Ideas versus ideology: The origins of modern labor economics

Starting with its early twentieth century origins, the development of Labor Economics is traced to the present. We describe an intellectual revolution in which an earlier tra-dition that focused primarily on the institution of the labor union has been replaced by a perspective that emphasizes the various roles played by labor markets in an eco-nomic system. That earlier tradition contained very significant ideological elements, whereas its successor deals much more with the world of ideas. In the course of the debate, which still continues, ideas triumphed over ideology and created modern Labor Economics.     

Flipping and ex post aggregation

We show that Bayesian ex post aggregation is unstable with respect to refinements. Suppose a group of Bayesians use ex post aggregation. Since it is a joint problem, each agent's problem is captured by the same model, but probabilities and utilities may vary. If they analyze the same situation in more detail, their refined analysis should preserve their preferences among acts. However, ex post aggregation could bring about a preference reversal on the group level. Ex post aggregation thus depends on how much information is used and may keep oscillating (“flipping”) as one keeps adding more information. Received: 16 April 2002/Accepted: 27 May 2002     

On strategy-proofness and essentially single-valued cores: A converse result

In a general model of indivisible good allocation, S?nmez (1999) established that, whenever the core is nonempty for each preference profile, if an allocation rule is strategy-proof, individually rational and Pareto optimal, then the rule is a selection from the core correspondence, and the core correspondence must be essentially single-valued. This paper studies the converse claim of this result. I demonstrate that whenever the preference domain satisfies a certain condition of `richness', if the core correspondence is essentially single-valued, then any selection from the core correspondence is strategy-proof (even weakly coalition strategy-proof, in fact). In particular, on the domain of preferences in which each individual has strict preferences over his own assignments and there is no consumption externality, such an allocation rule is coalition strategy-proof. And on this domain, coalition strategy-proofness is equivalent to Maskin monotonicity, an important property in implementation theory. Received: 22 February 2000/Accepted: 22 January 2002 I am grateful to Ryo-ichi Nagahisa, Shinji Ohseto, Hiroshi Ono, Tomoichi Shinotsuka and Shigehiro Serizawa for valuable comments. And I am indebted to two anonymous referees for useful suggestions. Especially, I owe the present proof of Lemma 2 to one referee. I also thank Yukihiko Funaki, Atsushi Kajii, Mamoru Kaneko, Eiichi Miyagawa, Tatsuyoshi Saijo, Manimay Sengupta, Yves Sprumont, Yoshikatsu Tatamitani, Manabu Toda, Takashi Ui, Takehiko Yamato, Naoki Yoshihara and the participants of the seminars in Hokkaido University, Kansai University, ISER (Osaka University), Otaru University of Commerce and Tsukuba University. All errors are my own responsiblity.     

The dilemma of recognition: Administrative categories and cultural diversity

Governments around the world combat inequality by means of group-specific redistribution. Some pursue redistribution that benefits groups, but also wish to avoid accentuating or even recognizing group distinctions. This poses a dilemma that they try to resolve by adjusting the category system used to target redistribution. There are three types of adjustment: accommodation (the multicultural approach), denial (the ideal-typical liberal solution), and replacement (a compromise). In replacement the targets of redistributive policies are constructed to avoid accentuation or recognition of inconvenient group distinctions, but still allow redistribution that benefits these groups. Replacement is increasingly in demand around the world because the disadvantages of multiculturalism are becoming apparent while denial is hard to sustain in the face of group inequality. The actual effect of replacement is little researched and less understood, however. Does it resolve the dilemma of recognition? Two examples–India and Nigeria–where replacement has been tried ever since the 1950s cast doubt on its viability.     

浅谈艺术教育在全面提高大学生素质中的作用

在当代大学素质教育中,艺术教育占重要的地位。通过艺术教育,可以培养广大青年学生良好情感、健康心理、综合能力及良好精神品质等素质,对于促进青年大学生综合素质的全面提高具有重要作用。     

中国当前科技发展存在的问题及中短期对策

21世纪是知识经济时代 ,科技的发展对一个国家经济的发展和综合国力的提高正起着越来越重要的作用。在科技发展过程中不断审视其存在的差距及问题 ,有助于探索有效的解决方案 ,有利于促进我国科技的持续健康发展。一、中国目前科技发展的差距及问题改革开放二十年来 ,尽管中国国内生产总值平均每年以 9.7%的速度递增 ,经济总量已跃居世界第七位 ,但和世界发达国家之间在科技实力上的差距仍然很大 ,并且还存在许多不容忽视的问题。1、中国的经济发展水平仍然较低经济水平受科技发展水平的制约 ,同时它也对科技的发展有着重要影响。经济的发展…     

Web数据库性能调优(英文)

提出了一种基于Web数据库系统设计、实现和性能调优的新方法,该方法包括由RDBMS配置优化、应用模式设计优化和编程优化。通过内存、分段、磁盘参数和时间相关参数的优化可以设置一个好的RDBMS运行环境。在编程时,通过减少与后台连接和断开操作、建立和使用索引、多用存储过程和优化SQL语句可以优化系统性能。在应用设计时,通过优化应用逻辑和降低规范化可以大大地改善系统性能。