Do Extrinsic Incentives Undermine Social Norms? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Energy Conservation

Policymakers use both extrinsic and intrinsic incentives to induce consumers to change behavior. This paper investigates whether the use of extrinsic financial incentives is complementary to intrinsic incentives, or whether financial incentives undermine the effect of intrinsic incentives. We conduct a randomized controlled trial that uses information interventions to residential electricity customers to test this question. We find that adding economic incentives to normative messages not only does not strengthen the effect of the latter but may reduce it. These results are consistent with recent theoretical work that suggests a tension between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives.     

Dominance solvable approval voting games

This work provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the dominance solvability of approval voting games. Our conditions are very simple since they depend just on the number of possible winners when voters play weakly undominated strategies. If there are at most two possible winners, then the game is dominance‐solvable and the outcome coincides with the Condorcet winner. If every candidate is a possible winner, the game is not dominance‐solvable. If none of the previous conditions holds, then the game need not be dominance‐solvable, and the outcome need not coincide with the Condorcet winner.     

科技人才集聚对中国区域科技创新效率的影响

基于2005-2015年省际面板数据,构建超越对数随机前沿距离函数模型,借鉴产业区位熵思想,研究科技人才集聚对中国区域科技创新效率的影响。结果表明,科技创新效率存在区域差异,东部地区高于中部、西部、东北地区,西部最低;科技人才集聚规模和均衡度与区域科技创新效率显著正相关,强度与区域科技创新效率显著负相关。鉴于此,为提高区域科技创新效率、缩小区域差异,我国政府应全方位培育并吸引科技人才,合理引导科技人才流动、整合科技人才资源。     

Green consumers and environmental policy

The present paper examines how improvements in consumers' environmental awareness influence the choice between output and emission taxes, within a framework of imperfect competition and endogenous choice of abatement level. We first show that in the absence of policy intervention, there exists a level of environmental awareness beyond which welfare is decreasing as market imperfections become more prominent relative to environmental concerns. We also confirm that both output and emission taxes are welfare superior to the free-market case. What is surprising, however, is that the welfare performance of an optimally chosen emissions tax is monotonically decreasing in consumers' environmental sensitivity, while the opposite is true for an output tax up to a certain level. At low levels of consumers' environmental awareness an emissions tax is welfare superior, but eventually, there is a level of environmental awareness beyond which an output-tax welfare dominates an emissions tax. Therefore, an emissions tax is better suited to societies that have not yet developed high levels of environmental awareness, while societies characterized by high levels of environmental awareness should prefer an output tax.     

Where a contract is signed determines its value: Chinese provincial variation in utilized vs. contracted FDI flows

There are major differences between ex ante corporate investment plans and ex post investments. The case of China is useful for understanding this problem because there is substantial time series and cross sectional variation in the ratio of utilized to contracted FDI (UC ratio), which is less than one in most province-year observations. Provinces may believe that they are rewarded for reporting higher levels of contracted FDI, which would lead to lower UC ratios and higher policy incentives in subsequent years. Alternatively, provinces may be rewarded for reporting data more accurately, which would lead to higher UC ratios and policy incentives in subsequent years. Empirical analysis supports the second, institutional theory and suggests that provinces may increase their rate of utilizing pledged FDI by strengthening their legal systems and reducing government bureaucracy.     

中国对外直接投资有助于沿线国家绿色技术创新吗——基于“一带一路”沿线国家数据的检验

“一带一路”沿线国家的绿色转型给中国承担新使命、促进国内国际双循环和绿色发展创造了新机遇。基于中国对外直接投资（OFDI）特征,研究其对“一带一路”沿线国家绿色技术创新的影响及作用机制。研究发现,中国OFDI主要通过绿色技术溢出机制、增长机制影响“一带一路”沿线国家绿色技术创新;该绿色技术创新效应随着互联互通合作水平提升而显著增强,且对沿线国家绿色技术创新的改善效果主要体现在高收入组国家。     

Imperfect Capital Mobility: A General Approach to the Two-Sector Harris Todaro Model

This paper investigates the analytical implications of partially mobile capital among sectors arising in the context of the two-sector general-equilibrium Harris–Todaro (HT) model. It is shown that under partially mobile capital, unlike the case of totally mobile or immobile capital, labor growth (capital accumulation) may destabilize sectoral capital movement and lower the welfare of a small country if the agricultural rental rate is lower (higher) than the manufacturing rental rate. While the price–output response is always normal in a stable system, the Rybczynski type of factor endowment–output response requires more stringent conditions ( vis-à-vis perfectly mobile or immobile capital case).     

Alliances versus Federations: An Extension of Riker's Analysis of Federal Formation

This essay explores the distinction between federations and alliances and asks the question: When will states choose to federate rather than ally? William Riker argues that a necessary condition for a federal state's formation is that those offering the federal bargain must seek to “expand their territorial control, usually either to meet an external military or diplomatic threat or to prepare for military or diplomatic aggression and aggrandizement.” This argument, though, does not tell us why states sometimes respond to threats by forming federations and at other times by forming alliances. Here we address this issue directly and use a formal model of alliance formation to illustrate our arguments. Briefly, that model assumes states have initial endowments of military and economic resources, where economic resources enter utility functions directly and military capability influences preference only insofar as it determines a state's ability to counter or make threats. State can divert economic resources to military spending, and alliances, in turn, are self-enforcing coalitions designed to augment a state's offensive or defensive capabilities. Federations, which serve the same ends as alliances, are coalitions that need to be enforced by the “higher authority” established when the federation is formed. Our assumption is that states form federations in lieu of alliances if and only if (1) a stable alliance partition does not exist or, if one exists, it is dominated by an unstable partition and (2) if the cost of the loss of sovereignty to each state in the federation is offset by the gains from joining it, relative to what that state secures as its security value.