Small worlds: Modeling attitudes toward sources of uncertainty

We introduce the concept of a conditional small world event domain—an extension of Savage's [The Foundations of Statistics, Wiley, New York, 1954] notion of a ‘small world’—as a self-contained collection of comparable events. Under weak behavioral conditions we demonstrate probabilistic sophistication in any small world event domain without relying on monotonicity or continuity. Probabilistic sophistication within, though not necessarily across, small worlds provides a foundation for modeling a decision maker that has source-dependent risk attitudes. This also helps formalize the idea of source preference and suggests an interpretation of ambiguity aversion, often associated with Ellsberg-type behavior, in terms of comparative risk aversion across small worlds.     

The effect of gender and race on student performance in principles of economics: the importance of personality type

This article analyses motion picture box-office gross revenue using a cross-section of films from 1997 to 2001. The dependent variable is total domestic box-office revenue. The independent variables investigated include: production budget; peak number of screens that the film was shown on in theaters; Consumer price index for movie tickets; personal income; season and year of the release in theaters; a measure of pre-existing audience; aggregate critic rating; MPAA rating; genre; word-of-mouth recommendation; the presence of popular stars and the award nominations. A distinction is made in the analysis between information available to the public prior to the release of the film in theaters (ex ante) and information available to the public after the film opens in theaters (ex post). Results for the ex ante ordinary least squares (OLS) regression reveal positive impacts of budget, summer and holiday release dates, critical reviews, sequels and several genres on gross revenue. Significant, positive determinants in the ex post OLS regressions include budget, the peak number of screens, sequels, critical reviews, summer and holiday releases, word-of-mouth, award nominations and star power.     

Urban and rural attitudes toward municipal water controls: A study of a semi-arid region with limited water supplies

This study addresses the effectiveness of using pricing mechanisms, government-imposed constraints, or a hybrid, as a means of rationing municipal water. We try to test which policies would be most accepted among rural and urban communities in a semi-arid region of Texas that depend on both surface and groundwater sources for their municipal supplies. This study reveals that a hybrid conservation policy that includes mandatory restrictions, fines for overuse, and pricing increases could be more acceptable, and hence more efficient, than a policy that only consists of regulation. Moreover, there is not a significant dichotomy in policy preferences between rural and urban constituents; although those in rural communities would seem to appreciate far less regulatory policy than would urbanites.     

Migration and marital status: The effect of geographic mobility on the earnings of young women

This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to document for the first time that single women have substantial earnings gains associated with migration. Married women who migrate lose relative to their non-migrant counterparts.     

Moving toward zero: the leader's mandate

Converting to a culture that strives for perfection and accepts no less than zero defects is the work of leadership in health care today. Some cultures are made up of people who believe that average is good enough. The challenge of the leader is to break up those beliefs and embed new models of "Yes We Can." The leader must communicate four very effective messages that must go along with the passion for the work: (a) evidence and "best practice" data trump local, opinion-based beliefs; (b) morphing from an internal view of best practice to a national/international view of practices within and outside health care; (c) transparency; and (d) KISS: "Keep It Simple, Stupid.'     

初次分配效率与公平失衡的“连锁效应”分析

改革开放以来,我国国民收入初次分配呈现高效率,低公平运行状态。这是一种失衡状态,这种失衡将引致一系列连锁反应,对经济运行和社会发展产生不利后果。在初次分配领域之内,初次分配的高效率是一种以低公平为代价所取得的畸形效率,而初次分配低公平是效率提高的制约瓶颈;在初次分配领域之外,初次分配失衡导致再分配公平调节乏力,再分配不能解决初次分配中的低公平问题,从而使得社会整体的公平程度很低;最终对经济和社会发展造成不利影响,使得经济发展出现消费断层和内需不足,并使社会发展面临和谐危机和许多潜在风险。     

Skills associated with employment positions in SMEs and favourable attitudes toward self-employment: Longitudinal evidence from students who participated in the shell technology enterprise programme

Successive British governments have encouraged young people to accumulate skills and attributes that would enable them to obtain jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as develop careers in enterprise. This article evaluates the contribution of the 1994 Shell Technology Enterprise Programme (STEP) that subsidised the placement of students in SMEs. In 1997, responses were gathered from STEP students as well as a control group of non-STEP students. The human capital profiles of students reporting full-time employment positions in smaller private firms as well as those reporting a favourable attitude towards self-employment or business ownership were ascertained. Participation in the programme was not found to be significantly associated with the selected outcomes. Skills and attributes honed by the programme were, however, significantly associated with the selected outcomes. Policy-makers need to appreciate that the skills and attributes reported by students associated with the propensity to obtain employment positions in smaller private firms are not the same as those associated with the propensity to report a favourable attitude towards self-employment or business ownership.     

Languages in the European Union: The quest for equality and its cost

The European Union has recently expanded from 15 to 25 countries, bringing the number of official languages to 20. Currently, the EU extends equal treatment to all member countries’ official languages. This, however, is costly, especially since many Europeans speak one of the procedural languages, English, French or German, either as a native or a foreign language. We develop a simple theoretical model of linguistic-regime choice in a multilingual society and apply the model's insights to the case of the EU: we compute disenfranchisement rates that would result from using only the three procedural languages for all EU business and then proceed to quantify the average cost per person and cost per disenfranchised person associated with providing translations and interpreting into the remaining languages. Both the disenfranchisement rates and costs are shown to vary substantially across the different languages, raising important questions about the economic efficiency of equal treatment for all languages. We argue that an efficient solution would be to decentralize the provision of translations.     

Efficiency,equality, income taxation and the brain drain: A second-best argument

This note conducts a second-best examination of the effect of the brain drain. If the size distribution of income is a welfare objective, lump-sum taxation is unavailable, and an Atkinson-type optimal income tax is used, it is shown that the opportunity to emigrate will create special difficulties for the LDC policy-maker.     

About time: the narrowing gender wage gap in Austria

Empirica - We examine the gender wage gap in Austria from 2005 to 2017 using data from EU-SILC. The raw gap of hourly wages declined from 18.6 log points in 2005 to 14.9 log points in 2017. We use...     

Revisiting the Roots of Japan's Economic Stagnation: The role of the Japanese corporation

For a long period in the 20th century, the development of the Japanese corporation appeared congruent with the development of the Japanese economy. The growth-maximising behaviour of the Japanese corporation and the preference for internal growth over acquisitions (see Odagiri, 1992) appeared to suit the long-term ambitions of Japan. Now, that formerly clear connection between the ambitions of corporate Japan and the Japanese public interest is no longer so clear. Increasingly, the global ambitions of the corporation appear as an impediment to Japan's economic development. By favouring the development of large-scale transnational corporations, Japanese industrial policy-making appears to have contained a fundamental flaw. Japan is now dominated by large-scale organisations with global ambitions, controlled by corporate elites. It is unlikely that their strategic decisions will correspond with the wider public interest, which raises the possibility that Japan is now afflicted with 'strategic failure'. Other examples from around the world suggest that Japan is not unique in this respect. Alternative ways forward are suggested.     

The effect of the timing and spacing of births on the level of labor market involvement of married women

We analyze the effect of the timing and spacing of births on the labor supply of married women in a framework that accounts for the endogeneity of the labor market and fertility decisions, for the heterogeneity of the effects of children on labor supply and their correlation with the fertility decisions, and for the correlation of sequential labor market decisions. Delaying the first birth leads to higher pre-natal levels of labor market involvement and reduces the negative effect of the first child on labor supply. The effect of the second child increases with the spacing of the two births as women, returning to work after the first birth, finance child care time increasingly through reductions in market time. Individual heterogeneity is considerable; women with lower propensity for children have the first birth later in life and space subsequent births more closely together, work more before the birth of the first child, but face larger effects of children on their labor supply.     

居民收入差距扩大的根源

□沈国军改革开放以来,我国从收入分配体制改革入手,进行了渐进式的市场化改革,收入分配关系发生了重大变化。传统体制下名义上按劳分配,实际上绝对平均主义的分配体制已被彻底打破,逐步建立起了以按劳分配为主,按劳分配与按要素分配相结合的分配体制,分配方式和分配渠道日益多样化。收入分配体制的改革,有力地促进了我国经济和社会的发展,居民收入水平显著提高。但是,在居民收入普遍大幅度提高的同时,居民的收入分配差距迅速拉大。收入分配差距问题已逐渐成为制约我国经济发展和社会稳定的一个重要问题,因此,正确认识并分析我国居民收入分…     

Unit Roots and Cointegration Analysis: The Impact on Empirical Analysis in Economics

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the impacts of the theoretical literature relating to unit roots and cointegration on empirical analysis in economics. The results of a survey of time-series-related empirical papers in seven journals in 1995 indicate that about 40 per cent and 30 per cent of papers include tests for unit roots and cointegration , respectively. In testing for unit roots, the Augmented Dickey- Fuller procedure is clearly the most commonly used test. In testing for cointegration, the closely related Engle-Granger procedure is the most commonly used test but its dominance is not as pronounced.     

当前金融危机的根源及启示探析:一种马克思主义的视角

对于当前全球性金融危机产生的原因,中外学者有不同的见解;有的从技术层面或运行层面或监管层面去解释,有的从体制层面或制度层面去解释,都有各自的道理。但从深层次的根源上说,这次金融危机并未超越马克思关于经济危机的理论逻辑,其根源依然是由资本主义基本矛盾引发的。我国应对此次金融危机,首先要坚持和发展中国特色社会主义,抵制和消除新自由主义对我国的影响;其次要重视虚拟经济与实体经济的结合;再次要减少我国过高的外贸依存度;最后要防止金融与经济危机危害的继续扩大,加强对虚拟经济的有效监管。     

Meeting Maastricht: Nominal convergence of the new member states toward EMU

This paper estimates whether the new member states (NMS) that joined the EU in 2004 have achieved a form of inflation and long-term interest rate convergence. Using quarterly data from the mid-1990s, convergence is evaluated through a series of unit root and cointegration tests. Both univariate and panel tests are performed, including tests for a large number of combinations of inflation and interest rates satisfying the Maastricht inflation and long-term interest rate criteria. It is generally found that nominal convergence in inflation has been attained among the NMS. There is, however, less evidence of convergence in long-term interest rates. Possible exceptions include Estonia and the Czech Republic and, to a lesser extent, Slovakia which has since joined the euro area. There is also a large degree of consistency between the various unit root and cointegration tests in both the univariate and panel variations.     

浅析会计信息失真的文化根源及其对策

会计信息失真几乎是所有的企业都需要面对的问题。造成企业会计信息失真的原因很多,我们着重分析导致会计信息失真的执行主体———人的因素和造成信息失真文化根源以及解决这方面问题的治理措施。造成中国会计信息失真的重要原因在于作为会计制度执行主体的人的因素,而人的思想观念又无时无刻不受各自民族文化的影响,中华传统文化对中国会计人员的思维方式、处世方式和行为方式的影响是深刻的,其负面影响是造成中国会计信息失真现象的文化根源所在。就此提出了解决会计信息失真问题的有关对策。     

From equality to inequality: The Diamond–Sen criticism of Harsanyi's criterion of social justice

It is difficult to resolve conflicts of interests even in a society consisting of identical persons. Such an issue has been perceived as a serious difficulty posed to Harsanyi's axiomatic utilitarianism by Diamond's critique which Sen seemed to approve. Recent treatments tried to resolve this criticism by modifying Harsanyi's analytical framework so as to render it immune to Diamond's view about fairness. This paper shows that Diamond's view of fairness may be read as a simple form of Rawls' justice as fairness; and hence its clash with Harsanyi's social welfare criterion reflects the Harsanyi–Rawls debate about social justice. Sen's position on the debate is also discussed. In the case where individual preferences share some common characteristics in the manner described in Harsanyi's 1955 axiomatization of utilitarianism, various conceptions of equal treatment of equals are possible. To each of these conceptions corresponds a specific social welfare function, and there is no way to find which one is the best, from the scientific or ethical points of view.