Convergent cultural evolution and multilevel selection: Reply to comments on Janet Landa’s ‘The bioeconomics of homogenous middleman groups as adaptive units: Theory and empirical evidence viewed from a group selection framework’

The comments on Janet Landa’s (J Bioecon 10(3):259–278, 2008) target article provide a fascinating snapshot of how multilevel selection theory is perceived across several disciplines. When we focus on the zone of agreement among the commentators, Landa’s article provides an important example of convergent cultural evolution. When we focus on the zone of disagreement, we find a snapshot of the current status of the group selection controversy that goes beyond narrow scientific issues and requires a ‘truth and reconciliation’ process to resolve, as discussed in my series of blogs titled “Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection” (Wilson , 2009) and briefly summarized here.      

基于主成分分析的上市公司财务危机预警模型研究

本文以我国上市公司为研究对象,选取2009年被ST的上市公司作为财务危机样本组,共61家, 同时选取与财务危机组同行业,资产规模在10%差异之内的61家非财务危机上市公司作为配 对样本,共计122家(61组)上市公司的财务数据进行研究。从这61组中随机选取31组配对样 本作为学习样本组,用来构建财务困境预测模型,另外30组样本作为检验样本组,用来检验 预测模型的有效性。     

Modelling Risk Perceptions of Stakeholders in Public–Private Partnership Toll Road Contracts

This paper investigates the risk perceptions of key stakeholder groups typically involved in public–private partnership (PPP) toll roads. Risk perceptions have an important impact on these PPP schemes for investing in public infrastructure. However, the nature and extent of risk associated with the specification of a PPP contract that commits contracting parties to deliver on their obligations remain unclear. In the context of major transport infrastructure, such as a new toll road, the often‐cited key risk to investors is the traffic (and hence demand) risk. There are, however, other risks, including political risk and media risk, the latter often causing untold harm resulting in modifications to the planned infrastructure. This paper develops a method to capture evidence on how public sector and private sector partners involved in previous PPPs perceive the levels of risk associated with each risk attribute, as a way of identifying the ex ante risk setting brought to negotiations in PPP toll road investments. Using a sample of 101 experts with contract experience in 32 countries, we develop a stated choice experiment and estimate a discrete choice model to quantify a risk profile index (RPI) to capture the perceived (relative) influence of each dimension of risk, and then identify sources of systematic differences in the RPI as a way of understanding the influence of personal traits and contextual and contractual factors.     

Conditions Ensuring the Decomposition of Asset Demand for All Risk-Averse Investors

Abstract

The paper explores how the demand for a risky asset can be decomposed into an investment effect and a hedging effect by all risk-averse investors. This question has been shown to be complex when considered outside of the mean-variance framework. Dependence among returns on the risky assets is restricted to quadrant dependence and it is found that the demand for one risky asset can be decomposed into an investment component based on the risk premium offered by the asset and a hedging component used against the fluctuations in the return on the other risky asset. The paper also discusses how the class of quadrant-dependent distributions is related to that of two-fund separating distributions. This contribution opens up the search for broader distributional hypotheses suitable to asset demand models. Examples are discussed.     

依靠技术创新 科学发展煤化工产业

兖矿集团20世纪90年代就已进入煤化工领域,在煤化工产业发展领域积累了很多有益的经验。文章介绍了兖矿集团煤化工产业的发展现状、煤化工技术创新的主要成果及其具体实践,提出兖矿集团煤化工产业"十二五"期间的重点技术研发目标。     

住房价格的特征法分析与“夹心层”住房需求的实证估测

本文基于对上海市600余名夹心层（青年白领）人士的问卷调查,采用特征价格法模型计量测度了住房关键性特征对上海住房价格的影响。在此基础上,根据上海市夹心层真实住房需求分布情况推算出该群体期望住房的市场价格,从而为进一步衡量夹心层住房购买力缺口提供科学依据。     

广东农业龙头企业——温氏集团科技创新的STS分析

科技创新与社会发展具有高度的相关性。在推进农业产业化的过程中,广东温氏集团起到了引领和示范作用。研究表明:科技创新是其持续发展的保障和重要的推动力之一。运用STS理论,通过对广东温氏集团近30年科技创新与社会发展历史进程的考察,我们得知温氏集团逐步形成了以产业技术创新为中心,以产学研为主体,以公共技术服务体系为支撑的科技创新体系,旨在对发展广东省农业现代化有所借鉴,对我国农业产业化可持续发展有所启示。     

A comparison of the estimates of expected utility and non-expected-utility preference functionals

This paper extends the literature on the estimation of expected utility and non-expected-utility preference functionals (and the consequent exploration of the superiority of non-expected-utility over expected utility preference functionals) to a comparison of two different ways (pairwise choice and complete ranking) of experimentally obtaining data on such preferences. What is revealed is that the magnitude of the subject error is clearly conditional on the elicitation method used and, rather alarmingly, that the preference functional apparently employed by the subject may also be conditional on the elicitation method.     

浅谈开滦集团党建特点

介绍了开滦集团党的建设情况,从时代要求、与企业转型发展并进的精神、自身发展的现实3个方面进行了阐述。     

Accommodating spatial correlation across choice alternatives in discrete choice models: an application to modeling residential location choice behavior

This paper presents a modeling methodology capable of accounting for spatial correlation across choice alternatives in discrete choice modeling applications. Many location choice (e.g., residential location, workplace location, destination location) modeling contexts involve choice sets where alternatives are spatially correlated with one another due to unobserved factors. In the presence of such spatial correlation, traditional discrete choice modeling methods that are often based on the assumption of independence among choice alternatives are not appropriate. In this paper, a Generalized Spatially Correlated Logit (GSCL) model that allows one to represent the degree of spatial correlation as a function of a multi-dimensional vector of attributes characterizing each pair of location choice alternatives is formulated and presented. The formulation of the GSCL model allows one to accommodate alternative correlation mechanisms rather than pre-imposing restrictive correlation assumptions on the location choice alternatives. The model is applied to the analysis of residential location choice behavior using a sample of households drawn from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) data set. Model estimation results obtained from the GSCL are compared against those obtained using the standard multinomial logit (MNL) model and the spatially correlated logit (SCL) model where only correlations across neighboring (or adjacent) alternatives are accommodated. Model findings suggest that there is significant spatial correlation across alternatives that do not share a common boundary, and that the GSCL offers the ability to more accurately capture spatial location choice behavior.