农业景观信息探研——以四库本王祯《农书》为例

元代王祯《农书》是中国重要农业典籍，其四库本相对于其他版本图像信息更为全面丰富，生动地记录了传统农具及相关生产技术状况，并反映出了当时的农业景观信息。选用《农书·农器图谱》中人、物、环境信息相对全面翔实的图像作为主要研究依据，对其进行分类与总结，描绘并探讨土地利用、农田水利、农作物种植、农村生活等方面的景观信息，再现古朴宁静的田园风貌，并由此揭示古人在农业活动中的技术发明和农业景观形态。这不仅可以促进农业文化遗产价值的挖掘，也对当今的传统村落保护和乡村景观建设带来一定的思考和启发。     

Patent life cycle: New evidence

Patents and their renewals are critical because they protect inventions and reinforce information reported to investors about the utility and the quality of inventions. Thus, they signal the appropriate use of financial resources being invested, notably in research and development departments, and future revenues for their owner. Based on a sample of about 22,700 European patents, our research contributes to existing literature on patent renewal by two relevant outcomes. The first contribution proposes a possible definition of a European patent life cycle: abandonment of procedure, natural abandonment, and late withdrawal. The second contribution shows two main factors that influence the renewal of a European patent by examining delivery time and the cumulative number of citations.Our results show that the procedure is the key issue of structuring the patent's life. In addition, patents' viability is likely to happen given that a part in a series of patents is increasing, which means that valuable patents are often cited by later ones. The relationship stems from the rational behavior of market operators who will try to minimize essential ownership.     

ENHANCING EFFORT SUPPLY WITH PRIZE‐AUGMENTING ENTRY FEES: THEORY AND EXPERIMENTS

Entry fees are widely observed in contests. We study the effect of a prize‐augmenting entry fee on expected total effort in an all‐pay auction setting where the contestants' abilities are private information. An entry fee reduces equilibrium entry but can enhance the entrants' effort supply. Our theoretical model demonstrates that the optimal entry fee is strictly positive and finite. In a laboratory experiment, we empirically test the effect of entry fees on effort supply. Our results provide strong support for the notion that a principal can elicit higher effort using an appropriately set entry fee to augment the prize purse.     

China's agricultural patents: How has their value changed amid recent patent boom?

Patent applications have surged in China over the past two decades. Has the application boom been accompanied by a simultaneous drop in the value (quality) of the patents? Our research examines this question by analyzing invention patents in agriculture. Using data from China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) for patents between 1985 and 2005 that had been granted before January 2011, we conduct duration analysis of patent life span and the length of patent renewal with the Weibull and Cox Proportional Hazard modeling respectively. The results show that the value of Chinese agricultural patents, measured by their life span and renewal length, has been improving, although foreign grants are still maintained significantly longer than domestic ones. For domestic grants, private entities, especially companies, are more likely to have a longer patent protection period than public entities. Furthermore, patent value varies significantly across different technological fields, with grants to inventions in complex and emerging technologies such as agricultural biotechnology and agricultural chemicals demonstrating higher value than others. The findings have implications for understanding the impacts of China's innovation policy on global patenting activities as well as China's innovation trajectory in agriculture and other sectors.     

The politics of technology management: influence and tactics in project selection

It is observed that technical information presented in aformalized way is used as ‘rational’ evidence to suport one particular point of view during the process of project selection. This ‘political’ action increases the chances of a favoures course of action being carried through provided that its output lends support to the actor's prior viewpoint. It is argued that the framework provided that its output lends support to the actor's prior viewpoint. It is argued that the framework provided by the rational actor model gives a biased and unrealistic view of the selection process because this political dimension is ignored. In the evidence presented here, and attempt is made to identify the discriminating factors associated with the supportive use of technical information at the level of the individual, the organization and the project. The data indicate that technical information is most likely to be used in a political manner by mature managers working in relatively small, low-tech companies. It is concluded that the supportive role played by technical information is political and symbolic in nature.     

Should I guess?

Formula scoring, or the use of a correction (or penalty) for guessing, has been commonly practiced on standardized tests for almost 100 years. The correction deducts a portion of the question’s point value for an incorrect response, with no points awarded or deducted for an omitted response. The optimal response strategy is dependent on the student’s risk attitude and is thus difficult to identify and convey, as discussed. This study uses survey data to examine the advice that has been provided (often at some cost) to students facing a test with a correction. The impact of some of this advice as well as explanations for its persistence is discussed. In so doing, the study does provide support for the apparent ongoing abandonment of this scoring practice.     

Optimal Licensing Policy under Vertical Product Differentiation

This paper explores a vertical product differentiation model with a licensing arrangement between a multinational firm with superior technology and a domestic firm with obsolete technology. We find that a subsidy provided by the domestic country's government to the domestic firm to assist with the licensing arrangement is welfare enhancing for the domestic country. Furthermore, both the multinational firm and the domestic country are better off under royalty than under fixed fee licensing. These findings stand in contrast to earlier results in the literature.     

Imperfect evaluation in project screening

This paper studies a model in which an agent considers proposing a project of unknown quality to an evaluator, who has to decide on whether or not to accept it. Earlier papers considered the case when the evaluation is perfect and showed than higher submission fees increase the expected quality of projects submitted for review by discouraging long-shot submissions. We examine the case of two-sided incomplete information where not only the agent’s, but also the evaluator’s assessment of the project is imperfect. We show that under this specification, an increase in the submission fee may lead to a decrease in the quality of projects that are implemented because of its adverse effects on the evaluator’s acceptance policy.     

SEQUENTIAL EXPERT ADVICE: SUPERIORITY OF CLOSED‐DOOR MEETINGS

Two career‐concerned experts sequentially give advice to a Bayesian decision maker (D). We find that secrecy dominates transparency, yielding superior decisions for D. Secrecy empowers the expert moving late to be pivotal more often. Further, (i) only secrecy enables the second expert to partially communicate her information and its high precision to D and swing the decision away from first expert's recommendation; (ii) if experts have high average precision, then the second expert is effective only under secrecy. These results are obtained when experts only recommend decisions. If they also report the quality of advice, fully revealing equilibrium may exist.     

基于因子分析法的地区专利发展水平比较研究

专利是一个国家或地区科技资产的核心,专利综合实力是衡量一个国家或地区综合实力以及区域创新能力的重要标志。通过对2008年我国发明、实用新型和外观设计三种专利申请总量排名前20位地区的分析,运用因子分析法评价了其专利发展状况,然后通过分析评价结果指出了各地区的优势与劣势。这对于提升各地区的专利综合实力具有重要的参考价值和借鉴意义,也为各相关部门的政策制定提供了理论决策依据。     

基于EDAS模型的出口商品质量水平评价研究—以2012-2018年度广东省制造行业为例

出口制造行业管理者如何通过了解自身情况来整合与管理资源以创造更多价值,是实现出口贸易转型与产业升级的关键.本文以广东省2012—2018年12个出口行业为研究对象对出口商品质量水平进行实证评价研究,构建了包括产品合格、市场感知及社会责任3项一级指标及其对应10项二级指标的出口产品质量水平评价体系,通过EDAS模型测评并分析了12个出口行业质量发展情况和存在问题.结果显示:出口商品整体质量水平处于中等水平,各出口行业质量水平参差不齐,照明行业质量水平相对较高,鞋类行业质量水平较差.此外,通过进一步研究,提供了各行业出口商品质量评价指标的优劣情况,为优化各行业出口商品质量提供了参考依据.     

Management Speaks,Investors Listen: Are Investors Too Focused on Managerial Disclosures?

Market regulators are concerned about the completeness of management-provided explanations in financial reports and other venues. In particular, the Securities and Exchange Commission has articulated the growing problem of firm managers selectively emphasizing information that is favorable to their firm's financial status. In this two-experiment study, we examine whether investors are adversely influenced when firm managers provide only a partial explanation for a firm's financial outcomes, even though the investors have information about all of the causes for a firm's financial outcomes. Our results reveal that investors are misled by partial management explanations. We demonstrate that this effect occurs in situation both when qualitative information is known about the causes and when quantitative information is known about the causes. We document that one way in which this overreliance on management-provided partial information can be mitigated is when investors are provided with a quantitative analysis of the management explanation; with this quantitative analysis we observe that investors are able to distinguish between partial and complete explanations. Our study has implications for regulators and researchers.     

A Model of Reputation in Cheap Talk*

We study a dynamic game of advice where the sender's preferences are unknown to the receiver. The novel feature of the model is that there is more than one type of biased sender. We show that the more equal the proportions of different biases in the sender population, the greater the credibility of the information transmitted. Somewhat surprisingly, however, we also find that the receiver does not benefit from this equality. We discuss our results in the context of political lobbying and show that institutions that increase transparency lower lobbyists' incentives for truthtelling, but unambiguously promote the policymaker's welfare.     

上市公司现金股利决策同群效应研究——基于董事连锁视角

文章以2014—2018年A股上市公司为样本,实证检验了公司现金股利决策的同群效应存在性,并将公司在同行业中兼任的董事作为现金股利决策信息的传递渠道,探究同业董事连锁对此效应的影响及其情景异质性和价值效应。研究发现:上市公司现金股利决策存在明显的同群效应;公司董事同业兼任会传递相关决策信息,从而显著强化现金股利决策的行业同群效应;在董事连锁下,高竞争性行业公司、融资约束较大及国有性质的公司未表现出股利同群效应行为,而低竞争性行业公司、融资约束较小及非国有性质的公司表现出更为显著的股利同群效应行为,而此效应给公司带来的价值效应是呈倒U型的。公司的现金股利决策应当结合自身实际科学合理制定,以实现利益相关者价值最大化。     

Price Discrimination in Public Healthcare

Could a public healthcare system use price discrimination—paying medical service providers different fees, depending on the service provider's quality—lead to improvements in social welfare? We show that differentiating medical fees by quality increases social welfare relative to uniform pricing (i.e. quality‐invariant fee schedules) whenever hospitals and doctors have private information about their own ability. We also show that by moving from uniform to differentiated medical fees, the public healthcare system can effectively incentivise good doctors and hospitals (i.e. low‐cost‐types) to provide even higher levels of quality than they would under complete information. In the socially optimal quality‐differentiated medical fee system, low‐cost‐type medical‐service providers enjoy a rent due to their informational advantage. Informational rent is socially beneficial because it gives service providers a strong incentive to invest in the extra training required to deliver high‐quality services at low cost, providing yet another efficiency gain from quality‐differentiated medical fees.     

ENTRY AND QUALITY SIGNALLING WHEN ONLY SOME CONSUMERS ARE INFORMED OF THE ENTRANT'S QUALITY

This paper focuses on competition between an incumbent and an entrant when only the entrant's quality is unknown to (some) consumers. The incumbent may or may not know the entrant's quality. The model reveals a separating equilibrium where the entrant's high price signals its high quality when the proportion of informed consumers is at some intermediate value. The case in which the incumbent knows the entrant's quality generates two additional equilibria. When the proportion of informed consumers is large enough, firms choose their prices as in the complete information case. The entrant's high price in combination with the incumbent's low price signals the entrant's high quality. When the proportion of informed consumers is at some intermediate value, the incumbent's high price signals the entrant's low quality, while its low price signals the entrant's high quality. Interestingly, we find that entry may be facilitated with informational product differentiation.     

Gottfried Haberler's 1930 Reformulation of Comparative Advantage in Retrospect

In 1930 Gottfried Haberler freed the doctrine of comparative advantage from its association with David Ricardo's labor theory of value and provided us with its modern opportunity‐cost formulation. Haberler's reformulation of comparative advantage revolutionized the theory of international trade and laid the conceptual foundation of modern trade theory. On the occasion of its 75th anniversary, a symposium has been organized to reflect on and celebrate one of the most durable and fruitful ideas in the history of economic thought. In this introductory paper I revisit Haberler's original formulation, which was published in German in the Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv.     

SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION IN AGENCY CONTRACTS*

We study how a principal uses her subjective evaluation of the agent's performance in an incentive contract. It is shown that the subjective evaluation can be used either 1) when there is no other information about the agent's performance and the principal is able to discard money, or 2) when the principal chooses between wage payment based on subjective evaluation by foregoing objective evaluation, and the one based only on the objective evaluation and when the subjective evaluation is sufficiently accurate. The principal pays a high fixed wage when her rating at the subjective evaluation is above a certain level. On the other hand, when it is below that level, she either pays a low fixed wage or obtains objective evaluation and pays based on its outcome.     

Exploring the role of pesticide traders in protecting farmers' benefit

Owing to the inadequacy of the public extension services, farmers in developing countries often rely on the suggestions of agricultural input traders. As profit-making agents, these traders, in their turn, may have an incentive to exploit farmers by suggesting relatively expensive inputs. In this study, the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) estimation method is applied to demonstrate that input traders in many ways play the substitute role of the public extension agents in a developing country. In the process, this study relied on primary information collected from 379 farmers in Bangladesh in two seasons (N = 758). Then the ESR estimation procedure is applied to predict farmer's expenditure on pesticides, conditional on whether or not they rely on traders' advice. Findings of this study suggest that pesticide expenditures are not statistically different between the farmers that rely on traders' suggestions and those that do not. The study thus concludes that by providing unbiased, useful information to the client farmers, profit-maximizing agricultural input traders render the services of public extension workers, which corrects possible market failures.     

Regulating a Monopolist with Unknown Demand: Costly Public Funds and the Value of Private Information

In this paper, we analyze the optimal regulation policy when the regulated firm has better information concerning the market demand than the regulator. We show that introducing a cost on public funds into the Planner's objective function does not lead to qualitative results similar to those obtained by introducing distributional considerations. In particular we show that under constant marginal cost the full information policy is not implementable and that the optimal regulatory policy results in informational rents. The social value of private information and the firm's informational rents are both increasing functions of the cost of the public funds.