Assessing Preference Change on the US Supreme Court

The foundation upon which accounts of policy-motivated behaviorof Supreme Court justices are built consists of assumptionsabout the policy preferences of the justices. To date, mostscholars have assumed that the policy positions of Supreme Courtjustices remain consistent throughout the course of their careersand most measures of judicial ideology—such as Segal andCover scores—are time invariant. On its face, this assumptionis reasonable; Supreme Court justices serve with life tenureand are typically appointed after serving in other politicalor judicial roles. However, it is also possible that the worldviews,and thus the policy positions, of justices evolve through thecourse of their careers. In this article we use a Bayesian dynamicideal point model to investigate preference change on the USSupreme Court. The model allows for justices' ideal points tochange over time in a smooth fashion. We focus our attentionon the 16 justices who served for 10 or more terms and completedtheir service between the 1937 and 2003 terms. The results arestriking—14 of these 16 justices exhibit significant preferencechange. This has profound implications for the use of time-invariantpreference measures in applied work.     

An experimental study of strategic information transmission

Summary We examine strategic information transmission in an experiment. Senders are privately informed about a state. They send messages to Receivers, who choose actions resulting in payoffs to Senders and Receivers. The payoffs depend on the action and the state. We vary the degree to which the Receivers' and the Senders' preferences diverge. We examine the relationship between the Senders' messages and the true state as well as that between actions and the true state and contrast the ability of different equilibrium message sets to explain the data.When preferences are closely aligned Senders disclose more. We assess two comparative statics: (i) as preferences diverge, state and action are less frequently matched, and (ii) messages tend to become less informative as preferences diverge. The first result is weakly confirmed for adjacent treatments but is considerably stronger when non-adjacent treatments are compared. We find that as preferences diverge messages become less informative. While the ex-ante Pareto-optimal Bayesian Nash Equilibrium does not explain our conditions, the equilibrium message sets supported by the data are similar to the ex-ante Pareto Optimal message sets.We would like to thank seminar participants at the Economic Science Association meetings, the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University and the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory meetings for their comments. We would like to thank Beth Allen, Joyce Berg, Robert Forsythe, Yong-Gwan Kim, Antonio Merlo, Leonard Mirman, In-Uck Park, Charles Plott, Jennifer Reinganum and an anonymous referee for their suggestions. Financial support from the Accounting Research Center at the University of Minnesota is also acknowledge.     

让所得税政策成为国家促进企业自主创新的主动力

当今,企业的自主创新科技开发,不但直接关系到企业的核心竞争力,而且关系到国家经济现代化发展的大局。该文认为,对科技创新型企业,政府对其科技创新资金的投入,运用所得税优惠或减免政策,可以有力地鼓励和支持企业的科技创新活动,并提出了5项具体政策性建议。     

非均衡的经济动态模型

本文旨在按现实世界的本来面目建立一个非均衡的内生经济动态模型。在这个模型中 ,源于部门内和部门间关系的内生变量导致资本市场、消费品市场上产量和价格的波动。市场的非均衡过程、存货调节机制以及经济人的最优行为和适应性行为是基于对现实世界的观察进行模拟的。静态性质及其稳定性是作为一般市场动态过程的特例加以讨论的。     

The Effect of Respondent Experience/Knowledge in the Elicitation of Contingent Values: An Investigation of Convergent Validity,Procedural Invariance and Reliability

Tests of convergent validity and procedural invariance were used to investigate whether individuals lacking direct experience with a commodity can provide valid responses to contingent-valuation questions eliciting ex post use values. Convergent validity between samples with and without experience was shown to hold for dichotomous-choice responses, but not for open-ended responses.     

Strategic Firm Behavior Under Average-Revenue-Lagged Regulation

Price caps have been shown to have incentive properties superior to traditional rate of return regulation. Average-revenue-lagged regulation (ARL) is attractive in that steady-state prices are known to be efficient. We show that the ARL scheme can be manipulated by the firm so as to yield the unregulated global profit maximum. While tests exist that can provide the regulator with evidence of this strategic behavior, we also demonstrate that the unregulated global profit maximum will not be attainable if Laspeyres (L) regulation is employed.Jel classification: L43, L51I would like to thank Michael Crew and an anonymous referee for their extremely helpful suggestions.     

我国生态环境保护和治理的财政政策选择

环境的公共产品性质和外部性，决定了它应该成为政府财政投资的重点。因而财政政策对环境保护和治理的影响极大。从总体上看，我国的财政政策在支持生态环境保护和治理中发挥了重要作用。但由于财政政策在设计上存在着缺陷，致使其在生态环境建设中的支持作用未能完全发挥。基于此，本文提出了完善我国生态环境可持续发展的财政政策建议。     

开拓进取 真抓实干 不断开创西部大开发的新局面

甘肃省三年来实施西部大开发取得了不少成绩。与此同时 ,也总结了一些经验。面对新形势 ,与时俱进 ,关键是要真抓实干 ,狠抓落实 ,不断开创新的局面。首先要用“三个代表”重要思想和十六大精神统一广大干部群众的思想和行动 ,必须抢抓机遇千方百计加快发展 ,必须按照“四新”要求 ,创造性地开展工作 ,必须突出重点 ,整体推进 ,必须坚持“两个务必” ,努力转变作风。     

农业上市公司资本结构与公司业绩的互动效应

资本结构的权衡理论和优序融资理论对资本结构与公司业绩之间关系的预测结论截然相反，大量实证研究也正如理论所揭示的那样没有得出一致的结论。以在我国沪深交易所上市的农业类上市公司为对象，将公司负债资金从性质上做出三种不同细分，运用多元回归分析法，实证研究了不同性质的负债资金和总资产的比率分别与公司业绩之间的相互影响效应，并得出当年公司业绩与上一年公司业绩对当年的资产负债率、短期借款率、有息负债率、无息负债率和流动负债率有显著负向影响，而对长期借款率和长期负债率的影响在统计上不显著等重要结论．     

构建和谐社会:背景与内涵——著名社会学家陆学艺教授访谈录

党的十六届四中全会提出 :“要适应我国社会的深刻变化 ,把和谐社会建设摆在重要位置 ,注重激发社会活力 ,促进社会公平和正义 ,增强社会的法律意识和诚信意识 ,维护社会安定团结。”这里提出的“构建社会主义和谐社会” ,不仅是一个重要的新概念 ,而且更重要的是今后社会主义现代化建设的重要目标。前不久 ,著名社会学家、中国社科院社会学所原所长、中国社会学会会长陆学艺教授来皖出席一个学术会议 ,笔者有幸籍此机会专访了他 ,就“构建和谐社会”提出的背景与其内涵问题请教了这位著名学者。