A Behavioral Life-Cycle Approach to Understanding the Wealth Effect

The somewhat surprising strength in consumer spending in recent years has focused renewed attention on the much-debated wealth effect, the notion that when individuals feel wealthier, they consume more. This study utilizes survey data to examine the wealth effect within the context of the behavioral life-cycle model of savings. The results indicate that the likelihood of households spending more when their assets increase in value decreases with the portion of assets held in home equity. This unexpected finding is due to homeowners responding to the perceived wealth gain from increased home values by cashing out their equity. The likelihood increases with the portion of assets held in stock outside of retirement accounts, but is not significantly related to the portion of assets held in stock overall. Moreover, households that have a full-time income earner, are homeowners, have more education, have a younger household head, or expect economic growth, are more likely to report a wealth effect. Households that utilize savings “rules of thumb” are less likely to report a wealth effect. These results can be used to improve the wealth effect specification in consumer demand models and assist firms to target consumer markets.     

家庭财富与城镇居民创业行为研究

企业家创业活动在经济和社会发展中发挥着重要作用,本文从家庭财富的视角研究我国城镇居民的创业问题。利用CHIPS2008年数据研究发现:家庭财富越多,城镇居民选择创业的概率越高,即创业过程中存在流动性约束。通过选取更为外生的财富衡量指标以及引入工具变量两种方法缓解潜在的内生性问题后,研究结论依旧稳健。进一步区分财富对不同类型创业活动的异质性影响发现,财富显著提高了城镇居民选择“自雇型”创业的概率,但对选择“雇主型”创业影响较小或不存在显著的影响。考虑到截面数据对财富与创业行为关系的识别可能存在一定的局限性,本文进一步引入CFPS面板数据,利用面板固定效应模型对两者之间的关系进行稳健性检验。本文的研究结论可为政府优化金融环境,缓解信贷约束,促进居民创业行为提供依据。     

住房负担能力的度量——从家庭到社会的视角

借鉴洛伦兹曲线和基尼系数思想,运用住房可负担倍数、住房可负担百分比和住房可负担度等微观指标以及住房洛伦兹曲线、住房基尼系数等宏观工具,构建从家庭到社会的住房负担能力度量体系。对上海、深圳、武汉和苏州四城市二手住房负担能力的实证研究表明,中等收入及以下家庭住房负担能力普遍偏低,其中苏州、深圳两城市整体住房负担能力高于上海和武汉,而且公积金政策能够有效地提高家庭住房负担能力,特别是中等和中等偏上家庭。该体系能有效地为家庭购房、开发企业经营、金融企业住房信贷及政府公共住房等决策提供依据。     

Whistle-Blowing Among Young Employees: A Life-Course Perspective

The 2003 National Business Ethics Survey, conducted by the Ethics Resource Center, found that respondents who were both young and had short organizational tenure were substantially less likely than other respondents to report misconduct that they observed in the workplace to an authority. We propose that the life-course model of deviance can help account for this attenuation of acquiescence in misbehavior. As employees learn to perceive informal prosocial control during their socialization into the workforce, we hypothesize that they will become more willing to blow the whistle on misconduct. Analysis of the 2003 NBES (n = 1,417, with a subset of 314 who observed misconduct) reveals that young and short-tenured employees do perceive less informal prosocial control, and that informal prosocial control does boost whistle-blowing; however, tests for mediation of the relationship between youth and short-tenure and whistle-blowing by informal social control were largely negative, suggesting that other explanations are still needed.     

Measuring Global Economic Interdependence: A Hierarchical Network Approach

This paper investigates the business cycle co‐movement across countries and regions since 1950 as a measure for quantifying the economic interdependence in the ongoing globalisation process. Our methodological approach is based on analysis of a correlation matrix and the networks it contains. Such an approach summarises the interaction and interdependence of all elements, and it represents a more accurate measure of the global interdependence involved in an economic system. Our results show (1) the dynamics of interdependence has been driven more by synchronisation in regional growth patterns than by the synchronisation of the world economy, and (2) world crisis periods dramatically increase the global co‐movement in the world economy.     

Resource Use In Household Activity Patterns—A Systems Approach*

Primary objective of this study was to identify from observed activities of the homemaker and family members patterns of resource conservation and augmentation that might explain improvement in the family's economic situation. Observations were performed in 30 rural nonfarm households, all reporting incomes below the poverty level five years previous to the study. An ecological systems model of the household was developed from categories of observed activities. Data indicated that patterns in which storage of materials was a frequently performed activity were most promising for further investigation. A high degree of interdependency was exhibited among household activities     

房产和金融资产对家庭消费的影响:中国的微观证据

利用最新的中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,研究资产对家庭消费的影响。在区分耐用品消费和非耐用品消费的基础上,分析房产和金融资产及扣除债务后的净资产在消费中的作用。实证结果显示:在房产拥有者中,房产的消费弹性在0.07～0.09之间,即房产增加100元,消费将增加7～9元;而金融资产的消费弹性比房产的消费弹性要小得多,当金融资产增加100元时,消费只增加2元左右;老年家庭房产的消费弹性低于年轻家庭;城市家庭的房产消费弹性高于农村家庭;借贷能力对资产的消费弹性没有影响。     

积累财富五大妙招

一、量入为出永远是积累财富的第一高招.尤其是对刚起步而收入有限的上班族,步入社会之后就会发现所有以前没想到的置装费、应酬交际费蜂拥而来.不过,自己若能制定各项花费的比例,可以省掉不少记帐时间.     

An Analysis of Sorting and Recycling of Household Waste: A neo‐Ricardian Approach

One of the most interesting but troublesome features of daily recycling is the mixture of different types of household waste and degradation of a recycled material caused by the mixture of different types of waste. This is often seen in recycling of materials such as used papers, plastics and so on. This paper analyses this aspect, and demonstrates how the formation of prices and activity levels is made in a long‐run growing economy, by means of a neo‐Ricardian type of production model. It is proved that a long‐run equilibrium exists under reasonable assumptions. It is also shown how the sorting rate of different types of waste affects the grade of recyclable resources as well as prices.     

十位民企第二代的自我实现——以创业精神继承财富

当父亲征服一座高山,再次登顶的挑战对于子辈变得索然无味。年轻人们开始琢磨,要如何去创造和迎接更为激动人心的时刻     

信息的哲学思考

信息是事物确定性的表征。信息是事物的存在形式之一,是一切事物的基本属性。没有没有信息的事物,也没有没有事物的信息。信息具有共享性、准确性、可传输性和时间性等重要特征。     

Socioemotional Wealth and Innovativeness in Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Family Enterprises: A Configuration Approach

What makes small‐ and medium‐sized family firms (family SMEs) innovative? Some family firm dynamics promote, yet others hinder innovation. It remains unclear whether combinations of family firm dynamics increase innovativeness. Our configurational perspective of socioemotional wealth (SEW) unravels determinants of family SMEs' innovativeness. We conduct a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis with 452 Swiss family SMEs. We categorize SEW dimensions into configurations of necessary and sufficient conditions. We contribute to theory on family SMEs' innovativeness because we reveal that the interplay of SEW dimensions leads to innovativeness. This offers practitioners a better framework to choose between SEW configurations.     

Choice Research: A Wealth of Perspectives

This article is a navigation guide to the twenty papers that emerged from the workshops conducted at the Sixth Invitational Choice Symposium (Estes Park, Colorado, June 2004). The papers are categorized into three broad sets that focus respectively on choice modeling issues, on providing interdisciplinary perspectives on choice, and on relating choice research to real world concerns. Within each category, we offer provide brief integrative overviews linking subsets of papers.     

Measuring Market Orientation: Exploring a Market Oriented Approach

This paper demonstrates that applications of existing approaches to measuring market orientation are myopic, non-comparative and over-reliant on the views of single respondents. Consequently, a multi-perspective, multi-informant approach for measuring market orientation is generated which focuses on gauging customers', competitors' and intra-organizational members' perceptions of the market orientation of an organization. To evaluate the psychometric properties of this approach an application of this design in a survey of manufacturing industry is subjected to tests for inter-rater reliability, scale reliability, content validity, criterion-related validity and construct validity. The conclusion of this evaluation is that the developed measure is both a reliable and valid means of gauging market orientation. The paper concludes with a series of implications for both theorists and practitioners.     

A Constructivist Approach to Business Ethics

A recurrent challenge in applied ethics concerns the development of principles that are both suitably general to cover various cases and sufficiently exact to guide behavior in particular instances. In business ethics, two central approaches—stockholder and stakeholder—often fail by one or the other requirement. The author argues that the failure is precipitated by their reliance upon “universal” theory, which views the justification of principles as both independent of their context of application and universally appropriate to all contexts. The author develops a contextual interpretation of “constructivism” as an alternative approach, and argues that this alternative meets the above challenge.     

A Marxist Approach to Business Ethics

This paper contains a philosophical explication of some of the essentials of a Marxist approach to business ethics. A Marxist approach is construed as a moral critique of capitalism. This paper hopes to lay the groundwork for a more detailed analysis of Karl Marx's critique of capitalist economies.     

A Nonstandard Approach to Option Pricing

Nonstandard probability theory and stochastic analysis, as developed by Loeb, Anderson, and Keisler, has the attractive feature that it allows one to exploit combinatorial aspects of a well-understood discrete theory in a continuous setting. We illustrate this with an example taken from financial economics: a nonstandard construction of the well-known Black-Scholes option pricing model allows us to view the resulting object at the same time as both (the hyperfinite version of) the binomial Cox-Ross-Rubinstein model (that is, a hyperfinite geometric random walk) and the continuous model introduced by Black and Scholes (a geometric Brownian motion). Nonstandard methods provide a means of moving freely back and forth between the discrete and continuous points of view. This enables us to give an elementary derivation of the Black-Scholes option pricing formula from the corresponding formula for the binomial model. We also devise an intuitive but rigorous method for constructing self-financing hedge portfolios for various contingent claims, again using the explicit constructions available in the hyperfinite binomial model, to give the portfolio appropriate to the Black-Scholes model. Thus, nonstandard analysis provides a rigorous basis for the economists' intuitive notion that the Black-Scholes model contains a built-in version of the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein model.     

A Convention-based Approach to Agent Communication Languages

This article aims to provide foundations for a new approach to Agent Communication Languages (ACLs). First, we present the theory of signalling acts. In contrast to current approaches to communication, this account is neither intention-based nor commitment-based, but convention-based. Next, we explore ways of embedding that theory within an account of conversation. We move here from an account of the basic types of communicative act (the statics of communication) to an account of their role in sequences of exchanges in communicative interaction (the dynamics of communication). Finally, we apply the framework to the analysis of conversational protocols such as the English auction protocol. We propose to give a compact expression of conversation protocols by means of a formula of the object-language. We also use this kind of representation to provide the basis for a procedure for keeping a record of the conventional effects achieved in a conversation. A corresponding axiomatic presentation is given, and shown to be sound and complete with respect to our proposed semantics. This paper is a revised and considerably extended version of Jones and Parent (2004). Some of the material included herein appeared in the document ‚A Logical Framework’, written by Andrew J. I. Jones, an unpublished chapter that formed part of the deliverables from the project ALFEBIITE (to which reference is made in the concluding acknowledgements).