Comparative Statics,Informativeness, and the Interval Dominance Order

We identify a new way to order functions, called the interval dominance order, that generalizes both the single crossing property and a standard condition used in statistical decision theory. This allows us to provide a unified treatment of the major theorems on monotone comparative statics with and without uncertainty, the comparison of signal informativeness, and a non‐Bayesian theorem on the completeness of increasing decision rules. We illustrate the concept and results with various applications, including an application to optimal stopping time problems where the single crossing property is typically violated.     

The Comparative Statics of Constrained Optimization Problems

This paper develops and applies some new results in the theory of monotone comparative statics. Let f be a real‐valued function defined on R^l and consider the problem of maximizing f(x) when x is constrained to lie in some subset C of R^l. We develop a natural way to order the constraint sets C and find the corresponding restrictions on the objective function f that guarantee that optimal solutions increase with the constraint set. We apply our techniques to problems in consumer, producer, and portfolio theory. We also use them to generalize Rybcsynski's theorem and the LeChatelier principle.     

找准政府工作与市场经济的最佳契合点

近几年,我们响水县紧紧围绕经济建设这一中心,切实转变政府职能,想群众所想,急群众所急,强化服务功能,以解决群众所想所怠之事作为理顺工作思路、确定工作方针的基本出发点,找准了政府工作与市场经济的最佳契合点,推动了全县经济、社会等各项事业的健康发展……     

Learning by Objectives for Adaptive Shop-Floor Scheduling*

Effective production scheduling requires consideration of the dynamics and unpredictability of the manufacturing environment. An automated learning scheme, utilizing genetic search, is proposed for adaptive control in typical decentralized factory-floor decision making. A high-level knowledge representation for modeling production environments is developed, with facilities for genetic learning within this scheme. A multiagent framework is used, with individual agents being responsible for the dispatch decision making at different workstations. Learning is with respect to stated objectives, and given the diversity of scheduling goals, the efficacy of the designed learning scheme is judged through its response under different objectives. The behavior of the genetic learning scheme is analyzed and simulation studies help compare how learning under different objectives impacts certain aggregate measures of system performance.     

建立健全两个机制的原则和功能

在20多年深化干部人事制度改革的探索和实践中,干部工作的科学化、民主化、制度化水平有了很大提高,在干部的选拔任用和管理监督方面,形成了一系列行之有效的措施和规范。但从总体上看,离建立健全干部选拔任用机制和管理监督机制的要求还有很大的距离。按照党的十六大提出的深化干部人事制度改革的目标和要求,必须把建立健全这两个机制的原则和功能放在重要位置加以重视。     

Liquidity and Trading Dynamics

In this paper, we build a model where the presence of liquidity constraints tends to magnify the economy's response to aggregate shocks. We consider a decentralized model of trade, where agents may use money or credit to buy goods. When agents do not have access to credit and the real value of money balances is low, agents are more likely to be liquidity constrained. This makes them more concerned about their short‐term earning prospects when making their consumption decisions and about their short‐term spending opportunities when making their production decisions. This generates a coordination element in spending and production which leads to greater aggregate volatility and greater comovement across producers.     

On the Dynamics of Unemployment and Wage Distributions

Postel‐Vinay and Robin's (2002) sequential auction model is extended to allow for aggregate productivity shocks. Workers exhibit permanent differences in ability while firms are identical. Negative aggregate productivity shocks induce job destruction by driving the surplus of matches with low ability workers to negative values. Endogenous job destruction coupled with worker heterogeneity thus provides a mechanism for amplifying productivity shocks that offers an original solution to the unemployment volatility puzzle (Shimer (2005)). Moreover, positive or negative shocks may lead employers and employees to renegotiate low wages up and high wages down when agents' individual surpluses become negative. The model delivers rich business cycle dynamics of wage distributions and explains why both low wages and high wages are more procyclical than wages in the middle of the distribution.     

Application of the Precautionary Principle by Senior Policy Officials: Results of a Canadian Survey

Though use of the controversial precautionary principle in risk management has increasingly been recommended as a guide for the construction of public policy in Canada and elsewhere, there are few data available characterizing its use in risk management by senior public policymakers. Using established survey methodology we sought to investigate the perceptions and terms of application of the precautionary principle in this important subset of individuals. A total of 240 surveys were sent out to seven departments or agencies in the Canadian government. The overall survey response rate was 26.6%, and our findings need to be interpreted in the context of possible responder bias. Of respondents, the overwhelming majority perceived the precautionary principle and the management of risk as complementary, and endorsed a role for the precautionary principle as a general guideline for all risk management decisions. However, 25% of respondents responded that the lack of clarity of the definition of the principle was a limitation to its effective use. The majority of respondents viewed their own level of understanding of the precautionary principle as moderate. Risk managers appeared to favor an interpretation of the precautionary principle that was based on the seriousness and irreversibility of the threat of damage, and did not endorse as strongly the need for cost effectiveness in the measures taken as a precaution against such threats. In contrast with its perceived role as a general guideline, the application of the precautionary principle by respondents was highly variable, with >60% of respondents reporting using the precautionary principle in one-quarter or less of all risk management decisions. Several factors influenced whether the precautionary principle was applied with the perceived seriousness of the threat being considered the most influential factor. The overwhelming majority of risk managers felt that "preponderance of evidence" was the level of evidence required for precautionary action to be instituted against a serious negative event. Overall, the majority of respondents viewed the precautionary principle as having a significant and positive impact on risk management decisions. Importantly, respondents endorsed a net result of more good than harm to society when the precautionary principle was applied to the management of risk.     

Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity

Recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance. In this paper the assumption of i.i.d. income innovations used in previous empirical studies is removed and the focus of the analysis is placed on models for the conditional variance of income shocks, which is related to the measure of risk emphasized by the theory. We first discriminate amongst various models of earnings determination that separate income shocks into idiosyncratic transitory and permanent components. We allow for education‐ and time‐specific differences in the stochastic process for earnings and for measurement error. The conditional variance of the income shocks is modelled as a parsimonious ARCH process with both observable and unobserved heterogeneity. The empirical analysis is conducted on data drawn from the 1967–1992 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find strong evidence of sizeable ARCH effects as well as evidence of unobserved heterogeneity in the variances.     

Schumpeterian Growth Theory and the Dynamics of Income Inequality

In this lecture, it is argued that Schumpeterian Growth Theory, in which growth is driven by a sequence of quality‐improving innovations, can shed light on two important puzzles raised by the recent evolution of wage inequality in developed economies. The first puzzle concerns wage inequality between educational groups, which has substantially risen in the US and the UK during the past two decades following a sharp increase in the supply of educated labor. The second puzzle concerns wage inequality within educational groups, which accounts for a large fraction of the observed increase in wage inequality, although in contrast to between‐group wage inequality it has mainly affected the temporary component of income.     

Trust, the Asymmetry Principle, and the Role of Prior Beliefs

Within the risk literature there is an ongoing debate on whether trust is vulnerable or enduring. Previous research on nuclear energy by Slovic in 1993 has shown that negative events have much greater impact on self-reported trust than do positive events. Slovic attributes this to the asymmetry principle: specifically, that trust is much easier to destroy than to create. In a questionnaire survey concerning genetically modified (GM) food in Britain (n= 396) we similarly find that negative events have a greater impact on trust than positive events. Because public opinion in Britain is skewed in the direction of opposition toward GM food, the pattern of results could either be caused by the fact that negative information is more informative than positive information (a negativity bias) or reflect the influence of people's prior attitudes toward the issue (a confirmatory bias). The results were largely in line with the confirmatory bias hypothesis: participants with clear positive or negative beliefs interpreted events in line with their existing attitude position. However, for participants with intermediate attitudes, negative items still had greater impact than the positive. This latter finding suggests that, congruent with the negativity bias hypothesis, negative information may still be more informative than positive information for undecided people. The study also identified the labeling of GM products, consulting the public, making biotechnology companies liable for any damage, and making a test available to detect GM produce as being particularly important preconditions for maintaining trust in the regulation of agricultural biotechnology.     

坚持党管人才原则须解决的问题

坚 持 党 管 人 才 原 则 , 组 织 部 门 对 人 才 工 作 牵 头 抓总 ,这 是中 央 为大 力实 施 人才 强国 战 略 而 作出 的 一 项 重大 决 策 。 对 此 ,各 级 组 织 部 门 积 极 探 索 ,取 得 了 一 些 成绩 ,但 也遇 到 了一 些问 题 。 一、组 织 部门 坚持 党 管人 才原     

Risk Management and the Precautionary Principle: A Fuzzy Logic Model

The aim of this article is to illustrate a procedure for applying the precautionary principle within a strategy for reducing the possibility of underestimating the effective risk caused by a phenomenon, product, or process, and of adopting insufficient risk reduction measures or overlooking their need. We start by simply defining risk as the product between the numerical expression of the adverse consequences of an event and the likelihood of its occurrence or the likelihood that such consequences will occur. Uncertainty in likelihood estimates and several key concepts inherent to the precautionary principle, such as sufficient certainty, prevention, and desired level of protection, are represented as fuzzy sets. The strategy described may be viewed as a simplified example of a precautionary decision process that has been chiefly conceived as a theoretical contribution to the debate concerning the precautionary principle, the quantification of its application, and the formal approach to such problems.     

价格刚性、异质性预期和通货膨胀动态

本文采用Chang等(2015)研究和处理过的中国宏观数据,沿用Dupor等(2010)一文使用的两步法,估计了中国市场环境中企业部门的粘性特征,发现:(1)粘性信息和粘性价格都有充分体现;(2)通过参数估计及脉冲响应分析,发现双粘性模型有别于混合新凯恩斯模型;(3)在双粘性模型下,企业调价频率平均为5个季度,基于最新信息最优定价的频率平均7.7个季度。在混合新凯恩斯模型中,企业前瞻理性预期的比重是72%,后顾适应性预期占比28%;(4)虽然双粘性和混合新凯恩斯模型的拟合优度难分伯仲,但数据更倾向匹配后者,这意味着在分析诸如中国的最优货币政策等问题时,仍应选择混合新凯恩斯。