using different measures of capital mobility that provide qualified confirmation that developing countries peg less as capital mobility rises. These tests indicate that direct measures of capital mobility have some correlation with de facto exchange rate regimes but not with de jure exchange rate regimes. Capital flows, a consequence of capital mobility, may have a direct effect on the choices of both de jure and de facto regimes. Governments do not make changes in their declared exchange rate policies in rational anticipation of the growing costs of pegging associated with increasing capital mobility. Rather, governments normally adapt their declared exchange rate policies after capital flows have increased and actual exchange rates have become more difficult to manage. The tests also indicate that hollowing-out has not only been the result of systemic factors such as increasing capital mobility and capital flows, but also due to domestic factors such as growing public sector indebtedness and the spread of democracy.     

Conditional on Conditionality: IMF Program Design and Foreign Direct Investment

The article explores how International Monetary Fund (IMF) program design influences foreign direct investment inflows. The author argues that stricter IMF conditionality signals a program-participating government's commitment to economic reforms, as it incurs larger ex ante political cost and risks greater ex post political cost. Thus, the catalytic effect of an IMF program is conditional on conditionality: programs with stricter conditions catalyze more foreign direct investment than those with less stringent conditions. Empirical analysis of the IMF conditionality dataset supports the argument and shows that after accounting for IMF program participation, the more structural conditions included in an IMF program, the more foreign direct investment flows into the country.     

爱因斯坦对人类命运的忧虑

爱因斯坦终生为人类命运而忧虑,认为社会充满了危机,并分析了科学技术、人的本性同时代危机的关系.爱因斯坦认为,科学技术的悲剧就是科学家的悲剧,主要表现在科学技术的破坏力量是科学家研究发明出来的,而科学家却没有能力阻止用技术力量来作恶.爱因斯坦认为"作恶"的冲动来源于"人的兽性本能",若不加以约束,就会形成物欲主义;在"物欲主义占优势的时代",就会出现利己主义的统治.利己主义在经济生活中造成了种种悲惨后果,在国际关系中导致种种冲突.冲突的深层根源主要是利害冲突.因而,只有用理性来取代原始本性,才能实现人类自我的解放、时代危机的化解.爱因斯坦的这种对人类命运的忧虑是留给后代的重要精神遗产.     

金融危机后的东南亚经济

本文论述与分析东南亚金融危机发生的带根本性的原因、东南亚各国经济所受金融危机影响的程度、特点不同的原因、它们所采取的应对政策、它们走向经济复苏的力度与特点不同的原因,最后对它们的经济前景作一些展望。     

East Asia in the Global Economy: Theoretical and Empirical Questions for Marxism

ABSTRACT

As Marxism and socialism pass through watershed years it is important to reflect on the abiding questions of Marxist theory and empirical analysis. This article takes up this task in the context of East Asia under the impetus of globalisation and neo-liberalism, introducing a collection of five articles collected in the special issue. The article shows that questions Marx posed about the global economy more than a century ago remain prescient and continue to animate cutting-edge research, as shown in the articles in this special issue.     

陈水扁应对政治危机的心理与行为模式

陈水扁上台以来,台湾的政治危机频繁发生,陈水扁在应对危机的过程中表现出的心理和行为模式值得分析。陈水扁在政治社会化过程中形成的政治意象会对其心理认知产生影响。陈水扁应对政治危机的心理认知模式包括“权力傲慢的心理认知”、“缺乏安全感的心理认知”、“机会主义的心理认知”等。他的主要行为模式是“静观其变—凝聚内部—煽动对立—获利妥协”。陈水扁应对政治危机的心理与行为模式会对他的政治人格、台湾政局和两岸关系产生一定的影响。