Trees and decisions

Summary. The traditional model of sequential decision making, for instance, in extensive form games, is a tree. Most texts define a tree as a connected directed graph without loops and a distinguished node, called the root. But an abstract graph is not a domain for decision theory. Decision theory perceives of acts as functions from states to consequences. Sequential decisions, accordingly, get conceptualized by mappings from sets of states to sets of consequences. Thus, the question arises whether a natural definition of a tree can be given, where nodes are sets of states. We show that, indeed, trees can be defined as specific collections of sets. Without loss of generality the elements of these sets can be interpreted as representing plays. Therefore, the elements can serve as states and consequences at the same time.Received: 23 January 2003, Revised: 2 November 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D70. Correspondence to: Klaus RitzbergerWe are grateful to Larry Blume, Ariel Rubinstein, Jörgen Weibull, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants at the universities of Vienna, Salamanca, and Heidelberg for helpful comments. Financial support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under project P15281 is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Reinforcing the Link Between Contributions and Pensions: The Effect of the Population Aging

In this paper, we analyze a majority voting process on the earnings-related part of pension benefits in a Social Security system with flexible retirement. We show that the aging of the population may make it easier to implement one of the proposed reforms to achieve a delay in the average retirement age of workers, to reinforce the link between contributions and pensions.     

中美审计结果公告制度实施环境的比较及启示

审计结果公告在发达国家是一种通行做法,近年来我国也颁布了相关的法律法规,但完整的审计结果公告制度尚未建立。审计结果公告制度的建立是一个系统工程,受政府信息公开程度、审计模式、审计规范体系等环境因素的影响和制约。文章从以上环境因素着手,分析比较了中美审计结果公告制度的异同,以期对我国审计结果公告制度建立和健全提供参考。     

Cultural Inertia and Uniformity in Organizations

We analyze aspects of the structure of organizational culture.We show that old and culturally uniform organizations are proneto cultural inertia, that is, they are reluctant to adopt adifferent culture in response to a change in the environment.Cultural uniformity can be beneficial because the associatedinertia ex post protects and therefore ex ante encourages culture-specificinvestments by agents. We also explore the model's implicationsfor such issues as cultural uniformity within an organization,cultural heterogeneity across organizations, the destabilizingeffect of growth and mergers, and the conflicts arising in themanagement of culture.     

第三方物流服务商开展电子商务的竞争策略研究

通过对我国第三方物流服务商开展电子商务的SWOT分析,提出了其利用电子商务整合企业资源,实现整个供应链最优化从而获得竞争优势的策略。     

论转型期中国的"两栖人"现象

随着中国经济和政治体制改革的深入,社会成员的结构发生了重大变化,在阶层分化的过程中出现了特有的“两栖人”现象。本文指出了在改革初期和世纪之交两个阶段分别出现的“两栖人”现象的实质,以及这种现象对社会的影响,最后提出了解决这一问题的思路与对策。     

我国制造业西移的成因和对策建议

实施西部大开发战略以来,西部地区的制造业出现了崛起的新迹象。但如果对西部大开发战略实施过程中的一些步骤、政策的设计或处理失当,尤其是对刚刚出现的制造业西移的现象关注不够,就会在实施中产生一些消极的影响,还会阻碍西部大开发战略的顺利实施。因此,加强对我国制造业西移现象的研究将成为一个迫切的任务。     

Strategic Environmental Standards, Wage Incomes and the Location of Polluting Firms

The purpose of this paper is tostudy how the choice of environmental standardsby governments is affected by the existence ofwage incomes when firms locations areendogenous. In developed countries labor isunionized, which allows positive wage incomesto arise. Thus, each government has incentivesto persuade firms to locate in its countrysince social welfare depends on suchincomes. But, as pollution damages theenvironment, each government will only try toattract polluting firms to thecountry, to obtain the wage incomes, whenthe valuation of environmental damage showsthat it is low.     

工业园区绿色招商指标评价体系研究

本文分析了目前国内招商引资中出现的问题，提出了综合考虑投资环境和扫商要求的工业园区绿色招商及其评价指标体系，给出了相应的评价方法、同时对苏州工业围区的绿色招商水平作了具体评价。     

中国上市公司债权对公司绩效影响的实证研究

关于债权的治理效应，代理成本理论和控制权理论都认为，企业资本结构中一定的负债有利于公司治理效率的提高。本文以2002～2004年度沪市上市公司为样本（样本总量为2284组数据），对我国上市公司的债权治理效率进行了实证分析。结果表明，我国上市公司负债对其绩效有重要影响：债权比例与公司绩效在统计上呈显著的负相关关系，即上市公司的负债比例越大，其绩效也会越差，公司绩效与负债还存在着显著的二次关系，当资产负债率（DAR）为21．79％时，若其他条件不变时，债权对公司绩效促进作用最大，超过这一比例，债权与公司绩效呈负相关。本文对这一结果进行了原因分析，并提出了政策建议。