Peers and Culture*

We analyze the evolution of culture when parents socialize children to the cultural variants that maximize child lifetime utility. Parents invest in cultural transmission by taking into account that children are also influenced by peers. We model the influence of peers by assuming that children observe different cultural variants in their peer group, assign merit to them and adopt one variant, following a probabilistic adoption rule. We show that cultural diversity is sustainable even if all parents strive to transmit the same variant. We also show that a parental demand for cultural pluralism does not guarantee cultural diversity.     

Adaptive economic growth

This paper develops an evolutionary theory of adaptive growth,understood as a product of structural change and economic self-transformation,based upon processes that are closely connected with but notreducible to the growth of knowledge. The dominant connectingtheme is enterprise, the innovative variations it generatesand the multiple connections between investment, innovation,demand and structural transformation in the market process.The paper explores the dependence of macroeconomic productivitygrowth on the diversity of technical progress functions andincome elasticities of demand at the industry level, and theresolution of this diversity into patterns of economic changethrough market processes. It is shown how industry growth ratesare constrained by higher-order processes of emergence thatconvert an ensemble of industry growth rates into an aggregaterate of growth. The growth of productivity, output and employmentare determined mutually and endogenously, and their values dependon the variation in the primary causal influences in the system.     

基于犹豫模糊Dematel-Kano方法的云南省智慧旅游服务需求分类研究

为解决智慧旅游背景下各顾客需求间相互影响关系考虑不足、顾客需求信息模糊和多样等问题,提出一种对智慧旅游服务需求差异性划分的犹豫模糊Dematel-Kano方法。首先,基于TOPSIS思想构建用以刻画顾客需求之间相互影响关系的犹豫模糊Dematel模型,以获取智慧旅游服务需求客观重要度。其次,利用犹豫模糊集表征Kano问卷中顾客需求重要度,并借助此模型对各需求进行定量分类和筛选。再次,构建集成的犹豫模糊Dematel-Kano二维坐标体系,进而获得各需求的重要度排序。最后,以云南省智慧旅游服务研究为例,甄别和筛选出关键的游客服务需求,为提高游客满意度及高质量的用户体验提供理论依据。     

探析现代陶艺与现代室内装饰的融合

现代陶艺与室内装饰的融合,使它们随着现代的审美意识成长与发展。现代陶艺创作的多元化与现代生活需求多样化又是现代陶艺和现代室内装饰巧妙的结合在一起的重要基础。现代陶艺走进建筑和环境是社会发展的必然结果。     

Industry diversity and its impact on the innovation performance of firms

This paper investigates empirically the impact of diversity on the innovation performance of a firm. We created a measure for diversity that mirrors differences in the resource base of firms within an industry and tested its impact in addition to more traditional factors such as technology-push, demand-pull, and firm-size, based on panel data stemming from three representative cross sectional surveys carried out in the years 1996, 1999, and 2002, respectively. In fact, diversity has a significant positive impact on the innovation intensity of firms and thus supports more theoretical findings in this area. We also find empirical evidence for the technology push and the demand pull hypotheses, as well as the importance of competition for innovation.     

Estimating the wetland rental fee: a case study involving a Taiwan wetland

Wetlands provide many functions that are both economic and recreational and are valuable in terms of their ecological diversity, while at the same time being nonmarket value products. The purpose of this study is to estimate the optimal wetland rental through estimations of both the demand and supply functions in relation to wetland. The wetland supply function is directly estimated based on the data provided by the owners of the wetland, while the estimation of the wetland input demand function involves using the bootstrapping and contingent visitation approaches. Such estimation approaches could also be applied to other nonmarket value products that give rise to environmental externalities. The estimation of rental fee could provide a long-term leasing contract that gives the landlord with a particular rent to lease their lands to support a wetland eco-tourism park to maintain wetland for substantial management. Several environmental management policy implications are also addressed.     

Some aspects on regional integration,comparative advantage and consumer's diversity

This article describes one simple Cournot oligopoly model with linear inverse demand and international linkage, and tries to analyse how the degree of competitiveness, the diversity in comparative advantage, consumer preference and market volume are closely interrelated with each other in the course of free trade areas (FTA) liberalization. The influence of income/substitution effects to firm's profit maximization is also examined. My analysis shows some basic results and implications regarding the tariff-setting strategies and the incentive for endogenous internal liberalization, as well as the role of FTA formation on a stream to world-wide liberalization.     

基于改进的生态足迹模型的石羊河流域生态经济系统分析

基于改进的生态足迹模型,分析了石羊河流域生态经济系统2001～2007年的生态供需状况、可持续发展及发展能力。结果表明,生态盈亏表现为生态赤字,供需矛盾尖锐,生态环境处于不安全状态,但生态赤字缓慢下降,说明生态环境有所改善。同时,可持续发展指标较低,生态-经济处于极不协调的状态,生态足迹多样性指数和发展能力几乎没有变化,石羊河流域实现可持续发展的任务依然艰巨。     

The intrinsic fallacy of market mechanism and private property rights in alleviating the tragedy of the commons

ABSTRACT

Economists’ solution to the tragedy of the commons relies on well-defined property rights and competitive market mechanism for limiting individuals’ self-serving, short-sighted actions that result in a dramatic depletion of the common resources. However, this solution implicates a serious threat in terms of sustainability. Recently, deterioration of genetic diversity reached alarming levels, mainly attributed to escalating economic pressure that obliges farmers to shift from local breeds towards more profitable and more productive industrial breeds. This study empirically examines the efficiency of the free market mechanism as a solution to the tragedy of the commons through a unique natural experiment in which a huge demand shock arises regarding sheep. Results robustly show that the free market mechanism can cope with even a very challenging demand shock through the adjustment of prices without any shortage of the commodity. However, this finding does not guarantee that such an outcome is sustainable over the very long term. Analysis of the growth rate of the local sheep breeds population and cross-breed sheep population shows that the trend is overwhelmingly in favour of cross-breeds, thus supporting concerns for a free market mechanism, intrinsically driving the extinction of local sheep breeds, an invaluable genetic resource.     

A NEW THEORY OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY AND EMERGENCE OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE FROM DOMESTIC TRADE

Abstract. In the paper a fixed learning cost is introduced into a framework with consumer-producers and transaction costs. The fixed learning cost yields a rate of return on the investment in individual specific learning and training which is increasing in its rate of utilization. Division of labor can avoid duplicated learning costs and generate economies of specialized learning. The tradeoff between economies of specialization and transaction costs can be used to explain concurrent increases in the extent of the market, aggregate demand, productivity, trade dependence, the degree of market integration, the degree of production concentration, diversity of economic structure, variety of different professions, each person's level of specialization, and the extent of endogenous comparative advantage and the emergence of international trade from domestic trade. This model explains demand and supply as two sides of the level of division of labor which is determined by a transaction cost coefficient. Hence, the demand law may not hold even for normal goods owing to complicated interdependencies between the level of specialization and demand and between the level of specialization and prices of traded goods. The extended version of this model with the CES function is used to endogenize variety of consumption in addition to the endogenization of individuals'level of specialization.     

Mortgage product diversity: responding to consumer demand or protecting lender profit? An asymmetric panel analysis

This article explores determinants of mortgage product diversity for owner-occupied and investment loans in the Australian housing mortgage market. From 2001 to 2012, 65 lenders introduced 1220 mortgage products in Australia. We examine whether the product proliferation was a result of consumer demand or a response to pressure to lower lending rates. We find that consumer demand for mortgages does not have a significant relationship with the number of mortgage products, but that decreases in the policy interest rate are highly significant as an explanatory variable for product proliferation. Such behaviour is consistent with information obfuscation, reducing the ease with which consumers can compare lending rates. Further, the relationship between mortgage products offered and the policy interest rate is asymmetric: decreases in the cash rate are associated with increased mortgage products offered, but increases in the cash rate have a more muted effect on decreasing the number of products.     

知识型员工的特征及其激励

知识型员工有追求工作自主、注重贡献、需求多样性和复杂性、对组织忠诚度低和流动性强、追求职业发展等特征。对知识型员工的激励,必须从激励环境、理论模型、激动方式与手段等方面进行系统性、动态性设计,以实现知识型员工和组织共同发展的目标。     

Modelling and mapping spatial heterogeneity in forest recreation services

Modelling and spatial mapping of recreation services require attention to both demand and supply factors. This paper combines recreational choice modelling and economic valuation with GIS based techniques to allow an assessment of the spatial diversity of the value of forest recreation services. The data for the analysis is a national study of the car borne recreational use of Danish forest sites. A random utility framework is used and a comparison between the standard fixed coefficient model and a mixed logit model is made. The results show that the different specifications of the random utility models reveal similar preferences for the measured forest attributes in terms of sign and magnitude. The spatial predictions, however, reveal a considerable difference in the spatial pattern of economic benefits from recreation between the two models. These results have implications for current ecosystem service mapping initiatives as they emphasise the need to account for spatial heterogeneity in preferences, and aggregate demand and environmental attributes and infrastructure.     

Liquidity, infinite horizons and macroeconomic fluctuations

This paper develops a computable dynamic general equilibrium model in which corporate demand for liquidity is endogenously determined. In the model, liquidity demand is motivated by moral hazard, as in Holmström and Tirole (J. Politic. Econom. 106 (1998) 1). As a result of incorporating agency cost and endogenously determined liquidity demand, the model can replicate an empirical business cycle fact, the hump-shaped dynamic response of output, which is seldom observed in standard RBC dynamics. Further, in the model the corporate demand for liquidity from a financial intermediary (credit line, for instance) is pro-cyclical, while the degree of liquidity dependence (defined as liquidity demand divided by corporate investment) is counter-cyclical. These business cycle patterns are consistent with a stylized fact empirically verified in the lending view literature.     

Input-output anatomy of import elasticities

The elasticity of imports with respect to final demand, calculated from the 1964 and 1970 input-output tables for Austria, is equal to 1.35. Input-output analysis makes it possible to show how the value of the import elasticity is related to following structural changes: i) Changes in the shares of final demand components (i.e. of consumption, capital formation and exports) on total final demand; ii) changes in the pattern of final demand components; iii) changes in the technology matrix; iv) substitution of domestic output by imports in the final demand; and v) substitution of the domestic output by imports in the intermediate demand.     

A Systematic Assessment of the Environmental Impacts of Transport Policy

This paper presents an integrated urbanpassenger transport model system for evaluatingthe impact of a large number of interrelatedpolicy instruments on urban travel behaviourand the environment. The model system has fourintegrated modules defining household locationand automobile choices, commuter workplace andcommuting travel choices, non-commuting travelactivity, and worker distributed workpractices. The demand model system, estimatedas a set of discrete and continuous choicemodels, is combined with a set of equilibratingcriteria in each of the location, automobileand commuting markets to predict overall demandfor passenger travel in various socio-economicsegments, automobile classes and geographiclocations. We illustrate the diversity of thesystem by applying the integrated system toPerth (Western Australia), in the context ofassessing their impacts on greenhouse gasemissions. The model system is embedded withina decision support system to make it anattractive suite of tools for practitioners.     

Semicollusion vs. Full Collusion: The Role of Demand Uncertainty and Product Substitutability

We examine the profitability of two different cartel organizational forms: full collusion, under which firms collude on both price and quality, and semicollusion, under which firms collude on price only. We show that, in the presence of demand uncertainty that cannot be contracted upon in the cartel agreement, firms may be better off limiting their collusive agreement to price only. However, a positive relationship between demand uncertainty and the relative profitability of semicollusion exists only for low levels of demand substitutability. The converse is true for high levels of demand substitutability. Therefore, if demand substitutability is sufficiently high, no level of demand uncertainty will make semicollusion the optimal organizational form. In contrast, semicollusion is guaranteed to be optimal for a sufficiently low level of demand substitutability. The market structure described is motivated by and closely parallels that of shipping cartels. Received September 29, 2000; revised version received December 10, 2001 Published online: November 11, 2002     

宁夏平原天然状态下作物水分亏缺研究

本文以宁夏平原为案例,对天然状态下的农田水分平衡状况进行了深入的定量研究,采用长系列(1961～2001年)、短时段(月)和多种作物类型(8种)相匹配的操作方法,建立农田水量平衡模型,计算得到了宁夏平原各个县域单元、各种作物、逐年、逐月的有效降水、盈水量、亏水量值。结果表明:自然降水不能满足作物生长发育的需求,水分亏缺是宁夏平原天然状态下农田水分平衡的主要特征;不同作物水分亏缺程度差异较大;宁夏平原未来农业发展必须推行"以水定产"战略。     

Diversity in innovation and productivity in Europe

The diversity in innovation patterns across manufacturing and service industries and in their outcomes in terms of hourly labor productivity are investigated in this article considering six European countries. The Schumpeterian insights into the variety of innovation are developed in this work by identifying different innovation–performance relationships for industries and countries, relying either on the dominant role of product innovation, or on the diffusion of process improvements. Moreover, the “push” effect of innovation is combined with the “pull” effect of demand, by considering the impact of the dynamics of consumption and investment at the sectoral level. The results point out a “North-South” divide across EU countries, with the three countries of Northern Europe closely associated to the model of productivity growth based on product innovation, and the three Southern countries, mainly relying on the mechanisms by which process innovation is at the root of productivity improvements.     

Chapter 3. Domestic Demand — Household, Business and Public

Real public sector demand rose by 1.9 per cent in 1976–77 and we have forecast a similar rise in 1977–78. However, when real public demand is adjusted to exclude expenditure by Qantas for the deliveries of planes real growth is only about 1 per cent. This picture is slightly more optimistic than the one presented in Review 2'77 when we forecast a decline of 1.5 per cent in real public sector demand. For the second half of 1978 we have assumed an annual rate increase in real total public sector demand of about 4 per cent.