Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature

I survey the literature post Ledyard (Handbook of Experimental Economics, ed. by J. Kagel, A. Roth, Chap. 2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995) on three related issues in linear public goods experiments: (1) conditional cooperation; (2) the role of costly monetary punishments in sustaining cooperation and (3) the sustenance of cooperation via means other than such punishments. Many participants in laboratory public goods experiments are “conditional cooperators” whose contributions to the public good are positively correlated with their beliefs about the average group contribution. Conditional cooperators are often able to sustain high contributions to the public good through costly monetary punishment of free-riders but also by other mechanisms such as expressions of disapproval, advice giving and assortative matching.     

Consumer specialization and the Romantic transformation of the British Grand Tour of Europe

This paper posits that significant changes in 19th century British recreational travel patterns resulted from a change in the manner in which tourists used entertaining stimuli in order to attain pleasure. Consumers no longer merely viewed arousing stimuli, but attempted to use them to produce emotional states of being which they could partially modify to intensify pleasurable feelings (Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain, William Heinemann, 2003). The impetus for this modification stemmed from an increasing awareness that emotional responses could be to some degree self-cultivated, as embodied in the Romantic ethos that become popular at the time via the emergence of the paperback novel and magazine industry (Campbell, The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism, Blackwell, 1987). By learning how to manipulate and modify mental images in a way that may not necessarily correspond with objective reality, Romantic tourists learned to elicit pleasure through engaging of their imagination. Such a change in the mode of pleasure seeking had important long run economic consequences for tourist regions throughout the European continent.     

基于PHP的电子文献资料管理系统

电子文献资料管理是提高企业信息化管理水平、提高管理效率,进而抓住机遇、增强自身实力及竞争力的重要保障。在总结了烟草行业多年的信息管理有效经验的基础上,采用B/S结构,利用PHP技术,实现了对电子文献资料的信息管理与信息挖掘。系统运行表明:该系统能够很好地满足企业对文献资料的存储、查询、分析和共享等需要,使文献资料及时、有效、准确地传递及处理。此系统的建立,大大提高了企业内部文献资料的管理水平。     

国际金融危机与我国先发地区产业转移——以外向型"东莞模式"为例

东莞市作为珠三角的经济先发地区,外向的劳动密集型产业基础强大。随着广东省产业转移战略的铺开,东莞产业发展的资源瓶颈效应和落后产业转移需求也很大,实施产业转移战略迫在眉睫。但是2007年的国际金融危机对东莞经济系统及产业转移战略造成了一定的外部冲击。在这种经济环境和固有的制度背景下,产业转移战略在经济先发地区应该如何推进?本文将以劳动密集型产业集聚的东莞市为例,分析经济先发地区推动产业转移的成效与不足,从而为产业转移这种产业政策的学术研究提供理论依据与实践素材。     

农民专业合作社发展模式的国际比较与启示

农民专业合作社在推动农业发展、促进农民增收,帮助解决"三农"问题等过程中发挥了重要作用。文章在借鉴美、日、欧等发达国家农民合作社发展经验和共同特性的基础上,从不断完善相关的法律法规体系,加大培育力度,扩大经营规模,规范内部管理职能及加强引导扶持,推动产业升级等方面入手,促进我国农民专业合作社的持续健康发展。     

Testing for Regime Changes in Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis

This paper examines whether the efficiency market hypothesis for the Greek sovereign debt holds. As in Blanco et al. (2005) we test the theoretical equivalence of credit default swap (CDS) and spreads that dictates a CI relationship between the two. The main innovation of the present analysis is the use of a threshold vector error-correction (TVECM) model, thus allowing thresholds within the sample covering the period 1990 to 2010. Moreover, by employing this methodology we are able to evaluate the degree and dynamics of transaction costs resulting from various events due to external market imperfections but also domestic factors. The main hypothesis we test is to what extent spreads and CDS are indeed integrated that may result in an efficient and integrated segniorage capital market. Our findings support the gradual integration hypothesis. We find that spreads and CDS are cointegrated, though threshold effects are also revealed in terms of events that have impacted on markets.     

Fiscal Autonomy and Total Government Expenditure: An Austrian Case-study

The ongoing debate on the efficiency of a federal system versus a centralized system has lead to a diverse and unclear empirical picture of the effects of fiscal decentralization on public sector growth. For analyzing these effects it is crucial to consider the sub-national decision power on taxing and spending. In the current paper, we test for the effects of fiscal autonomy on total government expenditure using time series from 1955 to 2007 for Austria. Determinants of government expenditure are economic growth, fiscal illusion of policy makers, and the unemployment rate. We additionally account for different degrees of sub-national fiscal autonomy. Our econometric results suggest that the often-hypothesized dampening effects of fiscal autonomy cannot be corroborated for the Austrian system.     

Under what conditions may social contracts arise? Evidence from the Hanseatic League

Social contractarians commonly take social contracts to be solely hypothetical and refrain from elaborating on the factors that influence the feasibility of the formation of social contracts. In contrast, this paper aims at providing a discussion of the conditions affecting the feasibility of social contracts. I argue that the more aligned the preferences of group members for public goods are, the more the individuals share similar social norms, and the smaller the group is the more feasible a genuine social contract becomes. I provide evidence in support of my contention from the medieval Hanseatic League. At the Hanseatic Kontor in Novgorod, one of the four major trading posts of the Hanseatic League in cities outside of Germany, German merchants agreed to live under the rule of a constitution that gave rise to a political authority for the Kontor society.