Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study

We report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting institutions in a voting game with common preferences. Rational choice theory predicts sharp differences in voter behavior between these two institutions. If voting is compulsory, then voters may find it rational to vote insincerely, i.e., against their private information. If voting is voluntary so that abstention is allowed, then sincere voting in accordance with a voter's private information is always rational while participation may become strategic. We find strong support for these theoretical predictions in our experimental data. Moreover, voters adapt their decisions to the voting institution in place in such a way as to make the group decision accuracy differences between the two voting institutions negligible. The latter finding may serve to rationalize the co-existence of compulsory and voluntary voting institutions in nature.     

Valuing improvements in urban water security: evidence of heterogeneity derived from a latent class model for eastern Australia

In many Australian cities the response to drought has included the imposition of mandatory constraints over how water is used by households, often termed ‘water restrictions’. A similar rationing approach has been witnessed in California’s recent drought. The aim of water restrictions is to slow the depletion of water storage but restrictions have also been criticized for the costs they impose on specific water users. In order to gain insight into the potential magnitude of the cost of water restrictions, this study uses a choice experiment to investigate the non-market values for specific attributes associated with the outcomes of drought restrictions. This information was sought to understand the community’s willingness to pay for attributes related to the extent, frequency and duration of water restrictions. The article reports a latent class choice model for a major city in eastern Australia and investigates heterogeneity in preferences towards increasing water availability during drought. This study departs from the existing literature by conducting the choice experiment in a context where water supply is relatively abundant. This unique framing of the choice experiment allows for a useful comparison with existing studies and also raises challenges about the interpretation of the data for planning purposes.     

金紫山风电场一期工程风机基础设计

风电场的风力发电机组基础形式主要有扩展基础、桩基础和岩石锚杆基础,具体采用哪种基础应根据建设场地地基条件和风力发电机组上部结构对基础的要求确定。文章以广西资源县金紫山风电场一期工程为例,介绍山区风力发电机组基础的设计。     

论信用概念的本质内涵与信用建设的基本途径

在时下的信用问题研究背景中,经济学一家独语的状况非常明显;即便是在伦理学研究背景下,信用也仅被作为一个关键概念局限于经济伦理领域。但是,要建立一个科学的社会信用制度体系,信用就应该首先被还原出它的作为一个一般伦理学概念的内涵,即它的本质内涵。当代的中国信用建设,仅仅局限于经济学或经济伦理领域来讨论具体的制度建构,无疑要走很多弯路。信用这个概念,正如诚信概念一样,不仅存在于人的经济活动领域,也存在于人的其他重大活动领域。在这些人的种种活动领域中广泛存在的信用概念是紧密联系和互动的,并且存在一定的同步性需求,这种需求的理论化,就是信用概念在一般伦理学语境下的充分讨论。     

金融数学专业设计性实验的教学安排

设计性实验对于金融数学专业是非常重要的,但是在设计性实验的教学过程中会遇到一定的困难,例如学生的实验过程不透明;学生会觉得实验太难太复杂而无从下手;学生提交的实验结果的正确性很难检验等。合理安排设计性实验的教学过程,将实验过程划分为授课教师可以掌控的几个部分,每部分指导学生独立完成就能够解决上述的常见问题,从而取得比较好的教学效果。     

近中期金融改革值得关注的几个问题

当前,国际金融危机影响依然存在,发达经济体、新兴经济体均面临结构调整,全球金融监管体制将全面改革。结合国内金融运行及金融业发展中存在的一些突出问题,文章以确立推进近中期金融改革的基本原则为出发点,从建立金融宏观审慎管理制度、研究应对危机债务成本的分摊机制等层面,提出当前需重点推进的几项金融改革及相关政策建议。     

Willingness to pay for safety improvements in passenger air travel

The risk of being involved in an airplane accident is largely ignored in air passengers’ choice models. The reason presumably is that it is hard to operationalize, because objective safety indicators often involve extremely low probabilities that are hard to grasp and interpret by passengers. In this paper, we propose an operationalization that is based on the perception of safety, which is easy to understand and resonates that perceptions often influence decisions stronger than objective variables. We conceptualize that passengers form a safety perception score of a particular flight based on their perception of airline and route attributes and that this score in turn is traded-off against other flight attributes, such as ticket costs, to arrive at a flight choice. In line with this conceptualization, two stated preference experiments are conducted. In a first experiment, combinations of airline and route attributes are evaluated in terms of safety that is captured on a rating scale. In a second experiment, safety perception is treated as an attribute and traded-off against other flight attributes to arrive at a flight choice. The paper presents the results of a regression and a Panel Mixed Logit model estimated from responses obtained from a convenience sample of 161 air passengers recruited in the Netherlands. The results of both models are then combined to calculate the willingness to pay values for improvements made to a range of airline and route attributes, taking into account socio-demographic variables and psychological traits. As expected, the results indicate that the willingness to pay for improving safety decreases with higher initial safety levels.     

Learning by Trial and Error: A Case for Moot Courts

This article describes the development of a computer tutorial for use in a history of economic ideas class. An early version of the tutorial contained ten topics, ranging from early Mercantilist thought to Jevons's marginal utility analysis. These concepts were presented in three ways: verbally, graphically, and in summary form. Student critiques were used to extend the content and revise the mode of presentation.     

Using Laboratory Experiments in Logistics and Supply Chain Research

Laboratory experiments provide an underutilized methodology for subjecting research in logistics and supply chain management to rigorous scientific scrutiny. As discussed in this paper, by following established procedures researchers can create an economic system in which behavior can be observed and replicated. With the ability to control the institution and the environment, researchers have complete information and can exogenously manipulate treatment variables, neither of which may be feasible in field work. We also address many of the reservations that skeptics of laboratory experiments often express including issues of realism, participant sophistication, and payoff stakes. We then provide several examples where experiments have been used to study issues relevant to logistics and supply chain management including auctions, wholesale practices in gasoline markets, inventory replenishment, liberalization of the electric power industry, and deregulation of the natural gas markets. Finally, we identify several additional areas where laboratory experiments could be informative.     

The Effects of Multiple Health and Nutrition Labels on Consumer Food Choices

Consumers face an increasing availability of information on health and nutritional aspects of foods, especially on food package labels. Previous research has identified that this information is positively valued, but the effect of presenting several items of information simultaneously is not well understood. We conduct a choice experiment to identify the effects of multiple health and nutrition information labels for two products representing a healthy and less healthy food choice. Although our consumers attach positive utility to most of the individual labels evaluated here, the simultaneous presence of more than one label only has positive impact on utility in one of nine possible cases. Therefore, promotion of multiple labels should not be considered beneficial a priori either from a regulatory or business perspective. In addition, results show that consumers show a higher willingness to pay for nutrition and health labels for less healthy products.