Intergovernmental competition for donations: The case of the Furusato Nozei program in Japan

This paper shows that municipalities compete excessively for donations under a unique program called Furusato Nozei (Tax payment to hometown) in Japan. Under the program, people make donations to their favorite municipalities and municipalities that have received donations give reciprocal gifts in return. This causes governments to compete for donations by setting “return rates” — the value of a gift as a percentage of the donation received. Our estimates show that, in the most likely case, this competition reduces net revenue by at least 7.5% compared to when the municipalities do not compete for donations.     

The Two Faces of Adam Smith

Adam Smith's two major works are based on apparently contradictory themes in human nature: noncooperative self-interest and other-regarding sympathy. These views are not contradictory if we distinguish impersonal market exchange and personal exchange. Noncooperative behavior in the former maximizes the gains from exchange, the basis of specialization and wealth creation. Cooperative behavior in personal exchange is based on reciprocity—trading gifts, favors, and assistance across time—which maximizes the gains from social exchange. That people can be both cooperative and noncooperative is corroborated in laboratory experiments and is postulated to stem from a self-interested propensity for exchange in markets and friendships.     

中国文化价值观对礼物馈赠行为的影响研究

我国是一个讲究礼尚往来的国家,礼品市场有着巨大的市场容量和增长空间。但目前学界对我国礼品消费行为的研究还很缺乏,文章分析了"礼"、"人情"、"面子"、"报"、"关系"等这些独特的本土文化价值观对礼物馈赠行为的影响,提出了一个礼物馈赠的研究模型,实证研究的结果表明:关系对中国人的礼物馈赠行为有最大的影响力,维护和拓展关系网是礼物馈赠行为的最大驱动力,同时面子也是支配中国人礼物馈赠行为的重要心理因素。     

夏威夷农产品礼物篮的消费者偏好分析——对于广州购买者的问卷研究

文章使用广州的调研数据，采用联合分析方法研究了消费者对于高价值、夏威夷生产的食品礼物篮的偏好。我们计算了相对重要性指标衡量消费者对礼物篮属性的评价。研究得到了三点结论：（1）食品和容器应为“夏威夷制造”，从而使得消费者愿意支付高的价格；（2）企业消费者一般不愿意为礼物篮支付高的价格；（3）个人消费者愿意支付高价格的奎阿相思木礼物篮。这说明一个新兴的高消费阶层在中国出现。     

夏威夷农产品礼物篮的消费者偏好分析——对于广州购买者的问卷研究

文章使用广州的调研数据,采用联合分析方法研究了消费者对于高价值、夏威夷生产的食品礼物篮的偏好.我们计算了相对重要性指标衡量消费者对礼物篮属性的评价.研究得到了三点结论:(1)食品和容器应为"夏威夷制造",从而使得消费者愿意支付高的价格;(2)企业消费者一般不愿意为礼物篮支付高的价格;(3)个人消费者愿意支付高价格的奎阿相思木礼物篮.这说明一个新兴的高消费阶层在中国出现.     

对等原则与最惠国待遇原则互逆共生

最惠国待遇原则是多边贸易体制的基石,WTO缔约方依据该原则而非歧视、无条件、自动地享有另一方给予第三方的优惠待遇,无须提供同等利益交换.美国近年来则积极推行对等原则,并以达成区域及双边协定、采取单边措施作为践行对等原则的突破口,要求各国享有优惠待遇必须付出同等对价,向WTO提出了巨大挑战.但是,对等原则与最惠国待遇原则之间的冲突是被过度放大的:对等原则不仅指美国片面强调的特定对等、完全对等、绝对对等,还包括与最惠国原则紧密共通的扩散对等.通过比较研究两项原则的真实含义、发展轨迹及实效优弊,中国可以全面认识二者互逆共生的实践关系,审慎接纳、有序践行特定对等,进而与各国一同坚守无条件最惠国待遇,巩固并扩大多边贸易体制来之不易的历史成果.     

民主的普适性与中国式民主的可能性——兼与景跃进教授商榷

景跃进教授强调民主具有特殊性,因而难以简单地普遍适用于各个国家。本文部分地赞同这种观点,但反对因此否认民主是一种普适价值。文章认为不能因为民主的特殊性而否认其普适性。中国式民主是一种新型民主模式。在接受民主普世价值的前提下,大力建设中国式民主,是推进我国政治文明建设的正确选择。     

Strategic interaction between inter vivos gifts and housing acquisition

This paper models the interdependence of parental inter vivos gifts and children’s home purchases when informal care affects decision making. We use data from Japanese households who purchased a detached house in an urban area to test this strategic interaction. Considering both censoring and endogeneity of inter vivos gifts, which are identified by information on formal care, our preferred results demonstrate that inter vivos gifts do not significantly increase the purchase price of housing. Theory suggests that this occurs when informal care tends to be a heavy burden for children. However, subsample analysis of young home buyers indicates that the empirical results are consistent with the literature: children who receive parental gifts tend to purchase a higher-priced dwelling. One potential explanation is that relatively young adult children are less likely to take charge of care obligations, and accordingly, parental gifts are only expected to relax their liquidity constraints. Subsample analysis appears to indicate that the underlying motivation of parental gifts is influenced by the timing of children’s home purchase decisions.     

Individual characteristics and the demand for reciprocity in trade liberalization: Evidence from a survey in Japan

Reciprocity is an important concept in international trade negotiations. However, we know little about who demands reciprocity in trade liberalization. This paper characterizes reciprocitarians based on a survey of 10,816 individuals in Japan. Workers in protected sectors tend to demand reciprocity in import liberalization, but oppose the demand for foreign countries to open their markets. In contrast, individuals in managerial occupations tend to demand foreign market opening, but reject the idea of no import liberalization without reciprocity. We also examine the effects of education, nationalism, and risk aversion.     

Does villager social capital hinder poverty targeting? Evidence from poverty-stricken county of Western China

Poor targeting performance is a common concern in the increasingly implemented decentralized targeted antipoverty programs in developing countries. Different from previous literature that focuses on targeting errors caused by elite capture, we explore the role of villager social capital as a whole in poverty targeting in the context of China's Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) policy. The empirical analysis uses a unique census-type data from three administrative and seventeen natural villages in the poverty-stricken county in Western China in 2017. Villager social capital is measured by a proxy index by combing reciprocity, support time, gift expenses, and political connection of villagers. We verify that the villager with rich villager social capital is more likely to be a beneficiary of TPA by using instrumental variable estimation. The nonpoor can mobilize their higher level of social capital than the poor to capture the beneficiary quotas that should be allocated to the poor, resulting in mistargeting. Such effect persists after controlling political elite capture effects. The findings point out villager social capital is the root cause of poor targeting in decentralized targeting programs in rural China and also lend new support from China to the classic debate on social capital is not the capital of the poor.     

Reciprocity information and wage personalization

This paper considers a modified principal-agent environment, where principals can use personalized offers based on agents' reciprocity-related information. With such information, principals can either impose stronger financial incentives or try to “trigger” agents' positive reciprocity by offering a higher fixed rate. Theory suggests that principals who believe in agents' reciprocity would personalize offers so that reciprocal agents increase their effort beyond the self-regarding benchmark. Using a lab experiment, we test the behavior of principals and agents. Our experimental market witnesses significant wage personalization when reciprocity information is available. However, agents' effort levels and principals' payoffs are lower under wage personalization, compared with the sessions where principals cannot personalize offers. Our structural analysis shows that, under wage personalization, agents expect higher fixed wages and reciprocate higher wages less. Information about agents' individual reciprocity is more correlated with the expected wages, rather than the strength of reciprocity toward higher or lower wages. Principals grant higher fixed wages to workers with lower wage expectations, but because principals cannot personalize offers effectively according to the strength of reciprocity, the performance of wage personalization is limited.     

HOW DO POOR RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN MYANMAR COPE WITH SHOCKS? COPING STRATEGIES IN A FISHING AND FARMING VILLAGE IN RAKHINE STATE

This paper examines how poor rural households in Myanmar cope with shocks which incur unexpected expenditure, namely, the sickness or death of a household member, using data collected in a fishing and farming village in Myanmar in 2008. The paper analyzes the sequence of coping strategies and the background factors behind the sequence. Self‐insurance, the dissaving of assets or cash, is given priority over intra‐party strategies, such as loans or gifts. The reason for this lies in the persistent severe credit constraints faced by households, both in terms of access and cost (high level of interest rates), and the absence of strong social norms for mutual insurance in the community. Both factors appear to force these households to self‐insure themselves from the outset.     

论清代回族学者刘智的友谊观

刘智是清代著名的回族译著家,在对待友谊的问题上,也具有独特的观点,其友道既保持了伊斯兰宗教思想的本质,也借鉴了儒家友谊观的精华思想,既重视友谊成己成人的作用和价值,也强调德行在择友过程中的重要性。其友道中对如何交朋友以及怎样对待朋友都表达了非常有价值的观点,对当前构建和谐社会良好的人际关系具有重要的借鉴意义。     

企业内部人际关系绿化的内在动因分析

由于人性恶或者关系主义思想的泛滥,企业内部人际关系出现了沙化的现象：人际关系荒漠化、小丘化、流体化,为此,我们应该加强对人际关系的治理,将它建设成为一种互惠互利的关系、节约型的关系、凝聚型的关系、增值型的关系,使人际关系得以真正“绿化”起来,发挥人际关系对企业的积极促进作用。     

Debt issuance incentives and creative accounting: Evidence from municipal mergers in Japan

Creative accounting has been a considerable problem in the field of governance and has caused serious economic issues. However, how governments determine the scale of creative accounting is unknown in the existing literature.We study whether a difference in the usage and the scale of creative accounting is determined by the intensity of the incentive to issue excessive debt. To study this, we focus on municipal mergers, a well-known setting wherein smaller merging municipalities have a stronger incentive to enjoy freeriding and issue debt since the debt burden will be shared and mainly owed by larger merging municipalities. This setting enables us to use the relative population size as a continuous treatment representing the strength of debt issuance incentives, whereas existing papers focused on binary treatments. Utilizing the data of Japanese municipal mergers, we find that governments with small relative populations, which have a strong debt issuance incentive, employed creative accounting more intensively than others. Moreover, we investigate how governments used the money obscured through creative accounting for the first time and find that it was not used to overcome financial difficulties nor increase politicians’ pecuniary gains but to increase resident welfare.     

Social Capital and the Environment

For as long as people have managed natural resources, they have engaged in collective action. But development assistance has paid too little attention to how social and human capital affects environmental outcomes. Social capital comprises relations of trust, reciprocity, common rules, norms and sanctions, and connectedness in institutions. Recent years have seen remarkable advances in group formation, with in the past decade some 408,000–478,000 groups emerging with 8.2–14.3 million members in watershed, irrigation, microfinance, forest, and integrated pest management, and for farmers' research. A new typology describes the evolution of groups through three stages, and indicates what kinds of policy support are needed to safeguard and spread achievements.     

运用高新技术对安徽传统产业进行改造的思考

随着生产力的发展 ,劳动的主体发生了从活劳动到死劳动到科学技术的演变 ,从而形成商品价值的主源泉也发生变化 ;衡量劳动的新标准是活劳动创造价值 ,死劳动创造和转移价值 ;坚持劳动价值论须承认生产要素的劳动化 ;劳动价值补偿形式是按要素分配。     

Controls and Cooperation in Interactive and Non‐Interactive Settings

Prior research finds that controls that induce cooperation among collaborators on a project increase trust, and that this increased trust increases subsequent cooperation among collaborators. We extend this work by investigating how controls influence cooperative behavior in two settings. The first is an interactive setting where people work together and can benefit from each other's work. The second is a non‐interactive setting where people do not work together directly but where behavior can be observed. We propose that because controls are likely to engender greater trust and reciprocity in interactive settings than in non‐interactive settings, the effect of controls on future cooperative behavior will be greater for controls in interactive settings than for controls in non‐interactive settings. We find that controls in both settings increase future cooperative behavior, but the effect is significantly greater in interactive settings (where reciprocity and trust are more likely to develop). Furthermore, this increased cooperation is observed in an uncontrolled task, suggesting that the control fosters trust in others rather than trust in the control. These findings suggest that the benefits of controls are more substantial in work environments characterized by extensive teamwork and where employees benefit from each other's work.     

The character of the real man and the symbolic meanings in the old man and sea

在海明威写的《老人与海》中，我们能够发现圣地阿哥高度集中了勇敢，自信，坚持不懈等这些性格特征。圣地阿哥从头到尾就像一个打不败的英雄，一直积极乐观，意志力坚强。小说对人物特征的塑造是成功的。海明成使用了“冰山理论”的创作原则。作者就试图以这些象征的物体来表达他对社会的不满。     

基于CiteSpace 的创新链研究综述

运用CiteSpace软件,以1995—2022年中国知网（CNKI）核心期刊和中文社会科学引文索引（CSSCI）期刊为数据源,从热点关键词、发文作者、发文机构以及突现词方面对创新链相关领域文献进行可视化分析。研究发现：有关创新链的研究角度大概可以分为产业、技术、区域、模式和价值链5个方面;从发文特征来看,发文量最多的是张杰,群体内相较于群体间合作较多;从研究机构分布来看,机构间的合作比较分散,且合作大多发生在一个国家或地区;从未来演进趋势来看,文献近期表现为国家政策主导。