Institutions,assortative matching and cultural evolution

This paper studies the role of institution in a Darwinian evolutionary process of cultural selection. The primary function of an institution is to determine how citizens in a society are matched pairwisely to interact. We examine three different types of institutions: utilitarian, egalitarian, and Nash. Two cultural types stand out in the long run through the evolutionary process. The opportunistic cultural type maximizes individual payoff against another opportunistic cultural type, while the civic-minded cultural type maximizes the total payoff of a pair. We show that the structure of the underlying interactions among citizens plays a critical role. On the one hand, the evolutionary stability of the civic-minded cultural type requires supermodularity of the citizens’ payoff function under the utilitarian institution and log-supermodularity in addition under the Nash institution. On the other hand, the evolutionary stability of the opportunistic cultural type requires submodularity of the citizens’ payoff function under the utilitarian institution and log-submodularity under the Nash institution. Neither type’s evolutionary stability is guaranteed under the egalitarian institution.     

Alternate signs of life: The growth of biotechnology industries in Shanghai and Bangalore

This paper explores the emergence of biotechnology centers in Shanghai and Bangalore by comparing their development to best practices in the literature for biotechnology cluster growth and development. Interviews with over fifty biotech companies and related institutions in China and India indicate that these regions are developing alternate models of low cost manufacturing and services that build on the current local base of knowledge and expertise. The ability to convert research into successful commercial activity was identified in both regions. The strong research capacity, private sector funding, and entrepreneurial environment deemed critical best practices were limited. New growth theory is used to explain these alternate approaches to technological and social change.     

Changes in volatility of credit spread and market efficiency during rapid growth of credit-related securities

This paper investigates the changes in credit spread volatility during 1993–2001. We find that the credit spreads between junk-grade corporate bonds and Treasury bonds were significantly more volatile in the second half of this period when credit-related securities became popular. In contrast, investment-grade bonds exhibited no significant change in volatility. The junk bonds variance ratios changed from being less than one to greater than one. Using the GJR-Garch model, the conditional volatilities of junk bonds increased in the second half of the period and the mean reversion speeds slowed, suggesting a longer time for mean reversion to occur. Our analysis rules out treasury volatility, credit spread level, equity market return, T-bill rate, curvature of the Treasury curve, financial crisis, quantity of defaults and standard deviation of defaults as explanations for the increase in junk bond volatility. In contrast, volatility of equity returns provides a partial explanation of junk bond spread volatility in the later period.     

The Gender Contract under Neoliberalism: Palestinian-Israeli Women's Labor Force Participation

This paper interprets the pressure to raise Palestinian-Israeli women’s labor force participation within the unfolding neoliberal project in Israel, arguing that women’s stalled workforce integration reflects embedded economic rationality. Poor infrastructure and discriminatory policies, combined with Israel’s rapid economic privatization, set contradictory expectations for Palestinian-Israeli women: their opportunity-cost calculations include entitlements to economic protection alongside obligations to provide expenditure-saving domestic labor. Yet growing pressure and desire to join the paid workforce suggest that the gender contract may be changing. This cultural schema, which links women’s economic strategizing to their sense of feminine propriety, is transforming as part of a broader transition to a market-led gender regime, with the paradoxical effect of encouraging women’s employment while simultaneously impoverishing them. By dwelling on the dialectics of culture and the structure of work opportunities, and women’s agency, this paper aims to resolves an impasse in the current debate on women’s low workforce participation.     

Half empty, half full and why we can agree to disagree forever

Aumann [Aumann R., 1976. Agreeing to disagree. Annals of Statisitics 4, 1236–1239] derives his famous we cannot agree to disagree result under the assumption that people are expected utility (=EU) decision makers. Motivated by empirical evidence against EU theory, we study the possibility of agreeing to disagree within the framework of Choquet expected utility (=CEU) theory which generalizes EU theory by allowing for ambiguous beliefs. As our first main contribution, we show that people may well agree to disagree if their Bayesian updating of ambiguous beliefs is psychologically biased in our sense. Remarkably, this finding holds regardless of whether people with identical priors apply the same psychologically biased Bayesian update rule or not. As our second main contribution, we develop a formal model of Bayesian learning under ambiguity. As a key feature of our approach the posterior subjective beliefs do, in general, not converge to “true” probabilities which is in line with psychological evidence against converging learning behavior. This finding thus formally establishes that CEU decision makers may even agree to disagree in the long-run despite the fact that they always received the same information.     

Surplus Value Production and Realization in Marxian Theory – Applications to the U.S., 1990–2015

ABSTRACT

Marx's Capital shows that surplus value can be produced in one industry, yet realized as profit (and possibly revenue) by other industries over the course of circulation. This paper highlights the separation between surplus value production and realization in Marx's work, and develops a new method for estimating surplus value production at the industry level to trace out transfers of surplus value across industries. The framework is based on the ‘New Interpretation’ and links money value added to surplus value production at the industry level. Data on value added by industry for the U.S. are used to estimate surplus value production by industry. The analysis allows comparison of surplus value production and realization in each industry. The pattern of differentials between surplus value creation and realization across industries sheds light on the processes of capitalist competition and points to a source of instability for capitalist economies.     

Does Web 2.0 utilisation lead to knowledge quality,improvisational creativity,compositional creativity,and innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises? A sense-making perspective

A few attempts were made to investigate how sense making is triggered through Web 2.0 utilisation and how it enables the accomplishment of key organisational outcomes. The objective of this research is to examine the structural relationship between Web 2.0 utilisation, knowledge quality (KQ) aspects, improvisational creativity, compositional creativity, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) innovativeness in an emerging market – Malaysia. Built upon sense-making theory, this study proposes that sense making is a progression of four formative constructs. Empirical analyses are based on a sample from SMEs’ top management (N?=?358, response rate?=?21%) using partial least squares approach. The findings indicate that Web 2.0 utilisation influences business entities’ sense-making activities in the way they realise the intrinsic value of knowledge and take action to apply the organisational knowledge. These sense-making activities are conducive to improvisational and compositional creativity of SMEs as well. Contributions, managerial implications, and limitations are discussed.     

区域创新系统衰退机理研究

本文运用社会燃烧理论分析了区域创新系统的衰退以及衰退机理,并进行实证研究,结果表明：区域创新系统存在衰退现象;区域创新系统衰退可发生在区域创新系统发展的任一阶段;区域创新系统的衰退存在着阶段性。本文首次将社会燃烧理论引入对区域创新系统研究中,并首次用来分析区域创新系统的衰退机理,丰富了区域创新系统的理论研究,并对区域创新系统的发展具有指导意义。     

创业绩效结构的探索性研究及其理论挖掘

创业绩效结构的明确不仅有利于创业理论的发展,而且有利于指导创业实践.研究发现,创业绩效是一种建构的事物,其测量理论的发展趋向于组织与利益相关者并重,其测量指标有从单维到多维、财务与非财务、客观与主观、绝对与相对并用的发展趋势.案例分析揭示了创业绩效的RSG结构维度-声誉、生存、成长,是对"基于合约的创业绩效理论"的修正.     

行为决策理论及决策行为实证研究方法探讨

作者对行为决策理论发展的历程及各阶段中决策行为的实证研究方法进行了梳理,发现决策行为的实证研究方法在很大程度上决定了行为决策理论发展的进程。在对决策行为一般实证研究方法及其特点进行分析之后,作者认为观察法较适用于决策行为的初步探索性研究;调查法则较适用于一般决策行为的总体状况和特征的研究;如果理论假说源于决策者某些特定的、深层次的主观动机,假设的证实或者证伪又需要大量的检验,实验法的优势比较明显。为了取得对本研究的实证效果,这里对如何将实验法应用于中国投资者决策行为研究做了一次实证性尝试,以供学术争鸣。