On the equivalence of the Arrow impossibility theorem and the Brouwer fixed point theorem when individual preferences are weak orders

We will show that in the case where there are two individuals and three alternatives (or under the assumption of the free-triple property), and individual preferences are weak orders (which may include indifference relations), the Arrow impossibility theorem [Arrow, K.J., 1963. Social Choice and Individual Values, second ed. Yale University Press] that there exists no binary social choice rule which satisfies the conditions of transitivity, Pareto principle, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and non-existence of dictator is equivalent to the Brouwer fixed point theorem on a 2-dimensional ball (circle). Our study is an application of ideas by Chichilnisky [Chichilnisky, G., 1979. On fixed points and social choice paradoxes. Economics Letters 3, 347–351] to a discrete social choice problem, and also it is in line with the work by Baryshnikov [Baryshnikov, Y., 1993. Unifying impossibility theorems: a topological approach. Advances in Applied Mathematics 14, 404–415].     

基于共生视角的企业社会责任研究

企业社会责任是现代企业所不能回避的问题,也是许多学者热衷探讨和研究的问题。在追求企业利益最大化的今天,如何协调企业利益和企业社会责任的关系,成为许多企业所面临的两难决策。本文从共生的视角重新审视企业社会责任,认为企业承担社会责任就是为了与各利益相关者和谐共生,以维持企业持续、稳定、健康的发展。     

Arrovian social choice with psychological thresholds

This paper studies Arrovian preference aggregation rules–the rules satisfying weak Pareto and Arrow’s independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA)–when individual preferences are nontransitive due to the existence of psychological thresholds — a problem of perceptible difference. A new domain replaces the universal domain, and rationality requirements of social preferences, i.e., transitivity, quasi-transitivity, and acyclicity with indifference transitivity, are converted into the corresponding versions respectively. We show that the Arrovian impossibilities, i.e., dictator, oligarchy, and vetoer theorems, still survive in this setting.     

The structure of decision schemes with cardinal preferences

This paper replacesGibbard’s (Econometrica 45:665-681, 1977) assumption of strict ordinal preferences by themore natural assumption of cardinal preferences on the set pure social alternatives and we also admit indifferences among the alternatives. By following a similar line of reasoning to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theoremin the deterministic framework, we first show that if a decision scheme satisfies strategy proofness and unanimity, then there is an underlying probabilistic neutrality result which generates an additive coalitional power function. This result is then used to prove that a decision scheme which satisfies strategy proofness and unanimity can be represented as a weak random dictatorship. A weak random dictatorship assigns each individual a chance to be a weak dictator. An individual has weak dictatorial power if the support of the social choice lottery is always a subset of his/her maximal utility set. In contrast to Gibbard’s complete characterization of randomdictatorship, we also demonstrate with an example that strategy proofness and unanimity are sufficient but not necessary conditions for a weak random dictatorship.     

To be or not to be unionized? A social dilemma perspective on worker decisions to support union organizing

A worker's decision whether or not to support union organizing remains a critical and timely issue for American workers. We draw on the union organizing, organizational psychology, and social dilemma literatures to offer new insight into a worker's decision whether or not to support union organizing efforts. In particular, we highlight three specific conditions – social uncertainty, environmental uncertainty, and exposure – that make the decision whether or not to support union organizing a social dilemma, and describe how these should be expected to vary by union organizing stage. We also examine the effects of key contingencies: management opposition that exacerbates, and strategic union efforts that counteract, the effects of social dilemmas. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of viewing union organizing from a social dilemma perspective.     

A sharing mechanism of investment outcome for interest-sensitive life insurance products

As growing sales of insurance contracts with a saving feature, an issue of sharing investment outcome gets the attention of insurers and policyholders. This paper focuses on a systematic way of finding the sharing mechanism for an optimal contract design in such a way that a policyholder and an insurer maximize their expected utilities. We adopt the policyholder and the insurer as a principal and an agent, respectively, and regard a share of the investment performance as an incentive for the insurer to elicit efforts. As a result of this setting, the moral hazard issue generated from the insurer is unavoidable. For the purpose, the Holmström (1979)’s principal-agent model with limited observability of the insurer’s action plays a leading role in resolving a pie-cutting problem. Under our model assumption, the sharing mechanism states that a portion of the outcome belonging to the insurer is a nondecreasing function of the excess of the portfolio return over a benchmark return when the two parties are risk-averse. In particular, the sensitivity of the sharing portion has an S-shape curve which is consistent with the insurer’s risk propensity.An empirical study based on companies’ portfolio attributes and crediting rates verifies that our theoretical findings are consistent with statistically significant results. In particular, we confirm that the bargaining power of the insurer has a considerable impact on the sharing mechanism as it is theoretically important.     

Does social learning promote cooperation in social dilemmas?

In this study, we analyze how emergence of cooperation is related to social learning. Cooperation is an example of social behavior. It is frequency-dependent that is the success of a particular behavior depends on the number of individuals adopting each behavioral trait. We study how social learning can affect the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas represented by two well-known games: Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) and Snowdrift (SD). We show that, in the PD game, increase in the proportion of social learners leads to the alleviation of the social dilemma. Whereas, in the SD game increasing the proportion of social learners does not always lead to the alleviation of the social dilemma, that is there is no simple monotonic relation between social learning and the weakening of the social dilemma.

     

The Labor Movement and the Dilemma of Direct Confrontation

The perennial weakness of the American labor movement can be explained by a single, pervasive dilemma concerning its use of confrontational forms of protest. As its history makes clear, the labor movement cannot survive without resorting to mass picketing, sit-down strikes, and other disorderly tactics which challenge the power of employers but also directly threaten property rights, public authority, and dominant visions of social order. However, the labor movement also cannot endure the political and legal consequences which follow when it does embrace these tactics. In developing this thesis, this essay challenges both the aversion to militancy long typical of mainstream unionism as well as the fervent veneration of militancy by many of labor’s contemporary supporters. Instead, it counsels that the movement’s survival depends less on tactical choices than on workers’ success in challenging the political and legal power of capitalists out of which this dilemma ultimately flows.     

Endogenous trading in credit default swaps

We introduce a real options model in order to quantify the moral hazard impact of credit default swap (CDS) positions on the corporate default probabilities. Moral hazard is widely addressed in the insurance literature, where the insured agent may become less cautious about preventing the risk from occurring. Importantly, with CDS the moral hazard problem may be magnified since one can buy multiple protections for the same bond. To illustrate this issue, we consider a firm with the possibility of switching from an investment to another one. An investor can influence the strategic decisions of the firm and can also trade CDS written on the firm. We analyze how the decisions of the investor influence the firm value when he is allowed to trade credit default contracts on the firm’s debt. Our model involves a time-dependent optimal stopping problem, which we study analytically and numerically, using the Longstaff–Schwartz algorithm. We identify the situations where the investor exercises the switching option with a loss, and we measure the impact on the firm’s value and firm’s default probability. Contrary to the common intuition, the investors’ optimal behavior does not systematically consist in buying CDSs and increase the default probabilities. Instead, large indifference zones exist, where no arbitrage profits can be realized. As the number of the CDSs in the position increases to exceed several times the level of a complete insurance, we enter in the zone where arbitrage profits can be made. These are obtained by implementing very aggressive strategies (i.e., increasing substantially the default probability by producing losses to the firm). The profits increase sharply as we exit the indifference zone.     

Nash implementation via simple stochastic mechanisms: strategy space reduction

Beno?t and Ok (Games Econ Behav 64:51–67, 2008) show that in a society with at least three agents any weakly unanimous social choice correspondence (SCC) is Maskin’s monotonic if and only if it is Nash-implementable via a simple stochastic mechanism (Beno?t-Ok’s Theorem). This paper fully identifies the class of weakly unanimous SCCs that are Nash-implementable via a simple stochastic mechanism endowed with Saijo’s message space specification (Saijo in Econometrica 56:693–700, 1988). It is shown that this class of SCCs is equivalent to the class of SCCs that are Nash-implementable via Beno?t-Ok’s Theorem.     

A New Strategy Against Hostile Takeovers: A Model of Defense in Participations

This article examines the efficacy of a ‘defense in participations’ policy consisting of competitors acquiring cross‐equity participations within the same industry to prevent hostile takeovers. This defense in participations strategy provides disincentive for raiders as partial ownerships increase market power of competitors and then reinforce the ‘outsider effect’. Also, we find conditions for a general result, which state that takeovers are less profitable in an industry with participations rather than in an industry without any capital links. We provide information to regulators about the positive social impact of cross participations in the context of mergers and expose an economic dilemma between a ‘laissez‐faire’ and an interventionist approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Large traders and illiquid options: Hedging vs. manipulation

In this article, we study the effects on derivative pricing arising from price impacts by large traders. When a large trader issues a derivative and (partially) hedges his risk by trading in the underlying, he influences both his hedge portfolio and the derivative's payoff. In a Black–Scholes model with a price impact on the drift, we analyze the resulting trade-off by explicitly solving the utility maximization problem of a large investor endowed with an illiquid contingent claim. We find several interesting phenomena which cannot occur in frictionless markets. First, the indifference price is a convex function of the contingent claim – and not concave as in frictionless markets – implying that for any claim the buyer's indifference price is larger than the seller's indifference price. Second, the seller's indifference prices of large positions in derivatives are smaller than the Black–Scholes replication costs. Therefore, a large trader might have an incentive to issue options if they are traded at Black–Scholes prices. Furthermore, he hedges option positions only partly if he has a negative price impact and thus exploits his ability to manipulate the option's payoff. For a positive price impact he overhedges the option position leading to an extra profit from the stock position exceeding a perfect hedge. Finally, we also study a model where the large shareholder has a price impact on both drift and volatility.     

From feminism to FemInc.ism: On the uneasy relationship between feminism,entrepreneurship and the Nordic welfare state

Feminism in the Nordic countries was primarily formulated in terms of ‘state feminism’. The women’s movement cooperated with feminist government officials and politicians, resulting in societies that can be considered to be the most gender-equal societies in the world. Historically, the state provided for a large publicly-financed welfare sector which made it possible for many women to combine work and family through the state’s implementation of family-friendly policies, while simultaneously providing employment opportunities for many women. However, since the financial crisis of the 1990s, there has been a political change influenced by neo-liberal thought, in which politicians have handed over the welfare state’s responsibilities to the market, and, instead, the politicians have encouraged entrepreneurship, not least among women. Further to this development, there has been a change in emphasis from entrepreneurship (understood as starting and running a business) to entrepreneurialism which, in addition to a belief in the efficacy of market forces, also contains a social dimension where individuals are supposed to be flexible and exercise choice. In this article, we ask whether this entails a change in the feminist project in the Nordic countries, and if so, what the likely consequences are for this project, both in practice and in research. In order to answer this question, we reviewed existing Nordic research on women’s entrepreneurship and examined how this body of work conceptualizes entrepreneurship, gender, the state, and equality. We also considered whether any trends could be identified. We relate our findings to recent changes in government policy and conclude that the current discourse on entrepreneurship challenges, and possibly weakens, state feminism, but we also conclude that this discourse may also provide space for new forms of feminist action, in market terms. We coin the term FemInc.ism to denote feminist action through enterprise and we discuss a number of important challenges that research on this phenomenon is faced with.     

A Bayesian analysis of suicide data

The identification of change points in a sequence of suicide rates is one of the fundamental aspects of Durkheim’s theory. The specification of a statistical standard suitable for this purpose is the main condition for making inferences about the causes of suicide with distinctive trends of persistency and variability just as Durkheim theorized. At present, the statistical ‘strategy’ employed by the French social scientist is too ‘rudimentary’. A hundred years later, I take the opportunity to test Durkheim’s theory through modern methodological instruments, specifically the Bayesian change-point analysis. First of all, I analyzed the same suicide data which Durkheim took into consideration. Change-point analysis corroborates the Durkheimian analysis revealing the same change-points identified by the author. Secondly, I analyzed Italian suicide rates from 1864 to 2005. The change-point analysis was very useful. Durkheim’s theory ‘works’ until 1961: suicides rates increased as industrial development increased. However, after 1961 and the economic boom, they declined, and when they began increasing again, after 1984, they did not reach the same level as before. This finding obliges us to ‘adjust’ the Durkheim’s theory giving space to Halbwach’s convergence law. Therefore, as high economic and social development levels are attained, suicide rates tend to level-off: People adapt to the stress of modernization associated to low social integration levels. Although we are more ‘egoist’, individualism does not destroy identity and the sense of life as Durkheim had maintained.     

Gaining from disorder: Making the case for antifragility in purchasing and supply chain management

The purchasing and supply chain management (P&SCM) discipline assumes that supply chains are fragile systems, hence taking a “negative” approach toward disorder. Building on Taleb’s concept of antifragility—the ability to gain from disorder rather than avoiding it—, we challenge this traditional assumption. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that some companies were indeed able to gain from disorder, whereas some of those that focused too much on robustness and resilience lost ground. Building robust and resilient supply chains may no longer be enough to thrive in today’s highly volatile business world. This article sparks a new debate by introducing antifragility to the P&SCM literature and provides new directions for future research.     

Decreasing downside risk aversion and background risk

In this paper, we show that risk vulnerability can be associated with the concept of downside risk aversion (DRA) and an assumption about its behavior, namely that it is decreasing in wealth. Specifically, decreasing downside risk aversion in the Arrow–Pratt and Ross senses are respectively necessary and sufficient for a zero-mean background risk to raise the aversion to other independent risks.     

Technology choice and its performance: Towards a sociology of software package procurement

Technology acquisition is an important but neglected issue within the social science analysis of technology. The limited number of studies undertaken reproduce a schism between rationalist (e.g., economic) forms of analysis, where the assumption is that choice is the outcome of formal assessment, and cultural sociological approaches which see choice as driven by the micro-politics of the organisational setting, interests, prevalent rhetorics, fads, etc. While sympathetic to the latter critical view, we are dissatisfied with the relativist portrayal of technology selection: that decisions beset with uncertainties and tensions are divorced from formal decision making criteria. Influenced by Michel Callon’s writing on the ‘performativity’ of economic concepts and tools, we argue that formal assessment has a stronger relationship to technology decisions than suggested by cultural sociologists. We focus on a procurement which is characterised by high levels of organisational tension and where there is deep uncertainty about each of the solutions on offer. We show how the procurement team are able to arrive at a decision through laboriously establishing a ‘comparison’. That is, they attempt to drag the choice from the informal domain onto a more formal, accountable plane through the mobilisation and performance of a number of ‘comparative measures’ and criteria. These measures constituted a stabilised form of accountability, which we describe through the metaphor of a ‘scaffolding’, erected in the course of the procurement. Our argument is threefold: first, we argue that comparisons are possible but that they require much effort; second, that it is not the properties of the technology which determines choice but the way these properties are given form through the various comparative measures put in place; and finally, whilst comparative measures might be imposed by one group upon others in a procurement team, these measures remain relatively malleable.     

Relaxing IIA and the effect on individual power

We allow departures from IIA in Arrow’s framework. Our measure of the extent of a departure is the amount of information needed to socially order a pair of alternatives. We also propose a measure of the scope of an individual’s power. The scope of at least one individual’s power increases in step with a reduction in the amount of information that has to be gathered to socially order two alternatives. This result is also established for correspondences, which select a subset of the feasible set as a function of individual preferences.     

Stemming the gender gap in STEM entrepreneurship – insights into women’s entrepreneurship in science,technology, engineering and mathematics

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are notably important for innovation and technological development, which in turn are seen as drivers of social and economic growth. Hence, researchers and policy-makers have paid substantial attention to analyzing and promoting high-growth ventures in STEM fields. However, STEM fields are highly gender-skewed, regardless of whether the population considered is students, faculty members, graduates, top managers, or entrepreneurs. This is noticeable in the small number of women entrepreneurs with STEM backgrounds. This underrepresentation of women in innovation-driven business startups highlights existing gender biases and systemic disadvantages in social structures, making visible the double masculinity that exists at the intersection of STEM and entrepreneurship. This article addresses this issue by combining insights from research about women’s entrepreneurship and research about the gender aspects of STEM fields. We emphasize institutional, organizational, and individual factors influencing women’s entrepreneurship in STEM fields, laying the foundation for the articles included in this special issue. Finally, we discuss the way forward for research on the gender aspects of STEM entrepreneurship to help us create the knowledge needed to close this gender gap.