Public perception and responses to environmental pollution and health risks: evaluation and implication from a national survey in China

Concerns have been raised among policy-makers, researchers and Chinese citizens regarding the widespread environmental degradation that has occurred in China in recent decades. Years of environmental education and media coverage on pollution harm and health risks have not only provided information about pollution to the public, but have also strengthened people’s concerns. However, an ‘intense focus’ on pollution is far from sufficient; at present, it is necessary to assess to what extent the public can identify specific environmental conditions and whether they are ready to cope with potential health risks from pollution. Through face-to-face surveys on trains and at railway stations nationwide, we investigated public experiences of environmental pollution accidents, perceptions of local environmental risks (focused on air and water quality) and responses to local environmental conditions. By comparing public perceptions with official environmental monitoring data-sets, we concluded that the accuracy of perceptions related to four environmental factors ranged from 40 to 60% at the individual scale. Furthermore, the accuracies increased approximately 2–10% at the county scale and 10–30% at the city scale, highlighting the possible benefits of collective intelligence in helping the public to identify existing environment conditions more accurately. Additionally, despite great concerns about pollution and health, public attitudes toward coping with the dangers of pollution and health risks were found to be indifferent. Our study revealed factors at the individual, social and governmental levels that led to low levels of perception accuracy and response scores. Thereout, we stressed potential pathways to improve the accuracy of public perception and the positivity of responses. The survey results indicate that there is a long way to go before the public is well prepared to cope with the risks of pollution; as a consequence, it is necessary to improve both personal environmental awareness as well as governmental, social and commercial responses to pollution events.     

新《保险法》中"保证保险"的风险及其防范

新《保险法》财产保险业务中新增加了保证保险,然而并没有对保证保险的定义、性质、适用范围及合同相关内容做明确规定。因此,正确认知保证保险与普通财产保险的区别,把握保证保险在我国实施过程中可能面临的各种风险具有积极意义。防范保证风险应从完善保证保险立法和监管制度、提高保险公司对保证保险的专业管理操作能力、创新相关产品、加强银保合作和信用环境建设等方面落实。     

The tail risks of FX return distributions: A comparison of the returns associated with limit orders and market orders

This paper measures and compares the tail risks of limit and market orders using Extreme Value Theory. The analysis examines realised tail outcomes using the Dealing 2000-2 electronic broking system based on completed transactions rather than the more common analysis of indicative quotes. In general, limit and market orders exhibit broadly similar tail behaviour, but limit orders have significantly heavier tails and larger tail quantiles than market orders.     

The relevance of earnings and cash flows in a heavily regulated industry: Evidence from the Greek banking sector

This study examines the informational quality of annual accounting earnings within Greek banking institutions taking into consideration the most significant risks facing by such firms and specifically interest rate risk, credit risk, liquidity risk and solvency risk, alongside with the persistence of earnings and bank size as significant determinants of ERCs. Data analysis over a period of ten years (1995-2004) revealed that earnings have higher incremental importance in explaining stock return movements compared to cash flows since earnings change has been found to affect stock returns positively. Additionally, interest rate risk has a positive but not significant impact on the return-earnings relation but on the contrary solvency risk, credit risk and liquidity risk proved to have a negative impact on the valuation process for both small and big-sized banks. Finally, tests on the incremental informativeness of cash flows when earnings are transitory provide significant results suggesting that investors seek for alternative measures of banks' performance when earnings are characterized by increased extremity but inversely cash flows and earnings seem to be equally value relevant when investors evaluate big-sized banking institutions. The results are generally robust to the specification of the empirical models and the research design employed in our study.     

Social protection and private insurance: Reassessing the role of public sector versus private sector in insurance

This paper first discusses the standard reasons why private insurance cannot be expected to function well and why public intervention in or public provision of insurance can improve on private market outcomes. These arguments are based on efficiency but also on equity considerations. Then the paper turns to new developments in modern societies that might affect the balance between social and private insurance. They pertain to the current working of labor markets, to the openness of our economies and the ensuing fiscal competition, and to the crediblity and commitment problems faced by the state. The paper concludes that the public sector will find it less and less affordable to provide both insurance and assistance and recommends that it focus on the latter objective by awarding tax-financed uniform benefits on the basis of specified contingencies.     

Implicit attitudes toward risk: the construction and validation of the measurement method

Methods that are typically used to examine individual differences in risk attitudes (e.g. lotteries, dilemmas, questionnaires) require participants to explicitly declare their willingness to take risk. Therefore, they may be biased by the need for self-presentation or situational characteristics such as time pressure and cognitive constraints that lead to more spontaneous and automatic processing of risk-related information. The aim of this study was to construct an indirect measure of risk attitudes that is free of these methodological limitations. The method based on the Implicit Association Test shows high internal reliability and satisfactory stability over time. It correlates moderately with different explicit measures of risk attitudes that are related to sensation seeking. Finally, it is characterized by a high predictive power. Adding the implicit measure to the set of independent variables representing declarative evaluations of risk attitudes significantly improved the model predicting risky real-life behavior. We argue that the indirect assessment of risk attitudes presented in this paper may be used as an universal measure of people’s risk propensity that is free of biases related to self-presentation and situational factors.     

The emergence of a new international competitor in the commercial aircraft sector: The China syndrome

This paper examines China's emerging industrial and international trade potential within the commercial aerospace sector. Decades of industrial offset agreements between Western aerospace companies and Chinese subcontractors have endowed China with the technological fundamentals required to build commercial passenger jets. These offset agreements were designed to secure sales of Western-built aircraft to China, and often involved critical streams of knowledge transfer from prime contractors to Chinese suppliers. By now, China has acquired virtually all of the technological know-how to enter the commercial aircraft market on an internationally competitive basis. The implications for Western producers are presumably not bright, as China's unit costs are extraordinarily low. Further, it is clear that China's first regional jet has been designed to lead to a replacement for the Boeing 737. Looking to the future, I contend that China will challenge Airbus and Boeing in the market for medium-to-large passenger jets by the mid-2020s.     

Goals versus institutions: the development of performance measurement in the Swedish university sector

This paper contrasts goal-directed and institutional approaches to the development of performance measurement (PM) in the Swedish university sector, which has been subject to increasing emphasis on management by objectives since the early 1990s. We adopt a macro perspective, focusing on recent changes in PM related to governmental control of universities and colleges and combine an extensive review of archival data with interviews in our empirical analysis. It is concluded that although the goal-directed model cannot be completely rejected as a heuristic informing recent changes in PM, a process-orientated institutional perspective considerably enriches the analysis by making it less static and more contextually informed. In particular, the latter perspective better explains the evolution of loose couplings between formally stated goals and performance indicators and between different systems for PM by directing attention to the complex interplay between conflicting constituent interests in the evolution of resource and cost allocation practices and quality control procedures. However, our empirical analysis also leads us to reconsider the conceptions of loose coupling as either a “given” feature of institutionalised organizations or an outcome of more pro-active resistance at the micro level prevailing in much earlier work in institutional theory.     

城镇居民医疗保险制度的运行及改革

各级政府从2007年开始进行城镇居民医疗保险制度的试点,期望以此来解决城镇困难群体的就医问题。文章首先以我国东部地区某市的数据分析了老年城镇居民医疗保险制度运行,筹资额与所花费医疗费用的比例低,按照制度设计的原则,政府不对制度运行补贴,则报销比例低,影响人们的参保意愿。第二部分,国际上大多数实行医疗保险制度的国家为被保险者家属提供医疗保险待遇。从以上两部分的分析来看,城镇居民医疗保险制度未来的发展方向：第一,与城镇职工基本医疗保险制度逐步融合起来,以便分散风险;第二,加强对公共卫生和社区医疗服务的投入。结论是：如果没有遏制医疗费用上涨的有效手段,医疗保险制度对解决城镇困难群体的就医问题作用不大。     

Management of environmental and social risks and topics in the banking sector - An empirical investigation

This paper investigates how environmental and social (E&S) risks and topics (i. e. E&S issues that are important in terms of adaptation to a changing business environment) are integrated in the banking sector. Despite banks’ key role in steering financial flows towards sustainable development, little is currently known as to whether and how banks integrate E&S aspects into their management control systems and whether this integration translates into E&S performance. Building on prior studies in the environmental management control literature, we design a conceptual model in which we link contextual factors, a proactive strategy approach, E&S management controls, and E&S performance. Following common practice in the banking sector, we differentiate between two paths of E&S management controls: risk management (value protection) and topic management (value creation). Based on survey data for a small sample of 50 European banks, we find evidence that contextual factors, reflected in the perceived power and legitimacy of clients, voluntary standard setters and NGOs, are positively related to a proactive strategy approach. This proactive strategy translates into both topic and risk management. Yet, in the next step, only topic management is positively related to the E&S performance of a bank, but not risk management.     

The influence of the CEO's value perception towards auditing on audit demand in private firms

Audit demand is generally considered to be a direct reflection of the level of agency conflicts. This study examines the CEO's value perception towards auditing as additional driver for both auditor reputation demand (appointing a Big 4 auditor or not) and audit effort demand in private firms. Examining the CEO's value perception in a multidimensional way, the regression results indicate that the CEO's functional value perception towards auditing positively affects the demand for audit effort, while the CEO's social value perception towards auditing negatively affects the demand for audit effort but positively affects the demand for auditor reputation.     

小概率高损失事件的忽略——对中国发展巨灾保险的意义

地震、洪水和台风等都属于小概率高损失的巨灾风险,一旦发生将给社会和人们的生活带来破坏性的后果。研究表明,巨灾事件的发生会极大地改变公众对风险或损失的预期和感知。在巨灾事件发生时以及一段时间内,由于风险信息的显著性和可获得性,公众会产生暂时的紧张和恐惧心理,随着时间的流逝,人们会慢慢从非理性中冷静下来,意识到巨灾风险发生的概率是如此之小,过度的担心是没有必要的。这对于巨灾风险制度的发展产生了重要的影响,因此,分析和研究公众对巨灾风险的感知、提出相应的巨灾保险发展的对策建议具有重要的理论和实践意义。     

Economic crisis and determinants of solvency in the insurance sector: new evidence from Spain

This paper analyses the factors that determine the solvency of insurance companies operating in Spain. The selected time span, from 2008 to 2015, encompasses a period of economic instability characterised by record low interest rates and low or even negative economic growth. Using a dynamic panel data model, we conclude that actual solvency margins are positively related to profitability, underwriting risk and a mutual-type organisation but inversely related to size, reinsurance use, longer-tailed business and life insurance specialisation. We also find that less concentrated markets and the context of an economic crisis decrease solvency margins.     

Evaluation of psychosocial and organizational factors in offshore safety: a comparative study

This study compares UK and Norwegian offshore workers' evaluations of social and organizational factors that can have an impact upon safety on offshore installations. A total of 1138 Norwegian (87% response rate) and 622 UK workers (40% response rate) responded to a self-completion questionnaire, which was distributed to 18 installations in February/March 1994. The questionnaire contained six scales that were suitable and relevant for the purposes of comparison. These scales measured ‘risk perception’, ‘satisfaction with safety measures’, ‘perceptions of the job situation’, ‘attitudes to safety’, ‘perceptions of others' commitment to safety’ and ‘perceptions of social support’. The data show clear differences in how UK and Norwegian workers evaluate various social and organizational factors that can have an impact upon safety, however, eta² analysis indicated that for most of the scales ‘installation’ explained a greater percentage of the variance than sector. The exceptions to this were scales measuring ‘safety attitudes’ where both sector and installation contributed equally to the effects. Although the results from the ‘safety attitudes’ scales should be interpreted with caution (due to low internal reliability), it is possible that they are tapping into more deeply held beliefs about the nature of safety, e.g. ‘fatalism’ and the ‘causes of accidents’. In contrast, the other scales are measuring factors directly related to the working environment such as perceptions of risk and satisfaction with safety measures on the installation. These may reflect the prevailing ‘safety climate’ or ‘atmosphere’ on the installations surveyed, whereas constructs such as ‘fatalism’, etc. may be reflections of underlying ‘cultural’ values. Recognizing the existence of different ‘safety cultures’ and understanding the processes which lie behind them could have implications for safety management in an industry which is highly international in nature and in which workers' are often required to work in foreign countries for varying periods of time.     

长期护理保险制度中老年人的失能风险和照料时间——基于Barthel指数的分析

文章采用我国长期护理保险试点地区普遍使用的失能评估工具Barthel指数作为老年人的失能评估标准,以2014年的CLASS和CLHLS数据为基础,在将两项数据合并后,综合运用多重填补法、生命表技术、沙利文法,对老年人的失能水平及其长期照料需求时间进行评估。分析结果表明:第一,老年人失能水平随年龄增加而快速增长,且存在明显的性别差异,女性老年人的生活自理预期寿命及其带残存活时间均高于男性,应将其作为重点关注人群;第二,轻中、重度失能人群中受损的活动能力项目存在差异,在提供照料时应加以区分;第三,60岁的老年人在重度失能状态下需要照料的时间约为0.42年,中重度状态下为0.79年,但是如果将轻度失能也考虑在内,需要照料的时间将增至5.01年。因此,将项目的受益人群扩大到轻度失能人群会导致照料成本大幅度上升。     

Public priorities and expectations of climate change impacts in the United Kingdom

Irrespective of the success of climate mitigation efforts, societies worldwide face the challenge of adapting to a changing climate. In this paper, we examine UK residents’ expectations of future threats and opportunities associated with climate change impacts, along with willingness to prioritise different climate change impacts for investment. Using a national survey (n = 2007), we report on three main findings. First, UK residents tend to expect threats related to flooding and wet weather to be more likely and concerning than heat extremes or opportunities. Second, UK residents’ expectations of climate change impacts do not align with expert assessments, especially showing lower estimates of heat-related threats as compared to experts. Third, willingness to allocate resources to potential climate change impacts tends to be more strongly associated with anticipated concern should they occur than climate change belief or the expected likelihood of them occurring. We discuss the implications of our findings for policies and communications about climate change adaptation in the UK and elsewhere.     

The Effect of the Alternation in the Ruling Party on Three-Factor Risks and Returns in ETF: The Case of Presidential Elections in Taiwan

This study discusses the effect of alternation in the ruling party in presidential elections on three-factor risks and returns of the three main exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Taiwan, which has an unclearly defined international status and whose citizens have the right to vote directly for the president. We find that after the ruling party has been determined, in the period between Election Day and inauguration day, both the stock market and ETFs show a slight rise in prices. This suggests that most investors are initially optimistic after the election results have been announced. Meanwhile, the reverse book-to-market risk value deteriorates significantly. These results indicate that political uncertainty increases the risk premium of market factors and reverse book-to-market factors for some ETFs.     

The use of performance measurement systems in the public sector: Effects on performance

We study the use of performance measurement systems in the public sector. We hypothesize that the way in which these systems are being used affects organizational performance, and that these performance effects depend on contractibility. Contractibility encompasses clarity of goals, the ability to select undistorted performance metrics, and the degree to which managers know and control the transformation process. We expect that public sector organizations that use their performance measurement systems in ways that match the characteristics of their activities outperform those that fail to achieve such fit. We test our hypotheses using survey data from 101 public sector organizations. Our findings indicate that contractibility moderates the relationship between the incentive-oriented use of the performance measurement system and performance. Using the performance measurement system for incentive purposes negatively influences organizational performance, but this effect is less severe when contractibility is high. We also find that an exploratory use of the performance measurement system tends to enhance performance; this positive effect is independent of the level of contractibility. The effectiveness of the introduction of performance measurement systems in public sector organizations thus depends both on contractibility and on how the system is being used by managers. These findings have important implications, both for practice and for public policy.