Are property rights enough?Re‐evaluating a big‐bang claim1

We investigate the claim made by proponents of the big‐bang strategy that the establishment of property rights in an economy in transition creates its own demand for the enforcement of laws to protect those rights. Our model contains a government engaging in activities to accomplish objectives that depend on public support for the enforcement of the rule of law and agents who interpret the level of activities of the government as indications of the government's intent to enforce the rule of law. Agents, using the level of government activities as an input to their decisions, choose whether to support the government's objectives. We establish conditions under which the level of activities chosen by the government maximizes its benefits, and simultaneously induces the constituency to support enforcement of the rule of law. These conditions provide a basis for the argument for the implementation of the big‐bang policy. When these conditions do not hold, however, we show that the level of activities that maximizes the government's benefits may have only a minor impact on support for the enforcement of the rule of law. Two characteristics play an important role in these conditions: the initial level of crime and the types of activities the government chooses to undertake. We present examples showing that the initial level of crime has the more dramatic effect on subsequent support for the rule of law.     

How responsive are charitable donors to requests to give?

People are more likely to contribute to a charity when they are asked to. Although this so-called ‘power of asking’ is well-known among fundraisers, the existing literature does not pay much attention to the role of donation requests in charitable giving. This paper uses a unique survey that includes a question on whether the respondent is asked to give to estimate the causal effects of charitable solicitations on giving behavior. In order to address the endogeneity of the donation requests due to non-random solicitation of charitable donors, I link this survey to IRS data on charitable organizations and propose identifying instruments. After controlling for the endogeneity, I find that donation requests increase the propensity to give by about nineteen percentage points for those who are asked to give. This effect is robust under different specifications and with different sets of instruments, and is much larger than the estimates from univariate models, which assume that charitable solicitations are exogenous. I argue that this result is counterintuitive and discuss some possible explanations.     

The endogeneity of the natural rate of growth – an empirical study for Latin‐American countries

The aim of this paper is to analyse the sensitivity of the natural rate of growth to the actual rate of growth for a sample of 11 Latin‐American countries, assuming the natural rate to be determined endogenously by changes in the actual rate of growth. The natural rates of growth are estimated in a system of SUR estimations over the period 1986–2003. In order to determine whether they react endogenously to changes in the actual rate of growth, a dummy variable for boom periods is added to the system of regressions. The results confirm the hypothesis about the endogeneity of the natural rate of growth.     

Tax Reform,Sector‐specific Labor Supply and Welfare Effects*

This paper focuses in particular on the 1992 tax reform in Norway. In this reform the top marginal tax rates were cut considerably. We find that the impact on overall labor supply is rather modest, but these modest changes shadow for stronger sectoral changes. The tax reform stimulated the women to shift their labor from the public to the private sector and to work longer hours. A calculation of mean compensated variation, calculated within the framework of a random utility model, shows that the richest households benefited far more from the 1992 tax reform than did the poorest households.     

Stackelberg thresholds in network routing games or the value of altruism

It is well known that the Nash equilibrium in network routing games can have strictly higher cost than the optimum cost. In Stackelberg routing games, where a fraction of flow is centrally-controlled, a natural problem is to route the centrally-controlled flow such that the overall cost of the resulting equilibrium is minimized.We consider the scenario where the network administrator wants to know the minimum amount of centrally-controlled flow such that the cost of the resulting equilibrium solution is strictly less than the cost of the Nash equilibrium. We call this threshold the Stackelberg threshold and prove that for networks of parallel links with linear latency functions, it is equal to the minimum of the Nash flows on links carrying more optimum flow than Nash flow.Our approach also provides a simpler proof of characterization of the minimum fraction that must be centrally controlled to induce the optimum solution.     

Contracts with endogenous information

I study covert information acquisition and reporting in a principal agent problem allowing for general technologies of information acquisition. When posteriors satisfy two dimensional versions of the standard First Order Stochastic Dominance and Concavity/Convexity of the Distribution Function conditions, a first-order approach is justified. Under the same conditions, informativeness and riskiness of reports are equivalent. High powered contracts, that make the agent's informational rents more risky, are used to increase incentives for information acquisition, insensitive contracts are used to reduce incentives for information gathering. The value of information to the agent is always positive. The value of information to the principal is ambiguous.     

The relation between forest clearance and household income among native Amazonians: Results from the Tsimane' Amazonian panel study, Bolivia

The Amazon rain forest harbors some of the world's richest biological diversity. During the twentieth century, two types of actors cleared that forest: native Amazonians and outside encroachers. Of the two actors, we know more about what drives outside encroachers to clear forest than about what drives native Amazonians to clear forest. The past research focus has served well because during the twentieth century outside encroachers cleared most of the Amazonian forest. But the past research focus needs to be expanded because native Amazonians are claiming de jure stewardship of the forests they inhabit, and with tighter jurisdiction over those forests will likely come changes in the amount of forest native Amazonians clear. Prior research in rural areas of low-income nations suggests that household income affects household forest clearance. To estimate the effects of household real income on the total forest area (old-growth + fallow) cleared by households we use a panel composed of five annual household surveys (2002-2006, inclusive) from 324 households of a native Amazonian society in Bolivia (Tsimane'). We control for household and village fixed effects and use an instrumental variable for household income. We find positive and significant household real income elasticities of forest clearance of 0.35 and 0.47 and an increase in forest clearance of 5.3%/year. The main finding stood up well to sensitivity analysis. These estimates suggest that in the near future, the forest in the Tsimane' territory will likely face increasing pressure from the Tsimane' themselves, not just from outside encroachers.     

基于内容分析法的发达国家大学研发支持模式研究

本文采用内容分析法,研究了1995—2008年期间主要发达国家对其大学研发活动进行支持的相关文献资料,探讨了主要发达国家对其大学研发活动的各类直接和间接支持模式。研究发现,主要发达国家在直接支持模式中大都引入竞争机制来提高资源的配置效率;此外,所研究的发达国家还十分重视通过促进科技成果转化来间接支持大学的研发活动,且这种间接支持模式已成为一大趋势。     

中小企业板公司上市前后绩效变动的实证研究

本文以2004—2005年在我国中小企业板上市的50家上市公司为研究对象,从净资产收益率、主营业务收入增长率和营业利润增长率三个指标出发,研究了中小企业板上市公司IPO前后的业绩变化是否具有显著性,并对引起业绩变化的相关因素进行了回归分析。研究结果表明:公司上市后的净资产收益率、主营业务收入增长率和营业利润增长率都出现了不同程度的下降;位于中西部地区的上市公司的整体绩效表现优于位于东部地区的上市公司;上市公司的管理层持股比例高、第一大股东持股比例高,其上市后业绩的下滑更明显;流通股比例对中小企业板公司上市前后的业绩影响不具有统计意义上的显著性。     

科技型创业者的创业背景研究——以福建沿海地区为例

在对科技型创业者创业背景的研究进行回顾的基础上,本文以针对福建沿海地区科技型创业者所做的调查为基本依据,对福建沿海地区科技型创业者的家庭背景、教育背景、年龄背景、性别背景、专业背景、工作经历背景等进行了探讨和分析,并将调研结论与现有创业学中有关创业背景的研究结论进行了比较。