Moral Opinions are Conditional on the Behavior of Others

In social dilemmas individual behavior creates external effects on others. In such situations, a person's opinions concerning right and wrong might influence his behavior. Understanding moral opinions therefore is important. This paper reports on an experiment which shows that moral opinions are conditional on the behavior of others. This is demonstrated by the finding that a large majority of subjects in a public good game experiment report personal normative beliefs that increase with the actual contributions made by group members. This finding is important for the design of policies attempting to sustain public good provisions.     

Mindreading and endogenous beliefs in games

We argue that a Bayesian explanation of strategic choices in games requires introducing a psychological theory of belief formation. We highlight that beliefs in epistemic game theory are derived from the actual choice of the players, and cannot therefore explain why Bayesian rational players should play the strategy they actually chose. We introduce the players’ capacity of mindreading in a game theoretical framework with the simulation theory, and characterise the beliefs that Bayes rational players could endogenously form in games. We show in particular that those beliefs need not be ratifiable, and therefore that rational players can form action-dependent beliefs.     

Indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game

We study indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game. At any time only half of the subjects can build a reputation. This allows us to study both pure indirect reciprocity that is not contaminated by strategic reputation building and the impact of incentives for strategic reputation building on the helping rate. We find that pure indirect reciprocity exists, but also that the helping decisions are substantially affected by strategic considerations. Finally, we find that strategic do better than non-strategic players and non-reciprocal do better than reciprocal players, casting doubt on previously proposed evolutionary explanations for indirect reciprocity.     

Are Public and Private Social Expenditures Complementary?

Most analyses of social protection are focussed on public arrangements. However, social effort is not restricted to the public domain; all kinds of private arrangements can be substitutes to public programs. OECD data indicate that accounting for private social benefits has an equalising effect on levels of social effort across a number of countries. This suggests complementarity between public and private social expenditures. But their distributional effects differ. Using cross-country data, we find a negative relationship between net public social expenditures and income inequality, but a positive relationship between net private social expenditures and income inequality. We conclude that changes in the public/private mix in the provision of social protection may affect the redistributive impact of the welfare state.Part of Leiden Social Security Incidence Project. Revised version of a paper presented at the 57th International Atlantic Economic Conference, Lisbon, Portugal (March 10–14, 2004), and at the 60th Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, Milan, Italy (August 23–26, 2004). The usual disclaimer applies.     

身份认同与薪酬激励：一个文献评述

本文回顾了近期在西方取得快速研究进展的身份认同理论发展历程,并详细介绍了其在治理结构研究中的运用。我们发现身份认同与薪酬激励的结合为解决中国公共部门与企业的委托代理问题均提供了很好的研究思路。同时,身份认同理论与薪酬激励理论及发展经济学的结合将为解决中国转型经济特有的企业控股股东与经理人的委托代理问题发挥重要的作用。     

Stated beliefs versus inferred beliefs: A methodological inquiry and experimental test

Belief elicitation in game experiments may be problematic if it changes game play. We experimentally verify that belief elicitation can alter paths of play in a two-player repeated asymmetric matching pennies game. Importantly, this effect occurs only during early periods and only for players with strongly asymmetric payoffs, consistent with a cognitive/affective effect on priors that may serve as a substitute for experience. These effects occur with a common scoring rule elicitation procedure, but not with simpler (unmotivated) statements of expected choices of opponents. Scoring rule belief elicitation improves the goodness of fit of structural models of belief learning, and prior beliefs implied by such models are both stronger and more realistic when beliefs are elicited than when they are not. We also find that “inferred beliefs” (beliefs estimated from past observed actions of opponents) can predict observed actions better than the “stated beliefs” from scoring rule belief elicitation.     

Welfare Effects of Different Public Expenditures and Taxes in the Netherlands

This paper explores the welfare effects of public consumption, income transfers and public investment financed through different types of taxes. One surprising result is that, contrary to public consumption goods, public capital goods do not necessarily become less attractive if distortionary taxes, rather than lump-sum taxes, are necessary to finance them. The numerical simulations reveal that the net welfare effects of public investments in the Netherlands are typically positive if financed through lump-sum taxes or distortionary taxes on labor. However, if a source-based capital tax is adopted to finance public investments, the overall welfare effect may be negative.     

State Variations in Hospital Expenditures: An Ecological Approach

Hospital expenditures vary across states both in terms of the levels and growth rates. Economic status, insurance coverage (or lack thereof), health risk factors, and demographic factors are used to explain these differences. Interestingly, the prevalence of poverty rates across states does not seem to be a good predictor of differences in hospital expenditures but the percent without health insurance does relate to higher hospital expenditures, when the factors listed above are all considered. Policy discussions about universal health insurance may be missing a point if better health care coverage resulted in lower hospital costs.

Import Contents of Final Expenditures in the United States

This paper applies the Kennedy and Thirlwall method of input-output formulation to study the differential import effect of final expenditures in the U.S. Import contents of consumption, investment, and government expenditures as calculated for 1958, 1963, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1981, and 1984. It also separates import effects of trade expansion, changes in the competitive position, shifts in the level of final demands and changes in the structure of final demands. It is found that the import fractions of the four final expenditures differ substantially, resulting in different income multipliers. [410]     

School Expenditures and Educational Discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment

This paper examines the decline in use of the Knight-Keynes uncertainty concept in mainstream economics. Using electronic archives, it shows that the frequency of its appearance in leading journals of economics has fallen rapidly from the 1950s. As well as to the declining popularity of Keynesian ideas since about 1970, the decrease in this use of the uncertainty concept is additionally related to the increasing mathematical formalization of economics and to the prevalence of a positivist emphasis on prediction. Some possible causes of this formalization are examined. Finally the essay discusses the prospects for a broadening of economics within universities, beyond a relatively narrow preoccupation with predictive formalism and including a reinvigorated Keynesianism.     

韩国的技术转移与产业化

近年来,为了促进科技成果的技术转移与产业化,韩国政府实施了一系列的计划措施,并制定了相关的制度。本文从韩国政府在技术转移方面的宏观组织、国家创新体系中的技术转移机构、以大德研究开发特区为代表的产业技术园区的技术转移及韩国科学技术研究院（KIST）的技术转移现状等4个方面对韩国的技术转移与产业化的相关情况进行论述,以供从事技术转移相关工作人员参考。     

Beliefs and Pareto Efficient Sets: A Remark

We show that, in a two-period economy with uncertainty in the second period, if an allocation is Pareto optimal for a given set of beliefs and remains optimal when these beliefs are changed, then the set of optimal allocations of the two economies must actually coincide. We identify equivalence classes of beliefs, giving rise to the same set of Pareto optimal allocations. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D51, D61.     

新型工业化与城乡二元工业化的协调发展

由于我国严重的“二元经济结构”和“双重演进”的制度变迁特征,形成了农村工业化和城市工业化同时并存的城乡二元工业化格局。城乡二元工业化格局在促进经济发展的同时,也形成了对经济发展的延迟效应。在新型工业化的实现过程中,既要实现以信息化带动工业化,又要推进城乡工业的协调发展,促进农业工业化的发展,加速完成经典工业化的任务。     

Allocating Government Education Expenditures Across K-12 and College Education

As of the late 1990s, public spending on education in the US comprised approximately 7.1% of GDP; about 60% of that support was directed at K-12 education and the remainder at college education. We investigate the welfare and output implications of this spending in a theoretical model in which agents of differential innate ability choose whether to pursue higher education. Higher ability agents support greater expenditures at both the K-12 and college levels. When public education expenditures are low, all agents prefer that spending be directed solely to K-12 education; when expenditures are high, all prefer that some spending be allocated to college education.     

我国社会保障支出的地区差异分析

文章首先运用GE指数分解法,分析我国社会保障支出区域差异及贡献率;然后运用GINI系数分解法,分析社会保障各项支出对总体差异的贡献率。结果表明:三大区域总体、区域内及区域间的差异基本呈下降趋势,期间略有起伏,但区域内差异远远大于区域间差异;东部、中部和西部地区差异变动趋势不一致,且对总体差异的贡献率差别较大;社会保障各项支出的贡献率差异较大,其中社会保障补助支出成为总体差异的主体因素。文章最后对实际测算结果作进一步分析,并提出相应的政策建议。     

Government Expenditures and Revenues: Evidence of Fractional Cointegration in an Asymmetric Modeling

In this paper, we examine the relationship between the US government expenditures and revenues using a fractional cointegration framework. In doing so, we permit a much richer degree of flexibility in the dynamic adjustment process toward equilibrium than in the classical case of cointegration. Moreover, we relax the assumption of a symmetric adjustment process throughout the use of threshold autoregressive (TAR) and momentum threshold autoregressive (M-TAR) models in the error correction representation of the process. The results show that both individual series are non-stationary I(1) and we do not find evidence of cointegration of any degree. However, if we take into account a structural break at 1973(2), fractional cointegration is found if the underlying process is autocorrelated, especially in the asymmetric modeling.

工业化中的政府与市场

政府与市场间的关系不仅是改革中的关键问题,而且对我国工业化道路和模式的选择也至关重要。我国工业化中一直存在“行政推动”。在市场经济条件下,“行政推动”应该有新的内容和表现形式。“行政推动”不能再扭曲市场机制的作用。政府作用必须建立在“以人为本”的基础上,“以人为本”的工业化中,政府不再以GDP为目标,更多地发挥人力资源的作用,进一步解放蕴藏在巨大人口中的生产力,应该是我国工业化中政府工作的重点。政府通过推动并规范本地民众创业,通过推动本地资源优化配置合理协调城乡关系,通过推动公共产品体系的建设,工业化将在新的基础上推进我国经济社会长期、健康、协调地发展。     

中国医疗卫生费用增长的实证分析

采用一阶广义差分法和岭回归法,使用SAS9.0统计软件对相关数据分别建立医疗卫生费用的供给和需求模型进行实证分析表明:医疗卫生费用的增长速度快于国内生产总值的增长,但弹性相对较小;医疗卫生需求与城镇居民人均可支配收入、城镇医疗保健价格指数、人口调整数和卫生事业费同方向变化,而与医疗机构的数目反方向变化;医疗卫生服务供不应求,进一步加重了居民的医疗负担。对此应进一步明确政府在医疗卫生服务市场职责范围,合理调整医疗服务价格体系。     

健康人力资本与经济增长的均衡分析

按照新经济增长理论观点,当生产函数中加入人力资本和技术水平后会导致各国家和各地区的经济增长呈现差异,并且随着时间的推移将会不断扩大[1]。基于健康人力资本层面,着力研究健康是如何影响经济增长以及所产生的地区经济差异。在总结前人已有的模型基础上,通过在健康生产函数中加入私人健康支出这一变量来构建一个RCK增长模型,结果表明,物质生产函数和健康生产函数的不同类型直接决定着模型的动态结果,在某些情况下经济存在多重均衡,在某些情况下存在着唯一的均衡,在另一些情况下存在极限环。这有助于从理论上来解释现实经济当中所存在的地区经济差异现象。在实证部分对健康投资进行了细分,结果表明我国正处在由传统的“物质资本驱动型经济”向“人力资本驱动型经济”转型时期,在转型过程中应进一步释放私人健康投资的活力。     

Control Without Deception: Individual Behaviour in Free-Riding Experiments Revisited

Lying to participants offers an experimenter the enticing prospect of making others' behaviour a controlled variable, but is eschewed by experimental economists because it may pollute the pool of subjects. This paper proposes and implements a new experimental design, the Conditional Information Lottery, which offers all the benefits of deception without actually deceiving anyone. The design should be suitable for most economics experiments, and works by a modification of an already standard device, the Random Lottery incentive system. The deceptive scenarios of designs which use deceit are replaced with fictitious scenarios, each of which, from a subject's viewpoint, has a chance of being true. The design is implemented in a sequential play public good experiment prompted by Weimann's (1994) result, from a deceptive design, that subjects are more sensitive to freeriding than cooperation on the part of others. The experiment provides similar results to Weimann's, in that subjects are at least as cooperative when uninformed about others' behaviour as they are if reacting to high contributions. No deception is used and the data cohere well both internally and with other public goods experiments. In addition, simultaneous play is found to be more efficient than sequential play, and subjects contribute less at the end of a sequence than at the start. The results suggest pronounced elements of overconfidence, egoism and (biased) reciprocity in behaviour, which may explain decay in contributions in repeated play designs. The experiment shows there is a workable alternative to deception.