Environmental Risk and Averting Behavior: Predictive Validity of Jointly Estimated Revealed and Stated Behavior Data

We conduct predictive validity tests using revealed and stated behavior data from a panel survey of North Carolina coastal households. The application is to hurricane evacuation behavior. Data was initially collected after Hurricane Bonnie led to hurricane evacuations in North Carolina in 1998. Respondents were asked for their behavioral intentions if a hurricane threatened the North Carolina coast during the 1999 hurricane season. Following Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in 1999, a follow-up survey was conducted to see if respondents behaved as they intended. A jointly estimated revealed and stated behavior model indicates that the hypothetical and real evacuation behavior is based on the same choice process. Using predictions from this model with a hypothetical bias correction, we find that it predicts actual evacuation behavior with a small forecast error. These results suggest that stated behavior data has some degree of predictive validity.     

Towards a Theory of Revealed Economic Behavior: The Economic-Neurosciences Interface

Based on recent findings from economics and the neurosciences, we present a conceptual decision-making model that provides insight into human decision-making and illustrates how behavioral outcomes are transformed into phenomena. The model may be viewed as a bridge between the seemingly disparate disciplines of neuroscience and economics that may facilitate more integrative research efforts and provide a framework for developing research agendas for scientists interested in human behavior and economic phenomena.     

Introduction: methodologies of bounded rationality

The modelling of bounded rationality is currently pursued by approaches that exhibit a wide diversity of methodologies. This special issue collects five contributions that discuss different methodological aspects of these approaches. In our introduction, we map the variety of methodological positions with respect to three questions. First, what kinds of evidence do the respective approaches consider relevant for modelling bounded rationality? Second, what kind of modelling desiderata do the respective approaches focus on? And third, how do the respective approaches justify the normative validity of bounded rationality? To broaden the picture, we not only discusss the five contributions of this issue, but also include relevant positions from the extant literature.     

The geometry of distributional preferences and a non-parametric identification approach: The Equality Equivalence Test

This paper proposes a geometric delineation of distributional preference types and a non-parametric approach for their identification in a two-person context. It starts with a small set of assumptions on preferences and shows that this set (i) naturally results in a taxonomy of distributional archetypes that nests all empirically relevant types considered in previous work; and (ii) gives rise to a clean experimental identification procedure – the Equality Equivalence Test – that discriminates between archetypes according to core features of preferences rather than properties of specific modeling variants. As a by-product the test yields a two-dimensional index of preference intensity.     

Measuring Women's Quality of Life: A Discussion of Alternative Approaches

This paper reports our experiences with the application of a number of alternative approaches to a study of women's economic circumstances and quality of life in a typical western city. The important work of, especially, Martha Nussbaum on the capabilities approach to evaluations of “quality of life” has highlighted pitfalls associated with the use of a narrow informational base in studies of women's lives and has emphasized the value of qualitative methods in these evaluations. However, to date, most discussions of the relevance of plural approaches to studies of women's lives have been conducted in the context of developing countries. This paper contributes a practical, current example of the relevance of such approaches to assessments of the lives of women in western countries as well. The research findings reported in the paper also cast further light on the importance of several, related themes in the literature on the capabilities approach, namely the importance of understanding how women's aspirations and expectations change with their economic and social experiences; and the importance of appreciating the social uses of language and how this affects the way in which women describe their lives.     

政府经济职能:市场机制的补充者

转变政府职能是现阶段经济改革的一项主要任务,关系整个改革进程,因此,我们亟需寻求政府职能的恰当定位。政府经济职能不能定位于市场的替代者,而应定位于市场机制的补充者。把政府经济职能定位于市场机制的补充者是政府职能的真正回归。     

The relation of risk attitudes and other-regarding preferences: A within-subjects analysis

In this paper we provide experimental evidence on the relation of individual risk attitudes and subjects׳ aversion to favorable inequality. In a within-subjects design we expand Blanco et al.׳s (2011) modified dictator game by the risk-elicitation task of Eckel and Grossman (2002). Our data show strong support for a significant negative correlation between risk tolerance and an aversion to favorable inequality. The results are independent of gender, i.e., women and men show a similar correlation in these traits.     

政府审计新领域:经济政策执行效果审计

政府审计机关具有开展经济政策执行效果审计的必要性和可行性,经济政策执行效果审计的评价指标体系包括:经济政策的合法性、科学性、合理性、适用性、可操作性和绩效性。由于目前推行经济政策执行效果审计还是一个全新的领域,因此必须加快经济政策执行效果审计的理论研究,创新审计程序和方法,健全相关法规体系和审计专业人才队伍建设,充分发挥政府审计的免疫系统功能。     

Rethinking the aid–growth relationship: A network approach

Over 40 years of conventional economic analysis has not reached consensus on the effect of foreign aid on recipient country growth. We provide new insight into this relationship by using a network approach to characterize the topological properties of the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) foreign aid network. Viewing the OECD foreign aid community as an interdependent and complex system, we characterize not only the amount of aid but also the position of both donor and recipient within the network. We find that the degree centrality of the recipient, with an edge inclusion threshold that sets a minimum share of a donor’s aid to a particular recipient, is significantly correlated with the growth impact of that donor’s aid. Contrarily, aid is uncorrelated with growth with a recipient‐side filter on the importance of the donor to the recipient. These results suggest that the importance of a recipient within the donor’s network, rather than the volume of aid alone, is associated with the growth impact of bilateral aid. We explore mechanisms for these findings that include the complementarity of aid from multiple attentive donors. Our findings speak to the aid–growth puzzle and suggest that network metrics may illuminate non‐obvious channels of aid impact.     

网络公司价值评估方法的比较研究

网络的出现改变了人们生活和工作的方式,也为这个社会带来了巨大的商机。随着网络公司如雨后春笋般的出现以及网络股在市场中的表现,评估师们面临这样一个问题：如何评估网络公司的价值？网络公司作为一种新的组织形式,在运用传统的价值评估方法对网络公司进行价值评估时遇到了瓶颈。如何正确地看待网络公司的价值这一问题,亟待解决。     

THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ON GROWTH: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM A HETEROGENEOUS PANEL

This paper investigates the impact of government expenditure on growth, in a heterogeneous panel, for a sample of developing countries. Using generalized method of moments techniques, we show that countries with substantial government current expenditure have strong growth effects, which vary considerably across the nations.     

The social construction of value: value theories and John Locke's framework of qualities

Value theory is central to economics. Whenever new economic theories appear on stage, their theory of value is different. I classify value theories along Locke's lines of primary and secondary qualities. When value is thought to inhere in objects, value is a primary quality. The marginalists perceive value as given to objects by autonomous individuals independent of their environment (much like monads) with given preferences. Value here is a secondary quality. Both are unsatisfactory; value is a social construct. The question arises why social value theory, which Clark and Anderson worked on around the turn of the nineteenth century, did not take root.     

Testing economic models of volunteer labour supply: some empirical evidence for the German Red Cross

We use a new data set collected by means of a questionnaire study of volunteers of the German Red Cross to test predictions of three competing economic models of volunteer labour supply: the public-goods model, the private-consumption model and the human-capital model. The three competing economic models make different predictions regarding the response of a volunteer’s labour supply to a change in the perceived labour supply of other volunteers. Our empirical results lend support to the public-goods model.     

Modeling IT relationship quality and its determinants: A potential perspective of network externalities in e-service

This article addresses the development of relationship quality in the service context of information technology (IT) based on the network externalities theory. The model predicates the IT relationship quality is influenced by both synchronization value and autarky value, whereby autarky value is influenced by the availability of complementary goods. At the same time, synchronization value is influenced by relationship commitment and perceived critical mass, while availability of complementary goods is influenced by perceived compatibility and overall installed base. Note that the autarky value represents the value generated by the product itself even if there are no other users (e.g., the printing and copying functions of a fax/printer machine), while synchronization value represents individuals’ perceived value obtained through interaction (e.g., chatting functions of Skype). The model is examined using data obtained from employees of different companies in Taiwan. The empirical findings and their implications are discussed herein.     

A direct test of direct democracy: New England town meetings

Representative democracies govern most locales in the US, making it difficult to compare performance relative to direct democracy. New England states, however, provide an opportunity to test both direct and representative democracy at the local level. This article uses revealed preference axioms to compare spending patterns in New England towns and cities against median voter hypothesis benchmarks. Contrary to previous evidence, we find no differences between direct and representative democracy. The results suggest that horizontal competition arising from local fragmentation minimize differences between direct and representative local government, providing support for wider applicability of median voter-based empirical models of local government behaviour in the US.     

基于居民生活满意度的城市景观经济价值评价——以大连市为例

基于大连市的调研数据,利用生活满意度数据,探索了城市景观质量对居民效用的影响,进而使用有序Probit模型测算城市景观的经济价值。结果表明:城市景观质量对居民的生活满意度具有显著的正向影响;以十分制定位景观评价标准,每年每户居民对单位城市景观质量改善的意愿支付为26282元;相对于低收入群体,较高收入群体对城市景观质量的变化更为敏感;当城市景观质量实现由Ⅰ级向Ⅱ级的改善时,居民的支付意愿最强,可达到96807元;随着城市景观质量等级的升高,家庭的边际支付意愿明显下降,反映出处在较低质量景观状态中的居民具有更强烈的景观改善意愿。     

货币的有关经济人类学解读

货币作为现代经济运行的基石,其作用和意义毋庸置疑。然而,如果我们从货币的诞生、使用和发展这一个大的范围来看,就可以发现货币带给我们的思考应该是多方面的、多层次的。经济人类学最独特和最有价值的部分是它的研究视角——从人类学的角度去研究分析人们的经济行为与经济生活。所以,经济人类学对货币的看法和研究,或许会给我们观察现代经济带来某些启迪。     

Hedonic and environmental quality: A hybrid model of product differentiation

In this paper, we analyze how strategic competition between a green firm and a brown competitor develops when their products are differentiated along two dimensions: hedonic quality and environmental quality. The former dimension refers to the pure (intrinsic) performance of the good, whereas the latter dimension has a positional content: buying green goods satisfies the consumer's desire to be portrayed as a socially worthy citizen. We consider the case in which these quality dimensions are in conflict with each other so that the higher the hedonic quality of a good, the lower the corresponding environmental quality. We characterize the equilibrium configurations and discuss the policy implications deriving from our analysis.     

Creative vs. Mechanical Evolutionism: A Commentary on Petr

Abstract:

The paper deals with the lack of attention that many socially minded economists pay to social issues, with social costs being a special case. It argues that while these economists acknowledge that social costs exist, and are rooted in the way the economy functions, they do not frame their economic inquiries accordingly. This is because they believe that scientific dialogue is possible only by accepting a commonly shared ground for scientific inquiry that focuses on restricted, but generally accepted goals. This behavior obscures a major implication of systemic openness: The choice of goals and the way scientific inquiry is carried out do not depend on once-and-for-all criteria, but require the explicit formulation of a range of value judgments. The conclusion of the paper is that it is possible to deal with social issues while pursuing scientific dialogue, but this requires framing the dialogue in a twofold manner: identifying the shared grounds of inquiry and identifying the specific issues to be investigated     

Determinants of patent value: Insights from a simulation analysis

This paper contributes to understanding the determinants of patent value. By drawing on a real options approach, we develop a theoretical model of patent value, which explicitly considers the uncertainty about future value. On this basis, we rely on Monte Carlo simulations with data from a case study in a large chemical firm to estimate patent value according to our model. In the simulation analyses, we compare an R&D project with patent protection and the same project without patent protection. The difference of the values of the two projects is the surplus in profit that may be expected from having a patent covering the project. This surplus is regarded as the value that is directly attributable to the patent. The results of the simulation analyses indicate that the development costs and expected net cash flows of a patent-protected project are higher than of an unpatented project. The higher net cash flows outgrow the increased development costs, and patent value is positive. However, this value is smaller than the overall project value of the patent-protected R&D project.