身份与信任*——基于干部身份的实验证据

本文设计了由中国大学生被试作为委托人和受托人的投资实验,通过在实验中“泄露”不同完备和对称程度的信息,检验了在“无信息”、“单向信息”和“双向信息”三种不同的环境下,“学生干部”这一社会身份对“信任”和“值得信任”水平的影响。研究发现：首先,多数中国学生被试之间存在着彼此信任和值得信任,这使得双方实现了“双赢”。其次,受托人的干部身份,招致了委托人更高的可信任度;但干部在其身份信息不公开时,并不比无信息状态下的受托人更值得信任。再次,双向信息的干部身份可以显著提升干部的互利性,使得他们比无信息状态下的受托人有着更高的值得信任的水平。     

THE INTERPLAY OF INEQUALITY AND REFERENCE DEPENDENCE WITH TRUST AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Using a canonical trust game, we investigate whether the inequality of endowment between trustor and trustee and the acquired versus permanent financial state affect trust and trustworthiness. We found that trust and trustworthiness are reference‐dependent and that individuals with permanent financial state receive more trust and are more trustworthy than others. In our experiment, unequal endowments do not significantly affect trust, but trustworthiness increases significantly when the trustor is poorer.     

Trust and trustworthiness reputations in an investment game

Trust is an essential component of good social outcomes and effective economic performance. Reputation on the trusteeʼs past behavior in the same role has proven to be greatly effective at raising the level of trust. In this study, we show that providing information on the trusteeʼs past behavior as the trustor is equally effective as a reputation system. In fact, people still find it worthwhile to invest in a reputation as a trusting person, even though the immediate payoff for trusting is poor. This confirms the role of indirect reciprocity as a strategic notion based on reputation, whereby pro-social actions by one person towards a second person are sanctioned by a third party.     

Playing the trust game with other people’s money

We experimentally investigate to what extent people trust and honor trust when they are playing with other people’s money (OPM). We adopt the well-known trust game by Berg et al. (in Games Econ. Behav. 10:122–142, 1995), with the difference that the trustor (sender) who sends money to the trustee (receiver) does this on behalf of a third party. We find that senders who make decisions on behalf of others do not behave significantly different from senders in our baseline trust game who manage their own money. But receivers return significantly less money when senders send a third party’s money. As a result, trust is only profitable in the baseline trust game, but not in the OPM treatment. The treatment effect among the receivers is gender specific. Women return significantly less money in OPM than in baseline, while there is no such treatment effect among men. Moreover, women return significantly less than men in the OPM treatment.     

Economics of Guanxi as an Interpersonal Investment Game

The purpose of this paper is to provide a simple model of guanxi given stylized facts. I first outline the intrinsic characteristics of guanxi to draw the stylized facts, and then use these facts to model it as an interpersonal investment game. I find that the degrees of the ability and loyalty of the Recipient must be reasonably high enough for the interpersonal investment to take place. After the investment has occurred, the degree of loyalty must be higher than that of the ability to guarantee stable gaunxi relationships. When the interpersonal investment is made, it is a signal of trust in the ability and loyalty of the Recipient. However, if the ability factor dominates, then the Recipient will not always feel loyal enough to return the favor. This indicates that loyalty counts for more than ability. A related result is that a stable guanxi relationship is unlikely to occur for a highly able person given the equal chance of the two characteristics. This paper also presents some interesting implications for corruption and lock‐in relationships.     

Variable temptations and black mark reputations

Reputations often guide sequential decisions to trust and to reward trust. We consider situations where each player is randomly matched with a partner in every period. One player – the truster – decides whether to trust. If trusted, the other player – the temptee – has a temptation to betray. The strength of temptation, private information to the temptee, varies across encounters. Betrayals are recorded as publicly known black marks. First, we identify equilibria when players only condition on the number of a temptee's black marks. Second, we show that conditioning on the number of interactions as well as on the number of black marks does not prolong trust. Third, we examine stochastic variations where black marks may be forgotten. Perhaps surprisingly, such variations do not improve outcomes. Fourth, when players condition on more general summary statistics of a temptee's past, we study equilibria where trust is suspended temporarily.     

OPTIMAL MONETARY POLICY WITH THE STICKY INFORMATION MODEL OF PRICE ADJUSTMENT: INFLATION OR PRICE‐LEVEL TARGETING?

I investigate the optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian macroeconomic framework with the sticky information model of price adjustment. The model is solved for optimal policy, and welfare implications of three alternative monetary policy regimes under this optimal policy are compared when there is a cost‐push shock to the economy. These monetary policy regimes are the unconstrained policy, price‐level targeting and inflation targeting regimes. The results illustrate that optimal policy depends on the degree of price stickiness and the persistence of the shock. Inflation targeting emerges as the optimal policy if prices are flexible enough or the shock is persistent enough. However, the unconstrained policy or price‐level targeting might be preferable to inflation targeting if prices are not very flexible and the shock is not very persistent. The results also show that as prices become more flexible, the welfare loss usually gets bigger.     

It takes two to cheat: An experiment on derived trust

Social life offers innumerable instances in which trust decisions involve multiple agents. Of particular interest is the case when a breach of trust is not profitable if carried out in isolation, but requires an agreement among agents. In such situations the pattern of behaviors is richer than in dyadic games, because even opportunistic trustees who would breach trust when alone may act trustworthily based on what they believe to be the predominant course of action. Anticipating this, trusters may be more inclined to trust. We dub these motivations derived trustworthiness and derived trust. To capture them, we design a “Collective Trust Game” and study it by means of a laboratory experiment. We report that overall levels of trustworthiness are almost thirty percentage points higher when derived motivations are present, and this generates also higher levels of trust. In our set-up, the effects of derived trustworthiness are comparable in size to positive reciprocity, and more important than concerns for equality.     

Creative capital,information and communication technologies,and economic growth in smart cities

ABSTRACT

We study aspects of economic growth in a stylized smart city with two distinct features. First, the modeled inhabitants of this city are smart because they possess skills. Using the language of Richard Florida, these inhabitants comprise the city’s creative class and hence they possess creative capital. Second, the city is smart because it uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) and we model one specific kind of ICT use. In this setting, we first derive expressions for three growth related metrics. Second, we use these metrics to show that the economy of smart city A converges to a balanced growth path (BGP). Third, we compute the growth rate of output per effective creative capital unit on this BGP. Fourth, we study how heterogeneity in initial conditions affects outcomes on the BGP by introducing a second smart city B into the analysis. At time t?=?0 two key savings rates in city A are twice as large as in city B. We compute the ratio of the BGP value of income per effective creative capital unit in city A to its value in city B. Finally, we compute the ratio of the BGP value of skills per effective creative capital unit in city A to its value in city B.     

Exchange Rates,Expectations, and Monetary Policy: a NOEM Perspective*

We use a dynamic general‐equilibrium optimizing two‐country model to analyze how the formation of exchange rate expectations shapes the effects of a monetary policy shock in an open economy. We also provide empirical evidence on how traders in foreign exchange markets form exchange rate expectations. Our model implies that the short‐run output effect of a permanent monetary policy shock diminishes if “technical traders” form the type of regressive exchange rate expectations we find in our empirical analysis. If the influence of technical traders is strong enough, a permanent expansionary monetary policy shock can result in a temporary decline of the output in the country in which it takes place. The output effect of a temporary monetary policy shock is magnified when technical traders form regressive exchange rate expectations.     

DOES BIG GOVERNMENT HURT GROWTH LESS IN HIGH‐TRUST COUNTRIES?

Social trust is linked to both public sector size and to economic growth, thereby helping to explain how some countries combine high taxes with high levels of economic growth. This paper examines if social trust insulates countries against the negative effects of public sector size on growth, documented in several studies. We note that the effect is theoretically ambiguous. In panel data from 66 countries across 40 years, we find no robust evidence of insulation effects: when excluding countries with uncertain trust scores, our results suggest that big government hurts growth also in high‐trust countries, and that the mechanism is by lowering private investments. (JEL H10, O11, P16, Z10)     

Monotonic Knowledge Models,Cycles, Linear Versions and Auctions with Differential,Finite Information

In games of incomplete information where each player's information is represented by a partition of the state space, this paper presents a characterisation of monotonic models in terms of connected partitions and another in terms of versions . A model is monotonic if and only if there is a linear version, and this is true if and only if there is a real‐valued function on the state space such that every partition of the model is connected with respect to this function. These results help us understand the strength of the connectedness assumption on common‐value, second‐price auctions with differential, finite information. We offer a simple sufficient condition for non‐monotonicity to check if models are monotonic.     

Private Information in the BBV Model of Public Goods

To analyze the private provision of a public good in the presence of private information, we explore the connections between two frameworks: the binary public good model with threshold uncertainty and the standard continuous model à la Bergstrom et al. Linearity of best responses in others' contributions is key to matching the two frameworks. We identify all utility functions that display this linearity, and we provide conditions ensuring that the minimal properties that Bergstrom et al. require for utilities are satisfied. Using techniques developed in the threshold uncertainty framework, we show existence and uniqueness of the Bayes‐Nash equilibrium—thus generalizing existing results—and we analyze its comparative statics properties. In particular, under the reasonable assumption that agents' income is stochastic and private information, we complement the full‐information crowding‐out and redistribution results of Bergstrom et al. If the government taxes agents' income proportionally and redistributes (expected) revenues lump sum, equilibrium public good provision can increase or decrease, even if the set of contributors is unchanged. Similarly, we show that crowding‐out can be one‐for‐one, less than one‐for‐one, or more than one‐for‐one. Finally, we extend our results to a multidimensional framework in which agents' unit costs of contributions are also private information.     

Trust, trustworthiness, and risk in rural Paraguay

This dissertation looks at the relationship between trust, trustworthiness, and risk aversion in a rural Paraguayan setting. The first chapter of this dissertation looks at theft between farmers. Rural areas of developing countries often lack effective legal enforcement. However, villagers who know each other well and interact repeatedly may use implicit contracts to minimize crime. I construct a dynamic limited-commitment model in which a thief cannot credibly commit to forego stealing from his fellow villagers but may be induced to limit his stealing by the promise of future gifts from his potential victim. Using a unique survey from rural Paraguay which combines traditional data on production with information on theft, gifts, and trust, as well as with experiments measuring trust and trustworthiness, I test whether the data is consistent with predictions from the dynamic model. The results provide evidence that, in contrast with predictions from a one-period model with an anonymous thief, farmers do implicitly contract with one another to limit theft. Farmers who have more close family members in their village give fewer gifts, and farmers with plots which are more difficult to steal from give fewer gifts, experience less theft, and trust more. Gift-giving increases when trust is lower and the threat of theft is greater, turning the social capital literature on its head. The second chapter of this dissertation looks at a different linkage between trust, trustworthiness, and risk. Trusting behavior in general and play in the traditional trust experiment specifically depend both on trust beliefs and on levels of risk aversion. I ran two experiments with a diverse set of subjects in fifteen villages of rural Paraguay, the traditional trust experiment and a new experiment measuring only risk aversion. I find that risk attitudes are highly predictive of play in the trust game. In addition, omitting risk aversion as a regressor in trust regressions significantly changes the coefficients of important explanatory variables such as gender and wealth. The chair of this dissertation committee was Ethan Ligon and the other committee members were George Akerlof and Elisabeth Sadoulet.     

Non-commitment in performance evaluation and the problem of information distortions

Auditing is modeled in a sequential game without commitment. The manager must decide whether and where to audit a worker's output, taking into account all interim information he has obtained. The worker will work just hard enough (and show it) to divert the manager from making an audit or cover up, withholding information about his work to make an audit more difficult. This usually raises the costs of setting work incentives, so incentives are softened, sometimes drastically. Moreover, when a worker's on-the-job information is valuable for entrepreneurial decisions, work incentives must be softened to improve the internal flow of information.     

Where are we in the political economy of reform?

We review the experiences of developing countries with market-oriented reforms, using the tools of modern political economy. We impose intellectual discipline by requiring that actors behave rationally using available information and that basic economic relationships such as budget constraints be accounted for. We attempt to integrate two approaches, one based on dynamic games played by interest groups, with one that focus on limited information and the dynamics of learning.

We describe the “starting point” as the set of “old” policies and we attempt to explain the dynamics (political, economic and informational) that lead to reform (section II). We analyze strategies for reformers subject to political constraints (section Ш). We evaluate the aggregate and distributional costs of reforms, emphasizing the importance of looking at the right counterfactuals (section IV).

We conclude by pointing to the challenges ahead: the second-stage institutional reforms necessary to take off from underdevelopment.     

Learning with noiseless information and payoff-relevant signals

Summary. In models of active learning or experimentation, agents modify their actions to affect the distribution of a signal that provides information about future payoffs. A standard result in the experimentation literature is that agents experiment, if at all, to increase information. This finding is a direct consequence of Blackwell's theorem: one experiment is more informative than another if and only if all expected utility maximizers prefer to observe the first. Blackwell's theorem presupposes, however, that the observed signal only conveys information and does not directly affect future payoffs. Often, however, signals are directly payoff relevant, a phenomenon that we call signal dependence. For example, if a firm is uncertain about its demand and uses today's sales as a signal of tomorrow's demand, then that signal may also directly affect tomorrow's profit if the good is durable or if consumers form consumption habits. Datta, Mirman and Schlee [9] and Bertocchi and Spagat [4] show that, if the signal is payoff relevant, experimentation may indeed reduce information. Here we show that, despite the inapplicability of Blackwell's Theorem, agents always experiment to increase information if the information structure is noiseless: given the true value of the unknown parameter, the signal realization is deterministic. We then apply our framework to analyze Lazear's [16] model of retail clearance sales, a model with both signal dependence and noiseless information. Received: February 19, 1999; revised version: August 11, 1999     

Condorcet Jury Theorem or Rational Ignorance

We analyze a symmetric model of an election in which voters are uncertain about which of two alternatives is desirable for them. Each voter must incur some cost to acquire information about the alternatives. We show that by focusing on unbiased voting strategies, general symmetric signal structures can be degenerated to a two‐signal model. In addition, we show that for any sequence of unbiased voting equilibria, if the second‐order derivative of the information cost function at no information is zero, then the probability of electing the desirable alternative converges to one, that is, the Condorcet Jury Theorem is valid. Otherwise, this probability converges to some value less than one; that is, the “rational ignorance” hypothesis is valid.     

Culture, caution, and trust

Trust is an important determinant of economic development. Understanding its origins is therefore critical. We develop a principal-agent model with heterogeneous players to determine the aggregate amount of trustworthiness and trust in a society. People are distributed according to their preference toward caution, which we model as loss aversion. The first two moments of the distribution across principals and agents—along with institutional quality—are critical to the process by which trustworthiness and trust are formed. A direct effect suggests that more caution leads to less societal trust. An indirect effect of greater caution, working through trustworthiness, leads to more trust. Paradoxically, the net effect is almost always positive. The results are similar when we use expected utility theory. Different distributional assumptions can influence the results.     

数据信托参与数据治理:理论逻辑与实现机制

基于数据流通场景的数据治理和数据权利保护,以个人对个人信息/数据的绝对控制权为理论基础;这种个人绝对赋权模式忽视信息/数据的社会属性和公共属性,不能充分发挥信息/数据的价值。传统信托制度参与数据治理与信托当事人理论和信托财产理论等方面存在抵牾。当前实在法体系下,综合运用法律解释等法律方法能够为数据信托参与数据治理提供制度可能。由传统信托理论出发,对未来数据信托制度的建构必须基于数据收集阶段和数据流通阶段的具体区分,数据流通阶段是数据信托发生的主要场景;可以采取修改法律以及出台司法解释等方式更新传统信托理论,使之更加契合数据时代对数据权利保护的根本目的。