教育者增加价值的最优奖励策略:理论和来自中国的经验

在过去的三十年中 ,教育改革一直是政策制订者和社会科学家们争论的一个主题。最近的改革计划提出根据学生实际取得的成绩来奖励他们的教师。在本文中我们证明 ,建立在客观和主观绩效评价相结合基础上的激励合同能够减轻由不完美客观度量引起的激励扭曲 (比如应试教育 )。而且 ,当我们结合基于客观绩效评价的显性合同和基于主观绩效评价的隐性合同时 ,由此提供的联合激励随着客观绩效评价的方差递增。我们随后分析来自中国中学教师的评估体系 ,尤其是它对客观和主观绩效评价的同时使用。初步估计表明 ,教师薪酬确实与客观绩效评价和主观绩效评价正相关。我们发现 ,尽管受教育程度和性别并不直接影响薪酬 ,却和晋升的概率显著相关 :那些教育程度高、已婚、男性、工作经验丰富、一周内接触较少学生的教师更有可能是高级职称。     

Computing the market price of volatility risk in the energy commodity markets

In this paper, we demonstrate the need for a negative market price of volatility risk to recover the difference between Black–Scholes [Black, F., Scholes, M., 1973. The pricing of options and corporate liabilities. Journal of Political Economy 81, 637–654]/Black [Black, F., 1976. Studies of stock price volatility changes. In: Proceedings of the 1976 Meetings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, American Statistical Association, pp. 177–181] implied volatility and realized-term volatility. Initially, using quasi-Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate numerically that a negative market price of volatility risk is the key risk premium in explaining the disparity between risk-neutral and statistical volatility in both equity and commodity-energy markets. This is robust to multiple specifications that also incorporate jumps. Next, using futures and options data from natural gas, heating oil and crude oil contracts over a 10 year period, we estimate the volatility risk premium and demonstrate that the premium is negative and significant for all three commodities. Additionally, there appear distinct seasonality patterns for natural gas and heating oil, where winter/withdrawal months have higher volatility risk premiums. Computing such a negative market price of volatility risk highlights the importance of volatility risk in understanding priced volatility in these financial markets.     

A new integral for capacities

A new integral for capacities is introduced and characterized. It differs from the Choquet integral on non-convex capacities. The main feature of the new integral is concavity, which might be interpreted as uncertainty aversion. The integral is extended to fuzzy capacities, which assign subjective expected values to random variables (e.g., portfolios) and may assign subjective probability only to a partial set of events. An equivalence between the minimum over sets of additive capacities (not necessarily probability distributions) and the integral w.r.t. fuzzy capacities is demonstrated. The extension to fuzzy capacities enables one to calculate the integral also in cases where the information available is limited to a few events. I wish to thank Eran Hanany, David Schmeidler, Eilon Solan and especially Yaron Azrieli and the anonymous referee of Economic Theory for their helpful comments.     

THE IMPACT OF FEMALE WORK ON FAMILY INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES: BLACK-WHITE DIFFERENTIALS*

Using data from the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, the present study analyzes, for blacks and whites separately, the impact of female market activity on the inequality of the income distribution among households. The family life cycle is divided into three stages, according to the presence and age of children: (1) the interval between marriage and the birth of the first child, (2) the child-rearing interval, and (3) a final period which begins when all the children have reached school age. Using the coefficient of variation as an indicator of inequality, the empirical results show that in period 1, the contribution of white working wives has a large equalizing impact, while that of their black counterparts results in a slight increase in dispersion. In the child-rearing and post child-rearing stages, the labor supply of mothers decreases family income inequality by a small amount for both black and white households. A decomposition of the squared coefficient of variation of family income is presented to aid in the interpretation of these findings.     

Developing better industrial advertising

This paper reports on various factors that should be applied by industrial advertisers in order to improve their advertising effort. Topics on setting objectives, developing copy, designing the layout, and selecting media are covered in an applications-oriented way. The result is a concise approach of how industrial advertising can be more effective.     

Conjectural variations strategies in accelerated cournot games

A family of constant conjectural variations strategies is defined and examined in the natural context of infinitely repeated Cournot duopoly games with discounting. It is shown that any pair of linear reaction functions in the family gives rise to a unique pair of quantities in stationary equilibrium. As the conjectures and discount parameter vary, the sum of the stationary quantities will vary anywhere between the competitive and the monopoly outcomes. Equilibrium is strongly stable and credible (in the sense of exhibiting a variation of Selten's subgame perfection) provided that firms can react quickly enough to one another's actions.     

An admissible set occurring in various bargaining situations

Given a set of alternatives S and a binary relation M on S the admissible set of the pair (S, M) is defined to be the set of maximal elements with respect to the transitive closure of M. It is shown that existing solutions in game theory and mathematical economics are special cases of this concept (they are admissible sets of a natural S and M). These include the core of an n-person cooperative game, Nash equilibria of a noncooperative game, and the max-min solution of a two-person zero sum game. The competitive equilibrium prices of a finite exchange economy are always contained in its admissible set. Special general properties of the admissible set are discussed. These include existence, stability, and a stochastic dynamic process which leads to outcomes in the admissible set with high probability.     

The improvement trajectory of PCR DNA replication and ERP software as general purpose technologies: an exploratory study of ‘anchor technologies’

As an effort to peek into the black box of large-scale general purpose technologies (GPTs) like biotechnology and information technology, we develop the concept of ‘anchor technologies’. An anchor technology is a core technology of a large-scale GPT (‘mega-GPT’) that opens a new era in the development and diffusion of the mega-GPT. We trace the historical evolution of two process-based, yet otherwise very different, anchor technologies: enterprise resource planning (ERP) software within the mega-GPT of information technology and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA replication within the mega-GPT of biotechnology. The case studies reveal the utility of ‘productisation’ as an important means of commercialising innovations in anchor technologies; more generally, the interplay between improvement in process-based technologies and in complementary product-based technologies provides insight into how ERP and PCR were able to sustain a path of continued improvement within their respective mega-GPT.