Introduction to judgment aggregation

This introduces the symposium on judgment aggregation. The theory of judgment aggregation asks how several individuals' judgments on some logically connected propositions can be aggregated into consistent collective judgments. The aim of this introduction is to show how ideas from the familiar theory of preference aggregation can be extended to this more general case. We first translate a proof of Arrow's impossibility theorem into the new setting, so as to motivate some of the central concepts and conditions leading to analogous impossibilities, as discussed in the symposium. We then consider each of four possible escape-routes explored in the symposium.     

当前我国企业资本结构优化中的问题分析

一直以来，由干我国企业大箩是国有企业，企业资金都由国家统一管理，因此企业的财务部门更多的时候只是纯粹的会计计账。然而随着现代企业制度的建立，企业实行“自主经营、自负盈亏”，企业原有的资本结构中的问题逐渐在市场经济中凸现，成为了影响企业发展的一个重要因素。因此，对于我国企业来说，优化资本结构，合理筹措资金，使各种资金来源和资本配比保持合理的比例，是企业提升核心竞争力，提高经营绩效的必要条件，也是企业财务战略管理的核心。     

Group selection and the evolution of altruism

‘Group selection’ is an oft-cited but controversialexplanation for the survival of altruism. Rather than enterthis debate, this paper asks whether a group structure alonecan provide a reasonable explanation for the survival of altruisticbehaviour in an evolving population. If altruism (defined astaking a cooperative action in a standard Prisoners' Dilemma)is to flourish, either groups need to be isolated from one anotherfor multiple generations, or groups need to be constructed ina positively-assortative manner. Concentrating on the formercase the paper shows that the size of the group, the relativebenefit to cost of altruism and the number of generations inisolation all play a critical role. The smaller the group size,or the larger the benefit-to-cost ratio, the higher the survivalchances of altruism. Additionally, for altruism to survive,the number of generations spent in isolated groups must be neithertoo big nor too small.     

Real money balances and the productivity growth slowdown: The U.S. manufacturing sector, 1955–81

Summary and Conclusions The model of labor productivity for the U.S. manufacturing sector was developed in this paper within the context of a three-input production function where time entered as a proxy for technical change. The growth rate of labor productivity was found equal to the share-weighted contributions from growth in the capital-labor ratio, changes in the composition of the capital stock, growth in the money-labor ratio, and total factor productivity.The empirical results of this research yield three important conclusions. First, labor productivity growth has suffered a continuous and increasing retardation, the most severe of which occurred in the newly-examined 1978–81 time period. Second, real money balances were shown to have contributed to this slowdown in the same direction as, but somewhat less than, the contributions of either the capital-labor ratio or changes in the composition of the capital stock. Thirdly, a deletion of the monetary effect from the analysis results in an overestimation of the importance to productivity growth and its slowdown of both the capital-labor and the composition effect.Based upon these main empirical results, this study concludes that the real money balances held by firms in the U.S. manufacturing sector have played a non-passive role in that sector's labor productivity growth slowdown.This paper is part of the author's doctoral dissertation, written at West Virginia University.     

A simplified portfolio analysis of the long-run demand for money in Australia

The paper derives the form of a money demand equation when money is explicitly considered as one element of a limited set of financial assets. The results from estimation of the portfolio model are compared with those from the typical single equation form and are superior in a number of respects. In contrast with the traditional model the impact equations of the portfolio model provide no evidence of serial correlation or parameter instability. Systems estimation provides for a much faster speed of adjustment than is in evidence with the traditional model. Estimation by ridge regression procedures to accomodate collinearity among the regressors further enhances this speed of adjustment.