Unsettling aspects of voting theory

Summary. Voting procedures are known to be plagued with a variety of difficulties such as strategic voting, or where a voter is rewarded with a better election outcome by not voting, or where a winning candidate can lose by receiving more support. Once we know that these problems can occur, the next objective should be to completely understand how, why, and where they arise. Namely, for each election procedure, the new goal is to determine when such problems can occur, all voter types who can cause these difficulties, and the actions they must take. This paper develops an easily used approach to handle all of these issues for standard voting methods. New intuitive explanations for these various oddities follow from this approach. Received: August 14, 2002 ; revised version: September 4, 2002 RID="*" ID="*"My thanks to Richard Barrett and, in particular, to Hannu Nurmi for corrections, several useful comments, and suggestions they made about earlier versions. Also, my thanks to a referee for calling some excellent references to my attention. An earlier draft was presented at the 2002 Public Choice Society meeting. This research was supported by an NSF grant.     

Strategic freedom, constraint, and symmetry in one-period markets with cash and credit payment

Summary. In order to explain in a systematic way why certain combinations of market, financial, and legal structures may be intrinsic to certain capabilities to exchange real goods, we introduce criteria for abstracting the qualitative functions of markets. The criteria involve the number of strategic freedoms the combined institutions, considered as formalized strategic games, present to traders, the constraints they impose, and the symmetry with which those constraints are applied to the traders. We pay particular attention to what is required to make these strategic market games well-defined, and to make various solutions computable by the agents within the bounds on information and control they are assumed to have. As an application of these criteria, we present a complete taxonomy of the minimal one-period exchange economies with symmetric information and inside money. A natural hierarchy of market forms is observed to emerge, in which institutionally simpler markets are often found to be more suitable to fewer and less-diversified traders, while the institutionally richer markets only become functional as the size and diversity of their users gets large.Received: 5 June 2003, Revised: 18 November 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: C7, G10, G20, L10, D40, D50. Correspondence to: Eric SmithEric Smith, Martin Shubik: We are grateful to Lloyd Shapley, Duncan Foley, and Doyne Farmer for discussions in the course of this work.     

减少农民数量与增加农民收入的实证分析——以安徽省为例

农民增收已经成为我国三农问题的核心,然而,长期以来,农民收入增长问题一直困扰着我国农村经济的发展。作者认为,适当减少农民是实现农民增收的根本途径。最近几年出现的“民工荒”告诉我们,农民的数量不能盲目的减少,必须在搞清新时期农民的概念和类型的基础上有针对性、有步骤的去减少农民才具有现实意义。本文以安徽省为例,从安徽农村经济的变化来说明减少农民数量的必要性,并提出相关建议。     

A new approach in multivariate time series specification

Within the study of multivariate time series, this work is centered on vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) models, specifically on the specification stage. Until now, numerous procedures have been proposed to resolve the problem of identifying the dynamic behavior in a VARMA model framework. A new strategy is added to specify VARMA models justified by results within the field of matrix Padé approximation. Besides contributing a characterization of these models, alternative methods are added to those already in the literature to deal with the problems of identifiability and exchangeability. The obtained characterizations have the advantage of graphically presenting the results in tables for direct interpretation. The proposed technique is illustrated by means of a theoretical example, a simulated model, and data from economic variables (already dealt with by other authors) in order to compare results.     

Workplace abuse: finding solutions

The atmosphere within the work setting speaks volumes about your culture, and is often a primary factor in recruitment and retention (or turnover) of staff. Workplace tension and abuse are significant contributing factors as to why nurses are exiting workplaces--and even leaving the profession. Abuse can take many forms from inappropriate interpersonal communication to sexual harassment and even violence. Administrators should adopt a zero tolerance policy towards abusive communication. Addressing peer behavior is essential, but positive behavior must also be authentically modeled from the CNO and other nursing leaders. Raising awareness and holding individuals accountable for their behavior can lead to a safer and more harmonious work environment.     

THE CARE AND HANDLING OF MONETARY AUTHORITIES*

Sometimes a group of people want to hire some agent (a monetary authority, for instance) to force them to cooperate with one another. This can cause problems, not only of the standard principal-agent type, but also of inconsistency, which appears here as renegotiation. The group faces a conflict between controlling the agent – the agency problem – and controlling themselves – the inconsistency problem. Terms of office are a good way to resolve this problem, and in fact, for people patient enough, the renegotiation problem disappears. This model provides insights into why the public dislikes inflation, why the market for presidents does not clear in Walrasian fashion, and why the controversy about “rules versus discretion” provides no policy guidance.     

知识型员工薪酬激励方案的优化——以某国有工程咨询设计公司为例

知识型员工是现代企业中一个个性鲜明的工作群体,如何有效地激励管理他们,特别是薪酬体系设计问题成为当代人力资源管理的新课题,也是企业特别是科技型企业构建核心竞争力的关键。案例企业对知识型员工的薪酬激励尚存在着薪酬结构不合理、缺乏对内公平性和对外竞争性等诸多问题,优化设计的方案是以岗位绩效工资为基础的主体薪酬体系和其他辅助激励形式并存的综合激励方案。     

Agency problems and unrelated business income of non-profit organizations: an empirical analysis

Nonprofit organizations are traditionally assumed to dislike commercial activities. In the USA, they are however allowed to engage in commercial activities, but the income they derive from these activities is then subject to the so-called ‘unrelated business income tax’. If NPOs do indeed dislike commercial income, then why do they engage in these activities? Using a data set of 2103 US NPOs, this study suggests that the presence of agency problems inside the organization can at least provide an explanation for the occurrence of ‘unrelated business income’.     

Book Reviews

Traditional capital market theory says that markets are efficient because investors are rational. The new school of behavioral finance says the opposite. Rather than solving problems "rationally," individuals tend to make biased decisions using pattern recognition techniques. However, what is rational and irrational may depend upon the type of problem we wish to solve and the method we use to solve it. If the market inefficiency is a simple objective problem, then "cool reason" should prevail. However, if the market is a complex system, then the value of data would be ambiguous making it more rational to use pattern recognition techniques. In this article we will find that rational investors would indeed keep certain types of mispricing from happening. Likewise, human behavior and the market complexity cause mispricing that cannot be arbitraged away. In the end, investors are irrational if they use the wrong method to solve a particular type of problem. By examining method and object we can find when investors are rational, when they are irrational. A non-mathematical model integrating efficient markets, behavioral finance, and complex systems is presented.     

Instrumentalism and Economic Policy: The Quest for Reasonable Value

Neuroeconomics and behavioral economics (NEBE) is one of the most dynamic fields in contemporary economics. However, from the viewpoint of economic methodology there are still substantial reasons why NEBE is irrelevant for economic theory. This paper argues that they will only become an essential part of economics if they are embedded into a fully-fledged institutional and evolutionary paradigm. I develop a Neo-Veblenian theory of the individual that starts out from the observation that modern brain sciences do not support the notion of the brain to be an integrated and consistent rational decision apparatus. An evolutionary explanation is offered for this, which reinstates Veblen's distinction between adaptation as engineering optima and social selection. Individual identity does only emerge through communication and interaction among brains, in particular via language. The concept of the "extended brain" is proposed, which is applied to define human individuality as a social phenomenon. Thus, the systematic unity of neuroeconomics and institutional economics is established.     

Cultural differences in perceptions of environmental problems

A comparative survey study of environmental perceptions and beliefs was conducted in Japan and in two New York State countries in 1974. While the samples and the instruments were not strictly comparable, there was sufficient comparability to compare perceptions about the seriousness of the environmental problem, perceptions of the quality of various environmental elements, the definition of the environmental problem, the causes of the environmental problem, attitudes toward governmental action to solve environmental problems, and citizen activity with respect to the environmental problem. Some general findings are that the definition of the environmental problem is culture bound. That we cannot expect people to support strong environmentally protective actions by governments until they perceive a clear and present danger. That if people perceive environmental damage to be caused by the social, economic, and political system, they will look to the system for the solution and will take little personal action to alleviate the problem. We had held a hope that mankind might take a more thoughtful and planned approach to a new environmentally protective social order; this hope received little encouragement from what we have learned in this study.     

A Common Nomenclature for Stated Preference Elicitation Approaches

It is often difficult to determine what actually was done in work involving data collected with stated preference surveys because the terms used to describe various procedures have ambiguous and sometimes conflicting meanings. Further, terms used to describe data collection procedures often are confounded with terms used to describe statistical techniques. We call for the use of a common nomenclature to describe what was done in a data collection effort for stated preference studies, and take a first step at setting out such nomenclature. We only seek to improve clarity in the communication of research results and take no position here on appropriateness of particular procedures.     

Why is the teen birth rate in the United States so high and why does it matter?

Teens in the United States are far more likely to give birth than in any other industrialized country in the world. U.S. teens are two and a half times as likely to give birth as compared to teens in Canada, around four times as likely as teens in Germany or Norway, and almost 10 times as likely as teens in Switzerland. Among more developed countries, Russia has the next highest teen birth rate after the United States, but an American teenage girl is still around 25 percent more likely to give birth than her counterpart in Russia. Moreover, these statistics incorporate the almost 40 percent fall in the teen birth rate that the United States has experienced over the past two decades. Differences across U.S. states are quite dramatic as well. A teenage girl in Mississippi is four times more likely to give birth than a teenage girl in New Hampshire--and 15 times more likely to give birth as a teen compared to a teenage girl in Switzerland. This paper has two overarching goals: understanding why the teen birth rate is so high in the United States and understanding why it matters. Thus, we begin by examining multiple sources of data to put current rates of teen childbearing into the perspective of cross-country comparisons and recent historical context. We examine teen birth rates alongside pregnancy, abortion, and "shotgun" marriage rates as well as the antecedent behaviors of sexual activity and contraceptive use. We seek insights as to why the rate of teen childbearing is so unusually high in the United States as a whole, and in some U.S. states in particular. We argue that explanations that economists have tended to study are unable to account for any sizable share of the variation in teen childbearing rates across place. We describe some recent empirical work demonstrating that variation in income inequality across U.S. states and developed countries can explain a sizable share of the geographic variation in teen childbearing. To the extent that income inequality is associated with a lack of economic opportunity and heightened social marginalization for those at the bottom of the distribution, this empirical finding is potentially consistent with the ideas that other social scientists have been promoting for decades but which have been largely untested with large data sets and standard econometric methods. Our reading of the totality of evidence leads us to conclude that being on a low economic trajectory in life leads many teenage girls to have children while they are young and unmarried and that poor outcomes seen later in life (relative to teens who do not have children) are simply the continuation of the original low economic trajectory. That is, teen childbearing is explained by the low economic trajectory but is not an additional cause of later difficulties in life. Surprisingly, teen birth itself does not appear to have much direct economic consequence. Moreover, no silver bullet such as expanding access to contraception or abstinence education will solve this particular social problem. Our view is that teen childbearing is so high in the United States because of underlying social and economic problems. It reflects a decision among a set of girls to "drop-out" of the economic mainstream; they choose non-marital motherhood at a young age instead of investing in their own economic progress because they feel they have little chance of advancement. This thesis suggests that to address teen childbearing in America will require addressing some difficult social problems: in particular, the perceived and actual lack of economic opportunity among those at the bottom of the economic ladder.     

和谐企业文化缓解员工工作压力探析

随着社会的发展、竞争的加剧,员工的工作压力问题日趋严重,让员工健康而幸福地工作与生活已成为企业不容推卸的社会责任。在构建和谐社会的时代背景和以人为本管理理念的指导下,本文通过对和谐企业文化内涵的理论与实证分析,提炼出和谐企业文化的15个评价维度。基于工作压力来源以及压力应对层次理论,发现和谐企业文化有助于缓解工作压力的路径图,并从管理实践层面阐述了和谐企业文化如何消除五大方面的工作压力源,最终达到缓解员工工作压力的目的。     

Global capital markets and the impact of changes in the money stock on real activity

Reduced-form empirical work on the impact of monetary change on real activity has implicitly assumed the absence of a capital market. Such a market will cause identification problems in discrimination between the impact of unanticipated monetary change or the impact of nominal shocks on real activity.     

Getting into the energy efficiency scene: does corporate social responsibility matter for energy efficiency in SMEs?

A growing body of literature argues that improving energy efficiency is an essential step that firms must take to mitigate climate change issues. It is assumed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general plays a prominent role in firms’ policies, and this paper specifically investigates the effects of the individual CSR dimensions on SMEs’ energy efficiency improvement. Based on data from a sample of 146 thousand SMEs, and using logit model, and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the study reveals that high activities in social, environmental and economic CSR dimensions are associated with high energy efficiency. Specifically, the environmental CSR dimension has the highest contribution to improving energy efficiency. Furthermore, this study indicates that energy efficiency improvement can be achieved by large SMEs provided they have developed simultaneously the environmental, social, and economic CSR dimensions. In doing so, this study answers to recent calls for more research on CSR-energy efficiency relationship and addresses with greater precision why it matters to relate the role of the CSR dimensions and energy efficiency. Furthermore, this study can be of value to policymakers who are called to promote CSR practices of SMEs in order to foster their energy efficiency.     

Nursing overtime: why, how much, and under what working conditions?

To provide the best care to patients, the physical wellness of nursing staff is essential. Current evidence indicates long work hours can lead to adverse nurse and patient outcomes. To provide quality and safe patient care, both staff nurses and nurse managers need to recognize the adverse effects of overtime, whether it is mandatory or voluntary. Results of this study showed overtime was not used more when there was an increase in nursing shortages. Further, overtime was not used to control shortages; rather, understaffing was an underlying condition of the nursing practice, at least in the study sample. Thus, efforts must be made not only to prevent nurses from working long hours, but also to resolve the problem of understaffing in order to retain qualified nurses in hospitals.     

80后员工职业价值观与忠诚度关系研究

本文以企业"80后"员工为研究对象,以组织支持感为调节变量,研究其职业价值观对忠诚度的影响。通过文献分析法和访谈法,初步构建企业"80后"员工职业价值观、组织支持感和忠诚度的理论模型,并编制相关变量的调查量表。通过实地调查和网络调查进行实证研究,收集了301份有效问卷,采用SPSS18.0和AMOS17.0软件对调查收集的数据进行描述性统计分析、因子分析、相关分析、回归分析。通过实证研究得出:"80后"员工职业价值观和组织支持感对其忠诚度有显著影响,其影响程度与方向在各个维度上具有差异;组织支持感在职业价值观和忠诚度之间起到了显著的调节作用。     

国有企业员工培训问题与对策

员工培训是国有企业人力资源开发的核心内容,有效的员工培训能够帮助国有企业发展人才并留住人才。目前中国国有企业已经逐步重视员工培训,但在实际工作中存在各类问题抑制了员工培训的效果。提出＂从意识上重视培训的效率、从体制上保障培训效率、从培训技术上提高培训效率＂多方面解决中国国有企业员工培训中存在的问题,提升员工培训的有效性。     

成人学士学位授予工作的实践与思考

成人本科学士学位的授予工作是我国学位工作的重要组成部分。学位授予工作存在的诸多问题,成人教育普教化模式严重,标准不统一,缺乏灵活性,社会对学士学位获得者重视不够。提高成人学士学位授予质量,加强教学管理队伍建设,确保学士学位授予质量,完善成人学士学位授予制度,建立成人本科教育的学位授予质量与管理保障体系。