On the impatience implications of Paretian social welfare functions

In this paper, we investigate the impatience implications resulting from the assumption of existence of a Paretian social welfare function (SWF) aggregating infinite utility streams. We show, for very general program spaces, that the set of utility streams, at which the SWF exhibits impatience, has the power of the continuum. In the context of a more special program space, which has figured prominently in the literature, we establish that this set is dense, so that even if there is a point in the program space at which the SWF does not exhibit impatience, there are points close to it at which it does. If the Paretian SWF is continuous (in the sup metric), we show that impatience is generic: the collection of points, at which the SWF does not exhibit impatience, is a closed, nowhere dense set.     

Approximation of convex preferences

It is shown geometrically that a monotone concave preference order can be approximated by orders representable by a concave utility function. This is applied to proving that preferences with ‘desirable’ properties (such as inducing smooth excess demand functions, analyticity, strict convexity) are dense.     

On the existence of a probability measure compatible with a total preorder on a Boolean algebra

If an economic agent's beliefs about the relative likelihood of events are characterized by a total preorder ? on the algebra $\text{A}$ of events, the problem arises to know under which conditions, ? is representable by a probability measure. Here we show that there exists a probability measure compatible with a total preorder on a Boolean algebra, if and only if, the Boolean algebra is well bounded, weakly Archimedean, and perfectly separable, this last condition substituting for Villegas' monotone condition used in Chateauneuf and Jaffray (1984); if σ-additivity is required. Villegas' monotone condition, must merely be added.     

The Economic Role of Government as, in Part, a Matter of Selective Perception, Sentiment and Valuation: The Cases of Pigovian and Paretian Welfare Economics

This essay identifies and explores the role of selective perception, sentiment and valuation in the formation of economic policy, with particular reference to the conduct of policy-making under the aegis of Pigovian and Paretian welfare economics. First, we identify certain background conditions. Second, we present an argument with regard to the economic role of government. Finally, we apply the argument to Pigovian and Paretian welfare economic reasoning, showing first the equivalence of Pigovian and Paretian reasoning under particular assumptions and their non-equivalence under more realistic conditions, and then how the latter results give rise to selective perception, sentiment and valuation in the formation of economic policy.     

Blockwise bootstrap wavelet in nonparametric regression model with weakly dependent processes

In this paper, we suggest a blockwise bootstrap wavelet to estimate the regression function in the nonparametric regression models with weakly dependent processes for both designs of fixed and random. We obtain the asymptotic orders of the biases and variances of the estimators and establish the asymptotic normality for a modified version of the estimators. We also introduce a principle to select the length of data block. These results show that the blockwise bootstrap wavelet is valid for general weakly dependent processes such as α-mixing, φ-mixing and ρ-mixing random variables.     

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR REDISTRIBUTION: A CRITIQUE

It is striking that there are so many theoretical justifications of redistribution by government. Is it because each single justification is weak? I review and criticise the various arguments advanced in the literature. The main distinctions are between (a) Paretian justifications asserting that all, including the net payers, benefit from redistribution, (b) theories of justice and (c) utilitarianism. My conclusion is that redistribution ought to be based on Paretian arguments as far as possible and that helping the poor is more likely to maximise the happiness of all than is a general levelling of income differences.     

The Ideal Inflation‐Indexed Bond and Irving Fisher's Impatience Theory of Interest with Overlapping Generations*

Abstract Irving Fisher long advocated inflation‐indexed bonds. But with what index? I prove in the context of a multicommodity CAPM world that the best welfare‐improving bond pays the minimum money needed to achieve the same utility, and not the minimum needed to buy an ideal commodity bundle. Irving Fisher also developed and advocated the impatience theory of interest. But in OLG economies, the rate of interest is determined by population growth, not impatience. I reconcile this contradiction by proving that in stationary OLG economies with land, the interest rate at the unique steady state does depend on impatience. Indeed, the proposition that greater impatience creates higher interest rates holds more generally in OLG with land than in Fisher's two‐period model, because then income effects and substitution effects naturally work in the same direction.     

A new family of dispersive orderings

In this paper we introduce a new family of univariate dispersion orderings which, under mild conditions, includes the weakly dispersive ordering as a particular case. Different properties of the new class of dispersion orderings are analyzed. Some connections with other univariate dispersion orderings are stated. Finally an application of the new family of dispersion orders to the field of genetics is developed.     

Continuous lexicographic preferences

Under what conditions are lexicographically representable preferences continuously representable? This question is actually two questions, since there are two natural definitions of continuity for lexicographic representations. A complete answer is given for one of these questions, and the other is answered for two dimensional lexicographic representations.     

新师大乒乓球队发球技术浅析

发球是以旋转为基础的,如果旋转,除非是发急球,否则是没有什么威胁可言的。无论练习什么旋转的发球,一定要掌握至少两种不同旋转的发球。本文就乒乓球队的发球技术进行了调查分析。     

Inequality and catching-up under decreasing marginal impatience

This paper examines how endogenous time preference interacts with inequalities in economic development. We consider two distinct groups of households with intrinsic inequality (e.g., capitalists and workers), and show that (i) under decreasing marginal impatience (DMI), an unequal society may be preferable for poor households than an egalitarian one in which every household owns an equal share of asset; (ii) poor households tend to benefit more under DMI than CMI (constant marginal impatience) from positive shocks; (iii) inequality exhibits a sharp inverted-U shape as more people become rich, which should be good news for developing countries in catching up; and (iv) a tax on capital income reduces poor households’ income when the fraction of the rich is sufficiently small. We also examine immigration and discuss capital mobility.     

Uncertain equilibria and incomplete preferences

This paper studies the tendency for incomplete preference structures to be associated with equilibrium price indeterminacies in an Arrow–Debreu–McKenzie state-contingent setting. It is shown that the presence of a sufficiently smooth stochastic production technology is inconsistent with equilibrium price indeterminacies even if all individuals have incomplete preference structures. A particularly convenient characterization of Paretian equilibria in the presence of incomplete preferences, which allows Paretian equilibrium to be characterized using simple principles of convex optimization and (sub)differential analysis, is also developed.     

Endowment-regarding preferences

We consider a general equilibrium model of pure exchange economies with endowment externalities. Consumers’ behaviors depend not only on their own consumption but also on the endowments of the other consumers. Applying the same method of analysis in Balasko (2015) about wealth concerns, we first show that almost all properties of equilibrium, including smooth equilibrium manifold and genericity of regular economies, can be directly extended to the economy where the demand function depends on the endowments of others and wealth of only one consumer. Next, we clarify the sufficient conditions under which those properties remain true in the economy with the most general form of endowment externalities. Finally, we generalize the above sufficient conditions to derive generic regularity results in the economy with both consumption and endowment externalities.     

Dynamic programming for non-additive stochastic objectives

We derive the existence of an optimum and the techniques of dynamic programming for non-additive stochastic objectives. Our key assumption for non-negative objectives is that asymptotic impatience exceeds asymptotic ‘mean’ growth, where ‘mean’ growth is derived not only from intertemporal inelasticity and the random return on investment but also from the curvature of the non-additive stochastic aggregator (i.e. the ‘certainty equivalent’). We provide broad families of new, interesting, and tractable examples. They illustrate that ‘mean’ growth can exist even when the distribution of returns has unbounded support, that power discounting often implies infinite asymptotic impatience, and that non-positive objectives are easily handled with few restrictions on growth.     

How do politicians save? Buffer-stock management of unemployment insurance finance

We fit an empirical structural model of forward looking government savings behavior to data from the U.S. state Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs 1976–2008. States increase benefits or lower taxes when Unemployment Trust fund balances are high, consistent with a desired target level of savings. This can be explained by the representative state program behaving like a Carroll (1992) buffer-stock consumer who trades off a desire to expend savings (impatience) against the fear of running out of funds (risk aversion). We calibrate the model to the data and find that statistics from model simulations match similar statistics produced from the data for reasonable levels of risk aversion and impatience.     

Beliefs,payoffs, information: On the robustness of the BDP property in models with endogenous beliefs

Neeman (2004) and Heifetz and Neeman (2006) have shown that, in auctions with incomplete information about payoffs, full surplus extraction is only possible if agents’ beliefs about other agents are fully informative about their own payoff parameters. They argue that the set of incomplete-information models with common priors that satisfy this so-called BDP property (“beliefs determine preferences”) is negligible. In contrast, we show that, in models with finite-dimensional abstract type spaces, the set of belief functions with this property is topologically generic in the set of all belief functions. Our result implies genericity of (non-common or common) priors with the BDP property.     

Random aggregation without the Pareto principle

Barberà-Sonnenschein (J Econ Theory 18:244–254, 1978) have shown that any binary and Paretian random social choice function can be associated with a mapping which associates a real number with each coalition of individuals. This function gives, for each coalition, the power that this group has in imposing on society, their common preference relation on a pair of alternatives. The aim of this paper is to extend this result, showing that the Pareto criterion is not a necessary condition for the existence of such a coalitional power function.     

From Cardinal to Ordinal Utility Theory

A bstract .   This paper examines the transition from cardinal to ordinal utility. We begin with the egalitarian utilitarianism of J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer, in which everyone was supposed to count as one. That is their phrase to explain how the happiness of existing people was to be maximized. We compare Spencer's goal with Darwin's goal of the "general good," in which the number of perfect people was to be maximized. Spencer's goal was egalitarian, while Darwin's entailed biological perfection or hierarchy. We consider Edgeworth's hedonic calculus, in which the notion of hierarchy enters economics. For Edgeworth, agents have differential capacities for happiness. Throughout, we consider normative aspects of Darwin's work, in particular Darwin's challenge to the early utilitarianism of Mill and Spencer. We suggest that the Paretian principle returns utilitarianism to its egalitarian roots.     

实施六西格玛的四大陷阱

文章首先简述了六西格玛管理的应用,进而详细分析了实施六西格玛管理中的人才配备陷阱、项目管理陷阱、实施力度不够陷阱以及急于求成的心态这4个方面的常见陷阱,以帮助企业搬开六西格玛成功之路上的绊脚石。