EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: POLICY AND MEASUREMENT PARADIGMS

Abstract Equality of opportunity is a widely accepted principle of distributive justice and it is the leading idea of most political platforms in several countries. According to this principle, a society might institute policies that secure an equal distribution of the means to reach a valuable outcome among its members. Once the set of opportunities have been equalized, which particular opportunity, the individual chooses from those open to her, is outside the scope of justice. Ex ante inequalities, and only those inequalities, should be eliminated or compensated for by public intervention. The recent literature on the opportunity egalitarianism often merges these questions introducing two different economic issues. On one side the design of a public policy intended to implement the equality of opportunity view and on the other side the problem of measuring the degree of opportunity inequality in a society. We describe the basic setting and assumptions of some different approaches derived by Roemer’s algorithm for public policy and then we discuss some theoretical and empirical studies to separate and test alternative paradigms on the measurement of inequality of opportunity. Accordingly, an extended critique on the causality issue on policies and measurements is taken into account.     

Expert opinion versus expertise in forecasting

Expert opinion is an opinion given by an expert, and it can have significant value in forecasting key policy variables in economics and finance. Expert forecasts can either be expert opinions, or forecasts based on an econometric model. An expert forecast that is based on an econometric model is replicable, and can be defined as a replicable expert forecast (REF), whereas an expert opinion that is not based on an econometric model can be defined as a non-replicable expert forecast (Non-REF). Both REF and Non-REF may be made available by an expert regarding a policy variable of interest. In this paper, we develop a model to generate REF, and compare REF with Non-REF. A method is presented to compare REF and Non-REF using efficient estimation methods, and a direct test of expertise on expert opinion is given. The latter serves the purpose of investigating whether expert adjustment improves the model-based forecasts. Illustrations for forecasting pharmaceutical stock keeping unit (SKUs), where the econometric model is of (variations of) the autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA) type, show the relevance of the new methodology proposed in the paper. In particular, experts possess significant expertise, and expert forecasts are significant in explaining actual sales.     

The dynamics of public opinion under majority rules

This note explains the process of public opinion formation via a locally interactive, space-time analysis. The model we use is a special case of the general framework for modelling social interaction proposed in Blume and Durlauf (2001). In the reduced form of the model we study how each individual, when faced with the choice of one, out of two, opinions, tends to conform to the opinion held by the majority of her neighbours. We consider different, symmetric and asymmetric, majority rules. Depending on the specific behavioral rule, the aggregate process of opinion formation may display contagion on one specific opinion, or consensus among all individuals in the population, or co-existence of both opinions. Whenever consensus obtains, we observe the formation of homogeneous areas ( clusters) that seem almost stationary along the dynamics. The authors wish to thank A. Postelwaite and two anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions.     

突发公共卫生事件对大学生媒介素养的考量

新冠肺炎疫情爆发以来,网络舆论场规模空前扩大,这既是对大学生媒介能力的挑战,也是提高和重塑大学生媒介素养能力的重要机遇。高校应加强突发公共卫生事件下大学生对网络信息的评判能力和识别能力,从而提高学生的媒介素养和综合能力。     

Measuring opinion distributions

In this study it will be argued that the perceived distribution of opinions among others is important for opinion research. Three different ways of measuring the perception of opinion distributions in survey research are compared: (a) by means of a questionwhat most people think about an issue, (b) by means of a questionhow many people are perceived to agree with an issue-statement, (c) by means of ‘line-production-boxes’, a special version ofmagnitude estimation. The results indicate that ‘line-production-boxes’ can improve data quality, but have also some drawbacks which will have to be dealt with. ‘Line-production-boxes’ give a wealth of information about individual differences in the forms of perceived opinion distributions. Although the normal distribution is used often, many other distribution forms are also used. The method of ‘line-production-boxes’ is compared with the method of estimating percentage points. Although high correlations suggest a good concurrent validity, some systematic differences do exist. New research directions are suggested.     

Information Technology and the Organization of Firms

This paper seeks to understand why improved information technology (IT) might strengthen the case for decentralization, as recent empirical work suggests. We study a firm with a headquarters and two managers, each of whom gathers information about her changing local environment. The firm earns a gross profit that depends on actions taken as well as the current local environments. More information permits better actions, and information‐gathering costs drop as IT improves. When the firm is centralized, information‐gathering expenditures are first best, but after the firm decentralizes, each manager becomes a self‐interested player of a “sharing game” in which she collects a share of gross profit and bears the cost of her chosen information‐gathering activities. The firm's actions are determined by the information gathered at the equilibria of the game. As a result, the firm experiences a decentralization penalty, namely the change in net profit (gross profit minus informational costs) after decentralizing. If the penalty is small, then it is outweighed by the advantages of decentralizing—the vanishing of monitoring costs and perhaps the improved motivation of a decentralized manager's staff. To gather information a manager chooses (once and for all) a partitioning of her possible local environments and then searches to find the set in which her current environment lies. Our main measure of a manager's information cost is a technology parameter, θ, times the number of sets in her chosen partitioning. A second measure is θ times the partitioning's “Shannon content,” which may be interpreted as average search time when search is efficient. We ask whether improved IT, i.e., a drop in θ, indeed lowers the decentralization penalty. We obtain a strongly affirmative answer to this question for both cost measures in a class of examples and a mixed answer when we generalize so as to preserve some of the key properties of those examples. In a parallel manner we explore another conjecture suggested in the empirical literature, namely that better IT raises the coordination benefit, which we define as the increase in net profit when the firm bases its actions on pooled information, rather than letting each action variable depend on the information gathered by just one manager.     

Competition for Managers and Product Market Efficiency

We investigate whether competition between two firms to hire managers with different abilities might affect efficiency in the product market, when a manager's effort is his/her private information. We conclude that competition for managers might lead to an improvement in efficiency in the market of the firm that attracts the most efficient manager. Competition for managers might even eliminate the productive efficiency loss due to the asymmetry of information in the firm-manager relationship.     

The Empirical Research on Auditor Independence and Mandatory Auditor Rotation

Using, the method of correlation coefficient, this paper discusses the empirical relationship between audit tenure and audit opinion in annual reports in China A-share market and period of mandatory rotation of auditor. The research finds that the negative correlation between auditor tenure and non-standard unqualified audit opinion is statistically significant, and auditor tenure might impair his/her independence. To enhance auditor independence and improve audit quality, it is necessary to rotate mandatory auditor. The results also fred that consecutive auditing years should not exceed 5 years when the existing auditor has been the auditor of listed company, and mandatory rotation of auditor adapts to the rotation of CPA firms in charge of a client.     

投资信息审计意见可以提高公司投资效率吗？——基于公司内部治理环境的调节效应

通过手工整理2013—2015年审计报告中的投资事项增量信息,研究审计意见中投资事项增量信息(投资信息审计意见)与公司投资效率之间的关系。结果表明,投资信息审计意见具有缓解投资过度的正面作用,但也具有加剧投资不足的负面作用;内部治理环境具有调节效应,当内部治理环境较好时(代理成本较低、管理层权力较小),投资信息审计意见的正面作用得到提升,负面作用受到抑制。进一步进行中介效应检验发现,内部监督在投资信息审计意见缓解投资过度的过程中起到了中介效应,表明促进股东加强内部监督是投资信息审计意见发挥作用的重要途径。研究结论表明审计意见中与投资事项相关的增量信息具有额外价值。     

Political opinion polls and the stock market

It is a part of the received wisdom of the American and British stock exchanges that the market prefers a Conservative administration. However, attempts to test this proposition by examining market returns about the time of elections have produced contrasting and sometimes indecisive results. The present paper assumes that election outcomes will be largely anticipated by the market on the basis of published opinion forecasts. The paper examines the impact of opinion poll information on share prices over the period 1960–79—one largely characterized by two-party competition. It is found that opinion movements towards the Conservative Party do exert a significant positive impact on the market, but only where the two main parties are relatively evenly balanced.     

Dynamics of clustered opinions in complex networks

A simple model for simulating tug of war game as varying the player number in a team is discussed to identify the slow pace of fast change. This model shows that a large number of information sources leads slow change for the system. Also, we introduce an opinion diffusion model including the effect of a high degree of clustering. This model shows that the de facto standard and lock-in effect, well-known phenomena in economics and business management, can be explained by the network clusters.     

Biased recommendations from biased and unbiased experts

When can you trust an expert to provide honest advice? We develop and test a recommendation game where an expert helps a decision maker choose among two actions that benefit the expert and an outside option that does not. For instance, a salesperson recommends one of two products to a customer who may instead purchase nothing. Subject behavior in a laboratory experiment is largely consistent with predictions from the cheap talk literature. For sufficient symmetry in payoffs, recommendations are persuasive in that they raise the chance that the decision maker takes one of the actions rather than the outside option. If the expert is known to have a payoff bias toward an action, such as a salesperson receiving a higher commission on one product, the decision maker partially discounts a recommendation for it and is more likely to take the outside option. If the bias is uncertain, then biased experts lie even more, whereas unbiased experts follow a political correctness strategy of pushing the opposite action so as to be more persuasive. Even when the expert is known to be unbiased, if the decision maker already favors an action the expert panders toward it, and the decision maker partially discounts the recommendation. The comparative static predictions hold with any degree of lying aversion up to pure cheap talk, and most subjects exhibit some limited lying aversion. The results highlight that the transparency of expert incentives can improve communication, but need not ensure unbiased advice.     

Understanding the Change–Cynicism Cycle: The Role of HR

Employee change cynicism is an unintended consequence of organizational change, which can undermine the effectiveness of change initiatives. Based on social information processing theory, we examine the impact of two human resource roles (administrative expert and strategic change agent) on the relationship between the quantity of organizational change and employee change cynicism. Using multilevel data from 1,831 employees in 70 organizations, we find employees who are exposed to more organizational change report higher levels of change cynicism. However, the strength of the organizational change–cynicism relationship is affected by the role of HR in the employees’ organizations. When HR undertakes an administrative expert role, change is more likely to generate change cynicism. When HR undertakes a strategic change agent role, change is less likely to generate change cynicism. Our results suggest that organizations need to think carefully about the role of HR during organizational change and encourage HR to adopt a strategic change agent role. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Competitive Procurement of Auditing Services with Limited Information

We analyse the auditing procurement process when the client is initially uncertain about her/her auditing needs and when she/he cannot discern the level of assurance provided by the auditor. The client's limited information can lead to under-auditing and substantial rent for auditors, despite the presence of ex ante competition among auditors. The information asymmetry can also make it difficult for new auditors with superior auditing technologies to displace incumbent auditors. In addition, the asymmetry can limit the incentives of auditors to improve their technologies.     

‘I Like How You Think’: Similarity as an Interaction Bias in the Investor–Entrepreneur Dyad

Investigating the factors that influence venture capital decision‐making has a long tradition in the management and entrepreneurship literatures. However, few studies have considered the factors that might bias an investment decision in a way that is idiosyncratic to a given investor–entrepreneur dyad. We do so in this study. Specifically, we build from the literature on the ‘similarity effect’ to investigate the extent to which decision‐making process similarity (shared between the investor and the entrepreneur) might bias or otherwise impact the investor's evaluation of a new venture investment opportunity. Our findings suggest venture capitalists evaluate more favourably opportunities represented by entrepreneurs who ‘think’ in ways similar to their own. Moreover, in the presence of decision‐making process similarity, the impacts of other factors that inform the investment decision actually change in counter‐intuitive ways.     

Expert systems in production management: An assessment

Over the last several years expert systems (ES) have gained almost sensational interest. Within business administration, production management might be one of the most fruitful application areas for ES. There already exist a number of interesting pilot systems, and reports of research projects are beginning to appear in the literature.The main goal of this study is to identify systematically those areas in production management where an ES approach might be most promising. This is important to both researchers and practitioners because it helps pinpoint where research and development resources would be best allocated.In this article the authors provide a taxonomy for production management activities. They then combine this taxonomy with a well-known list of eight “expert tasks” to provide what they call an “applications map” to guide the discussion.After discussing existing research efforts and potential production management applications of expert systems, the authors employ a Likert scoring procedure to quantify their subjective ratings as to problem importance, potential for improved solution, and ease of development, for expert systems development efforts in a given production management decision situation.One conclusion here is that the applicability of expert systems to production management appears to be broadly based. This is particularly true for what the authors have labeled as “technological” activities. An interesting finding is the apparent lack of applicability of expert systems to inventory management. The authors found no existing system or research proposals applying expert systems to inventory management. Finally, systems that combine technological with logistical knowledge seem to be a fertile (but difficult) application area for ES.     

力场分析法在物流自营决策中的应用

本文综合分析企业在物流业务自营还是外包的各种影响因素，提出利用力场分析法对各种因素进行分析，并在专家意见基础上将各个因素量化，从而作出决策。     

Use of donor‐specified donation splitting: a technique to understand the impact of financial management on donor trust

• Two experiments investigated donors' willingness to split their donation into a proportion that the charity could use for administration costs and a portion that could be used to deliver the charity's services. Experiment 1 found that participants in the condition given the opportunity to split their donation into an amount for administration costs and an amount for service delivery gave a significantly smaller proportion of their overall donation to administration costs, when compared with participants in another condition who were simply asked what proportion of their donation they would be happy for the organization to use for administration costs. Experiment 2 manipulated the amount of information participants (donors) received about the breakdown of a charity's administration costs but found no significant change in the amount donated to administration. Both experiments show that donors were willing to donate approximately 15% of their donation directly to charity administration costs. Results are discussed in terms of understanding how a charity's financial management might be influencing donor's trust in the charity and providing charities with a degree of certainty in the proportion of donations they can spend on administration costs.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Will truth out?—An advisor’s quest to appear competent

We study a dynamic career-concerns environment with an agent who has incentives to appear competent. It is well known that dynamic career concerns create incentives for an agent to be conservative and to tailor his reports towards a commonly held prior opinion. The existing models, however, have focused on short time horizons. We show that, for long time horizons, there exist countervailing incentives for the agent to report his true opinion. In particular, if the agent is sufficiently patient, the time horizon is sufficiently long given the agent’s patience, and the quality of the competent expert is high enough given the time horizon and the discount factor, the beneficial long-term incentives overwhelm any harmful myopic ones, and the incentive problem vanishes.     

Stochastic methods in population forecasting

"This paper presents a stochastic version of the demographic cohort-component method of forecasting future population. In this model the sizes of future age-sex groups are non-linear functions of random future vital rates. An approximation to their joint distribution can be obtained using linear approximations or simulation. A stochastic formulation points to the need for new empirical work on both the autocorrelations and the cross-correlations of the vital rates. Problems of forecasting declining mortality and fluctuating fertility are contrasted. A volatility measure for fertility is presented. The model can be used to calculate approximate prediction intervals for births using data from deterministic cohort-component forecasts. The paper compares the use of expert opinion in mortality forecasting with simple extrapolation techniques to see how useful each approach has been in the past. Data from the United States suggest that expert opinion may have caused systematic bias in the forecasts."