The economics of online dating: A course in economic modeling

The author discusses the development of a unique course, The Economics of Online Dating. The course is an upper-level undergraduate course that combines intensive discussion, peer review, and economic theory to teach modeling skills to undergraduates. The course uses the framework of “online dating,” interpreted broadly, as a point of entry, via Paul Oyer's popular economics book Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating. The author then explores an approach to teaching students how to not just solve models, but to create economic models from abstract ideas. This approach to teaching modeling is supported by Albert Bandura's work on self-efficacy as a bedrock pedagogical principle.     

劳动新论

劳动的内涵深奥、复杂,外延很宽泛。笔者首创出三组概念：外化劳动与内化劳动、场内劳动与场外劳动、订制劳动与自主劳动。对劳动过程（价值形成过程）与生产过程、劳动与劳动力,以及工资与利润的性质做了新的阐释,并就劳动（价值）计量问题发表了独特看法。     

Integrating econometrics: A modern undergraduate economics capstone experience

Angrist and Pischke (2017) call for a pedagogical paradigm shift by pointing out that econometrics courses often do not align with modern empirical approaches employed by economists. This article's authors propose a modern capstone experience, designed to address these concerns by integrating econometrics into the traditional capstone approach. They couple a full econometrics course with a traditional capstone course by weaving a cohesive econometrics-heavy research paper through the two courses. They feel this approach addresses the lack of econometrics skills among economics majors while simultaneously making some necessary improvements to undergraduate econometrics content. They hope this article will be a valuable resource for programs changing course requirements or revamping their curriculum to better fit the increasing demand for data analysis skills in the job market.     

Price rigidities and institutional variations in markets with posted prices

Summary An exchange economy with price rigidities and rationing is considered. The rationing systems allowed are very general. Several characterizations of the set of constrained equilibria are given, and new equilibrium existence results are provided. More specifically, well-known properties like the existence of equilibria without rationing of the numeraire commodity, and the existence of supply and demand constrained equilibria without rationing on the market of at least one commodity follow as special cases from the theorems proved. Finally it is shown that the equilibrium correspondence is upper semi-continuous, while it is continuous on a residual set of points. In order to prove these results a new continuity result for the budget correspondence is given.The author would like to thank Dolf Talman, Gerard van der Laan, Jan van Geldrop, and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments on previous drafts of this paper. The author is financially supported by the Cooperation Centre Tilburg and Eindhoven Universities, The Netherlands. This research is part of the VF-program Competition and Cooperation.     

再思社会科学方法论的形式主义与实质主义之争——以经济学的新进展为例

笔者从社会科学方法论中的形式主义与实质主义之争这一古老论题出发,阐明了经济学中的形式主义思想在最近半个世纪的发展是建立细节完全刻画的"全模型",并指出其背后的理念不在于建立普遍规律,而在于形成可以用以启发人们理解经验世界的辅助性认知手段。在澄清全模型方法认识论价值的同时,本文也指出其应用重点不在于形成理想化与意识形态化的叙事,而在于针对局域的经验事实,建立具有确定经验限定意涵的模型化推论,以阐明经验事实背后不易被单纯质性研究阐发的机制。当代经济学方法论显示的这一发展,可以被称为"形式主义经济学的实质主义化",对这一趋势的把握有助于揭示主流经济学独特的认识论价值。     

Teacher Effectiveness and Student Performance

This paper evaluates the effects of using graduate student instructors rather than regular faculty in a macro course. Experienced faculty presumably have a positive effect on student performance, yet graduate instructors appear to be as effective in teaching macro principles. What may be involved are different sets of skills: experienced faculty may have a greater depth of understanding of the material, more self-confidence, and a more critical approach. Graduate instructorS, on the other hand, may be able to grasp what students don't understand, and may make up in enthusiasm and approachability what they lack in understanding.

The author urges using more than one measure of effectiveness in studies of this type because of many things not captured: excitement with the subject, caution in accepting unsupported arguments, a perspective on the economic system, and the like.     

On the uniqueness of subjective probabilities

Summary The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, within the framework of Savage (1954), we suggest axiomatic foundations for the representation of event-dependent preference relations over acts. This representation has the form of expectation of event-debendent utility with respect to non-unique subjective probabilities on the set of states. Second, we give an economic-theoretic motivation for selecting a unique probability distribution as an appropriate concept of subjective probabilities. However, unlike in Savage's theory, this notion of subjective probabilities does not necessarily represent the decisions-maker's belief regarding the likelihood of events.Our approach involves a departure from Savage's postulate P4, which guarantees the completeness of Savage's likelihood relation on the set of all events. Instead, we assume the existence of a finite partition of the set of states, {S ₁,...S _n}, such that, for events within each element of this partition P4 is satisfied. This weakening of Savage's axioms suffices for the existence of an expected event-dependent utility representation, but not for the uniqueness of the subjective probabilities.In many economic problems involving decision-making under uncertainty the existence of a unique probability is presumed and, in fact, is essential for the statement of the result. An example is Arrow's (1965) finding that all risk averse decision-makers will invest in a risky asset provided its expected rate of return exceeds that of an alternative risk-free asset. We show that a unique probability distribution can be chosen so as to render such results meaningful. Namely, any risk averse decision-maker will hold a positive position in the risky asset if and only if its expected rate of return with respect to the chosen probability exceeds that of the riskless asset.The research described in this paper began while the authors visited the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, Germany. It was carried out in part while the second author visited the Santa Fe Institute in Sante Fe, New Mexico, USA and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. The second author would also like to acknowledge the financial support by NSF grant 911873.     

十九、二十世纪之交的上海公共租界城市 公园功能变迁研究

在中、英、美、澳、法等国第一手档案资料的基础 上，旨在走出“植入”中国“西方公园”的框架，从租界社会 出发探讨我国近代社会背景下公园功能的生发演变，增进对我 国近代园林史及公园现代化的理解。通过历时性的对比分析， 指出在租界建设初期，公共租界内的公园主要作美化环境的休 闲绿地来使用。随着19、20世纪之交数年间上海租界社会和 人口结构的变化以及国际港口海洋贸易网络的形成，这些公园 开始展示出“公共健康”“体育运动”及“儿童活动”等方面 的功能，并最终成为复合的城市景观。     

Endogenously determined price rigidities

Summary There exists an extensive literature about economies with price rigidities, where some constraints on the set of admissible price systems are exogenously given. In this paper a general equilibrium model extended by a political system is described where the price rigidities are endogenously chosen by political candidates. Sufficient conditions for the existence of a mixed strategy and a pure strategy equilibrium are given. Finally an example is discussed, where in equilibrium both political candidates propose price rigidities excluding the Walrasian equilibrium price system.The author would like to thank Dolf Talman, Pieter Ruys, Jan van Geldrop, and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments on previous drafts of this paper. The author is financially supported by the Cooperation Centre Tilburg and Eindhoven Universities, The Netherlands. This research is part of the VF-program Competition and Cooperation.     

Thomas Jefferson on the repudiation of public debt

Thomas Jefferson's theory of public debt repudiation illustrates both the normative and positive aspects of public debt repudiation. Using Jefferson's model, this paper attempts to reveal several characteristics of public debt repudiation. First, that the positive characteristics of repudiation can not be analyzed apart from the normative and institutional issues. Second, how a debt repudiation rule might be incorporated into a country's constitution and, finally, how such a rule may lead to an improvement of the country's credit terms over those that would exist otherwise. In other words, a country may be better off announcing its standards for repudiation then if it denied any intention to repudiate under any conditions. A related issue, which is beyond the scope of this paper, is the sufficient conditions for repudiation. Jefferson's model develops only the necessary conditions. I would like to thank J. Richard Aronson, Wayne Brough, Dean Crawshare, James Dearden, Kenneth Greene, Vince Munley, the anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the 1990 Public Choice Society meetings and at Lehigh University for helpful comments and suggestions. Of course, the author is responsible for any errors. The author is grateful to The Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise which supplied research support.     

Sharpen your bargaining skills

As the health-care revolution continues, bargaining skills have become more crucial for doctors than ever before. If you want your practice to thrive, you must regularly negotiate with colleagues, practice administrators, allied health professionals, managed-care plans, business groups, hospitals, and the government. Yet medical schools and residency programs devote little if any time to negotiating skills. The "golden days," when physicians could afford to be mavericks, are over. Doctors must develop a new collaborative outlook to be successful and happy in their careers, says Leonard J. Marcus, Ph.D., lead author of the book "Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving conflict to Build Collaboration." He and his co-authors often conduct seminars for health professionals on improving bargaining skills. The following excerpt concerns the role of conflict in negotiation, and how to resolve it.     

对应用写作与应用写作课价值的再认识

基于应用文及其写作与当代人们的社会实践间的关系,本文从新的视角论述了应用文及其写作的价值。即应用文是组织传播的重要载体,是保障组织生存与发展的重要手段;应用文及其写作是现代人应具备的一项基本素质,是个人创业和成功的必备技能之一。从新的视角论述了《应用写作》课的价值,即其是培养大学生基本素质与基本能力的课程,可促进学生对其它课程的学习与研究,有助于培养大学生思考问题、解决问题的能力。     

A Note on Attitude as a Factor in Learning Economics

Although one might naturally assume that students interested in economics will learn more in an introductory course than those not interested in the subject, this assumption had to be tested. Using a specially designed “Questionnaire on Student Attitude Toward Economics” on a pretest and posttest basis, and accounting for previous course work, the student's verbal and quantitative skills, and student program requirements, Karstensson and Vedder employed linear multiple regression analysis and found a positive relationship between precourse attitude and course grade. Changes in student attitude which occurred during the course were also analyzed.     

Component efficient solutions in line-graph games with applications

Recently, applications of cooperative game theory to economic allocation problems have gained popularity. We investigate a class of cooperative games that generalizes some economic applications with a similar structure. These are the so-called line-graph games being cooperative TU-games in which the players are linearly ordered. Examples of situations that can be modeled like this are sequencing situations and water distribution problems. We define four properties with respect to deleting edges that each selects a unique component efficient solution on the class of line-graph games. We interpret these solutions and properties in terms of dividend distributions, and apply them to economic situations. This research has been done while the third author was visiting Tinbergen Institute at the Free University, Amsterdam. The research is part of the Research Programme “Strategic and Cooperative Decision Making” at the Department of Econometrics. Financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) in the framework of the Russian-Dutch programme for scientific cooperation, is gratefully acknowledged. The third author also appreciates partial financial support from the Russian Leading Scientific Schools Fund (grant 80.2003.6) and Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund (grant 02-02-00189a). We thank three anonymous referees for their valuable comments.     

Computer knowledge and earnings: evidence for Australia

This paper uses data on wage and salary workers in Australia in 1993 to examine the relation between computer knowledge and earnings. A unique feature of the data set that is used is detailed information on the types and levels of computer skills possessed by individual workers. The main objectives of the study are to contribute to understanding the magnitude and sources of the relation between computer knowledge and earnings. Similar to existing research it is found that there is a large and significant return to computer knowledge, but that the magnitude of the return is substantially reduced in regressions that include detailed occupation controls. Using the detailed information on workers’ computer skills the main finding is that earnings are significantly positively related to the number of types of skills and average level of skills possessed by a worker.     

心理资本理论及其最新研究进展

心理资本是除人力资本和社会资本之外又一对组织竞争优势起重要作用的资源,在文献研读的基础上,文章对不同学者有关心理资本的概念、构成要素和测量方法进行了剖析和评述,重点分析了与心理资本相关的实证研究及心理资本管理和干预的方法,最后对心理资本理论及其实证研究的未来做出了展望。     

One size doesn’t fit all: A project designing small-scale economic development projects

The authors describe an innovative active learning strategy for a course on the economics of developing countries—a project designing a small-scale economic development project. Student teams research issues faced by developing countries and identify a specific problem in a specific locale. Students then create a detailed, feasible plan to alleviate the problem. Student plans include five key components: justification, implementation, budget, funding and evaluation. After having implemented this project for six years, the authors believe it has the potential to enhance learning and improve analytical, creative problem-solving and research skills. Results from a spring 2017 survey, where students respond favorably to the project, are discussed.     

社区创业工程的开发模式

以中加国际合作项目“自雇型企业创业培训”为背景,运用系统工程的原理与方法,开发了适合我国下岗失业者等弱势群体创业的生存型创业模式,即社区创业工程。经过4年的应用实践,这种以社区为活动中心,以培训和指导下岗失业者创建自雇型企业为基本内容,以政府小额贷款、企业项目合作为基本支持的社区创业工程,有助于使一部分具有创业能力的失业者成为创业型就业者,能够创造就业岗位,将社会性失业问题部分地消化在社区、解决在社区。给出了社区创业工程的概念与总体设计思路、系统的节点与任务、系统运行的机理和系统良性运行的体制与制度保证等内容。     

Tweeting Your Way to Improved #Writing, #Reflection,and #Community

Economics appears to be lagging behind other fields in the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. Twitter is an online microblogging utility, permitting posts of up to 140 characters called tweets. The utility is rapidly making its way into secondary and post-secondary classrooms as a complement to traditional instruction and an active learning tool. In this article, the author describes how Twitter was employed as a complement to traditional lecture in a small macroeconomics principles course (the instrument is applicable to courses at any level). The brevity of the tweets forces students to express their thoughts concisely and is believed to develop reflection and writing skills while expanding the class community.