Analyzing the Relationships between Individual Criminal Behavior and the Severity and Probability of Punishment

This paper deals with problems encountered in analyzing how an individual is deterred from committing a crime by the severity and probability of punishment. It is argued that it might be advantageous to base such an analysis on a model of maximization of expected utility. According to this model, the attractiveness of committing a crime is strongly affected by the product of the relative utility of committing the crime and being punished as compared with the utility of not committing the crime times the probability of the punishment. This implies that the bivariate linear relationships of choices to commit or not to commit crime and the severity and probability factors are dependent on the variations in both these factors and their mean values. In this paper, these bivariate relationships are analyzed in two ways – formally-algebraically and by numerical examples.     

Effects of commitment on intentional loyalty at the person-to-person and person-to-firm levels

This study explores how customers’ affective commitment and calculative commitment to the personal adviser and bank, respectively, affect their intentional loyalty to the personal adviser and bank. Data were collected using a web survey of mass affluent customers of a major Swedish bank. Responses were measured and analysed using factor, correlation, and regression analyses. The results reveal that the person-to-person and person-to-firm loyalty categories are influenced by affective and calculative commitment to the personal advisor and by affective commitment to the bank, but not by calculative commitment to the bank. Moreover, there is a strong relationship between customer loyalty to the personal adviser and to the bank. It can be concluded that affective commitment has a stronger overall impact on customer loyalty than does calculative commitment, indicating the importance of creating affective ties with customers, and that personal advisers are central to bank – customer relationships. The importance of financial issues to mass affluent customers implies that both affective commitment and calculative commitment to the personal adviser are important in building customer loyalty to a bank or brand.     

Willingness to pay for improved air quality in Sweden

The aim of the paper is to quantify individual willingness-to-pay measures of improved air quality in Sweden by using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). Such measures are important for policy makers when deciding about public investments and policy instruments in order to regulate environmental impacts, e.g. from road transportation and industry. The mean willingness to pay (WTP) for a 50% reduction of harmful substances where the respondents live and work was about 2000 SEK/year, which is of the same order of magnitude as earlier stated preference studies in Nordic countries. Most parameters in the econometric analysis had the expected sign. WTP was increasing in income, wealth and education; it was larger for men, members of environmental organizations, people living in big cities (which are on average more polluted), and people who own their house or apartment. It was lower for retired people. However, the additional WTP for people in big cities, although significantly higher than for other people, was lower than expected, indicating a possible insensitivity-to-scope effect.     

体育锻炼与学生自尊发展关系的研究

自尊是个体对自身特点、个性、社会身份和行为的评价或感情反应。目前,西方锻炼心理学领域中,有关自尊理论的研究强调:一个人的自尊由不同的、具体的成分(如身体自尊、专业自尊和社会自尊等)组成。尽管影响个体自尊水平的因素很多,但体育运动确实是提高人们自尊水平的一条重要途径。由于身体自尊对研究体育锻炼参与的心理前因和效益具有重要意义,它的变化能引起整体自尊水平的同方向变化,因此,研究目前有关学生自尊及其与体育活动关系,却是深化学校体育改革的必然。     

关于服务承诺的几个问题

提供优质服务是市场经济条件下消费者必然的要求,也是企业进行市场竞争的一个重要手段。《关于服务承诺的几个问题》解析了当前服务承诺中的常见问题,并就如何切实履行承诺作了简要的论述     

Explaining municipal audit costs in Sweden: Reconsidering the political environment,the municipal organisation and the audit market

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.     

政府扶持物流发展的几个博弈问题

中国加入WTO,物流产业面临着前所未有的机遇和挑战,政府和企业所要进行的工作任重道远。我国物流现状远远落后于发达国家,政府作为国家重要基础设施的掌控者和国家宏观经济调控的决策者,应加大力度从宏观和微观的角度支持物流产业的发展,对相关扶持进行博弈决策。     

Keeping up with the Vaishyas? Caste and relative standing in India

People care about relative, and not only absolute, income. Thispaper investigates the importance of relative income withinand between castes in the Indian caste system, using a choiceexperimental approach. The results indicate that slightly morethan half of the marginal utility of income comes from somekind of relative income effects, on average. This is comparableto the results from previous studies in other countries. Belongingto a low caste and having a low family income are associatedwith higher concern for relative income. Moreover, an increasein the mean income of the caste to which the individual belongs,everything else held constant, reduces utility for the individual.Thus, the negative welfare effect of having a reduced relativeincome compared to the own caste average income dominates thepositive welfare effect due to increased relative income ofthe own caste compared to the income of other castes.     

在体育教育中应如何培养学生的创造力和创造思维

通过对学校体育课程改革的调查、研究,探索创造力与体育教育之间的内在关系,提出培养学生的创造力和创造思维应是当代体育教育所追求的目标。