Chinese Social Sciences Review. Volume 2

Author: Zhang Shuguang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: This issue's "Theme Forum" features two articles discussing financial issues. Dr. Sun Lijian's article advances the analysis of the financial system's resource allocation mechanism from general static market mechanisms to dynamic market transmission mechanisms. Through a comparison of the functions and micro-conduction mechanisms of market-dominated and bank-dominated financial systems in terms of liquidity, price discovery, risk diversification, information production, and corporate governance, it points out that the construction of the financial system should pursue "reasonableness" rather than "perfection" to maintain the efficiency of the financial system and achieve the ideal state where enterprises create the greatest value for society and consumers enjoy the greatest benefits. Under the conditions of financial globalization, market transmission mechanisms are quite complex, and their effects may be contradictory. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent and avoid the fallacy of composition. The key lies not in whether the market or the banks dominate, but in creating an environment that facilitates intermediaries or markets in providing good financial services to society. Yin Jianfeng's article introduces asymmetric information into the growth model, explaining how the heterogeneity of parties will lead to adverse selection and the "asymmetric information trap," negatively impacting economic growth. It further reveals that through credit rationing and other means, the financial system can identify heterogeneous parties, overcome the "asymmetric information trap," and solve the problem of adverse selection. Based on this, it concludes that a decentralized, competitive banking industrial structure is not conducive to the implementation of credit rationing, while a relatively concentrated banking structure is superior to a relatively decentralized one. Several articles published in "Academic Articles" and related columns are worth reading. Zhu Xiaoyang's paper adopts the "extended case" method to discuss the transformation of a village in Yunnan over more than half a century, explaining how people redefined major historical events according to the environmental conditions of the time, formed "conditional information" for individual and collective actions, and the "collective memory" of the village community, thereby influencing the "reality" of village development and community order-building, including village elections and self-governance in the 1990s. Wang Xiaozhang's paper compares and analyzes the ideas of Simmel and Weber on modern self-practice, revealing their inherent tension in denying the prophet yet playing the prophet, while also highlighting their respective limitations. Simmel views self-practice as an endless battle where life transcends itself and confronts itself, and only by maintaining a certain degree of superficiality can life continue. Weber proposed ascetic personality and self-practice, but modern society has dissolved the value rationality of early Puritan asceticism. Supervision is a common phenomenon in organizations, and supervision decisions are important organizational decisions. Wang Mijun's paper, building on previous research, discusses the impact of collusion on supervision decisions and organizational design, proving that collusion, information quality, and supervision technology characteristics are fundamental factors affecting supervision decisions and organizational design. Xu Zhangrun's article reviews Liang Shuming's constitutional and constitutional thoughts, which not only have great academic and ideological value but also hold significant practical implications for promoting China's democratic constitutional construction. In recent decades, property rights theory has developed rapidly, with continuous innovation and a vast body of literature. The reviews by Phluebotn and Tiebout in 1972 and De Alessi in 1980 are considered classics but fail to cover further developments. This issue's "Literature Review" column features an article by Xu Guangdong and Shi Hongxiu, which provides a new review of property rights theory in institutional economics from the perspective of intellectual history. This issue also published commentaries by 11 Ph.D. students from Peking University, Jilin University, and Renmin University, offering extensive reviews of the first four issues of China Social Sciences Review. These commentaries include praise, criticism, and encouragement, with insightful analyses and brilliant ideas across various aspects such as academia and ideology, theory and practice, concern for reality and intellectual context, intellectuals and knowledge production, editorial purpose and column settings, review methods, and article selection. All these converge on one point: for the cause of Chinese academia.