Social welfare orderings for ratio-scale measurable utilities

Summary. This article characterizes all of the continuous social welfare orderings which satisfy the Weak (resp. Strong) Pareto principle when utilities are ratio-scale measurable. With Weak Pareto, on both the nonnegative and positive orthants the social welfare ordering must be representable by a weakly increasing Cobb-Douglas social welfare function while on the whole Euclidean space the social welfare ordering must be strongly dictatorial. With Strong Pareto, on the positive orthant the social welfare ordering must be representable by a strictly increasing Cobb-Douglas social welfare function but on the other two domains an impossibility theorem is obtained. Received: July 31, 1995; revised version August 7, 1996     

Can sustainable consumption be learned? A model of cultural evolution

This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population via processes of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favor environmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission of different behaviors via individual and social learning influences agents' consumption behavior. The underlying learning biases can be traced back to evolved cognitive dispositions. Challenging the vision of a permanent transition toward sustainability, we argue that “green” consumption patterns are not self-reinforcing and cannot be “locked in” permanently.     

Globally evolutionarily stable portfolio rules

The paper examines a dynamic model of a financial market with endogenous asset prices determined by short-run equilibrium of supply and demand. Assets pay dividends that are partially consumed and partially reinvested. The traders use fixed-mix investment strategies (portfolio rules), distributing their wealth between assets in fixed proportions. Our main goal is to identify globally evolutionarily stable strategies, allowing an investor to “survive,” i.e., to accumulate in the long run a positive share of market wealth, regardless of the initial state of the market. It is shown that there is a unique portfolio rule with this property—an analogue of the famous Kelly rule of “betting your beliefs.” A game theoretic interpretation of this result is given.     

注册会计师行业诚信问题的进化博弈分析

注册会计师行业的诚信问题关系到整个社会经济的协调健康发展,特别是在我国资本市场尚待进一步完善的今天,注册会计师行业的诚信建设是保护投资者权益的重要方面。本文针对目前我国注册会计师行业面临的“诚信危机”,运用进化博弈论中的复制动态和进化稳定策略思想进行分析,试图发现引发注册会计师行业诚信问题的根源,进而证明建立基于产权保护的“第二方监督”机制的有效性,旨在推进我国相关制度的改革和发展。     

An evolutionary game theory model for the inter-relationships between financial regulation and financial innovation

Financial regulation and financial innovation tend to show a dynamic game process of ‘regulation-innovation-re-regulation-re-innovation’. This paper constructs an evolutionary game model to simulate the above phenomena for analyzing the stable equilibrium strategies between financial institutions and regulation institutions. Previous studies mainly stay in a theoretical perspective; instead, this study uses the financial and macroeconomic data of the U.S. during 1947–2007 to numerically demonstrate the dynamic evolution paths of financial regulation and financial innovation. This study finds that the financial regulation and financial innovation of the U.S. presents a dynamic adjustment process by promoting the development of each other. Both regulatory and innovative strategies should be coordinated in the evolutionary progress in a timely and coordinated reason. This study has great referential value for policy makers to balance regulation and innovation in the financial industry and for avoiding financial crises.     

Schumpeter's theory of economic evolution: a Darwinian interpretation

A general Darwinian framework is employed to arrive at an interpretation of Schumpeter's work that brings out clearly its specific evolutionary aspects. Schumpeter's theory of economic evolution is seen to be still highly relevant to evolutionary economics, because it sheds light on some fundamental issues: the relationship between evolutionary theory and equilibrium analysis, the usefulness of Darwinian theory for economics, and the precise nature of the evolutionary forces at work in economic systems.     

Effects of runoff voting rules on number of parties and candidates' political experience: Evidence from a law change in Peru

We study the effect of a change in electoral rules on political competition, measured by the number of candidates and their political experience. We explore the effects of a change in legislation, introduced a year before the gubernatorial elections in Peru on the number of parties that participated in these elections. We also investigate how the legislative change affected the political experience of the candidates. Given that the legislative change did not apply to elections for provincial mayors, we use those elections as a control group, in a difference-in-differences design. Our estimates show the number of parties registered increased by a margin of around 2.2 after the legislative change. The change also increased the candidates' years of accumulated political experience, particularly in the subsequent gubernatorial elections.     

A note on the “size” of determinacy and indeterminacy

Summary. It is shown in this note that in an incomplete markets economy with uncountably many states of the world there may be uncountably many isolated equilibria as well as uncountably many non-isolated equilibria. Moreover, both subsets can be simultaneously of second category. Therefore, none of the subsets can be considered negligible with respect to the other, neither from a cardinality point of view nor from a topological one. Unfortunately, this fact prevents from claiming that these economies may have “typically” determinate equilibria – even though uncountably many of them – as would have been desirable for comparative statics exercises. Received: May 19, 1995; revised version: March 24, 1997     

Rubinstein bargaining with two-sided outside options

Summary. In this note we show that if in the standard Rubinstein model both players are allowed to leave the negotiation after a rejection, in which case they obtain a payoff of zero, then there exist a continuum of subgame-perfect equilibrium outcomes, including some which involve significant delay. We also fully characterize the case in which, upon quitting, the players can take an outside option of positive value. Received: February 27, 1996; revised version: March 28, 1997     

低工资率下向左上方倾斜的劳动力供给曲线分析——“民工荒”现象的又一种解释

近年来屡屡出现的＂民工荒＂现象是由于低工资率下向左上方倾斜的劳动力供给曲线的存在而导致的。随着工资率的上涨,低收入者的劳动供给时间将减少,从而导致＂民工荒＂现象的出现。＂民工荒＂现象的微观主体原因是,新生代农民工已经成为农村劳动力迁移者的主体。中国目前仍处于＂刘易斯拐点＂前期,可以预计,农民工收入将步入快速增长期,从而给中国产业结构的调整带来新的约束条件。