On myopia as rationale for social security

It has been argued that “paternalistically motivated forced savings constitutes an important, and to some the most important, rationale for social security retirement systems.” This paper revisits the role played by myopia in generating a theoretical rationale for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security in dynamically efficient economies. If the competing asset is linear storage and myopic agents are allowed to borrow against future pension benefits, there is no welfare-rationale for PAYG pensions. Sufficiently strong myopia may justify such pensions only if agents cannot borrow against their future pension, but then they are at a zero-saving corner. With enough myopia, co-existence of positive optimal pensions and positive private saving is possible if the return to saving declines with saving, as in a model with a neoclassical technology.     

Do people really want to be nudged towards healthy lifestyles?

This paper assesses Thaler and Sunstein’s claim that policies that nudge individuals towards healthy lifestyles promote the welfare of those individuals, as judged by themselves. I argue that Thaler and Sunstein switch between two different interpretations of that clause. One interpretation gives the clause a wide range of applicability, but drains it of its content as a repudiation of paternalism. The other interpretation makes it more meaningful to say that people want to make the choices they are being nudged towards, but applies to a much narrower range of cases than Thaler and Sunstein have in mind.     

Firm age and performance

Amid increasing interest in firm age and its effects on firm performance, this special issue offers an exhaustive review of the literature and a novel collection of evidence on the effects of firm age on performance, including a special focus of interest on innovation performance, financial performance, exports, survival and growth. This editorial positions the theme in the extant literature, and provides key definitions and challenges ahead in the field of evolutionary economics. It introduces the collection of articles composing the special issue. The papers offer a diversity of country contexts, as well as analytical approaches and methods. They include an exhaustive review of the literature on age and firms’ performance, and present original empirical studies focusing on the effects of age on firms’ economic outcomes on the one hand, and on innovation outcomes on the other hand. While most of the papers use econometric analysis, the level of analysis ranges from firm to individual.     

试论近代上海民营企业的对外技术选择

在甲午战前,上海民营企业的技术选择一直盲目依赖在华洋行和洋人。进入20世纪,随着近代报刊等媒体的广泛传播、技术市场的扩大、企业技术力量的增强等,上海民营企业的对外技术选择呈现出从盲目依赖到理性自主,从单一化到多样化,从间接引进到直接引进的特征。     

期权加油卡的产品设计、定价和套期保值研究

在消费者被迫接受成品油价格风险、石油零售商零售业竞争日益激烈和我国成品油定价机制矛盾日益突出的背景下,本文提出石油零售商可发行期权加油卡来实现下面三个目标:(1)为消费者提供成品油价格风险管理的工具;(2)为石油零售商提供一种新的锁定客户的营销手段;(3)推进成品油的市场化改革。本文首先设计期权加油卡,然后采用蒙特卡罗模拟方法对加油卡定价,接着分析石油零售商发行加油卡的风险的套期保值损益,最后讨论期权加油卡的相关实际操作问题。     

On perpetual American put valuation and first-passage in a regime-switching model with jumps

In this paper we consider the problem of pricing a perpetual American put option in an exponential regime-switching Lévy model. For the case of the (dense) class of phase-type jumps and finitely many regimes we derive an explicit expression for the value function. The solution of the corresponding first-passage problem under a state-dependent level rests on a path transformation and a new matrix Wiener–Hopf factorization result for this class of processes. Research supported by the Nuffield Foundation, grant NAL/00761/G, and EPSRC grant EP/D039053/1.     

Quantifying corruption by a human capital earnings equation

This paper uses a human capital earnings equation to quantify administrative corruption in the public sector. Regression analyses are conducted based on information from surveys administered to public officials in Albania. After accounting for officials’ characteristics, e.g., schooling, experience, gender, type of agency, and public and private sectors’ features, we deduce that the administrative corruption was on average 2.6× the officials’ current salary in Albania, which is equivalent to 16.7% of the country’s GDP.

基于解吸能力的外向型技术转移研究框架——以网络嵌入性为视角

在开放式创新研究的基础上,从网络嵌入性的视角,探索外向型开放式创新中技术转移的机制和影响因素,揭示了解吸能力在整个技术转移过程中的作用机制,构建了外向型技术转移研究框架,为企业实践外向型技术转移和创新提供了理论基础。     

中国知识服务业国际竞争力研究

中国知识服务业的发展还处于初步阶段,国际竞争力水平存在较大差异,中国要建立创新型社会,就要注重知识服务业的发展,要从战略高度制定知识服务业相应的发展规划,建立相应的支撑体系,发挥政府职能作用,培养和引进专业人才,发展壮大知识服务企业等。