《美国经济评论》20篇百年经典经济论文导读
美国经济周期稳定化研究述评.
美国经济周期稳定化研究述评.论文报告：美国经济周期稳定化研究述评一、引言二、美国经济周期的发展历程及特点1.美国经济周期的起源2.美国经济周期的特点3.美国经济周期的演变三、美国经济周期中的稳定化措施1.货币政策2.财政政策3.结构性改革四、美国经济周期稳定化措施的评价1.货币政策的优缺点2.财政政策的优缺点3.结构性改革对经济的影响五、美国经济周期稳定化措施的案例分析1.2008年全球金融危机2.1990年代初的股市泡沫3.2001年的经济衰退4.20世纪70年代的经济萧条5.1960年代的经济繁荣六、结论引言作为经济学家，经济周期的稳定化一直是我们关注的重要问题之一。
在过去几十年，美国经济的周期波动频率不断降低，与此同时，美国经济中的通货膨胀率和失业率也趋于稳定。
这种趋势在全球范围内也是普遍存在的。
因此，本论文将围绕美国经济周期的稳定化问题展开研究，并对美国在经济周期波动时期采取的稳定化措施进行评价，最终分析其有效性和可行性。
美国经济周期的发展历程及特点1.美国经济周期的起源美国经济周期的起源可以追溯到19世纪初，发生了一系列的经济萧条和经济衰退。
这些经济周期的起因都是由于生产过剩和金融危机等原因导致的。
这种经济周期的不稳定性，在19世纪末到20世纪初逐渐得到了缓解，主要原因是美国经济结构的变化，劳动力市场的稳定以及生产技术不断创新等因素的作用。
2.美国经济周期的特点近年来的研究表明，美国经济周期具有一定的稳定性，主要表现在以下几个方面：（1）周期波动频率降低：过去几十年，美国经济中的周期波动频率不断降低，经济周期的周期越来越长，经济危机的发生也越来越稀少。
（2）通货膨胀率稳定：近年来，美国的通货膨胀率趋于稳定，这主要是由于美国的货币政策比较稳定，缺乏大幅度的通货膨胀。
（3）失业率稳定：经济周期频率降低以及就业稳定的政策措施的实施，是导致失业率趋于稳定的两个主要因素。
3.美国经济周期的演变美国的经济周期在演变过程中，最初的周期都是和生产规模的波动相联系，后来和金融市场因素的波动相联系变得更为显著。
对美国经济的再认识
美国经济的基本面分析： 宏观与微观
美国经济在 #$$$ 年第三季度突然结束了连续 !$ 多年 () 的高速增长， 并从 #$$! 年开始进入负增长。 但是， 进入今年第一 这是否意味着 季度以来， 又出现了高于 () 以上的经济增长率。 美国经济在经过了短短一年减速之后又重新回到快速增长的 轨道上来了？回答当然是否定的， 因为美国自今年第一季度以 来的经济增长并不正常， 对此， 我们不妨分析如下： !* 经济增长的动力不足 数据显示， 美国自今年第一季度以来的增长属于存货出清 式增长，其动力主要来之于以下两个方面：其一是库存增长率 “’ ・!! ” 的下降； 其二则是 事件之后消费者受悲观预期影响消 费偏好发生变化所致。 从统计资料看， 第一季度总私人投资对经济增长的贡献率 大约为 +* !# 个百分点，其中存货投资调整一项的贡献却高达 这也就是说， 如果扣除存货调整一项， 整个私人 +* (, 个百分点。 投资对 -./ 增长的贡献应为 & $* +0) 。 发生这种情况的根本原 因在于实际私人投资的持续下降。 据统计， 今年第一季度， 美国 非居民固定资产投资比上年第四季度下降了 1* #) 。 不仅如此， 伴随着私人投资下降趋势，企业利润也不断下降，失业率高居 企业利润却没有得到相应的增长， 第 不下。 尽管 -./ 增长强劲， 一季度企业税后利润仅比上年第四季度微增 $* ’) ，与去年同 期相比， 则下降了 !,* +) 。 值得注意的是， 税后利润的下降不仅 仅与销售收入下降有关，更重要的是由于利润率在下降，这表
美国经济的金融面分析： 虚拟经济最终还是要服从实际经济
在 !""" 年之前， 有许多人从美国股市长期走牛的事实中得 出了新经济可以摆脱传统经济周期的看法，并且深信股票市场 的牛气可以带动经济景气持续繁荣。 这种看法有一定的道理， 但 却带有较大的片面性。 说它有一定的道理， 是因为在美国新经济 的崛起和发展过程中， 股票市场功不可没。说它有片面性， 是因 为虚拟经济最终还是要服从实际经济。 $9 股票市场在新经济时代获得了新的功能 从历史至今，世界成熟市场经济国家股票市场的功能一直 处在不断的演变与进化之中。 最初， 人们认为股票市场的功能就是为企业筹措资本。 企业 通过发行股票筹措资本之所以必要，关键在于发行股票获得的 资金属于公司自有的资金，而通过银行贷款获得的资金则是债 权人的资金。 这也就是说， 股权融资和银行债权融资不仅存在成 本的差异， 而且还有支配权的差异评论 #$$#% !! & !#
美国经济及QE3对全球经济影响论文
浅析美国经济及QE3对全球经济的影响2012年，全球进入新一轮的经济衰退期。
美国也正经历自1933年经济大萧条以来最为严重的经济衰退。
全球三大经济体——美国、欧盟、中国，像高速行驶的火车，经济连续十年高增长。
由此而引发的产能过剩，产业结构失调，工业技术进步缓慢，是此一轮经济衰退的根本原因。
继2010年美国联邦储备系统（federal reserve system，简称fed），在以雷曼兄弟倒闭为标志的“金融危机”增发6000亿美元的货币量化宽松（简称qe2）之后，2012年美国经济因欧盟成员国一系列的债务危机影响，经济再度落入低谷。
尤其是美国制造业，制造业指数3年来首次跌破50，至49.7。
（见图1.1）此外，美国6月公布的零售数据已连续三个月下降，这是自08年以来持续时间最长的连续下降。
（见图1.2）全球市场都增强了对fed推行新一轮货币量化宽松（简称qe3）的预期。
首先，如果推行qe3其货币发行量会有多大根据卡甘模型货币需求函数：mt-pt=-γ（ept+1-pt）其中mt是t期货币量的对数；pt是t期物价水平的对数（t期为2010年qe2），而γ是决定货币需求对通货膨胀率敏感度的参数。
mt-pt是实际货币余额的对数，而pt+1-pt是t期和t+1期（目前盛炒的qe3）之间的通货膨胀率（2010年qe2时美国的cpi为0.1%，截止5月美国的cpi为1.8%）。
如果通货膨胀上升1%，那么实际货币余额就减少γ%。
ept+1是预期的物价水平，实际货币余额取决于预期的通货膨胀率。
也就是说美联储的预期通货膨胀率是2%现在低于2%说明预期的货币余额远远大于实际货币余额。
根据菲利普斯曲线，当π每增加1%那么失业率就相对减小1%（这个只是理论值，并且必须在cpi远小于正常cpi的时候，以此来看qe2的推出是起到效率最大化的。
美国的失业率从15%降低到了8.2%附近，通货膨胀率从0.1%上升到2.5%那么菲利普斯曲线的斜率应当是2.4：6.8，可能存在不精确。
美国的经济与政治论文2000字
美国的经济与政治论文2000字美国的经济与政治论文2000字美国经济破记录地持续增长是由于美国经济中确实存在着某些新的因素，包括美国目前在高科技领域中的领先地位，下面是由店铺整理的美国的经济与政治论文2000字，谢谢你的阅读。
美国的经济与政治论文2000字篇一美国经济的现实真相“实际上，美国的真实失业率高达16%左右，而如果我们幸运的话，美国经济年增速是0.7%。
”伯南克今年8月初大醉于华盛顿“埃尔伍德角落酒吧”(Elwood's Corner Tavern)，道出了美国经济的真实情况，“如果大家都知道这个事实的话，很可能会使全球金融市场，甚至那些能自我维持经济增长的新兴经济体崩溃。
”两个多月过去了，现在美国的经济增长看来“没有那么幸运”，衰退已经逼近美国。
尤其是“占领华尔街运动”爆发之后，美国经济会受到怎样的冲击，没人敢说。
更可悲的是，美国华尔街控制的主流媒体更是对此轻描淡写，把示威人群说成“乌合之众”，没有信仰和主张闹事;势态扩展至欧洲，它们却说“比预期规模要小”。
真滑稽。
金融危机过程中，我们经常听到的一个词是“好于预期”。
现在，这个词又被用到了对“占领华尔街运动”的描述上。
什么是“好于预期”?我的理解是，事情还在变坏，但变坏的程度比预期要好。
这与其说是对经济的一种判断，不如说是对市场情绪的一种“心理安慰”。
美国太懂得如何管理市场经济了，它们对于数据本身的在意程度，远远小于对市场信心的在意程度。
但是，我们中国人经常被“好于预期”的说法搞得昏头昏脑，而将“好于预期”理解为“转好”，理解为“复苏”。
所以，我们在中国媒体上看到的许多专家的说法，都充满乐观情绪。
这势必导致我们经常性的误判，甚至导致政策的偏差。
“除了华盛顿特区的大人物之外，他们不希望让任何人知道美国经济实际上糟糕透顶。
美国高筑的债台越来越严重，而不是缓解，这些问题预计将使美国经济陷于困境之中，而且拖累整整一代人。
”这就是伯南克给出的结论。
《美国经济评论》20篇百年经典经济论文导读
《美国经济评论》20篇百年经典经济论文导读2014-09-13经济学茶座由美国经济学联合会主办的《美国经济评论》创刊于1911年，是在美国影响最大，也是世界知名遐迩的经济学期刊之一。
为纪念创刊100周年，期刊特邀了阿罗（K.J.Arrow）、伯恩黑姆（D.Bernheim）、费尔德斯坦（M.S.Feldstein）、麦克法登（D.L.McFadden）、波特巴（J.M.Poterba）与索洛（R.M.Solow）等六位著名经济学家，成立了“20篇最佳论文”评选委员会，在该刊100年来刊登的数千篇文章中，甄选出对经济学发展与实践产生深远、重大影响，且富有创造性的20篇最佳论文。
2011年第1期《美国经济评论》出版了百年纪念特刊，开辟了百年论坛专栏，并公布了中选结果。
膺选论文都名重一时，代表了每一时期经济学的最高学术水平,同时整体再现了百年来在经济学领域艰辛跋涉、不断探索的历史发展轨迹，反映了美国主流经济学的基本走向。
为了提选最具开创意义和积厚流广的论文，评委会首先使用了JSTOR （JournalStorage）系统的论文引用和查询数量作为参考指标进行初选。
其后，为避免因论文引用与查询数量指标的内在缺陷可能导致早期刊发的经济学家的文章被漏选或误选，评委会对若干著名经济学家的相关文章也给予了重点关注。
最后，评委会每个人以自己对于质量和重要性的判断为标准，从已选论文中再作遴选，授予20篇论文为百年最佳论文。
其中，12篇论文为诺贝尔经济学奖得主独著或合著的经典论文。
现给出这20篇膺选最佳论文的导读，以飨读者，让读者感受这些经济学经典文献所蕴含的内在价值。
论文导读按文章发表先后顺序排列：《生产理论》（1982）C.W.柯布与P.H.道格拉斯著本文研究了1899-1922年间美国制造业的资本、劳动与产出的关系，分析了这一时期劳动与资本两类要素对产出的影响，首次提出并使用了此后以其名字命名的不变弹性柯布－道格拉斯（Cobb－Douglas）生产函数，其一般形式为：P＝ALαKβ,式中，P、L、K分别为产量、劳动、资本，A、α、β为三个参数。
美国经济评论century paper1
American Economic Review 101 (February 2011): 1–8/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.1.1100 Y ears of the American Economic Review:The T op 20 ArticlesBy Kenneth J. Arrow, B. Douglas Bernheim, Martin S. Feldstein,Daniel L. McFadden, James M. Poterba, and Robert M. Solow* The Top 20 Committee, consisting of Kenneth J. Arrow, B. Douglas Bernheim, Martin S. Feldstein, Daniel L. McFadden, James M. Poterba, and Robert M. Solow, was appointed by Robert Moffitt with the task of selecting the “Top 20” articles pub-lished in the American Economic Review during its first hundred years. We decided against trying to define formally the criteria for inclusion: they surely comprise sheer intellectual quality, influence on the ideas and practices of economists, and general significance or breadth; but it would be fruitless to try to specify the marginal rates of substitution among these and other qualities. We were looking for 20 admirable and important articles.As a starting point we used citation counts and numbers of searches in JSTOR.This is obviously important and relevant information, but not decisive on its own.Citation counts are biased in favor of subfields of economics with the largest popu-lations. There is also a bias in favor of moderately recent articles, if only because the number of potential readers and writers has been increasing in time; very recent articles suffer from the fact that citations build up over time. In any case we were expected to use our judgment about quality and significance. So we used the citation and JSTOR data only to give us a large group of eligibles. We worried especially about overlooking articles in the very early days of the AER, some by great names in the history of economics. But we found, just to take one striking example, that although Irving Fisher published several articles in the journal, they were all minor or ephemeral pieces.In the event, our early ballots showed an encouraging unanimity or near-unanim-ity, especially about the leading candidates. We very quickly converged on the Top15 articles. There were occasional differences of opinion, only to be expected from agroup with diverse interests, as we filled in the remaining three to five places. Here is our final list, arranged alphabetically, along with a brief reminder about each. There are few, if any, surprises.* Arrow: Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Stanford, CA 94305; Bernheim: Stanford University Department of Economics, Economics Building, 247 Stanford, California 94305; Feldstein: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138; McFadden: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Economics, 508-1 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720; Poterba: MIT Department of Economics, 50 Memorial Drive, Building E52, Room 350, Cambridge MA 02142; Solow: MIT Department of Economics, 50 Memorial Drive, Building E52, Cambridge MA 02142. We thank Jeffrey Hovis and Andrew McLetchie of JSTOR for their assistance. The 20 articles featured in this paper are available in the online version at /articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.1.1.1that approach creates the appropriate incentives for management. Many implica-tions of this hypothesis are developed.Arrow, Kenneth J. 1963. “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.” American Economic Review, 53(5): 941–73.This paper provided a framework for thinking about the economics of the market for medical care using the language and tools of modern microeconomics. It argued that the aforementioned market is beset by market failures because consumers are exposed to risks that are not fully insurable (in large part due to problems of moral hazard), and because they lack the information and expertise required to assess risks and treatments. It hypothesized that various salient features of the institutions governing the provision of medical care are best understood as social adaptations aimed at redressing the resulting inefficiencies. It also noted that in some cases those institutional adaptations undermine competition and perversely contribute to ineffi-ciency. Though written well prior to the emergence of the formal literature on asym-metric information, the paper anticipated many of the central issues that continue to occupy health economists today.Cobb, Charles W., and Paul H. Douglas. 1928. “A Theory of Production.” American Economic Review, 18(1): 139–65.The cliché surely applies here: this paper needs no introduction. The convenience and success of the constant-elasticity Cobb-Douglas function has spread its use from representing production possibilities, which was of course its original use, to representing utility functions and to much else throughout empirical and theoretical economics. Cobb and Douglas explored the elementary properties and implications of the functional form, and pointed to the approximate constancy of the relative shares of labor and capital in total income as the validating empirical fact.Deaton, Angus S., and John Muellbauer. 1980. “An Almost Ideal Demand System.” American Economic Review, 70(3): 312–26.A vast industry in applied econometrics analyzes the demand for specific prod-ucts, and the impact on consumers of public and private policies that alter market equilibrium. This paper, building on the traditions of Cobb-Douglas, Stone, and Gorman, introduces a practical system of demand equations that are consistent with preference maximization and have sufficient flexibility to support full welfare analy-sis of policies that have an impact on consumers. The Deaton-Muellbauer system is now the standard for empirical analysis of consumer demand.3 VOl. 101 NO. 1ARROW ET Al.:THE TOP 20 ARTIClES OF THE AERDiamond, Peter A.1965. “National Debt in a Neoclassical Growth Model.” American Economic Review, 55(5): 1126–50.Building on Paul Samuelson’s seminal work concerning consumption loans between individuals of different generations, this paper pioneered the analysis of overlapping generations (OLG) models with durable capital goods. It illumi-nated the properties of such models through two fundamental contributions. First, it demonstrated that the competitive equilibria of infinite horizon OLG models can be inefficient, even in the absence of conventional market failures. Second, it identified the mechanisms through which both external and internal debt can potentially reduce the capital stock. In clarifying the general equilibrium effects of displacing physical capital with government debt in individuals’ portfolios, it resolved a long-standing debate concerning the feasibility of using internal debt to shift the burden of paying for public expenditures to future generations.Diamond, Peter A., and James A. Mirrlees. 1971. “Optimal Taxation and Public Production I: Production Efficiency.” American Economic Review, 61(1): 8–27. Diamond, Peter A., and James A. Mirrlees. 1971. “Optimal Taxation and Public Production II: Tax Rules.” American Economic Review, 61(3): 261–78.This paper, in two parts, is the foundation of the theory of optimal taxation and public production in the presence of second-best limitations on redistribution and private production. Diamond and Mirrlees show how the tax system can be tuned to minimize distortions and disincentives, and eliminate production inef-ficiencies. By subjecting tax systems to rigorous microeconomic analysis, this paper opened research on tax mechanism design and minimization of the burden of taxes.Dixit, Avinash K., and Joseph E. Stiglitz.1977. “Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity.” American Economic Review, 67(3): 297–308. Under monopolistic competition with differentiated goods and increasing returns to scale in each good, is there too much or too little product differentiation? This paper uses classical tools of microeconomics to answer this question, and in doing so, provides the foundation for an entire literature in which products are endogenous in number and attributes, and general equilibrium welfare analysis can be used to examine the consequences of tastes for variety.Friedman, Milton.1968. “The Role of Monetary Policy.” American Economic Review, 58(1): 1–17.This presidential address is the origin of the “vertical long-run Phillips curve,” along with a contemporary paper by Edmund S. Phelps. It introduced the idea of a “natural” rate of unemployment as the only rate compatible with the sustained coin-cidence of actual and expected rates of inflation. This is the basis of the conclusion that the Phillips curve is vertical in the long run, allowing only a temporary trade-off between unemployment and inflation. From this followed possible implications for4THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW FEBRuARy 2011 the conduct of macro-policy, especially monetary policy. An enormous amount of research and discussion followed.Grossman, Sanford J., and Joseph E. Stiglitz.1980. “On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets.” American Economic Review, 70(3): 393–408. As pointed out by a number of scholars, in a world of dispersed information, the equilibrium price will itself in general be a source of information to participants, since it incorporates whatever information other participants have. Grossman and Stiglitz examine the implication for the case where information can be acquired at a cost. If there is an equilibrium, some will choose to get informed and others not; the two courses of action must be indifferent. (Very special assumptions are made about the risk aversion characteristics of the population and about its heterogeneity.) In particular, if some individuals can acquire perfect information at a finite cost, then no equilibrium exists, since, if information is acquired by some, it will be reflected in the price and so can be acquired costlessly by others, while if no one acquires information, it will pay any individual to acquire it.Harris, John R., and Michael P. Todaro.1970. “Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis.” American Economic Review, 60(1): 126–42. This widely cited paper starts with the puzzle that in poor developing countries one observes individuals migrating from agricultural areas to urban areas, even though they would have positive marginal product in agriculture but face a substan-tial probability of unemployment in the urban area. The first step in the explanation is to note that there are politically determined minimum wages in the urban areas that prevent wages from adjusting to achieve full employment for all those who come to the urban areas. The equilibrium distribution of potential workers between the rural and urban areas equates the marginal product of labor in agriculture to the expected wage in the urban area, i.e., the product of the wage and the probability of employment.Hayek, F. A. 1945.“The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review, 35(4): 519–30.The author addresses the fundamental question of the nature of the economic system and, in particular, its role in dealing with resource allocation when a fun-damental knowledge base is distributed in small bits among a large population. The knowledge needed includes consumer valuations, production relations, and resource availabilities. In particular, general scientific principles, where expert opinion might be best, are only a small part of the knowledge base. The author argues for the importance of a price system in achieving coordination and effi-ciency in resource use without implying an impossible aggregation of information in a central place.Jorgenson, Dale W. 1963. “Capital Theory and Investment Behavior.” American Economic Review, 53(2): 247–59.5 VOl. 101 NO. 1ARROW ET Al.:THE TOP 20 ARTIClES OF THE AERThis paper provided a theoretical framework for investment behavior based on a neoclassical theory of optimal capital accumulation. The paper introduced the user cost of capital as the key variable that combines the cost of finance (interest rates and equity yields) and tax rules (tax rates, depreciation schedules) and combined this user cost measure with the Cobb-Douglas production technology to obtain a desired stock of capital. Jorgenson then used the resulting implied optimal capi-tal stock to derive an econometric equation for investment. Generalizations of the Jorgenson framework (e.g., to allow for more general production functions) made this the standard approach to the empirical study of the determinants of investment. The user cost of capital also became the key concept for the theoretical study of the effects of alternative tax rules.Krueger, Anne O. 1974. “The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society.” American Economic Review, 64(3): 291–303.Many government policies, such as import licenses in developing nations, create rents for some market participants. While the presence of such rents and the distortions that they create have long been noted, this paper recognized the importance of “rent-seeking behavior” and explored its welfare implications. The paper’s central finding is that competitive rent-seeking increases the welfare costs of policies such as trade restrictions. In the context of import restrictions, this result strengthens the case for the use of tariffs rather than import quotas, since quotas create the possibility of rent-seeking behavior. By identifying the impor-tance of rent-seeking activities and providing a framework for analyzing their welfare costs, this paper expanded the economic analysis of the government’s choice of policy instrument to achieve particular goals. It also helped to launch a voluminous literature on the role of corruption and governance in the process of economic development.Krugman, Paul. 1980. “Scale Economies, Product Differentiation, and the Pattern of Trade.” American Economic Review, 70(5): 950–59.The classical theory that foreign trade is determined by comparative advantage fails to explain some important observations, for example, that there is consider-able trade in both directions within what is usually regarded as a single indus-try, and that countries tend to export goods for which the domestic demand is higher. Krugman investigates the determination of foreign trade under increasing returns; he assumes no difference in production conditions between countries. Prices are determined by imperfect competition with costless product differentia-tion. Using simple models, he formalizes foreign trade. When transport costs are introduced, he shows that each country will specialize, so no two will produce the same goods. The larger country will have terms of trade turned in its favor, and wages will be higher there. Some extensions of the model allow varieties within a single industry. It can then be shown that intra-industry trade can emerge and that countries will tend to export those commodities for which the domestic demand is highest.6THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW FEBRuARy 2011 Kuznets, Simon.1955. “Economic Growth and Income Inequality.” American Economic Review, 45(1): 1–28.Data from developing economies indicate that the earlier phases of economic development tend to be characterized by increasing income inequality, as those engaged in the small but growing modern sector of the economy pull away from those still left in agriculture and other subsistence activities. The degree of inequal-ity reaches a peak, however, and then diminishes with further development, as the modern sector comes to dominate the economy and perhaps more so if it creates room for redistributive activity. The resulting “Kuznets curve” has been the subject of much empirical research and discussion within development economics.Lucas, Robert E., Jr.1973. “Some International Evidence on Output-Inflation Tradeoffs.” American Economic Review, 63(3): 326–34.This article introduces a tight but stylized model in which market participants must make decisions without knowing whether local changes in price signal changes in relative price or merely reflect changes in the general price level; they do, however, know the statistical properties of both processes. From this basis emerges a natural-rate model in which the ratio of real-output change to price-level change in response to exogenous shifts in aggregate expenditure depends on the relative variance of those processes. Time-series cross-section data for a number of countries provide some weak evidence consistent with the basic conclusion. The underlying assump-tion has gone out of favor, but the modeling technique has been very influential.Modigliani, Franco, and Merton H. Miller. 1958. “The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment.” American Economic Review, 48(3): 261–97.A central question in corporate finance is how a firm’s financial choices, such as its use of debt rather than equity financing, affect its cost of capital and conse-quently its investment behavior. This paper developed a new framework for address-ing this question by asking how different debt-equity choices would affect the total market value of all of the cash flows that the firm provided to its investors, both bond-holders and stock-holders. The paper’s central result is that, in a setting with complete capital markets and in the absence of tax-induced distortions, a firm’s total market value is invariant to its borrowing behavior. This powerful result can be demonstrated constructively, by developing a straightforward set of borrowing or lending transactions that an equity investor can undertake to offset the consequences of changes in corporate borrowing. The analytical approach in this paper is one of the key foundations for the modern field of financial economics.Mundell, Robert A.1961. “A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas.” American Economic Review, 51(4): 657–65.This paper explains that selecting the optimal geographic area for a single cur-rency involves balancing two considerations. Macroeconomic stability is enhanced if the currency area has a high degree of internal factor mobility relative to the cross-border factor mobility. Taken by itself, this could lead to an excessively large7 VOl. 101 NO. 1ARROW ET Al.:THE TOP 20 ARTIClES OF THE AERnumber of currency areas, in the sense that there would be substantial transaction costs and valuation costs involved in making cross-area purchases. The optimal size of a currency area involves balancing these two considerations. Mundell discussed the potential application of this to the European countries some 30 years before the euro was introduced.Ross, Stephen A.1973. “The Economic Theory of Agency: The Principal’s Problem.” American Economic Review, 63(2): 134–39.This paper was the first to describe and analyze the canonical principal-agent problem with moral hazard, which has since become a cornerstone of microeco-nomic theory. It solved for the optimal compensation scheme using the first-order approach, and compared the solution to the first-best arrangement, noting that the two generally diverge due to the principal’s need to motivate the agent. It charac-terized the class of utility functions for which the principal’s solution is first-best optimal regardless of the payoff structure, as well as the class of payoff structures for which the solution is first-best optimal regardless of the utility functions. In only a handful of terse pages, it anticipated many of the central issues with which the subsequent literature was concerned.Shiller, Robert J.1981. “Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to Be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?” American Economic Review, 71(3): 421–36. Standard models of asset market equilibrium imply that the value of a share of corporate stock equals the present discounted value of that stock’s expected future payouts. This paper applied an ingenious test of this present value relationship, which compared the variance of annual stock price movements with the variance in corporate dividend payouts, to the US equity market for the period 1870–1979. The results suggested that historical stock price volatility was much greater than the volatility of dividend payouts would appear to warrant. This empirical finding stimulated a wide range of follow-on research exploring various aspects of the effi-cient markets hypothesis, testing for time-varying discount rates in capital markets, and investigating the econometric properties of stock market returns and corporate payouts.REFERENCESAlchian, Armen A., and Harold Demsetz. 1972. “Production, Information Costs, and Economic Orga-nization.” American Economic Review, 62(5): 777–95.Arrow, Kenneth J. 1963. “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.” American Eco-nomic Review, 53(5): 941–73.Cobb, Charles W., and Paul H. Douglas. 1928. “A Theory of Production.” American Economic Review, 18(1): 139–65.Deaton, Angus S., and John Muellbauer. 1980. “An Almost Ideal Demand System.” American Eco-nomic Review, 70(3): 312–26.Diamond, Peter A. 1965. “National Debt in a Neoclassical Growth Model.” American Economic Review, 55(5): 1126–50.Diamond, Peter A., and James A. Mirrlees. 1971. “Optimal Taxation and Public Production I: Produc-tion Efficiency.” American Economic Review, 61(1): 8–27.8THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW FEBRuARy 2011 Diamond, Peter A., and James A. Mirrlees. 1971. “Optimal Taxation and Public Production II: Tax Rules.” American Economic Review, 61(3): 261–78.Dixit, Avinash K., and Joseph E. Stiglitz. 1977. “Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity.” American Economic Review, 67(3): 297–308.Friedman, Milton. 1968. “The Role of Monetary Policy.” American Economic Review, 58(1): 1–17. Grossman, Sanford J., and Joseph E. Stiglitz. 1980. “On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets.” American Economic Review, 70(3): 393–408.Harris, John R., and Michael P. Todaro. 1970. “Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis.” American Economic Review, 60(1): 126–42.Hayek, F. A. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review, 35(4): 519–30. Jorgenson, Dale W. 1963. “Capital Theory and Investment Behavior.” American Economic Review, 53(2): 247–59.Krueger, Anne O. 1974. “The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society.” American Economic Review, 64(3): 291–303.Krugman, Paul. 1980. “Scale Economies, Product Differentiation, and the Pattern of Trade.” American Economic Review, 70(5): 950–59.Kuznets, Simon. 1955. “Economic Growth and Income Inequality.” American Economic Review, 45(1): 1–28.Lucas, Robert E., Jr. 1973. “Some International Evidence on Output-Inflation Tradeoffs.” American Economic Review, 63(3): 326–34.Modigliani, Franco, and Merton H. Miller. 1958. “The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment.” American Economic Review, 48(3): 261–97.Mundell, Robert A. 1961. “A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas.” American Economic Review, 51(4): 657–65.Ross, Stephen A. 1973. “The Economic Theory of Agency: The Principal’s Problem.” American Eco-nomic Review, 63(2): 134–39.Shiller, Robert J. 1981. “Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to Be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?” American Economic Review, 71(3): 421–36.This article has been cited by:1.David N. Laband, Suman Majumdar. 2012. Who Are the Giants on Whose Shoulders We Stand?.Kyklos65:2, 236-244. [CrossRef]2.JERRY EVENSKY. 2011. HES PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: WHAT’S WRONG WITHECONOMICS?. Journal of the History of Economic Thought34:01, 1-20. [CrossRef]。
美国经济评论century paper3
American Economic Review 101 (February 2011): 36–48/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.1.36Some Unsettled Problems of IrrigationBy Katharine Coman*[Geologist Nathaniel] Shaler called the Cordilleran area, comprising the western third of the United States, the “curse of the Continent.” West of the hundredth merid-ian, precipitation, except for certain favored sections, is insufficient for agriculture or for forest growth, and pasturage can be reckoned on for the spring and early summer only. From the mesas and foothills of the Rockies to the western slope of the Sierras, arid or semi-arid conditions prevail. The average annual rainfall varies from two inches in the deserts of the southwest to 20 inches on the Great Plains, but nowhere except on the north Pacific coast does it furnish a reliance for the farmer.On the western slopes of the mountain ranges, where the moisture-laden winds of the Pacific ascend to colder altitudes, there is considerable rain. The precipitation of autumn and winter is held in vast beds of snow and ice until the fervid suns of May and June release the flow. Then springs and torrents rush down to the lowlands, the rivers overflow their banks, and the valleys are flooded. How to conserve this excess water to serve the needs of summer-grown crops is the problem of arid America.The first Americans who attempted to farm the desert were the pioneers of the Mormon migration. Brigham Young and the 140 devoted saints who followed his lead across the Wasatch Mountains to the new Zion on the mesa above Great Salt Lake had no knowledge of irrigation; but agriculture was a sine qua non to a settle-ment so remote from civilization. Within two hours of their arrival they began to plow for a belated planting. “We found the land so dry,” wrote Lorenzo Snow, “that to plow it was impossible, and in attempting to do so some of the plow beams were broken. We therefore had to distribute the water over the land before it could be bro-ken.” The simple device worked satisfactorily and was used thereafter, not only to soften the soil but to water the crops. The damming of City Creek marked the begin-ning of irrigation in the Great Basin. Thereafter water supply was regarded even more than character of soil and means of transportation in determining the location of the successive “stakes” planted in the wilderness. Irrigating works were built, as were roads and bridges and sawmills, by cooperative effort, each colonist contribut-ing labor or material or money as he best could. New and struggling communities were not infrequently financed by the Church, stock being taken in exchange for funds advanced. The Mormon communities have now some six million acres under irrigation in the arid West and are producing wheat and alfalfa, sugar beets, peaches, cherries, and strawberries, out of all proportion to their ratio in the agricultural pop-ulation of the United States.* Coman (1857–1915), Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481. Originally appearing in March 1911, this is a reprint of the first article published in the first issue of the American Economic Review, volume 1, issue 1, pp. 1–19.During her time at Wellesley (1883–1900), Coman served as professor of history, chair of the economics depart-ment, and dean of the college.3637 Vol. 101 no. 1comAn: somE unsEttlEd pRoBlEms oF iRRigAtionMeantime the American pioneers in California were profiting by the irrigating experience of their Spanish predecessors. Dr. John Marsh, a Yankee and a Harvard graduate, secured a Spanish grant to a good square mile of land at the foot of Mt. Diablo and set about its cultivation with a zeal that soon made him one of the wealth-iest landowners in the province. His orchards and vineyards and irrigated fields were the marvel of the hijos del pais. Sutter’s ranch on American Fork was an equally convincing demonstration of what brains could do by adding water to the soil and climate of California. Water rights were free as air, and every ranchero used the streams that the winter rains sent across the lowlands, according to his own conve-nience. Only in the pueblos, San José and Los Angeles, was there endeavor to treat the scant supply as a common property to be developed by the building of dams and ditches under the direction of the public authorities. The advent of the gold seekers made heavy demands upon the water resources of the Sierras. Running water was a prime necessity in placer mining, the new market afforded by the mining communi-ties induced a far more extensive agriculture, and water rights became, for the first time, a matter of serious concern. The water needed to operate the sluices and long toms had to be conducted to the diggings in flumes, sometimes many miles in length and representing a considerable investment of labor and capital. Mining custom, which the California Legislature formulated into law, established the principle of “first come first served.” A notice posted at the point of diversion, stating date of posting and the amount of water to be taken out, constituted a claim to a specified number of miners’ inches. The law required that the claim should be registered with the county officer within 60 days of the posting, and the courts later decided that the claimant must prove that the construction of ditches, canals, or flumes had been undertaken immediately and prosecuted with diligence, and that the water drawn off was being put to a beneficial use. Notwithstanding these precautions, the m iners’ custom, notably when applied to agricultural districts, gave rise to strife and uncertainties that seriously handicapped industrial development. It had become evident that land with no assured water supply was of little value for agriculture. The streams that might be utilized within the resources of individual ranchmen were soon monopolized, and works of greater cost were needed to construct diversion dams, build main canals, and set up pumping machinery for the irrigation of the thousands of acres of fertile land that lay back from the water courses. In the hope of encouraging the development of the Great Valley between the Sierras and the Coast Range, a region all untouched by the Spanish regime, the Legislature (1862) passed an act authorizing the incorporation of canal companies and the construction of canals “for the transportation of passengers and freights, or for the purpose of irrigation and water power, or for the conveyance of water for mining or manufac-turing purposes, or for all of such purposes.” Under this liberal enactment, several irrigation companies were organized on the basis of claims to the flow of the San Joaquin and its tributary rivers.The common law doctrine of riparian rights was adopted by the courts of California in the early years of American occupation with no question as to its appli-cability to the new conditions. Practice vested in the adjacent landowner not only right to a continuous and undiminished flow, but to diversion for his own use and also for sale to agriculturists less fortunately situated. The effect was to give an extraordinary advantage to first comers and to speculators in this most valuable of38tHE AmERicAn Economic REViEW FEBRuARy 2011 natural resources. Subsequent cultivators, men who were proposing to convert cattle ranches and wheat fields into orchards and vegetable gardens, were obliged to be content with what was left or to defend their secondary claims by force. Appeal to the courts involved long and costly suits with inconclusive results, since the process of adjudication must be gone over whenever a new claimant appeared or an old claim was revived or extended. Agricultural enterprise in California is still retarded by the uncertainty of water rights and the heavy costs of litigation. Any one of the tens and hundreds of appropriators along a single stream may bring suit to enlarge his share, and the law offers no remedy to the revival of old disputes. Often the small farmer cannot afford the contest, and the victory goes by default to the wealthy ranchman or the well capitalized company. The doctrine of riparian rights even as modified by 50 years of court decisions is hopelessly inadequate, and the water users have had to resort to private agreements with mutual recognition of all the rights appurtenant to the supply in question. The doctrine of appropriation, the only doctrine suited to an arid agriculture, has never been formally recognized in California, much less the superior right of the public to the water supply which is precipitated on the mountain heights, collected in state-owned lakes and rivers, and which is indispensable to the future development of the commonwealth.By 1875 all the easily irrigated lands of the Cordilleran area were occupied, and it had become evident that the homestead law which had worked so satisfactorily in the Mississippi Valley was quite inapplicable to the conditions presented to the set-tler in the arid regions. The Desert Land Act was passed (1877) with intent to offer a sufficient reward to induce the man taking up public land to put in irrigating works.A full section of arid land, four times the amount permitted under the preemption or homestead acts, might be acquired by paying 25 cents per acre at the time of entry, redeeming the same by irrigation, within three years, and then paying the final charge of one dollar per acre. Residence on the holding was not required.1The Desert Land Act was put through Congress by men who knew little of west-ern conditions, on the assumption that water would always be found upon the land and in such form that it could be readily diverted to the fields; but few regions are so fortunately situated. Irrigation on a scale necessary to utilize distant mountain streams or to pump the subterranean flow required more capital and engineering skill than the ranchmen possessed and usually developed a capacity for watering tens of thousands of acres. The organization of irrigation companies followed. Hydrographic engineering was a new art, construction was not infrequently faulty, water rights uncertain, and the quantity of water available often grossly exaggerated. The promoters of these schemes relied on the fact that the settlers could do nothing toward completing their titles without water, and they devised contracts by which the farmer paid a flat rate per acre, regardless of the amount of water furnished. The temptation to contract to irrigate more land than could be provided for proved irresistible, and many of the settlers were ruined. Such promoters soon discovered, however, that they had killed the goose that laid the golden egg, for without water users there could be no revenue.1 The act was amended in 1891, reducing the holding to 320 acres and introducing the residence requirement.39 Vol. 101 no. 1comAn: somE unsEttlEd pRoBlEms oF iRRigAtionThe decade of 1880 to 1890 was the boom period of irrigation. The energies of the West were turned from the dwindling returns of cattle ranches and mining properties to the latent possibilities of the desert. Speculation ran riot. The capac-ity of lakes and streams was overestimated, and the agricultural value of land and climate exaggerated by overenthusiastic promoters; stocks and bonds were sold broadcast among investors who appreciated the significance of irrigation, but had no means of testing the legal or financial status of any individual proposition. The great majority of these projects failed, and the money contributed by thousands of small investors was irretrievably lost. Nothing goes to wreck more quickly than irri-gation works where repairs are not maintained; the ditches fill with sand or silt, the flumes warp in the sun, and the cement dams disintegrate under the alternate action of frost and heat. Many of the promoters, as well as the investors, had reason to ask themselves the unanswerable conundrum: What is the difference between a boom and a boomerang?Of far more interest than the physical problems of irrigation or its speculative possibilities is the slow but steady growth of custom and legislation away from the doctrine of riparian rights and priority claims to the recognition of the paramount importance of beneficial use and the public good. The first scientific study of irriga-tion as an economic problem was made by J. W. Powell, Chief of US Geographical Survey, in his report on the lands of the Arid Region, published by the government in 1879. Powell had spent a decade in the exploration of the great desert region between the Colorado River and the Snake, and his conclusions were worthy of con-sideration. He estimated that 8 percent or about 60 million acres of the Cordilleran area was both fertile and susceptible of irrigation, a conclusion not greatly in excess of the latest calculations of irrigation experts. Since the isolated farmer was unequal to the task of building and maintaining the dams and ditches needed, Powell pro-posed that Congress “authorize the organization of irrigation districts by homestead settlements upon the public lands requiring irrigation for agricultural purposes.” Any nine or more persons applying for a tract of land with the intention of construct-ing irrigation works were entitled to register for 80 acres each, in a continuous tract, the lands to be patented when evidence of successful irrigation was submitted. His observation of irrigation in Utah convinced Powell that a cooperative undertaking of this nature was not only practicable but the best means of preventing land monop-oly, and he deemed such legislation essential “if these lands are to be reserved for actual settlers, in small quantities, to provide homes for poor men, on the principle involved in the homestead laws.” Thus early was attention called to the inadequacy of the Desert Land Act, the desirability of encouraging a more democratic form of irrigation by cooperating communities, the necessity of attaching the water right to the land in order to guard against monopolization of both land and water, and the importance of a scientific classification of the public lands into irrigable, pasture, timber, and mineral, so that the diverse interests might be promoted by appropriate legislation. Powell was, unfortunately, 20 years in advance of public sentiment, and his farseeing recommendations attracted little attention at Washington.What might be accomplished by cooperative effort had already been demon-strated in the Mormon communities and in the Union Colony at Greeley, Colorado; but the first legislative enactment in furtherance of cooperative construction was the Wright Act, the California law of 1887. This provided that irrigation districts might40tHE AmERicAn Economic REViEW FEBRuARy 2011 be organized under state supervision wherever a majority of the resident freeholders should petition for the privilege. The district, once established, had authority to issue bonds, secured by a mortgage on the lands in question, for the purchase or construc-tion of waterworks, and further, to levy taxes assessed on the real estate represented sufficient to meet interest on the bonds and the annual costs of maintenance. The conduct of routine business was vested in elected trustees, but extraordinary con-tracts must be submitted to vote and ratified by the freeholders. Extravagant hopes were entertained of this system, and many districts were organized, but few have proven entirely successful. In many instances worthless or contested water rights were purchased, and the district was involved in long and costly litigation. In others, engineering works of great difficulty were undertaken with small comprehension of the expense involved, and the original bond issue was swallowed up in the prelimi-nary works. In order to get the water within reach of the farmers, a new issue was made necessary, and the trustees found the marketing of second mortgage bonds on property as yet undeveloped a piece of financiering quite beyond their powers. In the effort to push the enterprise through to completion, they not infrequently resorted to illegal means, and the district was in consequence dissolved. The crisis of 1893 involved in financial ruin still other districts that had been successfully managed up to that time.Some of these difficulties were peculiar to California, where confusion as to water rights and the hostility of private companies presented well-nigh insuperable diffi-culties, but others are universal. It is not an easy matter to get a group of landowners, geographically selected with reference to drainage basin, to cooperate intelligently and to wait patiently the result of an engineering problem; and again, the resources of such a community are rarely adequate to the carrying through of any but the simpler works. The irrigation district has since been legalized in half a dozen western states, and many bankrupt companies have been bought out by farmers thus associated; but nowhere is the device regarded as the solution of the larger financial problems of irrigation. The irrigation district can only succeed where cost of construction is light, and where soil and climate render the lands highly productive, as in southern California. Western men were becoming convinced that if the homestead law was to have any meaning west of the hundredth meridian, government must come to the aid of the settler, first in the adjudication of water rights, and second in the construction of the more costly irrigation works.Under the influence of Greeley and its daughter colonies, the state of Colorado (1876) had set aside the riparian right and announced the doctrine of appropriation,dedicating the water of every natural stream to the use of the people. A brief experi-ence of the hardships and loss involved in water wars and lawsuits determined the farmers of Colorado to insist on the public adjudication of conflicting claims. The state is now divided into districts according to drainage, and disputes as to priority and the prorating of water are referred to the corresponding water commissioners, from whose decision the aggrieved may appeal to the courts. But Colorado has as yet made no provision for the scientific measurement of the flow of streams, the capacity of canals, the acreage of land served, and the agricultural duty of the water furnished. The early settlers were accustomed to put in claims for a water supply far in excess of their needs, and the sum total of these claims was often in excess of the maximum output of the stream. The important water resources of the state are41 Vol. 101 no. 1comAn: somE unsEttlEd pRoBlEms oF iRRigAtionthus pledged to two and three times their utmost capacity, and the land now being developed can only be provided with water by the construction of mammoth reser-voirs. Colorado, however, took the lead in adopting the principle of appropriation as fundamental to any final adjudication of water rights. This doctrine and the necessity of public control were soon recognized in Congressional legislation (e.g., the Desert Land Act and the Timber Culture Act), and these principles may be regarded as now fully established for the arid region.The water code of Wyoming, adopted with its constitution in 1890, was the first thoroughgoing attempt to put the vexed question of water titles on a scientific and equitable basis and to render the water right inseparable from land ownership. Under this law, application for diversion of any portion of a lake or stream must be registered with the state engineer, and no claim has any validity until ratified by his office. The registration of a claim gives prescriptive right, but to secure legal title, the claimant must prove that the projected works have been constructed within the specified time and that the water is being used for a beneficent purpose. The state engineer is obliged to reject the application and to refuse registration in case the flow of the stream in question is all appropriated, or if he has reason to believe that the claimant is financially unequal to its development. Otherwise the certificate of registration might be used to promote a fraudulent undertaking. The adjudication of disputes is vested in a Board of Control made up of the state engineer and the super-intendents of the four water districts. Evidence as to the capacity of the stream and of the several diversion ditches, together with the agricultural requirements of the lands to be furnished, are ascertained by scientific survey. The superintendent of the division in which the disputed claims lie hears testimony as to priority of use, quan-tity utilized, etc., and prepares a list of existing claims. The decision of the Board of Control amounts to a formal decree defining all rights, and on this basis certificates of title are issued. Appeal may be made, however, from the Board of Control to the courts. This comprehensive and highly satisfactory system has been adopted with various minor modifications in Nebraska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, the two Dakotas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Oregon and has gone far to straighten out the confused tangle of riparian rights, priority rights, excess claims, etc. The Wyoming plan has done all that law can do toward determining the legal status of irrigation in the com-monwealths adopting it, and the practice of enforcing unauthorized claims by armed gangs and dynamiting the dams of rival companies is fast fading into the dramatic if disastrous past.The legal problems of irrigation are thus in a fair way to settlement, but the finan-cial problems remain. The furnishing of water by a private monopoly is no more satisfactory to an agricultural district than to a municipality, and the danger of inad-equate supply and exorbitant charges is no less a menace. In southern Spain, where this system obtains and water is sold at auction, the water rates mount in a dry season to an all but prohibitive point. In a wet summer, on the contrary, when the farmers have no need of the artificial supply, they fall so low that the company does not realize enough revenue to offset running expenses. The California law of 1862 empowered water companies “to establish, collect and receive rates, water rents or tolls, which shall be subject to regulation by the board of supervisors of the county or counties in which the work is situated, but which shall not be reduced by the supervisors so low as to yield to the stockholders less than one and one half percent42tHE AmERicAn Economic REViEW FEBRuARy 2011 per month on the capital actually invested.” This method of adjusting charges has not proven entirely satisfactory to either producer or consumer of the water sup-ply. Eighteen percent, a not unusual rate of profit in the early days of California, is excessive now that there is abundant capital on hand for such investments, while the “capital actually invested” means an overestimate of the present value of the prop-erty. No redress was provided in case the supply furnished is insufficient to meet all engagements, and in the not infrequent cases where the canal crosses county lines, the several boards of supervisors may come to different conclusions as to the justice of a given rate. Finally, the courts have ruled that a contract negotiated between company and water user cannot be set aside by the dictum of a public officer, and many farmers have been induced to accept a “contracting-out” clause which renders the arbitrament of the supervisors invalid. However, in the last analysis, the pros-perity of the community served is recognized by sane promoters to be the ultimate source of revenue, and charges are regulated by what the farmer can afford to pay rather than by what the water monopoly might possibly extort, while in many dis-tricts the waterworks are owned and rates fixed by the farmers themselves.On the other hand the financial future of the irrigation company is often far from reassuring. Irrigation works are usually built in advance of settlement, and returns sufficient to pay interest on the cost of construction cannot be expected until the number of consumers has reached the full capacity of the flow. Even where all con-ditions are favorable, water abundant, works adequately built, and soil and climate promising, the promoters of water companies aiming to supply settlers on public lands are often balked of dividends by the “sooners,” who seek out each new p roject in advance of the constructing engineers and locate their claims as soon as the sur-veyors’ stakes are driven. By more or less fraudulent compliance with the homestead act, they manage to get possession of the best land under the prospective canal. They have no intention of developing their holdings and use little or no water for irrigation but hold their patents for a rise in value and thus retard legitimate settlement. An arrangement far more satisfactory both to the farmers and to the purveyor of water obtains where both land and water supply are owned by the same company. Thus the Crocker estate in the San Joaquin valley is being sold in small tracts of five, ten, and 20 acres to actual colonists, and the deed of sale guarantees sufficient water for irrigation at the flat rate of one dollar per acre per year. The same terms are accorded under the Miller & Lux irrigation project and on some of the great California wheat ranches that are now being divided into fruit farms. The system is an admirable one, ensuring to the cultivator the indispensable water supply at a reasonable and unvary-ing price and to the owner of the works an adequate return on his investment. Long and intimate acquaintance with the vexations that beset irrigation projects inspired Senator Carey of Wyoming to urge upon Congress the legislation which has finally put the private irrigation of public lands on a rational basis. Under the Carey Act (1894), the federal government offers to make over to any one of the arid states complying with certain provisions as to reclamation and settlement one million acres of the public land or such portion thereof as has been demonstrated by actual survey to be susceptible of irrigation. The land commission of the state participating in this privilege is made responsible for the projects undertaken. The adequacy of the water right, the character of the works, the financial standing of the undertaking company are all passed upon and the prescribed specifications accepted43 Vol. 101 no. 1comAn: somE unsEttlEd pRoBlEms oF iRRigAtionin a written contract before the lands covered by the project may be offered for sale or advertisements issued. The lands are sold by the state officials in tracts of from 20 to 160 acres, at a rate fixed by each state and to bona fide settlers.2 Persons filing on these lands must furnish proof of at least 30 days’ residence and the cultivation of one eighth of the tract before receiving clear title. Furthermore, they must have signed a contract with the water company agreeing to purchase the water right at a specified charge per acre. Ten years is allowed for the water right payment, but this obligation may be anticipated or passed on with the title in case the holding is sold to a later incumbent. The settlers are purchasing not water only but the irrigating sys-tem. The price put upon this perpetual possession varies according to the exigencies of construction from $25 to $50 per acre, estimated on the supposition that, all the lands being taken up, the returns will cover the cost of the works and a fair profit on the investment. The capital once recovered, the promoting company proceeds to a new venture, leaving the settlers owners of the works. The water rights are converted into water stock, and a water-users’ association is organized in which the farmers hold stock in proportion to their respective acreage. This cooperative company, like the irrigation district, is responsible for the maintenance of canals, the distribution of water, and for any repairs that may prove necessary.Idaho inaugurated the Carey Act system with signal success, and the sagebrush plains of the Snake River Desert were brought under cultivation with marvelous rapidity. The example of Wyoming and Idaho was followed by Montana, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, California, and New Mexico. The achievements of irrigation under the Carey Act have been highly gratifying to its sponsors, and the guaran-tees provided have given to this class of irrigation securities a recognized financial status. The farmers’ water right contracts, secured by a first mortgage on the land, are deposited as security for bonds issued in the ratio of one and a half to one. The annual payments are collected by the representatives of the bondholders and applied, year by year, to meet interest and the ten annual payments on the principal; but the value of the irrigation system as appraised by the state engineer is the ultimate secu-rity. Notwithstanding these precautions, a Carey Act project may fail to fulfill its obligations, in case it is unable to market bonds sufficient to complete the works, or the difficulties of construction prove unexpectedly great, or untoward floods carry away the dam and costly repairs are necessitated. It is evident, furthermore, that the ultimate source of revenue is the earning capacity of the lands under the project. If these are not rapidly taken up, or if the conditions of soil and climate are such as to render tillage unremunerative, water right payments will not be forthcoming, and the only asset recoverable may be a discredited irrigation system and the underlying lands. The recent collapse of the Conrad Land and Water Company and the Big Lost River Irrigation Company, which went into the hands of receivers with outstanding bond issues of $150,000 and $1,355,000 respectively, are cases in point.National interest in the reclamation of arid lands culminated in the Reclamation Act (1902) whereby the proceeds of public land sales, in excess of the educational obligations already assumed, are devoted to the reclamation of agricultural lands in 17 arid and semi-arid states. The Reclamation Service was organized under the2 Oregon makes no charge for the land but requires the cultivation of one fourth the area.。
美国经济探讨及其对中国的启示
美国经济探讨及其对中国的启示美国经济探讨及其对中国的启示[摘要]本文对华尔街风云所反映出来的美国经济兴衰的历史进行探讨，并在此基础上就中国的经济发展提出思考，为中国特色社会主义市场经济发展提出可操作建议。
同时要注意到，作为从西方资本主义国家的资本运作市场得来的探讨成果，我国学者在利用这一理论分析中国相关社会现象时要考虑其适用性问题。
[关键词]编辑部论文发表,资本运作,经济危机,两条道路,制衡机制,华尔街1 探讨的意义1.1 资本主义市场有一定优势华尔街是美国经济的一个缩影，从很大程度上来说，是它将美国经济推向了世界。
华尔街所创造的财富远远超过它对财富的破坏。
对华尔街风云变幻的研究和探讨，有利于更深入、更实际地了解资本主义市场经济以及它所隐含的各种风险。
1.2 经济全球化的要求2008年，由华尔街所导致的美国经济危机最终演变成世界性的金融危机，没有一个国家可以独善其身，这也为中国人提供了一次重新认识和研究世界金融市场与资本主义运作模式的机会，以他人之利得为己之借鉴，使中国经济在经济全球化的浪潮中求得发展。
1.3 国情的需要中国坚持走中国特色社会主义市场经济的道路，这条道路必然是宏观调控这只“有形手”和市场经济这只“无形手”的综合，从而实现资源的合理配置。
走这条道路离不开对资本主义市场经济的深入研究和对金融领域的把控。
虽然中国证券市场已经走在建立成熟、开放市场的路上，但毕竟发展历史较短，与世界发达国家的证券市场相比，依然存在很大差距，中国的复杂性也给我们接受金融市场带来极大的'困难，因此，面对金融全球化的趋势，中国只能选择走认识它、学习它、融入它、影响它的道路。
2 华尔街风云的历程表现2.1 与荷兰联系紧密的历史渊源华尔街起初就是一道墙，最初是由荷兰人建立的。
美国利用荷兰人创立的股份制形式，通过公开发行股票，将分散在公众手上的资金汇聚起来实现生产，股份制沿用至今仍然是最有活力的公司组织形式。
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《美国经济评论》20篇百年经典经济论文导读2014-09-13经济学茶座由美国经济学联合会主办的《美国经济评论》创刊于1911年，是在美国影响最大，也是世界知名遐迩的经济学期刊之一。
为纪念创刊100周年，期刊特邀了阿罗（K.J.Arrow）、伯恩黑姆（D.Bernheim）、费尔德斯坦（M.S.Feldstein）、麦克法登（D.L.McFadden）、波特巴（J.M.Poterba）与索洛（R.M.Solow）等六位著名经济学家，成立了“20篇最佳论文”评选委员会，在该刊100年来刊登的数千篇文章中，甄选出对经济学发展与实践产生深远、重大影响，且富有创造性的20篇最佳论文。
2011年第1期《美国经济评论》出版了百年纪念特刊，开辟了百年论坛专栏，并公布了中选结果。
膺选论文都名重一时，代表了每一时期经济学的最高学术水平,同时整体再现了百年来在经济学领域艰辛跋涉、不断探索的历史发展轨迹，反映了美国主流经济学的基本走向。
为了提选最具开创意义和积厚流广的论文，评委会首先使用了JSTOR （JournalStorage）系统的论文引用和查询数量作为参考指标进行初选。
其后，为避免因论文引用与查询数量指标的内在缺陷可能导致早期刊发的经济学家的文章被漏选或误选，评委会对若干著名经济学家的相关文章也给予了重点关注。
最后，评委会每个人以自己对于质量和重要性的判断为标准，从已选论文中再作遴选，授予20篇论文为百年最佳论文。
其中，12篇论文为诺贝尔经济学奖得主独著或合著的经典论文。
现给出这20篇膺选最佳论文的导读，以飨读者，让读者感受这些经济学经典文献所蕴含的内在价值。
论文导读按文章发表先后顺序排列：《生产理论》（1982）C.W.柯布与P.H.道格拉斯著本文研究了1899-1922年间美国制造业的资本、劳动与产出的关系，分析了这一时期劳动与资本两类要素对产出的影响，首次提出并使用了此后以其名字命名的不变弹性柯布－道格拉斯（Cobb－Douglas）生产函数，其一般形式为：P＝ALαKβ,式中，P、L、K分别为产量、劳动、资本，A、α、β为三个参数。
当α+β＝1时，α、β分别表示劳动、资本所得在总产量中所占份额。
该函数以其简单的形式描述了人们所关心的一些性质，是经济学中使用最广泛的一种函数形式，被用于表示生产、效用函数以及理论与实证经济学其他方面。
他们用机器、工具、设备与建筑量测资本，制造业工人数表示劳动，经过对1899－1922年间有关经济资料的分析与估计，得到美国制造业以1899年为基准的不变价格的产量、资本和劳动投入量的数据，并总结出生产函数：P＝1.01L0.75K0.25，该函数表明这一期间的总产量中，劳动与资本所得的相对份额分别为75%与25%。
他还通过数理分析，探讨了该函数的基本性质。
《知识在社会中的利用》（1945）弗里德里希·冯·哈耶克著本文主要阐述了经济体系的本质及其在资源配置中的作用。
他认为经济社会的基本问题是社会中的知识利用问题。
知识分为两类：科学知识与原理；特定时间与地点的特殊情况的知识。
在经济活动中，众多参与者各自的经济活动产生了大量知识，分散在不同经济个体中。
知识的分散使经济计划成为必要。
哈耶克认为计划体制有三种，即中央计划、分散计划与介于二者之间的行业计划，即垄断，这些体制的效率取决于哪种体制能更充分利用知识。
由于知识障碍，中央计划当局不能做出有效决策，只有依靠分散计划才能保证特殊情况的知识迅速得到利用。
同时，社会经济问题总是唯一来自变化，分散计划也不能仅仅依据关于直接情况的有限知识做出决策，这又产生了如何传递别人信息的问题。
哈耶克认为分散信息通过价格机制传递，价格机制最显著的事实就是知识节约。
价格体系是信息传递的媒介，通过价格体系的传导作用，分工与资源协调利用成为可能。
价格制度是人们偶然发现的、未经理解就学会利用的体系，目前为止人们还没有设计出一种可以保留价格体系优点的替代体系。
哈耶克的信息分散论把理解经济知识建立在哲学认识论的基础之上，论证了经济自由和市场机制的客观性。
《经济增长与收入不平等》（1955）西蒙·库兹涅兹著本文根据经验数据阐明了经济增长过程中收入分配不平等的变化趋势及其原因。
他在分析说明经济发展早期（普鲁士）、经济发展后期（美国、英国、德国）及对比分析发展中与发达国家有限统计数据的基础上，提出了反映不平等长期变动特征的“倒U型”假说：在前工业文明向工业文明过渡的经济增长早期收入不平等扩大，经短暂稳定时期后，在增长的后期不平等差距逐渐消失。
库兹涅兹认为，在经济发展过程中，一方面，存在着使收入分配不平等扩大的两个主要因素：一是储蓄和积累集中在少数富裕阶层，储蓄又成为其获得更多收入的手段，经济增长必然导致穷富两极分化；二是工业化与城市化水平持续提高，而城市居民收入比农村更加不平等，经济增长必然引起分配差距拉大。
另一方面，随着收入差距的扩大，也出现了抑制不平等扩大的因素，如法律约束和国家政策干预、富裕阶层因低生育倾向而占总人口的比重降低、技术进步与新兴产业出现而引起的产业结构调整等。
因此，在上述两方面因素的作用下，社会收入分配不平等呈现“倒U型”变化趋势，用图形表示即是著名的“库兹涅茨曲线”，该结果成了众多发展经济学实证与理论分析的主题。
《资本成本、公司财务与投资理论》（1958）F.莫迪尼安尼与M.H.米勒著本文采用无套利分析方法、建立新的理论框架阐述了资本结构、资本成本与公司价值三者之间关系，回答了公司融资方式如何影响公司资本成本与投资行为这一公司财务的核心问题，这也成为日后莫迪利亚尼与米勒分别于1985和1990年获得诺贝尔经济学奖的重要基础。
MM理论认为存在不确定性的情形下，资本成本是资本投资者所要求的必要回报率即预期收益率的加权平均值，而不是获得某种特殊资本来源的成本。
在没有企业和个人所得税、没有企业破产风险、资本市场充分有效等假定条件下，公司的市场价值和平均资本成本与资本结构无关，无论有无债务资本，公司价值等于公司所有资产的预期收益额按其综合资本成本率进行折现的现值，其平均资本成本等于权益现金流的资本化率。
利用财务杠杆的公司，其股权资本成本随借入资本在总资本中所占比例提高而增加。
为了股东利益最大化，公司应当在投资收益大于或等于其资本成本时才进行投资。
同时，他们用无套利分析对此给予了证明，在假定条件下，投资者的套利活动必然引起债券与股票相对价格发生变化，最终使套利机会消失，进而抵消财务杠杆作用对公司市场价值的影响而达到投资均衡。
MM理论奠定了现代企业资本结构理论与金融经济学的基石，革命性地将企业财务目标转向股东利益最大化目标，首创的无套利分析成为金融经济学的基本方法之一。
《最优货币区理论》（1961）罗伯特·蒙代尔著20世纪60年代初，围绕浮动汇率与固定汇率之间最优汇率制度选择问题，学者们争论不休。
蒙代尔在文章中提出了最优货币区理论，探讨了对经济区成员国而言，什么是其放弃主权国家货币、采用共同货币的最优区域问题。
蒙代尔提出应以生产要素流动性为准则，以地理区域而不是国家为单位来确定最优货币区。
他认为货币区就是要素自由流动、汇率固定的地理区域。
当生产要素在每一区域内成员国之间能够完全流动，而区域之间生产要素不流动时，要素自由流动的每个区域就可采用共同或单一货币，建立货币区，而货币区之间保持浮动汇率。
在货币区内通过劳动力要素流动就能纠正由需求转移造成的外部失衡，进而实现各成员国充分就业或价格稳定；而货币区之间的外部平衡通过汇率浮动就可自动实现，从而达到经济稳定，无任何区域产生通胀或失业，即只有在基于地理区域的货币区之间通过汇率浮动实行稳定经济的政策才有效。
在此基础上，蒙代尔进一步指出最优货币地理区域规模的选择需考虑以下两方面因素的平衡：一方面，货币区规模越小，区内要素流动性程度相对于区外越高，成员国就越易实现宏观经济稳定，以至于每个要素不流动的失业地区都应独立成区；另一方面，货币区规模越小，交易费用、投机冲击越大，货币幻觉假设越无效，以至于整个世界应采用单一货币，建立最大的货币区，最优货币区规模即是这两方面因素的均衡。
最后，他还分析了该理论在欧元起动30多年前欧洲国家的潜在应用。
《资本理论与投资行为》（1963）戴尔·乔根森著本文克服以往投资理论研究“重宏轻微”的缺陷，以新古典资本积累理论为基础，构建了企业投资行为分析框架。
他认为企业资本存量需求不同于资本投资需求，短期投资需求取决于滞后的资本存量需求的变化，资本存量需求决定于企业净值最大化，企业净值是净收益的现值。
通过考察企业的行为，乔根森首先给出了净值、总收益、直接税方程，并考虑融资成本与税收制度而引入资本使用者成本概念。
其次，利用新古典经济学分析方法，结合资本使用者成本与柯布－道格拉斯生产函数,得出了新古典投资理论的最优资本存量方程：k*=γpq/c其中，k、γ、p、q、c分别表示资本存量、资本产出弹性、产出价格、产量与资本使用者成本。
该式说明了企业的最优资本存量k取决于当期的产量、产出价格以及资本使用者成本。
利用资本存量函数进而可导出投资经济计量方程：It=w(L)［K*t-K*t-1］其中，I、w为实际投资与滞后函数。
最后，乔根森还运用1948-1960年间美国制造业的季度数据对其投资行为理论模型进行了实证检验。
最优资本存量函数已成为投资行为实证研究的标准方法，其资本的使用者成本被广泛运用于选择性税则影响的理论研究中。
《不确定性与医疗保健经济学》（1963）肯尼斯·阿罗著本文用现代微观经济学的方法和语言，建立了医疗保健经济学的分析框架，被视为卫生经济学的开山之作。
阿罗认为医疗保健市场有显著的不确定性、外部性、信息不对称等特征，由此产生了逆向选择、道德风险、委托－代理等问题，医疗保健市场是不完全竞争市场，存在市场失灵。
他依据福利经济学第一与第二最优原理，分析了医疗市场失灵的原因：主要是由于风险承担的不可销售性与信息的无法完全市场化导致了医疗保健市场偏离完全竞争状态。
在确定性条件下，偏离表现在产品的不可销售性、供给规模递增、市场进入受限与产品差别定价等四方面；在不确定性条件下，偏离表现在针对所有可能风险的保险市场的缺失与医疗效果的不确定性两方面。
医疗保健市场失灵会产生低效率。
对此，阿罗指出，医疗保健市场最优状态没有实现时，社会在一定程度上会认识到其与最优状态之间的偏离，非市场补偿性制度就会出现，促进医疗市场向最优转化，旨在纠正由市场失灵产生的低效率。
医疗保健市场不同于完全竞争市场的特殊结构特征很大程度上就是为了纠正其对完全竞争状态的偏离。
如财政补贴、慈善行为等非竞争性行为就可用这种补偿性制度解释，医疗保障问题本质上就是这种适应性的表现。