Bargaining Outcomes with Double-Offer Arbitration

Increasingly, arbitration is becoming used to resolve bargaining disputes in a variety of settings. Reducing dispute rates is often listed as a main goal in designing arbitration mechanisms. Conventional arbitration and final-offer arbitration are two commonly used procedures, but theoretical examinations of these arbitration procedures show that disputants’ final bargaining positions do not converge and disagreement is likely. This article contains results from a set of experiments designed to compare bargaining outcomes under the two commonly used arbitration procedures with outcomes under an innovative procedure called “double-offer” arbitration (Zeng et al., 1996). This procedure requires that disputants make two final offers at impasse: a primary and a secondary offer. The arbitrator evaluates the pairs of offers using a linear criterion function, and theory suggests the secondary offers converge to the median of the arbitrator’s preferred settlement distribution. Because the procedure’s rules are that convergence of offers generates a settlement at those offers, this theoretical convergence result implies that arbitration is not needed in the end. Experimental results indicate that dispute rates in double-offer arbitration are, on average, about the same as dispute rates in conventional arbitration. However, other results show reason to favor double-offer arbitration. Specifically, in repeated bargaining, there is concern over whether use of an arbitration procedure becomes addictive and makes bargainers more likely to use the procedure in the future-a “narcotic effect.” The data show that double-offer arbitration is non-addictive, whereas both conventional and final-offer arbitration are.     

环境约束下中国造纸产业全要素生产率分析

文章基于中国、美国和日本等11个国家造纸产业的相关投入产出数据,利用数据包络分析法(DEA)对11国的造纸产业的生产效率水平进行了分析。根据环境规制的特征,通过应用Malmquist方法测算了环境规制之下中国以及其他10个国家2000-2008年的生产率及其成分,并与不考虑环境因素的传统全要素生产率进行对比研究。研究结果表明：考虑环境管制后11个国家的造纸工业平均全要素生产效率是下降的;具体每个国家而言,考虑环境管制后美国、奥地利和中国的全要素生产率比不考虑环境规制要高,而其他八个国家的全要素生产率则是下降。根据研究结论,文章认为促进中国造纸产业的发展主要从三方面着手：一是进一步促进中国造纸产业的工业规模化发展;二是加快造纸产业技术创新;三是提高企业的生产管理水平。     

Nonparametric Analysis of Longitudinal Binary Data: An Application to the Intergroup Prisoner's Dilemma Game

The intergroup prisoner's dilemma game was suggested by Bornstein (1992, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 7, 597–606) for modelling intergroup conflicts over continuous public goods. We analyse data of an experiment in which the game was played for 150 rounds, under three matching conditions. The objective is to study differences in the investment patterns of players in the different groups. A repeated measures analysis was conducted by Goren and Bornstein (1999, Games and Human Behaviour: Essays in Honor of Amnon Rapoport, pp. 299–314), involving data aggregation and strong distributional assumptions. Here we introduce a nonparametric approach based on permutation tests. Two new measures, the cumulative investment and the normalised cumulative investment, provide additional insight into the differences between groups. The proposed tests are based on the area under the investment curves. They identify an overall difference between the groups as well as pairwise differences. A simultaneous confidence band for the mean difference curve is used to detect the games which account for any pairwise difference.     

《小岭曹氏宗谱》宣纸研究史料价值及若干问题释疑

《小岭曹氏宗谱》是一部尤对宣纸研究有特殊史料价值的史籍,它给后人留下了有关宣纸经营、产区分布、重要宣纸人物和宣纸发展史上重大事件的记载,同时还引发了我们对历史上小岭曹氏历代遵行“口训”,长期有效地对宣纸技艺进行保密问题的思考。