Genetic risk and value

A conceptual truth about risks is that they involve a possible and future adverse effect or a negative value of some kind. The genetic risks that individuals may face in the health care setting differ in some crucial respects to other kind of risks. The aims of this paper are to analyse the notion of value in the context of genetic risk in the setting of health care, and to suggest a conception of the evaluative aspect of genetic risk that is fruitful for genetic risk information. Two influential and relevant approaches to value, preferentialism and the capability approach, are discussed in the light of certain distinctive features of genetic risk and a third, a sensibility theory of value is suggested. According to this view, the concept of risk is a so-called ‘thick’ evaluative concept that has both a world-guiding function as well as an action-guiding or normative function. It is argued that this provides a more promising way to think about genetic risks in the clinical setting.     

The effect of heterogeneous beliefs on mergers and acquisitions

This article investigates the effect of heterogeneous beliefs on firms’ mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decisions. Using data of China’s financial market, which is featured with great heterogeneity of belief, we find that heterogeneous beliefs are positively associated with the occurrence of M&A transactions, and firms with greater heterogeneous beliefs are more likely to pay the transactions with stock. Moreover, we show that government intervention, measured by state ownership, weakens the effect of heterogeneous beliefs on firms’ M&A decisions.     

多重委托代理下医生最优激励模型设计探究

"过度医疗"即指超过疾病实际需求的诊断和治疗的行为。医疗服务的特殊性,使患者、医生、监督方之间存在信息不对称和多重委托代理关系。鉴于此,从政府的第三方监督职能出发,将政府和患者作为共同委托人,避免政府与医院之间道德风险的发生,构建医生作为代理人的最优激励模型,并得出相关结论与启示。     

Beyond Asymmetry: Substantive Beliefs in Preference Formation and Efficiency of Asymmetrical Negotiations

Contrary to extant propositions on the primacy of trade dependency in compelling faster agreement by subordinate states in asymmetrical economic negotiations, in the European Union–Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (EU–ACP) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations, it is the states that were least materially vulnerable that were quickest to accept an EPA. Why so? I argue that the speed and propensity of ACP states to accept and ratify their EPAs were principally hinged on variances in preference formation based on what Ikenberry and Kupchan [(1990), ‘Socialization and Hegemonic Power’, International Organization, 44 (3), pp. 283–315: 283] call ‘substantive beliefs rather than material payoffs’. The quickest states to ratify an EPA were those which most intensely shared the EU's neoliberal belief in an automatic correlation between trade liberalisation and economic growth, rather than those that were most materially vulnerable. Therefore, by taking the normative sources of preference formation by subordinate states seriously, we can not only derive a parsimonious explanation of EPA negotiating efficiency but also form a foundational conceptual model of predicting efficiency in asymmetrical negotiations that unifies the role of both normative and material considerations.     

试析德沃金对司法能动主义的批判——宪法解释视角

德沃金的法律解释学说是本世纪重要的法律学说,其宪法的道德解释是不同于司法能动主义支持者解释路径,通过对原意主义批判和宪法道德解释证成两个方面对司法能动主义进行批判。     

Repeated moral hazard and recursive Lagrangeans

This paper shows how to solve dynamic agency models by extending recursive Lagrangean techniques à la Marcet and Marimon (2011) to problems with hidden actions. The method has many advantages with respect to the promised utilities approach (Abreu et al., 1990): it is a significant improvement in terms of simplicity, tractability and computational speed. Solutions can be easily computed for hidden actions models with several endogenous state variables and several agents, while the promised utilities approach becomes extremely difficult and computationally intensive even with just one state variable or two agents.     

Integration of and Deliveries among the World Zionist Organization,Israel, and Diaspora Countries: System Articulation with the Social Fabric Matrix

Abstract:

The religious economics (not economics of religion) concern here is the relationship between the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and Israel, which is known as a geopolitical power in its region and which is also known as an economic success story. Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Polanyi explained how the political economy of medieval Europe was influenced and guided by Christian morality. This paper extends the analysis of religious economics by using the social fabric matrix of original institutional economics to define and structure the integration of the WZO, Israel, and the Diaspora countries. This allows us to observe how to conduct such work and to learn how Israel is guided and influenced by the WZO. It also helps to explain Israel’s “risk of tearing itself apart” as noted in a recent article in the New York Times.     

Optimal insurance under rank‐dependent utility and incentive compatibility

Bernard, He, Yan, and Zhou (Mathematical Finance, 25(1), 154–186) studied an optimal insurance design problem where an individual's preference is of the rank‐dependent utility (RDU) type, and show that in general an optimal contract covers both large and small losses. However, their results suffer from the unrealistic assumption that the random loss has no atom, as well as a problem of moral hazard that provides incentives for the insured to falsely report the actual loss. This paper addresses these setbacks by removing the nonatomic assumption, and by exogenously imposing the “incentive compatibility” constraint that both indemnity function and insured's retention function are increasing with respect to the loss. We characterize the optimal solutions via calculus of variations, and then apply the result to obtain explicitly expressed contracts for problems with Yaari's dual criterion and general RDU. Finally, we use numerical examples to compare the results between ours and Bernard et al.