Even beyond humanity – a comment on ‘Change and commitment: beyond risk and responsibility’ by Silvio Funtowicz and Roger Strand

Due to past major food scares, food-safety perceptions have become a widely investigated topic. The aim of the present study was to examine food-safety perceptions separately for every step of the total meat supply chain, as such a detailed approach yields more promising strategies to ensure food safety in the future. Using a large-scale survey, we examined people’s risk perceptions of 18 steps describing the total meat supply chain. The results revealed a clear distinction between risk perception at the production stage and risk perception at home in the total meat supply chain, in that people perceived significantly less risk at home. However, people’s risk perceptions of the single stages in the total meat supply chain were overall slightly above average. Additionally, there were individual differences, as risk perception at the production stage was highly correlated with risk perception at home, meaning that some people perceived more risk than others overall. Using a multiple regression analysis, we found food-safety perceptions to be barely significant next to other important variables affecting people’s meat-consumption decisions. For those analyses, we asked participants to assess several constructs previously found to be associated with meat consumption. The goal was to determine how food-safety perceptions influence people’s meat consumption next to other important constructs in situations in which no major food scandal is present. The present paper concludes by discussing possible marketing and policy strategies to overcome people’s inaccurate safety perceptions of the stages of the total food chain.     

养老社会保障与城镇居民消费：理论分析与实证检验

自20世纪90年代以来,我国城镇居民消费倾向降低和储蓄率不断增加成为不争的事实。我国居民储蓄很大程度上受将来养老金发放以及医疗卫生和教育成本等不确定因素的影响,完善社会保障可以降低这些不确定性,从而促进居民消费。国外学者关于老年消费的研究以及养老社会保障对居民消费和储蓄的影响研究由来已久,并随着消费函数理论和实证研究方法的发展而不断深入。而与其他国家相比,我国养老社会保障现状又具有自身的特殊性,其对消费的影响效应是否与西方学者的研究结果一致？本文采用理论分析和实证研究相结合的方法,在消费函数理论框架内考查我国是否也存在退休消费困境以及养老保障对城镇居民消费的影响。     

Scenarios based on sustainability discourses: Constructing alternative consumption and consumer perspectives

This paper describes a research based scenario project on sustainable consumption in Belgium. In the Consentsus project a scenario method was developed and tested by the research team to assess scenarios both as learning and participation tools for sustainable consumption. By using a decomposition analysis a solid ground was laid to adequately summarize three guiding principles on how to reach a (more) sustainable consumption: eco-efficiency, de-commodification and sufficiency. These ‘pure’ strategies – showing significant similarities with concrete discourses – were then translated into a participative process: two expert-driven workshops and interim research yielded three future images of food consumption as well as indications on their boundary conditions. These three images reflect significantly diverging approaches on how to organize practices related to food consumption. This structural diversity allowed us to address an archetypical consumer, i.e. a generalized consumer based on the specificities of the scenarios. These consumer perspectives do not aim at indicating real (even potential) groups, but aim at illustrating how the environment of interactions around the consumer fundamentally changes throughout the three sustainability discourses. It is argued that thinking through alternative modes of consumption is of importance to support and elucidate debate in governance arenas that address transitions towards a more sustainable consumption.     

The Impact of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme on Consumption in Colombia*

This paper studies the impact of a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia on the total consumption of very poor households and on its components. Our evaluation methodology involves comparing household expenditures in areas in which the programme was not implemented (control) and those in which it was (treated). We use a quasi‐experimental approach, as the Familias en Acción programme was not randomly assigned across localities, for political reasons. We condition on a large range of household‐ and municipality‐level characteristics, and also control for pre‐programme differences in the outcomes of interest using a differences‐indifferences methodology. We find that the programme has been effective at greatly increasing total consumption and its main component, food consumption, in both rural and urban areas. The programme has also contributed to improvements in the quality of food consumed, in particular of items rich in proteins (milk, meat and eggs) and of cereals. Furthermore, the programme has created redistributive effects in favour of children through expenditure on education and children's clothing, while it has not significantly affected consumption of adult goods such as alcohol and tobacco or adults’clothing.     

内蒙古地区城镇居民肉类消费需求研究

本文以具有典型内陆消费特点的内蒙古地区为例,通过构建修正的AIDS模型即LA/AIDS模型和扩展的LES模型即ELES模型,利用2000年到2011年内蒙古城镇居民肉类消费的时间序列数据,对该地区城镇居民消费结构的变化趋势进行了实证分析。结果表明：当收入增加时,人们会更多的消费羊肉和牛肉,在考虑价格因素后,猪、牛、羊、鸡四种主要肉类消费支出份额趋于平衡;牛羊肉自价格弹性绝对值较大,但四种肉类都属于生活必需品。     

tay's as good as cay

The empirical evidence that the consumption–wealth ratio, cay, has strong in-sample predictive power for future stock returns has been interpreted as evidence that consumers take account of future investment opportunities in planning their consumption expenditures. In this paper we show that the predictive power of cay arises mainly from a “look-ahead bias” introduced by estimating the parameters of the cointegrating regression between consumption, assets, and labor income in-sample. When a similar regression is run, replacing the log of consumption with an inanimate variable, calendar time, the resulting residual, which we label tay, is shown to be able to forecast stock returns as well as, or better than, cay. In addition, both cay and tay lose their out-of-sample forecasting power when they are re-estimated every period with only available data.     

Images of the future: a historical perspective

In an attempt to create a futures philosophy, this paper analyzes and critiques Fredrich Polak’s Image of the future, a philosophy of history that contends that the image of the future of a society or culture defines a particular era and is the key to understanding of the rise and fall of civilizations. Polak’s view is compared with J.B. Bury’s ideas expressed in The idea of progress. The paper also illustrates how Max Weber’s The protestant ethic and the Spirit of capitalism contributes to an understanding of the progressive image of the future which, along with utopian images of the future, composes the dialectic of futures images. It shows how progressive and utopian images of the future have been expressed in dialectical world history and how they are still relevant today to serve as an insight for prognosis. Finally, it examines and answers Polak’s charge that existentialism is the cause for the destruction of the modern image of the future.     

Multi-scale narratives from an IA perspective: Part II. Participatory local scenario development

This paper builds on Part I, where three European and Mediterranean scenarios were introduced. Theses scenarios can be typified as qualitative, integrated narrative storylines that describe three possible directions of future change until 2030. The main purpose of the paper is to summarise the methods and results of a series of stakeholder workshops held in the Guadalentín (Spain) and the Val d'Agri (Italy) to develop local scenarios, using the Mediterranean scenarios as boundary conditions. Two workshops were organised in both watersheds, employing different methods to develop short-term and long-term future outlooks. During the first workshop an exploratory forecasting methodology was employed. By means of a collage of images, stakeholders constructed three future images linked to three Mediterranean scenarios. In the second workshop, a discussion on the short-term outlook based on current trends was followed by a backcasting exercise. The various methods yielded highly complementary results, with detailed short-term developments, rather general yet highly creative visions of the long-term future, and a set of desirable futures. It is argued that such a mix of methods has increased the quality and comprehensiveness of the results. In any case, these efforts should be but the onset of long-term stakeholder participation.     

Real term structure forecasts of consumption growth

This paper employs an empirically tractable affine term structure model of real interest rates to examine the predictive ability of the real short-term interest rate and its term spread with a longer-term interest rate to predict future real consumption growth. The estimates of the model provide support of the consumption smoothing hypothesis. The paper shows that the real term structure is spanned by two mean-reverting state variables. The mean-reverting property of these variables can consistently explain the forecasting ability of the short-term real rate and term spread to forecast future consumption growth rate, over different horizons ahead. Although the risks associated with changes in these variables are both priced in the market, they are not volatile enough to obscure the information of the real term structure about future real consumption growth.     

Consumption and expected asset returns without assumptions about unobservables

If asset returns are predictable, then rational expectations and the arithmetic of budget constraints together imply that these predictable changes in returns should affect current consumption. This paper presents a new framework linking consumption, income, and observable assets to expectations of future asset returns. Relative to previous work on this topic, the framework proposed in this paper has a number of advantages including not relying on untestable assumptions concerning unobservable variables and not requiring estimation of unknown parameters to arrive at a forecasting variable.     

Action research cycles for multiple futures perspectives

This paper focuses on the cyclical and iterative processes of action research and their usefulness in enabling participants in futures work to expand their images of futures. The author has been developing a participatory method of scenario development, based on action research, using cycles within cycles, thus allowing multiple opportunities for reflection and reperception. Because people can find it difficult to perceive their potential futures, to examine possibilities from different angles can clarify problems and help participants develop their reactions to various futures. This paper presents a case study of the new method, working through a series of cycles with a credit union, arguing that a cycles-within-cycles-within-cycles process has the potential to help make explicit the concealed and subconscious forces affecting the future of the participants' social entity.     

A Reexamination of Housing Price and Household Consumption in China: The Dual Role of Housing Consumption and Housing Investment

It is important to investigate the correlation between housing price and household consumption to gain an understanding of the behavior of the economy and effectively handle the consequences of economic development. In the last two decades, the accumulation of housing wealth by Chinese households has not been effectively transmitted to their final consumption. We discovered that the sustained increase in household wealth and housing-ownership rate in China has been accompanied by a decrease in consumption rate. We also identified a negative correlation between housing price and household consumption for both the homeowners who own one housing unit and those who own two units of housing. We investigated this phenomenon in China both theoretically and empirically by capturing the dual nature of housing as a consumption good and an investment vehicle. We found that the demand for second housing units is motivated by increasing housing consumption demand rather than pure investment needs. To explain the mechanisms that drive household-consumption behavior, we also explored the effects on household consumption of China’s educational system, marriage market and ageing society, as well as future housing-market uncertainty. The implications of government intervention in the housing market are discussed.     

家庭户消费风险分担实证研究评述

自20世纪80年代起,家庭户之间的风险分担作为平滑消费、分散风险的主要方式之一被广泛的研究.自此发展经济学正式将收入风险作为个人陷入贫困的主要原因.文章追溯了风险分担的理论发源,回顾早期实证检验以及最新研究动向,并且在综述国内研究的基础上对未来的研究方向进行了展望.     

On‐the‐Job Learning and News‐Driven Business Cycles

This paper proposes a new channel of on‐the‐job learning to explain the positive comovement between consumption and employment following good news about future productivity. The new recruits can generate an additional stream of output production in all future periods, and the firm's labor demand is thus characterized by the forward‐looking property. Therefore, the firm is motivated to hire more new recruits in advance in response to good news about future productivity. Once the increase in labor demand is greater than the decrease in labor supply caused by the income effect, the coincident rise in consumption and employment can be driven by the news shock. When such a channel is paired with investment adjustment costs and the endogenous capacity utilization rate, this paper provides a plausible explanation for simultaneous booms in current consumption, investment, output, and employment to match the empirical evidence under the news shock.     

The volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors and economic cycles

This paper aims to assess the macroeconomic and financial impact of economic uncertainty using information contained in the second moments of financial risk factors employed in the asset pricing literature. Specifically, we propose the volatility of consumption-based stochastic discount factors (SDFs) as a predictor of future economic and stock market cycles. We employ both contemporaneous and ultimate consumption risk specifications with durable and non-durable consumption. Alternative empirical tests show that this volatility has significant forecasting ability from 1985 to 2006. The degree of predictability tends to dominate that shown by standard predictor variables. We argue that the significant predictability of the volatility of consumption-based SDFs reported in this paper relies mainly on the joint effect of their components.     

Learning from young people’s image of the future: a case study in Taiwan and the US

An image of the future that an individual holds determines what attitude he/she holds towards the future and how he/she behaves in the present. These in turn would increase the probability to make the image realized as imagined in the future. As young people will be the builders of a society in the future, investigating their images of the future has significant implications for the future. With a survey of two groups of university students in Taiwan and the U.S., this study looked into various aspects of images, explored message sources influencing the formation of the images, identified values embedded in the images, and explored the relationship between the images and the students’ understanding of the present.     

The Impact of Deregulation and Financial Innovation on Consumers: The Case of the Mortgage Market

We develop a technique to assess the impact of changes in mortgage markets on households, exploiting an implication of the permanent income hypothesis: The higher a household's expected future income, the higher its desired consumption, ceteris paribus. With perfect credit markets, desired consumption matches actual consumption and current spending forecasts future income. Because credit market imperfections mute this effect, the extent to which house spending predicts future income measures the "imperfectness" of mortgage markets. Using micro-data, we find that since the early 1980s, mortgage markets have become less imperfect in this sense, and securitization has played an important role.     

我国经济启动机制选择的实证分析

经济启动模式的选择 ,对一国经济的健康运转是至关重要的。从理论上讲 ,应坚持消费启动为主导的原则。为此 ,本文拟通过对我国改革开放 2 0年来经济运行状况的分析 ,对这一结论予以实证检验 ,并对我国未来启动模式的构建提供可资参考的意见     

Evaluating stock returns with time-varying risk aversion driven by trend deviations from the consumption-to-wealth ratio: An analysis conditional on income levels

Based on the cointegrating relationship between consumption and wealth, we estimate the long run consumption-to-wealth ratio for each of five consumer income quintiles as well as national data for benchmarking purposes. Short run deviations from the consumption-to-wealth ratio for each quintile are examined for their ability to forecast changes in future consumption, income, housing values, and especially stock returns. We demonstrate that these trend deviations when combined with consumption growth in a multifactor model, significantly improve the ability of the dividend-to-price ratio to forecast future market returns over short and intermediate horizons for consumers in the highest-income quintile. This paper contributes to the financial economic literature by showing that the highest-income consumers are forecasting future stock returns with the help of the persistence in the dividend-to-price ratio and are modifying their consumption accordingly.     

Commodity Bonds and Consumption Risks

This paper analyzes the economic role of commodity bonds by examining the nature of the demand for these securities. I show that while commodity bonds protect against relative price changes, they do so by introducing variability into the future real income stream. This variability limits the desirability of using commodity bonds to provide “price insurance” for future consumption. However, this variability may allow commodity bonds to hedge risks to consumption caused by stochastic changes in income. The analysis also suggests that it is this “income insurance” rather than “price insurance” that is important in hedging risks to future consumption.