Is Time-Discounting Hyperbolic or Subadditive?

Subadditive time discounting means that discounting over a delay is greater when the delay is divided into subintervals than when it is left undivided. This may produce the most important result usually attributed to hyperbolic discounting: declining impatience, or the inverse relationship between the discount rate and the magnitude of the delay. Three choice experiments were conducted to test for subadditive discounting, and to determine whether it is sufficient to explain declining impatience. All three experiments showed strong evidence of subadditive discounting, but there was no evidence of declining impatience. I conclude by questioning whether hyperbolic discounting is a plausible account of time preference.     

Discounting and the evaluation of lifesaving programs

The evaluation of lifesaving programs whose benefits extend into the future involves two discounting issues. The intragenerational discounting problem is how to express, in age-j dollars, reductions in an individual's conditional probability of dying at some future age k. Having discounted future lifesaving benefits to the beginning of each individual's life, one is faced with the problem of discounting these benefits to the present—the intergenerational discounting problem. We discuss both problems from the perspectives of cost-benefit and costeffectiveness analyses. These principles are then applied to lifesaving programs that involve a latency period.The authors are, respectively, Associate Professor of Economics, Univesity of Maryland and Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future; and Senior Fellow and Vice President, Resources for the Future. We thank the National Science Foundation for their support under grant DIR-8711083.     

Discounting statistical lives

Benefit-cost analysis of government projects that reduce health risks over an extended period of time requires an estimate of the value of a future life. This in turn requires a discount rate. We suggest and carry out a method to estimate the discount rate using observations on discrete choices between projects with different time horizons. This method is implemented in a survey context. For our primary example, the estimated median discount rate is close to the market rate. A substantial proportion of the sample is estimated to have quite low discount rates. We provide some evidence that discount rates may differ for different types of risks.This research was supported in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Cooperative Agreement in Environmental Economics Research CR-813557-01-0. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We would like to thank Paul Portney for bringing the importance of discounting statistical lives to our attention, and John Conlisk, Maureen Cropper, Mark Machina, Robert Mitchell, Peter Navarro, and Walter Oi for helpful comments.     

Rush and Procrastination Under Hyperbolic Discounting and Interdependent Activities

We analyze the decision of individuals with time-inconsistent preferences to invest in projects yielding either current costs and future benefits or current benefits and future costs. We show that competition between agents for the same project mitigates the tendency to procrastinate on the first type of activities (i.e. to undertake them too late) and to rush on the second one (i.e. to undertake them too early). Competition can therefore increase the expected welfare of each individual. On the contrary, complementarity of projects exacerbates the tendency to rush and to procrastinate and therefore it can decrease the expected welfare of each individual.     

Temptations and Dynamic Consistency

The objective of this article is to test a prediction of the quasi-hyperbolic model. The test is innovative in that it uses an experimental implementation in which there are two treatments: a forward market and a spot market. In each of these markets goods and activities are sold. The good and activities sold are investment goods or activities and temptation goods or activities. The prediction of the quasi-hyperbolic model is that in the spot (forward) market participants will buy more temptation (investment) goods and activities than in the forward market and less investment (temptation) good and activities. This prediction is not confirmed by the data, and hence is at odds with previous experiments which have shown support for the hyperbolic model. We speculate on the reasons for this.     

Measuring Intergenerational Time Preference: Are Future Lives Valued Less?

Prior research has estimated intergenerational time preferences by asking respondents to choose between hypothetical life saving programs. From such choices, researchers have concluded that the public heavily discounts the lives of people in future generations. However, using a multiversion survey involving 401 respondents, I show that imputed intergenerational time preferences can be dramatically affected by the specific question that is asked. Different elicitation procedures can yield widely varying results by evoking or suppressing various relevant considerations (such as uncertainty). Many formats revealed no preference for current generations over future generations.     

A New Look at Home Care and the Hospital Social Worker

Clinical, administrative and social action reasons for expanding social work services in hospital based home care programs are persuasive. Hospital departments of social work should consider carefully how they may expand services in home care and coordinate and integrate such activities with social work and discharge planning processes occurring throughout the hospital. It is necessary for social work leadership to be present on professional advisory, quality assurance and similar committees and to use these committees as arenas for expanding the social work role in home care.     

A Global Look at Psychological Barriers to Women's Progress in Management

In the early 1970s Schein identified managerial sex typing as a major psychological barrier to the advancement of women in the United States. The globalization of management brings to the forefront the need to examine the relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics in the international arena. A review of the replications of the Schein research in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, and Japan provides the basis for a global look at the "think manager–think male" phenomenon. Implications of the outcomes, especially among males, for women's progress in management worldwide are discussed.     

解读日本2005年公司法的大修订

2005年,日本公司法自19世纪末期创制以来,经历了一次历史上最大规模的修订。这次修订无疑将会对日本公司法的理论和公司实务产生非常大的影响,同时也为发展中的我国公司法理论和法制建设树立了一个比较坐标和学习楷模。本文[1]将对日本公司法的此次大修订作一番简要的介绍和探析,[2]并在此基础上,探讨我国公司法所应借鉴和需要改善的地方。     

Combating Conflicting Messages of Values: A Closer Look at Parental Strategies

This study examined how parents respond when their children encounter values outside the home that conflict with family values. Forty‐eight middle‐class European American parents completed questionnaires consisting of 11 vignettes asking how they would respond to hypothetical situations where outside sources posed potential conflicts with parental values to their adolescent child (M age of child=13.33 years). We identified five strategies that parents might use: controlled cocooning, reasoned cocooning, compromise, pre‐arming, and deference. Parents in the study enlisted all five strategies, with reasoned cocooning and pre‐arming occurring most frequently. The self‐reported importance of values to parents was the most important predictor of which strategy parents used, with parents using more controlling strategies to defend values that were most important to them. Importance of values also mediated the relation between religion and the parent's self‐reported desire for the child's compliance on personal issues, and parental strategy choice. This study is among the first to examine alternative parental strategies for regulating children's values acquisition outside the home, and shows that the extent of parental control is related to the importance of specific values to the parent.     

从杜诗用字看诗歌的肌质作用

杜甫是一代伟大的诗人,最主要就是因为他在诗歌语言上的造诣和成就。本文试图从杜诗中的词语选择分析肌质关系对于诗歌意象的表情、诗歌风格、隐喻等多方面的作用,以检验西方文论中的诗歌对应原则和肌质理论,挖掘中国古典诗歌当中的独特诗性所在。     

Definitional and Responsive Environmental Meanings: A Meadian Look at Landscapes and Drought

Current conceptual frameworks differ deeply on the meanings of human-natural environment relations. One is a monist social constructionist frame: meaning is only in human definitions, and natural events are meaningless. The other offers dualist perspectives that locate meaning both in definitions and in realist indications of environmental events such as global environmental change. After discussing 'landscape' as a bridging concept, I suggest an ordering of the two perspectives through a metatheoretical distinction between definitional and responsive meanings with primacy in the response. Finally, I apply a metatheoretical schema based on the work of George H. Mead to meanings of natural environment implicated in a discussion of an official pronouncement, 'The drought is over'.     

Home Modifications among Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Closer Look at Race and Ethnicity

ABSTRACT

This study investigated racial and ethnic differences in home modification use. Data from the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study were used (n=6,764). Compared with non-Hispanic Whites, Hispanics were less likely to have a grab bar (odds ratio (OR) = 0.6), bath seat (OR = 0.8), or raised toilet (OR = 0.6). Non-Hispanic Blacks were less likely to have a grab bar (OR = 0.7) or bath seat (OR = 0.7) than non-Hispanic Whites, but more likely to have a raised toilet (OR = 1.3). English proficiency largely explained ethnic differences, while health status partially accounted for racial disparities.     

Policing Urban America: A New Look at the Politics of Agency Size*

Objectives. This article analyzes competing explanations for variation in the relative size of contemporary police forces in larger U.S. cities. The featured explanation is conflict theory, which previously provided much evidence for a racial threat thesis but limited evidence that racial insurgency affected police mobilization in the 1960s and 1970s. Methods. The study sample consists of the 66 cities with a population of at least 250,000 in 2000. Aggregate data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Congressional Quarterly's America Votes, and the U.S. Census Bureau are combined with a content analysis using the Lexis‐Nexis regional news database to generate the data set. OLS regression modeling is applied to the analysis of this cross‐sectional data set. Results. This analysis shows that the size of contemporary police forces is substantially shaped not only by the legacy of the 1960–1970 wave of racial unrest in the United States, but also by reaction to racial disorders in the 1980s and 1990s and by the prevalence of racial minorities in the current population. Conclusions. Police departments' relative force size in 2000 is not only a result of incremental growth from the size attained by 1980, but also is dramatically shaped by whether the city experienced a race riot from 1980–2000 and, to a lesser extent, the size of the minority population and the violent crime rate. City wealth is a less robust indicator; and there is no evidence that either community ideology or the degree of uptake of community policing matters.     

公民社会视角下社会工作的社会责任建构

综观中国当代社会工作的实践,社会责任始终是社会工作的重要议题,但在相关理论研究上,大多只谈到社会工作的哲学、使命、价值观等这些源于西方的意识形态方面,少有直接提及社会责任问题。本文认为,社会责任不仅是社会工作本土化的重要特征,也是公民社会的重要特征,因此,社会工作背景下的社会责任需要积极建构。因此,从公民社会的视角出发,以在海南开展的戒毒社会工作等社会实践为例,在理论基础、现实需求和实现途径这三个方面对建构本土化社会工作的社会责任问题进行了探讨。