Recognizing contributors: an experiment on public goods

We experimentally investigate the impact of recognizing contributors on public good contributions. We vary recognizing all, highest or lowest contributors. Consistent with previous studies, recognizing all contributors significantly increases contributions relative to the baseline. Recognizing only the highest contributors does not increase contributions compared to not recognizing contributors, while recognizing only the lowest contributors is as effective as recognizing all contributors. These findings support our conjecture that aversion from shame is a more powerful motivator for giving than anticipation of prestige.     

网络舆论监督的法律思考

网络信息传播具有传播速度快、受众面广、互动性强、形式多样、情绪化明显等特征.这些特征在发挥网络舆论监督积极作用的同时,也往往带来一些负面的作用,包括司法公正、隐私权和名誉权保护的影响等.完善网络舆论监督,不仅要健全网络立法,确保司法公开,同时还要完善信息公开制度,提升网民素质,加强私权保护.     

Unemployment dynamics in an OLG economy with public pensions

Pension benefits in old age establish a disincentive to save in youth, thereby yielding lower levels of capital stock and the wage rate. As a result, the trade union has an incentive to change the composition of its two targets: employment and the wage rate. This paper develops a model that includes employment effects of public pensions via capital accumulation and union wage setting. Within this framework, we consider how contribution rates to the pension system influence the level and time path of the unemployment rate. It is demonstrated that (1) a higher contribution rate results in a lower unemployment rate, and (2) the economy with a high (low) contribution rate experiences monotone convergence towards (oscillatory convergence towards or a period-2 cycle around) the steady state. The author would like to thank an anonymous referee, Kazutoshi Miyazawa, and seminar participants at Osaka University for their useful comments and suggestions, and Masako Ikefuji and Hiroaki Yamagami for their research assistance. Financial support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (No.17730131), the Asahi Glass Foundation, the Japan Economic Research Foundation and the 21st Century COE Program (Osaka University) is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are mine.     

金融舆情理论国内外研究综述

通过"中国知网"数据库检索发现,截至2014年4月25日,篇名中包含"舆情"的各类文献有5 352篇,其中期刊文献有3 728篇;但是,包含"金融舆情"的各类文献仅有5篇。金融舆情研究的相关理论基础不仅限于舆情或金融舆情领域,与金融舆情研究主题相关的现有研究可以分为三类:第一类是舆情与舆情演化理论研究;第二类是金融舆情相关理论研究;第三类是社会舆论及其对投资市场的影响。     

Considering the nuclear option: Hidden benefits and social costs of nuclear power in the U.S. since 1970

Although burning fossil fuels has environmental consequences, many countries have switched away from nuclear power in favor of fossil-fuel fired electricity production after incidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. This study estimates the substitution between nuclear and fossil-fuel fired electricity generation in the United States. Using an event-study framework, we leverage nuclear plant openings from 1970 to 1995 and forced nuclear plant outages from 1999 to 2014. Plant openings (nuclear outages) reduce (increase) monthly net coal-fired generation by approximately 200 GWh, implying a considerable reduction (increase) in emissions. We find that the substitution between nuclear and coal is not one-to-one, as has been assumed in prior literature. After establishing these stylized facts, we explore the potential underlying forces driving the observed substitution between coal and nuclear.     

Mitigating the tyranny of public opinion: Anonymous discourse and the ethic of sincerity

Public opinion breeds tyranny by forcing individuals to refrain from voicing their genuine thoughts and feelings. The means used to mitigate such tyranny include the separation of governmental powers, the ethic of tolerance, and the secret ballot. Yet neither individually nor collectively do these devices prevent the emergence and persistence of social taboos. This paper proposes two additional corrective devices. One is an electronic instrument that would enable public officials to deliberate on socially sensitive matters behind a veil of anonymity. The other is an ethic that would enhance the utility citizens derive from truthfulness on political matters. A draft of this paper was discussed at a Liberty Fund Conference on the “Ethical Foundations of Constitutional Order,” held in Arlington, VA, on July 9–12, 1992. Many of the conference participants offered frank criticisms that resulted in improvements. Jerry Harvey read the paper with exemplary care, making no effort to hide his reservations; I benefited greatly from his wise comments. I profited also from two reports commissioned by this journal, both anonymous.     

Cooperation under the threat of expulsion in a public goods experiment

In a public goods experiment with the opportunity to vote to expel members of a group, we found that contributions rose to nearly 100% of endowments with significantly higher efficiency compared with a no-expulsion baseline. Our findings support the intuition that the threat of expulsion or ostracism is a device that helps some groups to provide public goods.     

The effect of infrastructure on invention : Innovative capacity and the dynamics of public construction investment

The association between public infrastructural investment and invention is explored in this study, analyzing expenditure and patenting trends and cycles over much of the 20th century. First, innovative capacity, an endogenous indicator of US innovation potential based on invention patent output, is conceptualized and discussed. A major shift in invention modes is shown to have occured over seven decades (1920–1989) as corporate, rather than individual, invention became the most important national source of innovative capacity. The support of public infrastructure for invention is then analyzed, considering its most important characteristics and supportive functions, and its expenditure patterns over seven decades. The analysis of the infrastructural investment and the innovative capacity age cycle dynamics reveals a remarkable association between educational infrastructure construction and both aggregate and corporate innovative capacity. Time-series statistical analyses provide further insights on the effects of infrastructural investment on invention, showing that corporate patenting tends to benefit more from public infrastructural construction and that educational infrastructure expenditures provide a stronger association with both aggregate and corporate inventive performance.     

Reforming the public administration: The role of crisis and the power of bureaucracy

The need to balance austerity with growth policies has put government efficiency high on the economic policy agenda in Europe. Administrative reforms that boost the internal efficiency of bureaucracy can alleviate the trade-off between consolidation and public service provision. Against such a backdrop, this paper constructs (and makes available) a novel reform indicator to explore the determinants of public administration reforms for a panel of EU countries. The findings support political-economic reasoning: An economic and fiscal crisis is a potent catalyst for reforms, but a powerful bureaucracy constrains the opportunities of a crisis to promote reform. Furthermore, there is some suggestive evidence for horizontal learning from other EU countries, and for vertical learning associated with a particular type of EU cohesion spending.     

公权与私权的冲突与博弈——以城市拆迁为例

由城市拆迁引发的公权与私权的对抗冲突,折射出我国多元社会飞速发展与民主制度的脱节.是我国社会转型期必须正视的问题.如何规制无边界公权,维护合法私权,进而确立公权力与私权利平衡的机制,关系到我国民主、法治的建设进程,关系到经济快速发展和社会稳定.而公民社会的理论框架正是基于破除公私对立的困境而提出的,是未来政治发展的方向.     

The missing link: an evaluation of the utilization of the monitor studies in the Netherlands

This article presents the results of an investigation that has been conducted at the Eindhoven Univenig of technology. Investigated is whether Monitor studies (second framework programme of the European Commission) are utilized in the Netherlands. For this purpose, potential users have been interviewed and Monitor studies have been analyzed. The results of this investigation point out that Monitor studies are poorly used in the Netherlands. The reasons for this relate to the tuning (both content and form) of the Monitor studies with respect to the needs of the potential users and the dissemination of the research results. To improve the utilization of European policy research, more attention should be paid to the needs of potential users and to the dissemination and exploitation of the research results in the Netherlands.     

Enjoy the silence: an experiment on truth-telling

We analyze experimentally two sender–receiver games with conflictive preferences. In the first game, the sender can choose to tell the truth, to lie, or to remain silent. The latter strategy is costly. In the second game, the receiver must decide additionally whether or not to costly punish the sender after having observed the history of the game. We investigate the existence of two kinds of social preferences: lying aversion and preference for truth-telling. In the first game, senders tell the truth more often than predicted by the sequential equilibrium analysis, they remain silent frequently, and there exists a positive correlation between the probability of being truthful and the probability of remaining silent. Our main experimental result for the extended game shows that those subjects who punish the sender with a high probability after being deceived are precisely those who send fewer but more truthful messages. Finally, we solve for the Perfect Bayesian Nash Equilibria of a reduced form of the baseline game with two types of senders. The equilibrium predictions obtained suggest that the observed excessive truth-telling in the baseline game can be explained by lying aversion but not by a preference for truth-telling.

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Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Financial support through the Ramón y Cajal program of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science is gratefully acknowledged. This work was initiated while the author was working at Maastricht University.     

The public value of improving a weather forecasting system in Korea: a choice experiment study

The Korean government plans to improve the quality of its weather forecasting system in order to increase its public utility. The benefits arising from the implementation of this plan should be measured. To this end, this study applies a choice experiment to four attributes: the update frequency of both short- and medium-range forecasts, and the accuracy of both. A survey of 1000 randomly selected households was undertaken in Korea. In the study results, the marginal willingness-to-pays, respectively, for one more update of the short-range forecast per day, for a 1% increase in the accuracy of the short-range forecast, for changing the update frequency of the medium-range forecast from once a day (reference level) to twice a day, and for a 1% increase in the accuracy of the medium-range forecast as a result of improving the weather forecast service were estimated to be KRW 499.3 (USD 0.45), 108.3 (0.10), 346.5 (0.31), and 80.9 (0.07) per household per month. The findings can provide policy-makers with useful information for both evaluating and planning improvements in the weather forecasting system.     

Asymmetric information and agenda control: The bases of monopoly power in public spending

A pervasive empirical finding, widely known as the ‘flypaper effect’, is that lump-sum intergovernmental grants generate considerably greater public spending by the recipient jurisdiction than would be predicted by equivalent shifts in personal income in that jurisdiction. Moreover, such observations are inconsistent with standard median voter models of the political process. We posit a model in which it is in the interest of suppliers of a collectively provided good not to generate full information to voters about outside aid. The empirical results are consistent with ‘flypaper’ and suggest that voters are very poorly informed about outside grants.     

Monetary targeting in the Netherlands: an application of co-integration tests

There are two criteria to choose an intermediate variable for monetary targeting. First, the money demand function needs to be stable and second, the monetary authorities should be able to control the target variable given the available instruments. In this paper we examine whether M1 and M2 in the Netherlands fulfil the first requirement, i.e. we investigate whether a stable relationship exists between these monetary variables and key macroeconomic variables. Co-integration techniques are used which are very well suited for this purpose. Monetary policy in the Netherlands has been directed towards the growth rate of broad money (M2). The present findings do not suport the choice of M2 as an intermediate target for monetary policy in the Netherlands. A stable long-term relationship between M2 and real NNP and Long-and short-term interest rates does not exist. The results for M1 are considerbly better, though not favourable at all scores. The estimated moeny demand function for M1 is a good indicator for monetary policy, since the Dutch central bank probably cannot control the growth rate of M1.     

Technological risk perception and nuclear power costs : The quantification of uncertainty

The cost of nuclear power has escalated significantly in recent years, confounding the optimistic projections of planners and contributing to a serious slowdown in the industry. In this paper we investigate the factors underlying nuclear cost escalation and specify a nonlinear regression technique that identifies costs caused by public and professional uncertainty about future technological performance as opposed to costs based on objective design and construction-related factors.Using multivariate analysis of variance we establish a positive relationship between costs related to uncertainty and such plant specific factors as size, age, and vintage (year of initial operation). Specifically, uncertainty and its associated costs are shown to be greater for larger plants with more advanced technology and to decrease as plants accumulate operating experience. This result suggests that the tendency in the industry toward rapid deployment of large plants with innovative technologies has had a deleterious impact on power generation costs.     

The impact of public smoking bans on well‐being externalities: Evidence from a policy experiment

Recent studies on the effects of anti‐smoking policies on subjective well‐being present mixed results and do not account for potential externalities, especially among couples. We contribute to the literature by evaluating the impact of smoking bans on well‐being externalities among smokers and non‐smokers as well as couples of different types of smokers. We exploit the policy experiment provided by the timing of the UK public smoking bans and measure well‐being via the GHQ . We employ matching techniques combined with flexible difference‐in‐differences fixed effects panel data models on data from the British Household Panel Survey. The joint use of matching with fixed effects specifications allows building more comparable treatment and control groups, producing less model‐dependent results and accounting for individual‐level unobserved heterogeneity. We find that public smoking bans appear to have a statistically significant short‐term positive impact on the well‐being of married individuals, especially among women with dependent children. These effects appear to be robust to alternative specifications and placebo tests and are discussed in the light of the economic theory and recent evidence.     

The net effect of advice on strategy-proof mechanisms: an experiment for the Vickrey auction

Experimental Economics - We conduct laboratory experiments for the multi-unit Vickrey auction with and without advice to subjects on strategy-proofness. The rate of truth-telling among the subjects...     

上海市廉租房建设问题的思考

上海市是我国廉租房建设起步较早的城市之一,然而目前上海的"廉租房"建设似乎到了一个瓶颈的阶段,原因就在于"廉租房"建设资金的不充足,融资方式单一以及融资渠道不畅,这直接导致了"廉租房"建设的匮乏,使大量贫困人口得不到妥善的安置,严重影响了上海市的城市化进程.本文通过对上海市廉租房建设基本情况及存在的问题进行分析,就改进上海市廉租房建设的现行融资方式以及创造新型融资方式进行了初步的探讨.     

The Effects of Immigration on Regional Unemployment Rates in The Netherlands

The impact of immigration on the change in the unemployment rate in the Netherlands is analyzed using panel data from 26 labor market regions from 1996 through 2003. This study measures immigration through the year-to-year change in the foreign population, paying particular attention to immigrants of non-Western origin. Other variables controlling the composition of the local labor market include: occupation shares, the fractions of workers employed in high- and low-skilled jobs, the fractions of female workers, part-time employees, labor force participants over the age of 55, educational attainment shares, and population density. The ordinary least squares (OLS) results indicate a change in the foreign population in the labor force led to a statistically significant increase in the upward volatility of Dutch unemployment rates while the change in the non-Western share had no significant effect.