Briefly describe the research object, research content and basic theoretical framework of economics?

Since19th century, the capitalist mode of production and bourgeois regime have been consolidated in major capitalist countries in western Europe. Therefore, the mercantilist policy formed in the primitive accumulation period and the legal system reflecting excessive state intervention have become obstacles to the further development of capitalism, and the breakthrough is the "anti-corn laws Alliance" which took the lead in raising the banner of "economic freedom". However, the physiocracy originated in France in the second half of the18th century takes laissez-faire as the principle, opposes mercantilism and insists on various policies and legal systems of state intervention in the economy, and puts forward that "economic freedom" is the only way to realize a fair and reasonable "natural order". Smith, the representative of classical political economy, is the greatest thinker of this era. In 1776, he published a book on the nature and causes of national wealth, and put forward three basic categories that people are familiar with so far, namely "economic man", "invisible hand" and "night watchman", and pointed out that they were abstracted as "economic man". Any government intervention in the free order is almost certainly harmful (4), so the best role of the government is "night watchman" or "night police government", which has no economic function except taxation. Adam Smith's theory was widely recognized, and he became the originator of liberalism. At the same time, however, Western Europe and even Britain have promulgated a considerable number of laws reflecting the state's intervention in public utilities, finance and currency, foreign trade, prices and tariffs, such as the British Factory Law, the Customs Law and the French Food Price Reduction Law. Among them, "the formulation of factory law is the first conscious and planned response of society to its production process." (5)

/kloc-at the end of 0/9 and the beginning of the 20th century, relatively backward Germany was eager to catch up with the developed western European powers. The German historical school first challenged the laissez-faire economic thought by seeking a special historical path for the development of its own nation. According to the representative of Friedrich List, this is tantamount to letting a child compete with developed Britain through free trade. In order to develop the national economy, Germany must strengthen state intervention in the economy. Therefore, during the First World War, Germany began extensive economic control and enacted the Cartel Control Law to encourage, promote and support cartels. After the war, it broke through the basic principles of civil law such as "inviolability of ownership", "autonomy of will" and "freedom of contract", and promulgated a large number of decrees that state power intervened in economic life, such as 19 19 coal economic law.

Second, the theoretical analysis of market failure and government failure

"Market economy is a complex and sophisticated machine, which coordinates various economic activities of individuals and enterprises through price and market system. It is also a machine for transmitting information, which can bring together thousands of different kinds of knowledge and activities. Without centralized wisdom or calculation, it solves a production and distribution problem involving hundreds of millions of unknown variables or related relationships, and even the fastest supercomputer today is powerless. (10) However, after nearly two centuries of practice and thinking, we gradually realize that the market is not always the most efficient, and "market failure" exists objectively, including but not limited to the following:

Monopoly and imperfect competition. The productive economic activities of human society have experienced a process from small to large, from dispersion to concentration. Socialized mass production is the inevitable result of human progress and a manifestation of social progress, but when socialized mass production develops to a certain stage, there may be incomplete competition or monopoly. Monopoly is divided into natural monopoly and economic monopoly. The simple expression of natural monopoly is that a single enterprise can provide the same amount of products to the market more efficiently than two or more enterprises in industries with economies of scale. (1 1) Compared with competitors, natural monopolists enjoy a greater cost advantage. Faced with the demand without price elasticity, they obtain huge monopoly profits through monopoly pricing. A more reasonable way is for the state, the representative of social interests, to provide products and services to the society in the form of government pricing through direct investment and operation. Economic monopoly is a market with free competition, and it is a self-denial of competition, which is manifested in one enterprise or several large enterprises reaching a joint venture, monopolizing or manipulating the production and sales of one or several commodities. The price deviates from the value, the law of value is seriously distorted, resulting in the loss of consumers' welfare, even the static loss of social total welfare and the dynamic loss of market participants' motivation to improve the technical level and strengthen scientific management, which are usually overcome by the anti-monopoly law and unfair competition law formulated by the state. Among them, the Sherman Act (1890) and Clayton Act (19 14) and the Federal Trade Commission Act (2004) in the United States are the most typical. However, since 1980s, economists of Chicago School have reflected on anti-monopoly legislation, and they believe that most monopoly power comes from government intervention. Schumpeter, a professor at Harvard University, studied the phenomenon of innovation and productivity growth of some large enterprises (such as Intel, Microsoft and Boeing) in highly concentrated markets, and put forward Schumpeter's monopoly theory, that is, although high-tech monopoly enterprises have obtained monopoly profits, under the pressure of defending technological advantages, their monopoly profits are extremely limited and they must invest a lot in research and development, so these large enterprises have formed the source of technological change, and the application of anti-monopoly law is actually to kill the goose to get the egg. ( 12)

(2) Externality, also known as spillover effect, means that enterprises or individuals impose costs or benefits on others outside the market. Some externalities are positive (external economy) and some are negative (external diseconomy). Environmental pollution is a typical external negative effect, and its social cost cannot be reflected by market price and cannot be mediated by market mechanism. The state can manage and control external negative effects such as air, water and noise pollution, over-exploitation of mineral resources and hunting endangered animals and plants by enacting environmental protection law, natural resources law, wildlife protection law and mineral resources law, but practice has also proved that it is not necessarily the most efficient to apply only national laws and regulations, so economic means such as tax subsidies. 1990, according to the Clean Air Amendment, the US government issued a certain number of tradable emission permits, which achieved more remarkable results than the traditional command-and-control type. By the end of 1990s, the annual emission of sulfur dioxide decreased to 50% of 1990 (13). In addition, the research results of ronald coase of the University of Chicago show that among the production rights,

(3) Public goods. Public * * * products are the extremes of positive externalities, which refers to such products. When a person shares, it will not lead to an increase in cost, that is, the marginal cost is zero (non-competitive); And excluding anyone from sharing is costly (non-exclusive). (14) The basic requirement for the operation of the market mechanism is that the income can offset the cost or the cost can be traced back to a single consumer. However, the non-competitiveness and non-exclusiveness of public goods make it impossible for demand and supply and demand to be determined by the market. Generally speaking, the state represents the overall interests of society, assumes the responsibility of the supplier, and then recovers the income in the form of taxes. But in real life, the supply of public goods is often unsatisfactory, so is there a more efficient supplier? The new institutional economics school made a useful discussion, and ronald coase started with the lighthouse problem. "The lighthouse is a milestone in economics. When referring to this poetic example, economists know that it refers to the difficulty of charging, which makes the lighthouse a non-governmental service. " (15) However, Coase pointed out in the "Lighthouse of Economics" published in 1974 that 34 of the 46 lighthouses in Britain in 1820 were privately built, so it is entirely possible to design and invent a whole set of devices and systems, so that consumers can reach a * * * payment agreement with lower transaction costs, which will (16) James. Buechanan, a representative of the school of public choice, designed the model of "club products", which limited the consumers of public products from infinity to a certain range. The products were used uncompetitively and exclusively among club members, but they were exclusive outside the organization. When members reach a payment agreement and pay for products within the club, they can take "enough to pay for it". The above groundbreaking research enlightens us that in the field of public goods, the government is not the only or even an effective supplier, and there are diversified choices in the real society.

Information asymmetry, or information asymmetry. In classical economics, the market subject has comprehensive knowledge and rationality, and the price formed under the balance of supply and demand can reflect all market information. Actually, it is not. Market subjects are bounded and rational, and the lag and deviation of market prices also make information scarce, especially the asymmetric information distribution between the two parties, which leads to speculation, adverse selection and moral hazard of the subjects and "bad money drives out good money" in the commodity market. Therefore, it is necessary for the state public power to extend to the market, forcibly break one party's information advantage, and let market transactions be completed on the basis of equality, voluntariness and fairness. For example, product quality law, consumer rights law and advertising law are aimed at the general commodity market; For the mandatory disclosure of the capital market securities law, but in some areas, such as the information asymmetry between doctors and patients in the medical process, state intervention is invalid. Therefore, some scholars have designed the structure of professional property rights, that is, through strict market access, doctors collectively become social independent organizations, so that external public opinion pressure and internal professional ethics will effectively restrain doctors' behavior. Transfer the practical function of basic research methods and analytical framework of modern economics, and introduce the most basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics. The author tries to discuss the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics in the simplest possible language. Although these analytical frameworks and research methods seem simple, in fact, it is not an easy task to truly understand and integrate into one's life, study and research. However, as long as you master the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics, you will benefit for life. Because it will make your thinking smart, wise, profound and scientific; It helps you to learn and study the pure economic theory of Chun Xue; It also helps to guide the practical problems you face in your life and work. First of all, from the perspective of learning modern economics, once you master the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics, you will not be confused by abstract models and advanced mathematics. No matter how deep mathematics, formulas and complex economic models are used in an economic theory, the basic analytical framework and research methods introduced above are basically used to study it. As long as we firmly grasp these basic analytical frameworks and research methods and print them in our minds as a core clue, we will not lose our direction and focus and basically know what it is talking about. You can put aside those technical and incomprehensible details for a while, and then you need the theoretical framework and concrete conclusions before you understand those specific details. In other words, we must first grasp the main line and general idea of the article, understand what it wants to do and what conclusions it draws, and then grasp the specific details. In addition, once you master these basic analytical frameworks and research methods, you will have a correct view of modern economics, which is unlikely to be misled and will not affect your study of modern economics. People often criticize modern economics and its research methods. In fact, most of their comments are not based on scientific methods of analyzing problems, and some even rely entirely on their own subjective assumptions. Without a clear understanding of the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics, these remarks may mislead you, make you lose the correct direction of learning modern economics, and even make you adopt a neglected or even contradictory attitude towards learning modern economics. Secondly, from the aspect of learning modern economics, once we understand and master the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics, it will be helpful to the study of modern economics. Many people who want to do economic research, although they know a lot about modern economics and read many papers on economics, still find it difficult to do research by themselves, and they don't know how to do it, or they can't do meaningful research recognized by others. In fact, as long as you master these basic analytical frameworks and research methods and have a certain mathematical foundation and logical analysis ability, it is not so difficult to start economic research. In a sense, doing research is the logical fill-in-the-blank writing of the five components of the basic analysis framework. These basic frameworks and research methods may help to improve your research and innovation ability. For example, if you want to study an economic problem or phenomenon, or give a new theory, so that it has a strong ability to explain economic behavior and economic phenomenon, and can guide real economic problems, then you should reasonably and accurately describe and depict the economic environment and the behavior of economic people, use existing analytical tools or develop new analytical tools yourself, build a model as simple as possible, and then conduct deduction and demonstration. Thirdly, understanding modern economics and its research methods and analytical framework will also help you think about problems, handle daily affairs better, learn to treat people better, and make you more profound, knowledgeable and capable in your work. I often hear such a discussion about modern economics: economics seems to be a metaphysical thing. There is so much mathematics, it is so difficult to learn, and it is far from reality. What's the use of studying in the future? In fact, in daily life, the basic framework of economic analysis can be applied completely. For example, when you arrive in a new place, you are ready to do something, or you need to deal with people. The first thing to do is to understand the local situation, surrounding environment and national conditions (corresponding to "defining economic environment" in the framework); Then, we should learn about the local customs and people's feelings, and learn as much as possible about people's behavior, his conduct, personality and so on. (corresponding to "setting behavioral assumptions"); According to this information, decide the rules and ways of dealing with people (that is, the corresponding "giving system arrangement"); Then, among the feasible and alternative schemes, the best scheme (that is, the equilibrium result) is selected by weighing the trade-offs; Finally, summarize and reflect on the decisions you have made, the things you have done, and the ways you have taken to see if it is the most effective way to achieve the best results, whether it is fair and reasonable, whether it has mobilized everyone's enthusiasm, whether it has inspired people to respond and achieved your desired goals, which is called incentive compatibility. (that is, corresponding to "evaluation comparison"). Moreover, when the environment and situation change and the working object changes, of course, the rules of the game have to change accordingly to do a good job. I think everyone will agree that as long as we follow these five aspects and adjust the rules of the game at any time according to the changes in the situation, we will certainly do things better. The author believes that this may be one of the best ways to solve and deal with daily life and work affairs. And many achievements of economic theory also help you to think and solve problems. In short, to understand and correctly apply modern economics, we need to understand the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics. This paper discusses five basic components of an analytical framework of normative economic theory: (1) defining economic environment; (2) setting behavioral assumptions, (3) giving institutional arrangements; (4) selecting an equilibrium result; (5) Evaluation and comparison. The basic research methods include providing research platform, establishing reference frame, giving measurement scale and providing analysis tools. This normative analytical framework and research method have made modern economics develop rapidly, widely used and have great influence in the past 60 years, and become a social science field with large scale, many branches and rigorous system. Even scholars who specialize in economics can only understand a small part of the limited branches. It is difficult to really understand the essence of some of these economic theories without spending some time. In fact, the author found that the deeper a subject is, the less he feels, and the more cautious he is when writing, the more difficult it is to write and the more difficult it is to speak. Nowadays, many people like to talk nonsense, whether they understand it or not, and put forward some seemingly unconventional, sensational and even endless views to show their "wide knowledge and versatility". Of course, perhaps they exaggerate their achievements in order to attract attention and become famous, which seems to be a fashion in China economic circles at present. Unfortunately, even if these people have expertise, they often say something out of line without understanding the basic analytical framework and research methods of modern economics, not to mention seriously misleading many students. In the discussion of economic problems, we should distinguish between value judgment analysis and empirical analysis, between sufficient conditions and necessary conditions, and understand the role of economic theory, generality and relativity, as well as the role of mathematics in economics. Learning economics should not only understand its basic principles, but also learn its methods of asking, thinking and solving problems. Mastering the basic methods and analytical framework of modern economics is also conducive to the study and research of economics, and even helps people to better handle daily affairs. (5) The most serious defect of the market is the uneven distribution of income and consumption. A completely laissez-faire market economy may create a socially unacceptable gap between income and consumption. Adam Smith claimed that under the guidance of an "invisible hand", everyone invisibly promotes the expansion of the overall interests of society in the process of pursuing their own interests, but if social interests also include the fair distribution of wealth, then just having an invisible hand is not enough. First of all, income distribution reflects the individual's holdings of factors of production, that is, the initial endowment of wealth and intelligence, as well as a series of other factors such as race, gender, effort, health and luck; Secondly, under the condition of market economy, what goods are chasing is the currency votes, that is, the effective demand-the demand with the ability to pay, not the demand with the greatest utility. The difference between income and consumption comes from the internal market, so it cannot be eliminated by market self-regulation. We can redistribute social income by relying on the state's coercive power, for example, the state collects income tax, inheritance tax and gift tax, and reduces income imbalance by collecting higher taxes from high-income people than low-income people. The state has established a social security system, providing old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, medical insurance and minimum living security. For the old, the weak, the sick, the disabled and other vulnerable groups who need social help. However, some scholars suspect that the efficiency of national redistribution and the weakening of its influence on market players are essentially an unavoidable problem of balance and choice between fairness and efficiency.

Market failure is a necessary condition for the state to intervene in the economic field, but it is not a sufficient condition, because like market failure, there is also government failure, which includes but is not limited to the following aspects:

(1) State actions sometimes do not reflect public interests. Traditionally, the market and public interest are fundamentally opposed, and only the government is dedicated to the public. However, when Buchanan, a scholar of public choice school, applied the logical assumptions and analytical methods of economics, such as economic man, utility maximization and supply-demand analysis, to the study of national decision-making, he found that the country was not always trustworthy: firstly, because of the diversity of personal goals and the defects of the electoral voting system, it was difficult to achieve the choice of maximizing interests, and ordinary citizens could not afford the cost of understanding the government, so indifference to political power became a kind. Secondly, government officials are selfish economic men, who pursue the maximization of their own interests in the political field as in the economic market (17), and to a certain extent, the interests of government officials are internalized into government interests; Finally, influential special economic interest groups may capture relevant government members and make the country a representative of the interests of individual groups, rather than a practitioner of the overall interests of society. In socialist countries, the government represents the fundamental interests and long-term interests of the people. However, in the primary stage of socialism, the existing system cannot rule out the selfish pursuit of a few officials, and even the expansion of departmental interests and local interests.

(2) the state behavior is inefficient. In a market organization, every economic behavior must be the best result of cost-benefit accounting, but the state has special standards and requirements for "public goods" and "public services". Due to the sociality of products and services and the monopoly of national supply, market products are difficult to measure or cannot be measured; On the other hand, national income comes from taxes, profits of state-owned enterprises or other non-price income. Because of the lack of hard budget constraints and hard market constraints, it is easy to breed inefficiency and bureaucracy in resource utilization. The separation of income and cost on the basis of price also means that the degree of resource allocation error increases, that is, the supply of public resources exceeds demand or the supply exceeds demand.

(3) Parkinson's law of state behavior. The famous North Paradox of the new institutional economics school points out: On the one hand, without the intervention of state power and agency, property rights cannot be effectively defined, guaranteed and implemented, and the state provides conditions for reducing the transaction cost of property rights definition and transfer and maximizing social production; On the other hand, state power has the characteristics of monopoly and expansion, and is often the biggest and most dangerous infringer of individual rights. (18) The expansion of state power is described as "Parkinson's Law", that is, when a functional department is established, one of its behavioral goals is to maximize the budget, which in turn dominates the expansion of power and control areas, and then the organization and staffing automatically expand in a certain proportion, and the expansion of the public sphere will inevitably erode private space. Admittedly, not all countries' intervention should be condemned, but intervention usually has a tendency of self-development, and it will snowball bigger and faster. At this time, either because it is beyond the capacity of the bureaucratic system or because of the design defects of political and legal norms, the well-intentioned intervention of the state has also caused the burden on the people, and even many intermediary controls for intervention are more likely to cause bad money to drive out good money. State intervention is a constant threat to the development of social autonomy and self-discipline in our market economy. ( 19)

(D) the phenomenon of "rent-seeking" is widespread in state behavior. The concept of "rent" comes from land rent, which refers to the difference between the reward brought to the resource owner and the transfer of the right to use because of the lack of supply elasticity of a scarce resource. "Rent-seeking" in the theoretical study of public choice refers to rent-seeking for artificially scarce resources. In a sense, monopoly in the market is a phenomenon of economic rent. What is more difficult to deal with is the rent formed by the government's use of administrative power, such as price control, licenses, tariffs and export quotas, and government procurement. Its harm is to cut off the natural trend of optimal allocation of scarce resources in the market, seriously distort the allocation of economic resources, and increase the extra cost of non-production in social production, including the opportunity cost of rent-seeking and the cost of preventing rent-seeking behavior. In addition, based on their own interests, government officials actively use their rights to set and create rents, which leads to rampant corruption and social instability.

Just as the transaction cost theory explains why enterprises coexist with the market in a certain range, and enterprises are an organizational form that saves transaction costs more than the market, then the reason why the state exists in the market economy is because the state is an institutional arrangement that saves transaction costs more than the market. After experiencing the era of unlimited expansion of public rights, we should remember that only when all methods prove to be really unworkable, do we need to take state intervention, which is always the second best method. (20) To sum up, the necessary and sufficient conditions for state intervention in the market economy are: market failure, and state intervention can overcome market defects and deficiencies; And the cost of state intervention in the economy is lower than the loss of resources caused by market failure, and the object of economic law adjustment should be the social relations formed in the process of state intervention in the market under the above conditions. Although this is a vague definition, it is quite true for such a huge system of economic and legal relations, if the psychological obstacle of pursuing simplicity is eliminated.

Three, two new factors affecting the country and the market economy

(A) the development of market intermediary organizations. In modern economy, there are other market intermediary organizations besides the market and the country. There are mainly three types in China: the first type of accounting firms, law firms, asset appraisal and credit rating agencies, notarization and arbitration institutions, etc. Its main responsibilities are to review and evaluate the behaviors of market participants, supervise whether they compete fairly and openly, oppose fraud, and adjust and standardize the market; The second kind of quality inspection and measurement institutions, commodity inspection centers, consumer associations and other organizations that supervise market activities are mainly responsible for opposing hypocrisy and deceiving consumers, ensuring fair trade and competition in the market, and stabilizing the efficiency of economic operation; The third kind of market-independent middle-priced organizations, such as chambers of commerce and trade associations, are mainly responsible for formulating rules, regulations or conventions to restrain members' behavior according to market rules, implementing collective self-discipline and opposing unfair competition. (2 1) The existence and development of intermediary organizations have a profound impact on the relationship between the state and the market. On the one hand, it makes up for the unexpected consequences of market self-operation, inhibits the non-market behavior and bad market behavior of enterprise organizations, and becomes the "lubricant" of market economy; On the other hand, it decomposes the functions of the government, restrains the infinite expansion trend of public power, ensures the space for market machine production, and forms the "invisible hand" of the market and the "third hand" besides the "visible hand" of the country. Accordingly, the object of economic law adjustment fluctuates, that is, it expands the legal regulation content of established intermediary organizations, such as securities law and company law on accountants, lawyers and asset appraisers. It also reduced part of the space for national legal supervision and replaced legal constraints with industry rules.

(2) Internationalization of economy. Since the 1970s, the international economy has shown a good momentum of rapid expansion and development. English-speaking countries such as Britain and America call it "globalization", while French-speaking countries such as France call it "globalization". Although there are heated debates about the advantages and disadvantages of this trend in almost every country, it has actually changed our concept and life. The market has broken through national boundaries and become a big market in the world, especially the application of information technology such as computer, Internet and wireless communication. The concept of time and space has changed, and the integration of regional economy and world economy is close at hand. The domestic economic order must be fully integrated into the international economic order. For example, our government will revise and abolish domestic economic laws and regulations in order to fully integrate with the WTO. In the face of the expanding market, the leading power of the state is gradually insufficient, and regional economic organizations, supranational economic management institutions and a wide range of international treaties, conventions and agreements have emerged one after another. The Asian financial crisis has undoubtedly proved all this. "A butterfly flapping its wings in Argentina may really cause a typhoon in Hawaii." Foreign-related economic law is bound to occupy an important position in the economic law system, even so, the adjustment object of economic law will also be adjusted adaptively.

The above is a reflection on the object of economic law adjustment from the perspective of the state and market economy, but the development of economic law must have path dependence (22), that is, economic law depends on the specific social background, historical culture and economic development stage of China. China's economic law is the object of economic law and the object of adjustment in the economic system transition, and it must adapt to the reality (23). For example, in view of the fact that the reform of state-owned enterprises has become the key to the success or failure of the whole economic system reform, the state can not rely solely on the market mechanism in the reorganization and strategic adjustment of state-owned enterprises, but must adopt super-economic means to manage state-owned assets, realize the important functions of maintaining and increasing the value of state-owned assets and preventing the loss of state-owned assets; Due to the lack of local resources in China's market economy and the external pressure to participate in international market competition, the reform of China's market economy is to reduce the different stages of development to 20 or 30 years to complete the government-driven type, and the state undertakes the important functions of cultivating market players, perfecting market system and strengthening market functions; As a developing country, the country shoulders the historical task of catching up with developed countries, and needs to protect national industries and even support domestic monopoly enterprise groups to participate in international market competition and other important functions; The nature of a socialist country determines that stability comes first. Therefore, the country's economic regulation must contain a lot of political factors. When economic law is applied to adjust the above social relations, it also determines the China characteristics of the object of economic law adjustment. Correctly understanding the ideal and reality of the object of economic law adjustment is the theoretical basis for exerting the function of economic law and continuing to develop.