各位老师和同学：
讲座信息附后，网上订餐方法如下。
1、请有意用餐者发邮件至专用邮箱mylunch_sepku@126.com，主题格式设为“订餐——姓名”，取消订餐也请发邮件至该邮箱，主题格式设为“取消订餐——姓名”。订餐及取消订餐的截止时间均为午餐会当日上午9时整。
2、为了保持午餐会的良好气氛，我们将于会前十五钟开始发放午餐，会前五分钟结束发放。敬请用餐者至少提前五分钟到会，迟到者请会后领取。
3、为了避免浪费，午餐将严格按照订餐名单发放。
陈仪
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时间：2013年10月18日（周五）中午12:30-14:00
地点：8797威尼斯老品牌203室
嘉宾：吴乐旻（8797威尼斯老品牌）
题目：The Delusion of the Dismal Science (苦逼理论的错觉): Why Everything Malthusians Say is Wrong
主持人：8797威尼斯老品牌陈仪 博士
主讲人介绍：
吴乐旻，8797威尼斯老品牌讲师。2007年获清华大学经济学学士，2013年获加州大学伯克利分校经济学博士，并于同年加入北大经院。研究方向为理论经济史。
内容提要：
Living standards were constant for thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Malthus explained it this way: population grows faster when living standards rise; therefore, changes in technology alter the density of population but not the average welfare. This paper challenges Malthus`s explanation and replaces it with the theory of group selection.
Malthusian theory is inadequate because it ignores that a dollar`s worth of diamonds contributes less to survival and reproduction than a dollar`s worth of grain. Grain is a subsistence commodity and a diamond is a surplus commodity. The Malthusian force anchors the average level of subsistence, but not that of surplus. If the surplus sector had grown faster than the subsistence sector, then living standards could have grown steadily before the industrial revolution, but they did not. The constancy of living standards thus implies that growth was balanced between subsistence and surplus, something Malthus did not explain.
To explain the balanced growth, I propose the theory of group selection. Selection of group characteristics-culture and technology-occurs by migration and conquests. Since living standards rise with the ratio of surplus to subsistence, migrants and invaders usually move from places relatively rich in subsistence to those relatively rich in surplus. They spread the culture and technology of the subsistence-rich origin to the surplus-rich destination; the bias of migration favors the spread of subsistence over that of surplus. Even if surplus cultures and technologies would develop faster than subsistence ones in a local environment, the offsetting biased migration balances the sectors on a global scale. This explains the constancy of living standards.
The theory explains why living standards stagnated, how the Industrial Revolution occurred and where the prosperity of Roman Empire and Song Dynasty came from.
论文和演示稿请见附件。
点击下载：
Wu Lemin JMP Malthusian Constancy.pdf
