Commentary on Janet Landa's Paper

In her paper, Janet Landa argues that the key behind the success of the ethnically homogeneous Chinese middleman group (EHMG) is their highly developed in-group cooperation. She places the EHMG phenomenon within the framework of evolutionary biology by calling it 'a cultural transmission unit' subject to the influence of both genes and culture. Landa suggests that the individual members of the EHMG comprise the units of selection for EHMG groups much like the genes comprise the units of selection for individual organisms. However, evolution occurs through the differential survival and reproduction of individual organisms. In order to meet the criteria of biological group selection, it would have to be demonstrated that groups in competition with EHMGs had gone extinct. The fact that the EHMGs are simply faring better than their competitors is not evidence for group selection. The other reason biological group selection is not really applicable to EHMGs is that there are no physical/biological barriers to exogamous mating, and cultural barriers are intrinsically unstable.     

Parental altruism, life expectancy and dynamically inefficient equilibria

This paper presents a continuous time overlapping-generation (OLG) model which generalizes the Blanchard–Buiter–Weil model and clarifies the relationships between dynastic altruism, the length of planning horizons, and dynamic inefficiency. Our main innovation relies on the introduction of parental altruism, whose intensity is variable. We first show that parental altruism and life expectancy do favor overaccumulation. Second, we give a condition that explains why the Ramsey model may only display dynamic efficiency. These theoretical results are illustrated by a parameterization from US data. Our numerical exercises suggest that the US economy is dynamically efficient, mainly because of the shortness of life expectancy.     

Unfocused Altruism: The Impact of Iconography on Charitable Activity

Over the past generation much attention has been paid to the disadvantaged in our society. Public and private programs have been developed to alleviate poverty and allow the underprivileged into the mainstream of society. While much more needs to be done, many of these programs have been highly successful.Unfortunately, many social programs have had perverse consequences for the intended beneficiaries. One example is the debate over differential tuition at State University of New York (SUNY) colleges. Advocates of uniform tuition at SUNY colleges take a position that at first glance appears compassionate, but upon closer examination may actually work against the interests of the low- income students it is meant to help. The purpose of this paper is to show how altruism without rigorous analysis can be dangerous to those in need of assistance. What is important is the effectiveness of public policy initiatives, not their method of delivery.     

I complain for your good? Re-examining consumer advocacy

Marketplace helping behavior such as opinion leadership, market maven, and purchase pals that benefit others has been extensively studied. A diverse but similar to other marketplace helping behaviors is the concept of consumer advocacy. Extant review of literature reveals that customer advocacy and consumer advocacy are conceptually different. The former is an organization level construct, and the latter is an individual consumer's ‘generalized tendency to share market information’. It is argued that a following dissatisfactory service encounter, consumer advocates would indulge in market placing helping behavior such as negative word of mouth to prevent other consumers' from having similar marketplace disappointments. Hence, prior studies link consumer advocacy to ‘altruistic tendencies’. On the basis of self-construal theory, this study investigates the motivations for consumer advocacy. Using a scenario-based experimentation implemented in survey method; we establish that consumer advocacy is motivated by an amalgamation of altruism and self-interest. We also operationalize third-party complaint construct and empirically test whether consumer advocacy is a predictor.     

Organizations and overlapping generations games: Memory,communication, and altruism

This paper studies the role of memory and communication in overlapping generations (OLG) games between ongoing organizations. In each organization, each individual, upon entry into the game, replaces his predecessor who has the same preferences and faces the same strategic possibilities. An individual has no prior memory - that is, he does not directly witness the events that occur before his tenure. Instead, each individual relies on information about the past from his predecessor via cheap talk. This paper highlights the role of communication as a surrogate for memory.It has been shown elsewhere that Folk Theorems hold in OLG games with long enough lived individuals who can perfectly observe the past. However, the Folk Theorem fails for many games when individuals have no prior memory. We show that for OLG games without prior memory but with costly communication, a Folk Theorem holds only when there is some altruistic link between cohorts in an organization. Our main result asserts that if communication costs are sufficiently small, or if altruistic weights on successors are sufficiently large, then a strongly stationary Folk Theorem (i.e., equilibrium payoffs are time invariant) obtains if a managers message is public information. The equilibria in this Folk Theorem require a special form of intergenerational sanctions. In these sanctions, punishment is sometimes carried out long after both victim and perpetrator have left the game. Without this special structure, altruism may in fact destroy cooperation when it would otherwise be possible.Received: 18 April 2003, Accepted: 20 October 2003, JEL Classification: C72, C73, D74, D82We have benefitted from helpful comments and conversations with Luca Anderlini, Kirk Bailey, Hans Haller, Matthew Jackson, and Takashi Shimizu, and numerous seminar participants. This research is partially supported by the National Science Foundation, and by grants-in-aid for scientific research of the Ministry of Education of Japan. Of course, any remaining error is our own.     

The Redistributive Effect of Risky Taxation

This paper examines heterogeneous effects of uncertainty of the U.S. tax policies across income classes. We construct a multi-class general equilibrium stochastic OLG model with a stochastic process of effective tax rates. In accordance with empirical evidence, the model includes two types of families: a high-income family, whose members have bequest motives and share risks; and a low-income family, whose members do not. Some notable results are as follows: (i) under a CRRA preference the efficient allocation of resources within family generates the same proportional standard deviation of consumption and leisure among family members; (ii) the welfare cost of the uncertainty of a tax policy is higher for the low-income family than for the high-income family: the cost for the low-lifetime-income family is about 145% of that for the high-lifetime-income family; Finally, (iii) the absolute level of the welfare cost for the whole population is shown to be about 0.53% of GNP, which is higher than the welfare cost measures by previous research such as Bizer and Judd (1989) and Skinner (1988).     

信任的研究方法综述

信任在社会学、经济学、心理学等学科中受到日益广泛的关注。信任的研究方法可以划分为两类，即相关因素分析和博弈分析。通过回顾和总结两种研究方法下所做的重要工作，提出两个需要进一步研究的问题：利他的演化以及利他在非亲属之间的演化；利他、互利、信任的动态模型。     

Do Female Executives Prioritize Corporate Social Responsibility?

How do female executives view corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Previous studies have reported mixed findings on the relationship between female executives and CSR. We select a sample of Chinese listed firms and use propensity score matching to construct a new sample of firms and evaluate the gender transition (from male to female) of chief executive officers or board chairpersons (executives) who are randomly assigned to firms (i.e., the gender transition of executives is regarded as an exogenous event). Subsequently, we use a difference-in-differences approach to identify the pure effect of female executives on CSR. Our results indicate that female executives are more likely to encourage CSR reporting. Moreover, we suggest that the mechanism behind female executives prioritizing CSR is altruism preference rather than risk aversion preference.     

个人慈善捐赠的税收激励分析与政策思考

个人捐赠不仅受利他主义的驱使,还存在个人自利的追求.因此,许多国家制定了某些政策以支持人们的捐赠行为,其中税收优惠是各国激励个人捐赠的普遍做法.个人捐赠的多少取决于捐赠价格的高低,为鼓励人们捐赠,税收政策的制定应降低捐赠的价格.     

家族企业内部冲突机理分析

中国家族企业在发展过程中面临许多冲突,如家族成员冲突、传承冲突以及职业化冲突等,很多学者从文化、契约等角度来探讨这些冲突背后的原因,并取得了很多的成果.本文尝试以"家族理性"为理论假设,以家族利益与企业利益之间的广义"利他主义"关系为分析对象,探讨家族企业内部冲突机理.