A New Approach to Estimating Damages in Mass Torts

Damage estimation in mass torts involving hazardous or defective products is often complicated by the unknown time-profile of disease incidence or failure rate. Because these cases involve diseases with long latencies or involve products that fail after years of productive use, estimation of the defendants' future liability stream requires a model that can predict how the failure rate or the onset of the disease will change over time.This paper proposes such a model. The estimation technique allows one to compute the 'excess risk' attributable to the hazard or product defect distinct from the natural causes of failure or disease incidence and to calculate the defendants' future liability stream based on the estimates of failure or incidence rates. An application to product failure illustrates the working of the model.     

Public involvement in flood risk management in Hungary

The increasing frequency and intensity of recent floods and their economic, social, and political impacts created a situation in Hungary where flood management strategies need urgent reconsideration. Research suggests that in the case of natural disasters of uncertain and changing character, public education, information, participation, and cooperation are particularly important tools for coping. Drawing on the data collected by two recent empirical studies, this paper investigates state-of-the-art public involvement in flood control activities in Hungary. Results of a questionnaire survey and a series of semistructured interviews conducted in three flood basins of the Tisza river indicate that although the highly centralized system of flood control, and especially its strong financial background, a characteristic of state socialism, has significantly weakened since the political transition, forms of public participation, which could reduce the risk by building on a more conscious and responsible attitude of the citizens, have not developed yet. Paternalist and elitist attitudes prevail on the part of the authorities, contributing to the passivity of the public. There are signs, however, that in certain places, local government leaders take responsibility for building communication networks to raise public awareness and mobilize the public more effectively.     

以“思想道德修养与法律基础”课为依托,提升大学生法律素养

在我国逐步迈向法治社会的进程中,法律素养已成为大学生们必备的素养之一,《基础》课在培养大学生法律素养中承担重要的任务。为此,本文从大学生法律素养的现状入手,结合《基础》课探讨了提高大学生法律素养的问题,力求提高《基础》课法律教学的实效性。     

Incentives and managerial effort under competitive pressure: An experiment

We investigate how increased competition affects firm owners׳ incentives and managers׳ efforts in a laboratory experiment. Each owner offers a compensation scheme to his manager in two different conditions: under monopoly and under Cournot duopoly. Following acceptance of the compensation, the manager chooses an effort level to increase the probability of a cost-reduction which affects the firm׳s profit. According to standard theoretical predictions the entry of a rival firm in a monopolistic industry affects negatively both the incentive compensation and the effort level. Our experimental findings show that the entry of a rival firm has two effects on managerial effort: an internalization effect which affects positively the level of effort and an income effect which has a negative impact on effort. The combined outcome of these two effects is neutral with respect to managerial effort: we observe that when competition reduces the firm׳s profit, the owner reacts by offering lower incentives but despite the lower incentives the manager still accepts the contract offer and exerts the same level of effort than under the monopoly condition.     

浅谈高校财会人员的职业道德

在市场经济时代，高校财会人员职业道德的优劣直接影响到高校教育科研事业的发展。文章从顾全大局、提高思想觉悟、严格执行财政政策和制度、学习专业知识、优质服务、保密守信6个方面对高校财会人员的职业道德进行了概括。     

A state-contingent production approach to principal-agent problems with an application to point-source pollution control

Two basic representations of principal-agent relationships, the ‘state-space' and ‘parameterized distribution' formulations, have emerged. Although the state-space formulation appears more natural, analytical studies using this formulation have had limited success. This paper develops a state-space formulation of the moral-hazard problem using a general representation of production under uncertainty. A closed-form solution for the agency-cost problem is derived. Comparative-static results are deduced. Next we solve the principal's problem of selecting the optimal output given the agency-cost function. The analysis is applied to the problem of point-source pollution control.     

Moral property rights and harmonious society

To build the harmonious society needs the effect of morality.There are various kinds of moral values.Moral values can be divided into proper ones and improper ones according to whether the social benefit is bigger than the social cost of the moral behavior.The former is helpful to the optimal allocation of resources and improve the formation of the harmonious society; while the latter is harmful to the optimal allocation of resource and bad to the formation of the harmonious society.The proper and scientist moral values include： sustainable development view on ecology,fair,just and win win view on morality,credibility,right view on rich and poor,right view on consumption and so on.To build the proper and scientific moral value,the more important way is building proper moral property rights institution by recognizing properly and constructing moral property rights besides legislation,setting up moral surroundings,valuing moral penetration,strengthening moral education etc. Harmonious society;Moral property rights;Moral value     

On the value of information in the presence of moral hazard

This paper shows that the marginal value of a “small amount of non-output information” is generally non-positive in the context of the standard principal-agent model involving moral hazard, which suggests a non-concavity in the value of information. However, when both the principal and the agent are risk neutral, even a small amount of non-output information may exhibit a positive incremental value in presence of a liability constraint.      

Incentivized methods to generate electronic word-of-mouth: Implications for the resort industry

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) via social media and the internet is a popular channel through which consumers are communicating with other consumers. To increase eWOM effectiveness, some resorts have developed alternative methods to incentivize consumers to generate eWOM. These methods include: hiring reviewers, providing social currency to acquire products at a later date, or providing free product (stays at their resort). Under the theoretical framework of the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad and Wright, 1994), the impact of these methods on consumers’ perception of the resort’s image, moral judgments regarding the methods, and attitudes toward the resort was studied through an experiment. We found that the different methods to incentivize eWOM yielded significantly different moral judgments, which then predicted consumers’ attitudes toward the resort and the resort’s image. Additionally, different levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and consumers’ perception of industry practice norms also had effects on consumers’ moral judgments.