SOCIAL INDICATORS—SYSTEMS, METHODS AND PROBLEMS

Professor Moser regards the purpose of social indicators as being to aid the policy maker by summarizing the state and changing conditions of society, pinpointing the outstanding existing and emerging social problems and monitoring the effects of social policies and programmes. Thus social indicators will frequently, though not necessarily, be normative and they will often, though again not necessarily, be concerned with outputs rather than inputs. Although many writers regard social indicators as being combinations of series, the problems of construction are substantial. Central to the idea of a social indicator, however, is that it should represent or summarize a broader concept than itself and that it should belong to a structure or system of series. Although there are no social theories about society in general on which a structure of indicators can at present be based there are a number of middle range theories relating to specific fields or sectors, such as occupational mobility, education, migration, mental health, etc., around which quantitative relationships and models can gradually be be built to give insight into social changes and perhaps eventually into the manipulation of policy instruments for the improvement of social conditions.     

A new axiomatization of rank-dependent expected utility with tradeoff consistency for equally likely outcomes

This paper provides a new axiomatization of rank-dependent expected utility by relaxing tradeoff consistency to hold only when the involved outcomes are equally likely. The resulting weakened variant of tradeoff consistency is considerably simpler and intuitively more appealing than the original condition. Consequently, an improved tool for empirical studies and the elicitation of utilities is provided. It turns out that in the presence of weak ordering, simple-continuity, and stochastic dominance, the new tradeoff consistency for equally likely outcomes is sufficient to derive rank-dependent expected utility for general lotteries.     

China: Coming to Grips with the New Global Player

This paper analyses China's economic performance in the last 25 years and discusses its prospect for growth in the future. Exports and investment have been the two driving forces for the high annual GDP growth rates. FDI plays an important role. However, structural issues such as the loss‐making state‐owned firms and the fragile banking industry have to be solved. Monetary policy is complicated by the accumulation of reserves which, however, provide an insurance for the fragile banking system. Property rights, a crucial element in transforming a communist society, are far from being clearly developed. Major policy issues in the future include the correction of the distorted growth process and of the institutional deficits, especially with respect to the rule of law and the lack of democracy.     

FOCUS: Corporate Dialogue - a new perspective for Public Relations

Recent initiatives in Germany illustrate how major companies have changed their attitudes towards a critical public - and thereby have improved their economic and ethical performance. Prof. Dr. Horst Steinmann and Dipl.-Kfm. Ansgar Zerfaß belong to the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.