Auctions for social lending: A theoretical analysis

Prosper, today the second largest social lending marketplace with nearly 1.5 million members and $380 million in funded loans, employed an auction mechanism amongst lenders to finance each borrower's loan until 2010. Given that a basic premise of social lending is cheap loans for borrowers, how does the Prosper auction do in terms of the borrower's payment, when lenders are strategic agents with private true interest rates? We first analyze the Prosper auction as a game of complete information and fully characterize its Nash equilibria, and show that the uniform-price Prosper mechanism, while simple, can lead to much larger payments for the borrower than the VCG mechanism. We next compare the Prosper mechanism against the borrower-optimal auction in an incomplete information setting, and conclude by examining the Prosper mechanism when modeled as a dynamic auction, and provide tight bounds on the price for a general class of bidding strategies.     

Export-promoting production subsidies and the dynamic gains from experience

This paper examines export-promoting production subsidies in a dynamic product-cycle model with learning by doing and spillovers from experience. History dictates that the South is less experienced than the North and, thus, produces less advanced goods. Non-uniform Southern export promoting production subsidies applied to a small set of marginal industries that are on the verge of being internationally competitive, generate conventional static benefits for the South and costs for the North. Since such an industrial policy expands the South's range of production, it ultimately enhances Southern learning. The South's rate of production and technology transfer and the North's rate of innovation both increase, creating dynamic benefits for each country. While the South must gain overall, the North will also gain if the dynamic benefits outweigh the static costs.     

机制创新破解社会管理难题——基于福安市创新交通事故调处机制的实践分析

为解决日益增多且错综复杂的道路交通事故,在福安市综治委组织协调下,交警、法院、保险、法律援助、社会救助基金等机构联合成立多元处理调处中心,作为人民调解、行政调解、司法调解与保险理赔等多位一体的工作平台;通过系列有效的机制促使事故处理的上述部门实行＂无缝对接＂,为当事人提供＂一站式＂服务,促使纠纷得到及时、有效、彻底解决。本项社会管理机制创新的进一步发展还存在一些现实困难,需要不断完善协作机制、充分保障当事人的程序选择权和防止出现背离本项创新宗旨的＂异化＂现象发生。     

农村剩余劳动力转移与教育投资主体多元化

现阶段我国面临农村剩余劳动力转移的巨大压力,而农村教育水平低是制约农村剩余劳动力转移的根本性原因。在农村教育投资机制中,政府、企业与农户均呈现出投资不力状况,建立多元化的农村教育投资新机制,鼓励多方投资农村教育,提高农民素质,实现农村剩余劳动力的转移。     

IPO share allocation and conflicts of interest

The underwriter of an IPO has two sources of compensation for its services on behalf of the issuer. One is through a commission (spread), the other is by buying issued shares for itself (or its affiliates) and reselling them in the post-issue market. Profits from the former decrease along with the magnitude of underpricing while profits from the latter increase with it. Faced with these countervailing interests, the present paper analyzes how the underwriter decides upon the pricing and allocation of IPOs.      

国外农村土地信托:研究现状及借鉴

国外关于农村土地信托的研究主要涉及土地信托的产权基础、土地信托的目的和作用、土地信托中的公私关系、组织形式和运作模式几个方面,主要以土地所有权私有化为前提,但已将研究重点从所有权转移到使用权和控制权,且成果主要集中在农村土地改革和土地资源保护方面.因此,通过对国外上述研究成果综述和简要评论,可以为我国在该领域的研究提供借鉴.     

发展我国预约定价安排制度的思考

作为解决关联企业转让定价问题的一种方法,预约定价出现较晚,人们对其了解也较少。本文在简单阐述预约定价安排制度的基础上,分析了预约定价的优缺点,并结合我国预约定价的实践,提出了进一步完善我国预约定价安排制度的若干建议。     

Meta-Functional Benefit Transfer for Wetland Valuation: Making the Most of Small Samples

This study applies functional Benefit Transfer via Meta-Regression Modeling to derive valuation estimates for wetlands in an actual policy setting of proposed groundwater transfers in Eastern Nevada. We illustrate how Bayesian estimation techniques can be used to overcome small sample problems notoriously present in Meta-functional Benefit Transfer. The highlights of our methodology are: (i) The hierarchical modeling of heteroskedasticity; (ii) The ability to incorporate additional information via refined priors; and (ii) The derivation of measures of model performance with the corresponding option of model-averaged Benefit Transfer predictions. Our results indicate that economic losses associated with the disappearance of these wetlands can be substantial and that primary valuation studies are warranted.      

建立上市公司退出机制的思考

本通过对国内上市公司现状，尤其是ST和PT公司现状的分析，结合其他国家和地区的经验和做法，提出了降低我国股市风险，活跃证券市场，引导建立正确的投资理念的办法－上市公司退出机制，对该机制提出的背景，建立的意义，条件及办法进行了讨论，阐述了自己观点，供同行参考。     

Contracts with endogenous information

I study covert information acquisition and reporting in a principal agent problem allowing for general technologies of information acquisition. When posteriors satisfy two dimensional versions of the standard First Order Stochastic Dominance and Concavity/Convexity of the Distribution Function conditions, a first-order approach is justified. Under the same conditions, informativeness and riskiness of reports are equivalent. High powered contracts, that make the agent's informational rents more risky, are used to increase incentives for information acquisition, insensitive contracts are used to reduce incentives for information gathering. The value of information to the agent is always positive. The value of information to the principal is ambiguous.