The negative trade-off between risk and incentives: Evidence from the american whaling industry

This paper analyzes the trade-off between risk and incentives in the share contracts of the American whaling industry. Using a newly collected panel of 5378 individuals who sailed on more than 1000 whaling voyages from 1855–68, the response of sailors’ compensation to an increase in risk is estimated. The risks used to identify this response resulted from the commerce-raiding naval vessels of the Confederacy during the Civil War. As the Confederate cruisers sailed primarily in the Atlantic, and therefore posed far less of a threat to whaling voyages to other oceans, a quasi-experimental approach focusing on the differences between Atlantic voyages compared to others is implemented. The results are consistent with a negative trade-off between risk and incentives in the industry’s contracts. Moreover, evidence is found of selection among less risk-averse sailors and merchants into riskier voyages during the war.     

网络时代高校德育教育的对策

在网络时代，人们的活动范围开始从实际领域向虚拟空间扩展，原本在地域文化基础上形成簟思想观念、价值取向等更多的受到了外来文花的冲击，人类整个思想文化领域正经历着深刻的变化。高校德育工作者务必抓住时机，积极寻找对策，充分发挥网络的优势，扬长避短，开辟德育教育的新天地。     

Characterization of a class of moral-hazard, adverse selection games

Studying a principal-agent game in which the agent alone observes the state of the world and reports it, but the moral hazard is not reducible, shows that, if the principal uses all signals, then no solution exists, i.e. there is no contract that elicits truth-telling and motivates the agent to exert effort. When the principal does not use signals on the state of the world that seem irrelevant, a solution exists in which some of the ex post signals on outcome are not used, even though they obey the informativeness condition of Holmstrom (Bell Journal of Economics, 1979, 10, 74–91).     

关于高校"两课"教学改革的思考

高等学校思想政治理论课承担着对大学生进行系统的马克思主义理论教育的任务,是对大学生进行思想政治教育的主渠道。充分发挥思想政治理论课的作用。用马克思列宁主义、毛泽东思想、邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想武装当代大学生,是党的教育方针的具体体现,是社会主义大学的本质特征,是党和国家事业长远发展的根本保证。     

从日本环境问题对策的变迁看我国的环境政策

环境问题可以区分为“公害型”环境问题与“扩展型”环境问题,文章在分析了日本在解决这些环境问题方面积累的经验和教训的同时,提出解决我国的环境问题,要完善我国的环境政策体系,加强环境执法检查和行政执法,建立绿色核算体系和制度,彻底确立“环境保护优先”的方针,大幅度地增加环境支出,提高公众的环保意识的对策建议。     

Food beliefs and food supply chains: The impact of religion and religiosity in Israel

This paper demonstrates that religion and religiosity affect norms, which affect food consumption patterns and production. Heterogeneity and asymmetric information lead to multiple certification channels as well as multiple supply chains. Major supply chains may address multiple constituencies that are secular or less religious. Technological change affects norms and thus the food system. We obtain these results by analyzing the food systems for meat products in Israel where there are three religions – Jews, Muslims, and Christians – and people assign themselves three levels of religiosity – secular, conservative, and orthodox. Israel has multiple Kosher and Halal certifiers and several specialized supermarket chains for orthodox groups. Its main supermarket chains serve secular and some conservative segments. The immigration of secular Jews from Russia led to the proliferation of non-Kosher supply chains and products, and increased consumption of pork. New technologies and higher incomes led to emergence of fast food chains serving orthodox Jews that had previously tended to eat at home.     

Risk shifting in the US banking system: An empirical analysis

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on risk shifting. It proposes a method to find out whether risk shifting is present in the banking industry and, if so, what type. The type of risk shifting depends on the group of debt holders to whom risk is shifted. We apply this method to the US banking sector in 1998–2011. To study the relationship between risk shifting and the 2008 crisis, the sample is also split into pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis periods. Our results suggest that the same type of risk shifting is present in the entire sample and in the pre-crisis and crisis subsamples. We find no evidence of risk shifting after the crisis. Furthermore, holding capital buffers seems to disincentivize risk shifting. This finding appears to provide support for the conservative buffer included in Basel III.     

Institutions,moral hazard and expected government support of banks

We model the expected support of banks with credit ratings from Moody's and Fitch, taking explicitly into account the capacity and willingness of governments to provide support in case of need, as well as their concerns about moral hazard (i.e., that the expected support may induce banks to assume bigger risks). Our results suggest that moral hazard concerns are relatively weak. In addition, a substantial part of the expected support can be attributed to the quality of a country's institutions. These findings have important implications for the dynamics of banking crises, the value of the ‘fair’ insurance premium banks might be called upon to pay for the expected support, as well as for ways to reduce the resulting negative externalities.     

Bank distress prediction: Empirical evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries

In this paper we apply a simple hazard model to develop an early warning system of bank distress in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Specifically, we identify a set of leading indicators of bank distress that are used subsequently to predict the probability of bank failure in these countries. The investigation covers a wide set of bank level variables and other variables including the influence of bank management, competition, diversification, ownership and regulation. Similar to the previous empirical evidence, we found that good management lowers the likelihood of distress. Moreover, competition and diversification were found to be bad for the health of banks. This result is consistent with some empirical evidence on diversification; however, it contradicts the bulk of literature on competition, which suggests a negative influence on the probability of distress. The ownership structure and the capital requirement index were uninformative. Similar to the previous literature, the institutional development index was statistically relevant predictor. The bank specific and other CAMEL type variables as well as the systematic shocks in the financial and macroeconomic environment were all found to be in line with the findings of related empirical studies. Finally, we find that by conditioning on the relevant covariates, a simple hazard model has performed fairly well in predicting bank distress in the GCC countries.     

信贷配给及信息甄别博弈理论的文献分析及评述

自从Stiglitz＆Weiss和Jaffee＆Russell这两篇经典文献从信息不对称角度解释信贷配给现象之后,涌现出众多的理论文献对信贷市场的信贷配给现象和信息甄别问题进行了研究。现有的信贷市场基本理论研究在以下几方面取得成果：一是信贷配给的信息不对称成因;二是抵押物可以成为银行的风险分类工具：三是贷款额度可以成为银行的风险分类工具。同时其理论研究框架在银行类型假定、借款人类型假定、以及描述借款人行为的效用函数等方面存在局限性,有待进一步深入研究。