Pigou,Del Vecchio,and Sraffa: the 1955 International “Antonio Feltrinelli” Prize for the Economic and Social Sciences

In 1955, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded the inaugural International “Feltrinelli” Prize for the Economic and Social Sciences to Arthur Cecil Pigou. This paper considers Gustavo Del Vecchio's active role on the selection committee in recommending Pigou for the Feltrinelli Prize and the related correspondence between Pigou, Piero Sraffa, and Del Vecchio. One of the most significant discovery reported in this paper is Sraffa's contention, expressed in an unpublished letter to Del Vecchio, that Pigou had “never been honoured in proportion to his merits.”     

Apology and Ambiguity: Adolf Berle on Corporate Power

A sociocognitive foundation for transformative agency requires much deeper exploration to adequately understand the causal origins of human interests, preferences, and choices as they shape both the emergence of institutions and the process of institutional change. In the collegial spirit of rapprochement, reminiscent of earlier efforts at “bridge-building,” our central contention is that the new institutional economics of “late” Douglass C. North (2005) North, Douglass C. Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar] provides such a sociocognitive approach, as well as an important ontological frame for dealing with embedded agency. This agency may afford original institutional economics a complementary meta-theoretical account of how institutions are formed and changed over time.     

经济危机的机制分析——基于马克思和后凯恩斯主义危机理论的视角

在自由主义经济信条的指引下,人类社会正在经历着进入新世纪以来空前严重的经济危机。人们在反思西方自由市场经济思想弊端的同时,不断重温马克思在《资本论》中关于资本主义经济危机的深刻剖析。西方主流经济学在解释当前发生的经济危机时,显得苍白无力。与西方主流经济学相比,马克思的经济理论深刻的阐述了经济危机的本质,即危机本质上是实体经济的危机。此外,后凯恩斯主义危机理论对当前的金融危机也具有很强的解释能力。     

A field experiment to estimate the effects of anchoring and framing on residents’ willingness to purchase water runoff management technologies

Watersheds throughout the world have been severely polluted by nutrient-laden runoff that comes from industrial, agricultural, and residential sources. Efforts to reduce this runoff have focused on industrial and agricultural sources, while little attention has been paid to encouraging residents to reduce runoff from their properties. To study residents’ willingness to adopt landscaping practices that reduce runoff, we conducted a field experiment in the Delaware River watershed. In the experiment, over three hundred adults participated in a series of random-price auctions that revealed their willingness to pay (WTP) for five products that reduce nutrient runoff. To study how WTP can be influenced by attributes of the choice architecture, we randomized the starting bid values (anchors) and the way in which the external benefits of the five practices were framed. Compared to a neutral framing, a positive framing (using the product can improve water quality) increased average WTP by about one-third, while the estimated effect of a negative framing (failing to use the product can worsen water quality) was also positive, but smaller and not statistically different from zero. The estimated effect on average WTP from the anchor depends on how bids of $0 are modeled, but the results imply that higher anchors lead to higher WTP. Although we believe the magnitudes of our results should be considered suggestive and we recommend replications with higher statistical power, the results add to the evidence base that environmental programs can achieve policy-relevant gains in program performance through a series of small changes to the decision environment.     

Would I lie to you? On social preferences and lying aversion

This paper reinterprets the evidence on lying or deception presented in Gneezy (Am. Econ. Rev. 95(1):384–394, 2005). We show that Gneezy’s data are consistent with the simple hypothesis that people are one of two kinds: either a person will never lie, or a person will lie whenever she prefers the outcome obtained by lying over the outcome obtained by telling the truth. This implies that so long as lying induces a preferred outcome over truth-telling, a person’s decision of whether to lie may be completely insensitive to other changes in the induced outcomes, such as exactly how much she monetarily gains relative to how much she hurts an anonymous partner. We run new but broadly similar experiments to those of Gneezy in order to test this hypothesis. While we also confirm that there is an aversion to lying in our subject population, our data cannot reject the simple hypothesis described above either.

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Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.      

Your Place in Space: Classroom Experiment on Spatial Location Theory

The authors detail an urban economics experiment that is easily run in the classroom. The experiment has a flexible design that allows the instructor to explore how congestion, zoning, public transportation, and taxation levels determine the bid–rent function. Heterogeneous agents in the experiment compete for land use using a simple auction mechanism. Using the data that is collected, a bid–rent function is derived, and the experimental treatment is altered over the course of three sessions to uncover core concepts in urban economics. Moreover, this provides a tangible experience that can be used to help undergraduates relate to urban issues such as the steep rent gradient found around many larger colleges and universities.     

新古典经济学需求理论的合理性与缺陷分析

新古典经济学需求理论的主要目的是解释消费者对商品组合如何实现最优选择的问题,包括单个消费者是如何在不同商品选择中实现最大化满足的,消费者的个体需求是如何形成市场集体需求的等.本文在研读相关原著的基础上认为,新古典经济学需求理论在解决这些理论难题时,必须具体分析该理论的历史功绩和内在逻辑缺陷.     

论组织文化测量方法的选择

在我国,对于组织文化研究一直存在着表面化、肤浅化的现象,其中一个很重要的原因是忽视研究方法的探讨和选择.随着对组织文化理论的深入研究,相关的测量方法选择必然成为了一个基础性的重要问题.基于此,本文对组织文化研究中的测量方法进行了系统阐述.文章分析了组织文化的内涵,重点探讨了测量组织文化的质化方法、量化方法的具体内容及不同研究方法的优缺点,并对研究中两种方法的融合进行了分析,探讨了测量方法选择中需关注的一个重要问题:测量中使用的核心概念.