Cognitive ability and human behavior in experimental ultimatum games

Recent researches have shed light on the effect of cognitive ability on economic decision-making. By measuring cognitive ability applying Raven's progressive matrix test, we obtain two significant results that this effect affects decision-making in two types of experimental ultimatum games. First, the higher the cognitive ability, the larger the amount a sender offers when the offer is smaller than or equal to the half split. Second, the higher the responders’ cognitive ability, the smaller the offer they accept, when they accept it or not with the strategy method. This study not only finds new factors that affect decision-making in experimental ultimatum games, but also provides more evidences that cognitive ability influences economic decision-making.     

The Politics of Inequality as Organised Spectacle: Why the Swiss Do Not Want to Tax the Rich

In 2015, Swiss voters had the opportunity to impose a tax on the super rich in a popular vote and thereby fund a redistributive policy. However, a large majority voted against its seemingly obvious self-interest and rejected the tax. We propose an explanation for this puzzling outcome, bridging the usually separate behavioralist and institutionalist perspectives on the politics of inequality. We start from the observation that political economy tends to neglect processes of preference formation. Theorising preferences as socially constructed, we show that interest groups played a major role in shaping the outcome of the vote. Business frames were multiplied through allied parties and the media and had a major impact on individual voting behaviour. In addition, we demonstrate that interest groups representing business interests derive the content of their communication from business’s structurally privileged position in the capitalist economy. Specifically, creating uncertainty about possible perverse effects of government policies on jobs and growth is a powerful tool to undermine popular support. Frames based on this structural power ultimately explain why the Swiss refrained from ‘soaking the rich.’     

Estimating yield curves of the U.S. Treasury securities: An interpolation approach

Following the approach of interpolation, this paper proposes the multiple exponential decay model to fit yield curves for both the U.S. TIPS market and the conventional Treasury security market. Several estimation methods, including the unconstrained/constrained nonlinear minimization, quadratic programming, and the iterative linear least squares, are applied to estimate the unknown parameters according to different curve‐fitting purposes. Comparisons between the proposed model and the alternatives show that the multiple exponential decay successfully (1) adapts to a variety of shapes associated with yield curves, (2) (partially) keeps in line with the economic interpretations of Nelson–Siegel summarized by Diebold and Li ( 2006 ), and (3) dominates the competing models in curve‐fitting performance measured by mean fitted‐price errors over the sample period. In addition, the exact specification of a nonparametric interpolation model is pinned down by applying three statistical tools, which enable us to jointly take into account validity, optimality, and parsimoniousness of the proposed model.     

信息技术提高企业组织敏捷性的作用机理

从考察企业组织的敏捷性与交易成本的相互关系入手,对企业组织敏捷性的影响因素进行了剖析。详细分析了信息技术(IT)对提高企业组织敏捷性的作用机理。指出IT正是通过降低企业内、外部的交易成本、缩短流程时间、提高人的认识理性、扼制机会主义、促进企业组织结构、决策方式     

构造信贷市场资金价格形成机制分析——对定南县贷款利率市场化改革的个案研究

文章通过对江西定南县利率改革试点进行个案研究，从宏观和微观两个层面探讨了如何构造信贷市场资金价格形成机制。     

Social Comparisons in Ultimatum Bargaining

Experiments are used to examine the effects of social comparisons in ultimatum bargaining. We inform responders about the average offer before they decide whether to accept or reject their specific offer. This significantly increases offers and offer‐specific rejection probabilities. For comparison, we consider another change in informational conditions: telling responders the total pie is $30—ex ante it was either $15 or $30—affects offers and rejection probabilities roughly as much. Our results are consistent with people’s dislike for deviations from the norm of equity but inconsistent with fairness theories, where people dislike income disparity between themselves and their referents.     

浅析公共服务有效供给的新模式

通过对公共服务的属性分析，结合新政治经济学理论和政府失败的现实因素，探索公益物品的有效供给模式，提出了公共服务的签约转包机制，并分析了这一机制的不足和政府的作用。     

完善欠发达地区在区域不平衡发展中的促动机制

区域不平衡发展是一个普遍的规律,欠发达地区应根据不平衡发展理论,吸取经验教训,建立科学的不平衡发展促动机制。