城镇居民消费需求结构变化的线性分析

近年来，居民消费需求结构发生较大变化，该变化的政策含义包括：第一，应该重视对教育和医疗保健消费的引导和培养；第二，采取措施增加居民可支配收入；第三，提高社会保障水平，采取措施缩小收入分配差距，减少人们对未来收入和就业的不确定性等等。     

»Informational Utility«

The experiment examined factors that influence the selective exposure to media information. Earlier research has shown that dimensions of the informational utility model — magnitude of perceived consequences, perceived likelihood of their materialization, and perceived immediacy — govern selective news exposure. This approach is extended by the dimension of efficacy to predict the recipients’ selection of information. In an experimental procedure, two online newsmagazines with either positive or negative news only were presented. The 2x3x2 design varied efficacy (low vs. high), the established information utility dimensions (magnitude, likelihood, and immediacy) and the level of their intensity (low vs. high). Findings show that efficacy, as well as the established utility dimensions, foster the selection of news in recipients. The impacts of the dimensions is additive and applies to both positive and negative news.     

从化解高储蓄的角度谈消费的扩大--参加"首届中国经济论坛"有感

本文根据扩展的线性支出系统ELES计算得到,城镇居民储蓄倾向呈现逐步增强的趋势。引起居民储蓄倾向提高的原因包括:居民预防性储蓄动机增强、财富向高收入阶层聚集、财产性等收入占可支配收入的比例低、住房等消费品价格过高等。本文认为应该通过多种措施化解高储蓄,促进消费并带动经济和社会的和谐发展。一是要提高贫困线并增加对低收入者的转移支付;二是要提高社会保障水平;三是要培育教育和文化等消费热点;四是要抑制医疗和住房等价格的过快增长。     

R&D profitability: the role of risk and Knightian uncertainty

This paper provides the first empirical attempt of linking firms’ profits and investment in R&D revisiting Knight’s (Risk, uncertainty and profit, Hart, Schaffner & Marx, Boston, 1921) distinction between uncertainty and risk. Along with the risky profit-maximising scenario, identifying a second, off-setting, unpredictable bias that leads to heterogeneous returns to R&D investments is crucial to fully understand the drivers of corporate profits. Consistently with the Knightian theory that relates risk to profitability, we model the impact of risk and uncertainty on profits and provide a first empirical attempt to model the effect of ambiguity, a particular type of uncertainty, on R&D returns.     

Guided Tour Influence on Cruise Tourist Experience in a Port of Call: An eWOM and Questionnaire‐Based Approach

The study aims at exploring the importance of guided tours in cruise tourists experience while visiting a port of call and analyzing qualitative (electronic word of mouth from Tripadvisor) and quantitative (personal interviews with tourists) data. The results obtained from the electronic word of mouth analysis suggest that taking a guided tour is a highly satisfactory and sentimentally positive experience for the cruise tourist. Moreover, the empirical findings revealed that taking a guided tour has a moderating effect on (1) the interaction between destination image–satisfaction, (2) the satisfaction–loyalty causal relationship and (3) the destination image formation process regarding the infrastructure and atmosphere, and tourism resources image dimensions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fertility,Female Labor Supply,and Family Policy

The present paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium model for Germany in order to study the impact of public policy on household labor supply and fertility decisions. Starting from a benchmark equilibrium which reflects the current German family policy regime we introduce various reforms of the tax and child benefit system and quantify the consequences for birth rates and female labor supply. Our simulations indicate three central results: First, higher transfers to families (either direct, in‐kind or via family splitting) may increase birth rates significantly, but they may come at the cost of lower female employment. Second, the introduction of individual taxation (instead of joint taxation of couples) would increase female employment but might further reduce current birth rates in Germany. Third, it is possible to increase birth rates and female employment rates simultaneously if the government invests in child care facilities for children of all ages.     

Board Independence and Internal Committees in the BRICs

To be successful in global markets, companies from the emerging countries need the approval of foreign investors and other stakeholders. In this regard, Brazil, Russia, India, and China （BRIC） have progressively strengthened their corporate governance rules to help their companies overcome the competitors from the old industrialized countries. Directors＇ non-executive qualification, independence, and professional expertise represent basic requirements for effective corporate governance, so they should be carefully considered to guarantee a proper board composition and an adequate establishment of internal committees in listed companies. The paper intends to compare the legislative and regulatory frameworks adopted by the four countries; then it aims at answering to the following research questions by means of an empirical investigation： Have BRIC companies appointed non-executive and independent board members？ What do BRIC companies do in order to assure an effective participation of non-executive and independent board members to corporate governance activities？ Have BRIC companies established internal committees？ The research examines the appointment of non-executive directors and independent directors to the boards of 100 BRIC leading firms, as well as their involvement in internal committees focused on matters requiring motivated and impartial opinions. Although the laws and recommendations seem to favor a general convergence of corporate governance principles among the four BRIC and towards the international best practices, some differences and peculiarities emerge from a firm-level perspective. Indeed, the Indian and the Chinese companies analyzed appear more inclined than the Brazilian and the Russian ones to reassure their international stakeholders about board independence and effective committees.     

Infection and immunization: A new class of evolutionary game dynamics

Building upon a central paradigm of evolutionary game theory, namely the invasion barrier, we propose the new Infection and Immunization Dynamics (InfImmDyn), modelling a plausible adaptation process in a large population. For general games, this yields a novel refinement of the Nash equilibrium concept based on dynamical arguments, close in spirit to Nash's original “mass action” idea in his Ph.D. thesis. For partnership games, InfImmDyn exhibits a better asymptotic behavior compared to other popular procedures like Fictitious Play and Replicator Dynamics. We establish even support separation of InfImmDyn in finite time, which can never be achieved by any interior-point method like those mentioned above. In fact, this property has not yet been established for any other evolutionary game dynamics.     

Robust design in multivariate systems using genetic algorithms

This paper presents a methodology based on genetic algorithms, which finds feasible and reasonably adequate solutions to problems of robust design in multivariate systems. We use a genetic algorithm to determine the appropriate control factor levels for simultaneously optimizing all of the responses of the system, considering the noise factors which affect it. The algorithm is guided by a desirability function which works with only one fitness function although the system may have many responses. We validated the methodology using data obtained from a real system and also from a process simulator, considering univariate and multivariate systems. In all cases, the methodology delivered feasible solutions, which accomplished the goals of robust design: obtain responses very close to the target values of each of them, and with minimum variability. Regarding the adjustment of the mean of each response to the target value, the algorithm performed very well. However, only in some of the multivariate cases, the algorithm was able to significantly reduce the variability of the responses.