The Timing and Strategic Role of Self-Protection

Self-protection has private goods characteristics as it reduces own exposure to pollution given a certain level of pollution. We study the effect of timing self-protection before, after or simultaneously with abatement. We find that self-protection when timed before abatements has strategic effects. In this case self-protection, shifts the second stage subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of abatements such that own contributions of abatement are decreased and those of the other country are increased. Thereby shifting future abatement costs to the other country. When countries cooperate only on abatement, the incentives to shift future abatement costs are greater. Contrary to, intention, cooperation on abatement may in fact worsen environmental quality if it does not include self-protection.     

Self-protection against crime: what do schools do?

Most economic research about self-protection against crime concentrates on self-protection by individuals, households, and stores – private economic agents. We know much less about self-protection in public economic settings, such as by schools; this article takes a step towards learning more. An economic agent who self-protects benefits by reducing vulnerability to crime but incurs self-protection costs whether a victimization occurs or not; should a crime occur, the agent further bears the cost of the victimization itself. The agent, a school administrator in this application, must determine the optimal level of self-protection within this environment. Empirical results obtained using data from the 2004 and 2006 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) show that schools self-protect (use professional security personnel) much in line with theoretical predictions. Among other findings, schools located in larger cities and that have a larger and older student body self-protect more prevalently than other schools, while schools with more academically able students self-protect less than schools with less productive student inputs.     

Insurance,self-protection,and the economics of terrorism

This paper investigates the rationale for public intervention in the terrorism insurance market. It argues that government subsidies for terror insurance have the effect of discouraging self-protection and limiting the negative externalities associated with self-protection. Cautious self-protective behavior by a target can hurt public goods like national prestige if it is seen as “giving in” to the terrorists, and may increase the loss probabilities faced by others by encouraging terrorists to substitute toward more vulnerable targets. We argue that these externalities in protection are essential for normative analysis of government intervention in insurance markets and may also explain why availability problems in this market have engendered much stronger government responses than similar problems in other catastrophe insurance markets.     

Cooperative and noncooperative protection against transferable and filterable externalities

Given self-protection from an undesirable environmental externality, we examine, under several conditions, the efficiency properties of cooperative and noncooperative behavior. We demonstrate that if self-protection can transfer the externality to another agent, then noncooperative behavior will lead to overprotection. If self-protection filters or dilutes the externality, then noncooperation leads to underprotection. In addition, overprotection will worsen if an agent with more relative power is allowed a first-mover advantage or if the damage function is elastic and transferability is uncertain. Finally, a reduction in uncertainty about transferability will accentuate overprotection if the damage function is inelastic. Our results suggest that coordination of protection activities among agents will enhance the overall gains from environmental policy in the European Single Internal Market of 1992. Coordination minimizes the costs of environmental protection, thereby reducing the public credibility of its foes.     

网络外部性、软件保护与软件产业市场结构的关联分析——基于软件商业模式的角度

本文结合软件需求和供给的网络外部性、法律保护和厂商自我保护对软件的供给和需求的影响等,着重分析了软件产业中两种主要的商业模式——Windows模式和Linux模式,并研究了影响软件产业市场结构的因素及市场形成机理。研究结果表明:软件厂商主要通过选择不同的商业模式展开市场竞争,不同商业模式下软件的网络外部性和自我保护程度存在明显差异,这种差异内生了创新成本、获利能力、产品特性等差别化竞争优势,进而对软件产业市场结构的形成产生重要影响。     

“Probability of risk aversion” and other applications of derivatives of the certainty equivalent

“Probability of risk” aversion is principally concerned with reactions to scaling up of probabilities of non-zero values of a non-positive random variable by a common factor. Decreasing probability-of-risk aversion is defined and shown to be equivalent to ordinary risk aversion. Implications of this for insurance are pointed out. The sort of scaling involved is the same as that involved in “self-protection,” and it is shown that, for any expenditure on self-protection, say x, a concave utility function will prefer a coinsurance policy, costing x, which leaves probabilities unchanged, but scales down loss amounts by the same proportion as probabilities are scaled under self-protection. Properties of several comparative concepts of decreasing risk aversion are established. Derivatives of the certainty equivalent (CE) are used to elucidate well-known comparative static results in models of expected utility maximization. Finally, the study proves that concavity of the CE implies convexity of the coefficient of absolute risk aversion and examines the role of curvature of the CE in exploring relationships between properties of risk vulnerability, properness, and standardness.

The impact of prudence on optimal prevention revisited

We re-examine the link between absolute prudence and self-protection activities. We show that the level of effort chosen by an agent with decreasing absolute prudence is larger than the optimal effort chosen by a risk-neutral agent if the degree of absolute prudence is less than a threshold that is utility-independent and empirically verifiable.     

Environmental risk and welfare valuation under imperfect information

Consumers are often uninformed, or unsure, about the ambient level of environmental risk. An optimal policy must jointly determine efficient levels of self-protection, information provision, and public risk mitigation efforts. Unfortunately, conventional welfare measures are not amenable to welfare analysis in the presence of imperfect information. We develop a theoretical welfare measure, called quasi-compensating variation, that is a natural extension of compensating variation (CV). We show that this welfare measure offers not only a money metric of the “value of information,” but also a means to appropriately evaluate the welfare effects of various policies when consumers are imperfectly informed about ambient risk. This welfare measure allows us to obtain a number of results that the traditional CV measure fails to offer. In particular, we show that the consumer’s willingness to pay for a (small) environmental risk reduction is higher for those who underestimate ambient risk than for those who overestimate or are perfectly informed if the marginal return to self-protection increases with ambient risk.     

SOME SALIENT ISSUES RAISED BY THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

The recent global financial crisis has raised a number of important issues. This paper discusses five specific issues: first, macroprudential regulation, an issue related to the cause of the crisis; second, management of economic openness, an issue especially relevant for emerging market economies; third, diverse measures for coping with instability due to capital outflows, for example self-protection through foreign exchange reserve accumulation as well as international and regional cooperation; fourth, the future of the international monetary system, in particular the dollar-centred system; and fifth, the implications of the crisis for the economics profession.     

营造绿色文化 建设生态文明

２１世纪是全新的世纪，这不仅预示着人为在将拥有更多的社会实践成果，以驰示着将有更科学，健康，完善的社会文明。上世纪末，人类已不断接到进入这种文明信号，其中之一便是出现了以和谐的生态价值观和自我保护的机会生存思想为核心的绿色文化。本文针对这一现象，阐明绿色文化的涵义，表现特征，分析营造绿色文化的意义与有利条件，且根据现实状况对这一文化的发展作出积极展望，呼吁社会为营造绿色文化，为建设生态文明作了努力     

关注公寓安全 共建和谐校园

安全、规范、和谐的大学生公寓环境是学校宿舍管理能力和水平的集中体现。大学生公寓的安全管理是管理工作的重中之重。目前,大学生公寓安全管理存在学生及公寓管理人员安全意识淡薄、公寓安全管理体制不健全以及大学生普遍自我防范和自我保护能力差等诸多问题。因此,作为大学生公寓的管理者,加强大学公寓安全管理,应从安全宣传、完善安全监督和考评机制、加强外来人员出入管理、加强大学生安全素质教育以及人性化管理五方面进行,才能真正实现高校公寓安全管理。     

网络视角下战略性新兴产业技术创新小生境演化研究

运用生态学小生境理论分析新兴技术演化和产业技术创新问题是当前的研究焦点。基于网络视角,通过引入期望机制、力量机制和知识机制3个指标维度,将技术创新小生境划分为缺失期、萌发期、胚胎期、原型期、成长期和成熟期6个演化阶段。选取我国内地27个省市自治区新能源汽车产业相关数据,采用社会网络分析法进行实证分析。在确定各地区技术创新小生境演化阶段的同时,归纳出3种技术创新小生境模式,分别为关键技术主导型、科技孵化支撑型和集成创新驱动型。通过进一步对核心技术演化过程进行分析,发现主导、竞争、共生构成了核心技术演化态势。最后,提出了完善自我保护机制、构建协同共生模式和优化创新生存因子的相关政策与建议。     

A portfolio approach to climate investments: CAPM and endogenous risk

Is there a role for investments in climate change mitigation despite low expected return? We use a model of intertemporal expected utility maximisation to analyse this question. Similar to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) the rate of return depends on the correlation of risk between the return on investments in climate change mitigation and the market portfolio, but in contrast to the classical CAPM we admit the fact that economic and environmental systems are jointly determined, implying that environmental risk is endogenous. Therefore, investments in climate change mitigation may reduce risk via self-protection and self-insurance. If risk reduction is accounted for in cost–benefit evaluations, climate investments may be justified despite low expected return. These aspects of climate investments are not, however, communicated via standard cost–benefit analyses of climate policy. Optimal climate policy may therefore be more ambitious than previously considered.     

Storm Damage and Risk Preferences: Panel Evidence from Germany

Individuals’ risk preferences may change after experiencing external socio-economic or natural shocks. Theoretical predictions and empirical studies suggest that risk taking may increase or decrease after experiencing shocks. So far the empirical evidence is sparse, especially when it comes to developed countries. We contribute to this literature by investigating whether experiencing financial and health-related damage caused by storms affects risk preferences of individuals in Germany. Using unique panel data, we find that household heads were more risk-seeking after they experienced storm damage. We do not find evidence of exposure to storm per se (regardless of damage experience), which suggests that household heads have to suffer damage for their risk preferences to be affected. These results are robust across a battery of alternative model specifications and alternative storm damage measures (magnitude of financial damage). We rule out other potential explanations such as health-related and economic shocks. The self-reported storm damage data is broadly confirmed by regional storm damage data provided by the insurance industry. While we cannot identify the channels through which experiencing storm damage affects risk preferences from our data, we suggest and discuss some potential channels. The results may have important policy implications as risk preferences affect, for instance, individuals’ savings and investment behaviour, adoption of self-protection and self-insurance strategies, and technology adoption.     

The problem of the uninsured

The problem of the uninsured cannot be fully understood without considering the role of non-market alternatives to ‘market insurance’ called ‘self-insurance’ and ‘self-protection’ (SISP), including the public ‘health care safety-net’ system. We tackle the problem by formulating a ‘full-insurance’ paradigm that accounts for all four interacting insurance measures. We apply two versions of the full-insurance model to estimate, via calibrated simulations, the impacts of SISP on the fraction of uninsured, health spending, and health levels, and to assess how the mandated Affordable Care Act might affect these outcomes in comparison with the CBO projections in 2010. The results indicate that policy analyses which overlook the role of the real price of market insurance relative to the shadow prices of SISP in determining the decision to insure can grossly distort the capacity of mandated reforms like the ACA to insure the uninsured, contain overall health care costs, and improve health and welfare outcomes.     

会计生态的问题分析及改善对策

会计生态究竟该如何理解,文章提出一己之见。而要解决会计生态在诸多方面所存在的问题,就需要会计需求主体尽快成熟化,会计媒介主体尽快职业化,会计管理主体尽快权威化,会计供给主体尽快规范化,会计客体尽快市场化,会计环境治理尽快完美化。     

Homogeneous middleman groups as superorganisms,endogamous ethnic groups,and trust networks: Reply to comments on Janet Landa’s target article, ‘The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as adaptive units’

This article responds to some of the very valuable comments on my target article (Landa, J Bioeconomics 10(3):259–278, 2008) on homogeneous middleman groups (HMGs) as adaptive units. In addition to viewing HMGs as adaptive units, I discuss the idea of viewing HMGs as superorganisms and as endogamous ethnic groups, as well as re-emphasizing the importance of HMGs as trust networks. My theory of HMGs as adaptive units shares some similarities with biologists’ ‘biological market theory’ of mutualistic interactions between species.      

绿色财富观:生态文明时代人类的理性选择

如果说农业文明社会是以土地资产为主流的财富观,那么工业文明社会则是以有形和无形资产为主流的财富观,而生态文明时代理应是以绿色财富为主流的财富观。本文以生态文明时代为背景,以科学发展观为指导,对绿色财富内涵特征、分类以及构建策略进行了探讨.     

Promoting nursing as a career choice

Fewer young people are considering nursing as a career. This project was designed to present nursing as a viable career option to middle school students. A questionnaire was administered to six classes of middle school students before and after a presentation on nursing as a career. Results showed the presentation improved student attitudes and perceptions toward nursing as a career. Nurses can use this project as a stepping stone to develop additional programs to interest students in nursing as a career before the students discard the notion altogether.     

Modelling Sustainable Consumption. From Theoretical Concepts to Policy Guidelines

Changes in consumption processes have been recognised as important steps towards sustainable development. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of research on sustainable consumption and to sketch new approaches in economic modelling ofsustainable consumption. A special focus is given to the relationship between stocks and flows as well as consumer services as being welfare relevant. From that three different steps of modelling are proposed, where the links between material goods demand and consumer services demand as well as the stock-flow relationship can be made explicit.