Climate change adaptation actions by fish farmers: evidence from the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

This paper examined climate change adaptation strategies in fish farming and the effect of such methods on the profit of fish farmers in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Using cross‐sectional data obtained from 420 fish farmers from the region and applying multivariate probit and instrumental variable regressions, the study found that fish farmers have adopted a broad range of strategies to address climate risk and that these have significantly increased farmers’ profit. Our findings indicated important relationships between certain farm, socio‐economic and institutional characteristics and the adaptation actions. The study provides useful insight into factors that potentially encourage the adoption of livelihood‐enhancing climate risk adaptation strategies by fish farmers in the Niger Delta region and similar contexts.     

Ex-post incentive compatible and individually rational assignments in housing markets with interdependent values

This paper presents a model for housing markets with interdependent values. We introduce private information on the quality of a house (i.e., high or low), which is known only to the initial owner. Interdependency means that the ex-post preference of an agent depends on the private information of the other agents with regard to the quality of houses. We prove that on a domain satisfying a richness condition, the no-trade rule is the only rule that satisfies ex-post incentive compatibility and ex-post individual rationality.     

Asymmetry,Complementarities, and State Dependence in Federal Reserve Forecasts

Forecasts are a central component of policymaking; the Federal Reserve's forecasts are published in a document called the Greenbook. Previous studies of the Greenbook's inflation forecasts have found them to be rationalizable but asymmetric if considering particular subperiods, for example, before and after the Volcker appointment. In these papers, forecasts are analyzed in isolation, assuming policymakers value them independently. We analyze the Greenbook forecasts in a framework in which the forecast errors for different variables are allowed to interact. We find that allowing the losses to interact makes the unemployment forecasts virtually symmetric, the output forecasts symmetric prior to the Volcker appointment, and the inflation forecasts symmetric after the onset of the Great Moderation.     

Fertility and the puzzle of female employment in the Middle East and North Africa

Female labour force participation rates across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have remained low for over four decades even though, in the same period, women's education rapidly increased and fertility rates substantially decreased. This study provides a better understanding of this surprising phenomenon by testing whether the number of children affects the mother's labour supply (using twins at first birth as an instrumental variable.) Despite a strong first stage, it does not find statistically significant effects in the second stage, even in the combined sample of over 100,000 observations. This non‐result, however, does not rule out that fertility affects women's employment in these countries. But it rejects impacts larger than 0.09. Similar twin‐studies in the United States found effects between 0.12 and 0.31. The paper discusses the implications of this result in understanding the puzzle of female participation in MENA and in designing policies to increase women's employment.     

On the robustness of the competitive equilibrium: Utility-improvements and equilibrium points

We show that the set of competitive equilibrium points of a pure exchange economy are the equilibrium points of a broader class of better-response demands than the usual utility-maximizing demand functions. The better-response demands are derived from assigning weights to all commodity bundles with higher utility than the current commodity bundle, with the greatest weights being placed on the commodity bundles with the highest utility gain. The usual utility-maximizing demand functions are then those in which the weight on the utility-maximizing bundle is one. We also show that these better-response demands belong to a large class of response maps that are generated by monotonic transformations of the utility functions and/or monotonic transformations of the weights assigned to the commodity bundles.     

Beauty contest,bounded rationality,and sentiment pricing dynamics

We present a dynamic asset pricing model that incorporates investor sentiment, bounded rationality and higher-order expectations to study how these factors affect asset pricing equilibrium. In the model, we utilize a two-period trading market and investors make decisions based on the heterogeneous expectations principle and the “sparsity-based bounded rational” sentiment. We find that bounded rationality results in mispricing and reduces it in next period. Investor sentiment produces more significant effects than private signals, optimistic investor sentiment increases hedging demand, thus causing prices to soar. Higher-order investors are more rational and attentive to the strategies of other participants rather than private signals. This model also derives the dampening effect of higher-order expectations to price volatility and the heterogeneity expectation depicts inconsistent investor behavior in financial markets. In the model, investors' expectations about future price is distorted by their sentiment and bounded rationality, so they obtain a biased mean from the signal extraction.     

老年协会参与对老年虐待的影响

本文基于第三期全国妇女社会地位调查老年专项调查数据, 使用倾向值分析和工具变量方法,研究老年协会参与对老年虐待的影响及其作用机制。研究发现老年协会参与能有效抑制老年虐待。从作用机制来看,老年人在家庭私人生活领域之外的社会参与程度越高,参加文娱活动、志愿服务、互帮互惠等社会交往活动越频繁,法律意识越强,遭受家庭成员虐待的风险越小。但是目前广大老年人群特别是非精英的普通弱势老年人参加各类社会组织的积极性和广泛性还不够。对此,政府有关部门应强化城乡基层老年社会组织建设,为广大老年群体尤其是普通老人积极参与创造条件。针对家庭赡养中的虐老问题,老年社会组织应从法律、社会治理等方面开展鉴别、预防和干预工作,提升老年人法律素养,实施家庭支持策略强化延续家庭养老功能,维护弱势老年人合法权益。     

公司捐赠与经济理性——汶川地震后中国上市公司捐赠行为的再检验

中国公司捐赠主要是经理人员自利行为还是价值提升行为,文章利用"5.12汶川大地震"后上市公司的捐赠数据进行了检验。研究发现,消费者口碑敏感型行业公司和高毛利率公司,其捐赠比例更高、捐赠更及时、捐赠金额更大,而捐赠与否、捐赠及时性和捐赠力度还与公司盈利状况正相关。研究结论表明公司捐赠更多地体现了价值提升的理性动机。     

寻找理性经济行为的逻辑新起点——试论中国传统伦理下的中庸理性经济人

在主流经济学的视野中,追求效用最大化是社会个体理性行为的基本准则。文章认为主流经济学理性假设的根本问题在于没有揭示特定人类社会的独特复杂特征。主流经济学家忽略了在现实生活中存在于西方文明之外的实然——中庸理性。文章尝试在以中庸理性为假设的理性经济人模型基础上,探讨中国传统伦理下中庸理性经济人的演化及其存在的可能空间。     

行政规范性文件评估中合理性标准的运用

合理性标准是行政规范性文件评估中的一个基本标准,要求我们在评估实践中正确把握合理性标准的内涵。合理性标准与合法性标准是不相冲突的,合理性评估往往是在合法性前提下进行的评判。对行政规范性文件的评估应当从其制定的必要性、可行性及其所规定的内容上进行评估,从而防止行政规范性文件制定过程中的自由裁量权的滥用。同时,要求评估主体能够客观、公正地对所评估的文件作出合理性的评价,并在评估结论中予以体现。