计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Nations and Nationalism

Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.

Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy

It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. They also fail to explain why institutions are influenced by the past, why it is that they can sometimes change, why they differ so much from society to society, and why it is hard to study them empirically and devise a policy aimed at altering them. This 2006 book seeks to overcome these problems, which have exercised economists, sociologists, political scientists, and a host of other researchers who use the social sciences to study history, law, and business administration. It presents a multi-disciplinary perspective to study endogenous institutions and their dynamics.

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Institutions and the path to the modern economy

Tournaments, conflict, and rent-seeking have been modelled as contests in which participants exert effort to increase their probability of winning a prize. A Contest Success Function (CSF) provides each player's probability of winning as a function of all players' efforts. In this paper the additive CSF employed in most contests is axiomatized, with an independence from irrelevant alternatives property as the key axiom. Two frequently used functional forms are also axiomatized: one in which winning probabilities depend on the ratio of players' efforts and the other in which winning probabilities depend on the difference in efforts.

Contest success functions

This paper examines interaction in the absence of property rights when agents face a trade-off between productive and coercive activities. In this setting, conflict is not the necessary outcome of one-time interaction and cooperation is consistent with domination of one agent over another. Other things being equal, an agent's power, a well-defined concept in this paper, is inversely related to an agent's resources when resources are valued according to marginal-productivity theory. Some implications for the evolution of property rights are drawn. The model is applicable to a variety of situations in which directly unproductive activities are prevalent. Copyright 1992 by American Economic Association.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Cooperation, conflict and power in the absence of property rights

This paper examines interaction in the absence of property rights when agents face a trade-off between productive and coercive activities. In this setting, conflict is not the necessary outcome of one-time interaction, and cooperation is consistent with domination of one agent over another. Other things being equal, an agent's power, a well-defined concept in this paper, is inversely related to an agent's resources when resources are valued according to marginal-productivity theory. Some implications for the evolution of property rights are drawn. The model is applicable to a variety of situations in which directly unproductive activities are prevalent. (JEL C70, D23, D30, D74) Without complete assignment of enforceable property rights, as assumed in the competitive paradigm of economics, voluntary exchange may not exist; any single agent cannot be prevented from coercing another agent. No such constraints as property rights exist in the philosopher's hypothetical state of nature, where coercion and conflict are the presumed results. Unlike the competitive paradigm or the state of nature, prop

Cooperation, Conflict, and Power in the Absence of Property Rights.

In this paper, we review the recent literature on conflict and appropriation. Allowing for the possibility of conflict, which amounts to recognizing the possibility that property rights are not perfectly and costlessly enforced, represents a significant departure from the traditional paradigm of economics. The research we emphasize, however, takes an economic perspective. Specifically, it applies conventional optimization techniques and game-theoretic tools to study the allocation of resources among competing activities - productive and otherwise appropriative, such as grabbing the product and wealth of others as well as defending one's own product and wealth. In contrast to other economic activities in which inputs are combined cooperatively through production functions, the inputs to appropriation are combined adversarially through technologies of conflict. A central objective of this research is to identify the effects of conflict on economic outcomes: the determinants of the distribution of output (or power) and how an individual party's share can be inversely related to its marginal productivity; when settlement in the shadow of conflict and when open conflict can be expected to occur, with longer time horizons capable of inducing conflict instead of settlement; how conflict and appropriation can reduce the appeal of trade; the determinants of alliance formation and the importance of intra-alliance commitments; how dynamic incentives for capital accumulation and innovation are distorted in the presence of conflict; and the role of governance in conflict management.

/pdf/economics-of-conflict-an-overview-wv0ajw969e.pdf

Economics of Conflict: An Overview

Negative campaigning is an important aspect of campaign competition but plays little or no role in existing models of campaigns. Within the context of plurality elections for a single office we model the incentives that affect the use of negative campaigning. Under simplifying but still quite general assumptions we show a number of results, including the following key conclusions: (1) for two-candidate competition the front-runner will engage in more positive and less negative campaigning than the opponent; (2) in a three-candidate contest with one candidate clearly trailing by a large margin and playing mainly a spoiler role, that candidate will only engage in positive campaigning; and (3) in any three-candidate contest, no candidate engages in negative campaigning against the weaker of his two opponents, so that to the extent there is negative campaigning, it will be directed against the front-runner or it will come from the front-runner. These results have direct empirical applications to multicandidate primaries and nonpartisan contests and can provide insight into recent general elections as well.

Stergios Skaperdas

Papers

Contest success functions

Cooperation, conflict and power in the absence of property rights

Cooperation, Conflict, and Power in the Absence of Property Rights.

Economics of Conflict: An Overview

Modeling Negative Campaigning