我在网上看了篇文章，里边有和有色MM同样的观点。但从另一方面证明，大多数国家在重大自然灾害面前，是进行价格管制的。
BV }(djx x)#<.DX 这篇文章登在《胡佛季刊》
mWN1Q<vn,l |Y8Mk2,s http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817928022_35.pdf i_9Cc$Qh< !skb=B# 摘要如下：
dW{o+9 nw )0 n29 Dealing with natural Disaster:Role of the Market =
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iUxDEt[t* 9-a2L JI The competitive environment of an open market provides the best incentive to all the players: the financial sectors, the weather forecasters, the scientists, the engineers, the businesses, the home-owners, and everyone striving to find better and cheaper ways of dealing with natural catastrophes. Yet there have been constant attempts by governments in most countries, particularly in this century, to intervene in the marketplace and consequently to hamper the ability of the people to deal with natural calamities effectively.
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. Faced with a crisis, such as a drought or famine, one of the first things state agencies do is to institute price control and restrict the movement of goods. It is thought that, by putting a ceiling on the prices of basic food products, people will have better access to these goods. What is ignored is that, in a condition of scarcity, price control achieves exactly the opposite. Without the price signal,there is no way of knowing the enormity of scarcity and therefore no incentive to move goods to the affected areas. It is no coincidence that price control in a crisis situation inevitably leads to the growth of black markets and profiteering on a level that would be impossible to sustain in free-market conditions.
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,$ F Contrast this situation with the experience of richer countries in the world today. Economic development and dramatic improvements in agricultural practices have created a situation in which food production is no longer a major concern. Expenditureon food as a percentage of family income has been falling. The result is that even a major drought or a flood makes hardly a blip on the price of food products. For the first time in history many societies have reached a place where famine and hunger have all but been eliminated.
l NA' M& >Oi2gPA Nevertheless, the attraction of price control has continued. Restrictions on capital flows and the insurance markets reflect this desire to lower the cost of disaster mitigation through state intervention. Not unexpectedly, the results are exactly the opposite. Poor policies adopted by poorer countries have extracted a particularly heavy price. State monopoly over meteorological information has meant that there is no incentive to disseminate the information in a useful manner. Restrictions on channels of communication and state monopolies have discredited these channels to the extent that many people discount the information merely because it comes over nationalized broadcasting media. Restrictions on access to technology mean that even those who could have found the information from independent sources do not find it easy to do so. After the calamity, the thin spread of the channels of communication and technology means that few of these channels survive the disaster. This leads to a situation where even weeks after the disaster many of the affected areas remain cut off, without any relief or protection.
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I=263 It could be said that many of the safety regulations, such as building codes mandated by the government and effectively enforced, particularly in developed countries, have played a significant role in mitigating the effects of natural calamities such as earthquakes or fires. Two points stand out here. One, being richer has meant that these societies have been able to afford these measures. Two, there are few reasons to think that these safety measures have been cost-effective. On the other hand it could be argued that an open market in property and real estate would have incorporated many of the safety features as part of a process of value addition and would do it in a much more cost-effective manner than the regulatory approach.
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