Effort and Performance: What Distinguishes Interacting and Noninteracting Groups from Individuals?

We study how group membership affects behavior both when group members can and cannot interact with each other. Our goal is to isolate the contrasting forces that spring from group membership: a free‐riding incentive leading to reduced effort and a sense of social responsibility that increases effort. In an environment with varying task difficulty and individual decision making as the benchmark, we show that the free‐riding effect is stronger. Group members significantly reduce their effort in situations where they share the outcome but are unable to communicate. When group members share outcomes and can interact, they outperform groups without communication and individuals. We show that these groups do as well as the best constituent member would have done on his or her own.     

LOCAL TAXATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

"We are most of us profoundly uninterested in municipal affairs." Maud.
T his paper questions the rationale of the South African system of local taxation. It is argued that our system has too narrow a tax base-fixed property-to supply the needs of the modern city; that property taxation is iniquitous in its effects upon taxpayers; and that today it is being applied to finance categories of expenditure for which a tax on property was never intended. Some new thinking is required to devise a system that would supply a closer link between financial requirements and ability to pay.     

2007年东盟国家经济预测

2007年东盟经济增长率将有可能逊于2006年。由于欧美地区经济增速预计放缓，东盟国家对这些地区的出口会因此下降。不过，中国和印度的经济增长及亚洲多个国家国内经济需求和基础设施发展等，将抵消欧美经济放缓对东盟经济所带来的部分；中击，东盟经济仍将保持持续增长。     

与时俱进 艰苦奋斗 实现学校(院)的可持续发展

2002年,中共上海市财贸党校、上海商业职业技术学院实现了超常规、跨越式的发展。2003年,该校(院)将继续以发展作为第一要务,大力推进学校(院)朝集约化内涵式方向发展;以创建示范性高职院校为目标,切实提高教学质量,努力形成高职特色;按照“以人为本”的原则,推进体制创新,积极稳妥地实施人事用工分配制度和教学管理体制改革,以改革促进发展,以改革加强和规范管理,将贯彻“十六大”精神落到实处。