Stress, the press, the baby and the bathwater

The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

Samuel Butler, 1835-1902 English novelist and satirist     

Bacon, Boole, the EPA, and Scientific Standards

The scientific standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) include the use of retrospective meta-analysis. This analysis entails a use of the theory of probability that is only a simulation and cannot accurately measure the confidence that should be placed in the results. The uncertainty necessary for probability is, in a retrospective study, simulated rather than real. There are three logical forms for establishing a proposition. In the logic of the syllogism, a proposition is established by deduction from assumed propositions. In the logic of the physical sciences, a proposition is established by its ability to predict the outcomes of future experiments. In the logic of the courtroom, a proposition is established by its ability to explain past events. The logic of the courtroom operates under the handicap of working with nonrepeatable events. It is more subject to the preferences of the judge than the logic of the physical sciences or that of the syllogism. Because the logic of the courtroom is less reliable than either the logic of the physical sciences or that of the syllogism, it is the logic of last resort, i.e., it is used only when the other two are not applicable. Under the EPA scientific standards, the logic of the courtroom is accepted for establishing propositions about the physical world. As the logic of the courtroom is less reliable than that of the physical sciences, this practice increases the likelihood of errors.     

Coverage, technology assessment, and the courts

Coverage decisions by third-party payers are relying more and more heavily on the conclusions of technology assessment programs about the safety and effectiveness of technologies applied in specific clinical situations. Assessment programs vary markedly in the sophistication and rigor of their methodology. Payers differ as to how such assessment information is integrated into their decision-making processes. Finally, coverage decisions about a specific technology can vary widely across the country.     

Bioethics, medicine, and the moral ground

"Bioethics" and "biomedical ethics" are new expressions, conveying new ideas and new concerns. They entered the language in the 1960s. "Ethics," of course, is an ancient word meaning the study of applied moral philosophy. Bioethics is an interdisciplinary field of study that considers ethical issues in wellness and illness. Some would strongly argue that it even embraces our entire natural ecology. It certainly concerns the profession of medicine. Bioethics, like ethics itself, seeks to know and understand "goodness."     

Values,decision-making,and the rich life

Young people increasingly take only one value seriously in making decisions about careers, that of salary levels. They should understand that there are many values which need to be weighed in making decisions about employment. Given the present milieu, it may prove effective to use language which describes these other, nonmonetary values as contributors to the “rich lifer”     

Administration, Globalization, and the Arab States

Globalization involves risks and opportunities for the Arab world. Realistic knowledge of these possibilities is essential for adaptation of governance and reform of public administration to deal more effectively with the unfolding processes of globalization. To be participants rather than mere subjects, the Arab states have to recognize opportunities and limit potential negative consequences. Success requires good governance and professional public management. Public administration in the Arab world has to transform traditional methods of command and control and nepotism into a more collaborative management that relies on institutional capabilities and practicing managerial values of accountability, performance evaluation, transparency, and ethics.

Trust,Emotion, Sex,Politics, and Science: Surveying the Risk-Assessment Battlefield

Risk management has become increasingly politicized and contentious. Polarized views, controversy, and conflict have become pervasive. Research has begun to provide a new perspective on this problem by demonstrating the complexity of the concept risk and the inadequacies of the traditional view of risk assessment as a purely scientific enterprise. This paper argues that danger is real, but risk is socially constructed. Risk assessment is inherently subjective and represents a blending of science and judgment with important psychological, social, cultural, and political factors. In addition, our social and democratic institutions, remarkable as they are in many respects, breed distrust in the risk arena. Whoever controls the definition of risk controls the rational solution to the problem at hand. If risk is defined one way, then one option will rise to the top as the most cost-effective or the safest or the best. If it is defined another way, perhaps incorporating qualitative characteristics and other contextual factors, one will likely get a different ordering of action solutions. Defining risk is thus an exercise in power. Scientific literacy and public education are important, but they are not central to risk controversies. The public is not irrational. Their judgments about risk are influenced by emotion and affect in a way that is both simple and sophisticated. The same holds true for scientists. Public views are also influenced by worldviews, ideologies, and values; so are scientists' views, particularly when they are working at the limits of their expertise. The limitations of risk science, the importance and difficulty of maintaining trust, and the complex, sociopolitical nature of risk point to the need for a new approach—one that focuses upon introducing more public participation into both risk assessment and risk decision making in order to make the decision process more democratic, improve the relevance and quality of technical analysis, and increase the legitimacy and public acceptance of the resulting decisions.     

New Mothers’ Employment and Public Policy in the UK,Germany, the Netherlands,Sweden, and Japan

Abstract. This paper investigates the link between family‐friendly policies and women's employment after birth of the first child in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Japan in the 1980s and the 1990s. Our econometric analyses use household panel data from each of the five countries: BHPS, GSOEP, OSA, HUS, and JPSC, respectively. Public policies that facilitate the combination of motherhood and paid employment offer an effective means in increasing the participation rate of first‐time mothers. The results also indicate that the availability and stimulation of good‐quality part‐time employment can provide additional, strong incentives for new mothers to enter active employment.     

发展战略、休克疗法与经济转型

本文构筑了一个两部门的动态一般均衡模型,对前苏联和东欧国家实施"休克疗法"转型后产量大幅下降以及产业结构深度重组的现象给出了一个全新的理论解释。在转型前,政府采用扭曲性政策扶持重工业部门,新上台的政府试图采用"休克疗法"尽快取消这些扭曲性政策。结果是,失去政策扶持的重工业部门回报率下降,可流动的生产要素从该部门流出,导致其他非流动性的生产要素出现闲置和废弃,最终可能导致总产出下降。我们给出了"休克疗法"以后经济转型的数值模拟例子,结果表明,一个国家在转型之前的经济扭曲程度越高,其产出下降的幅度就越大;而且,在相同的扭曲程度下,相对落后的国家在转型后的经济恢复速度会更快;另外,我们的模型也能预测转型后产业结构的大幅度调整。     

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.     

Equity, Efficiency, Uncertainty, and the Mitigation of Global Climate Change

Policies to mitigate potential damages from global climate change impose costs on the current generation to provide benefits to future generations. This article examines how comparisons among three stylized policies-business-as-usual, mitigation of climate change, and compensation for climate damages-depend on social preferences with respect to risk and intertemporal equity. Also examined is the opportunity-cost criterion, which asserts that mitigation should not be chosen if its net present value is smaller than that of business-as-usual. Analysis reveals that the discount factor used to evaluate whether mitigation satisfies this criterion depends on preferences regarding risk and intertemporal inequality of consumption, and on the risk of the compensation policy. Risk aversion favors mitigation over business-as-usual. If society is neutral to inequality, risk aversion disfavors compensation, but if society is inequality averse, the effect of risk aversion on preferences between compensation and business-as-usual is ambiguous. Inequality aversion tends to favor business-as-usual over both alternative policies provided that, roughly speaking, the anticipated future improvements in welfare exceed the anticipated climate damages.     

政策冲击、市场环境与国企生产效率:现状、趋势与发展

基于来自国家统计局工业企业的大样本数据,本文从微观层面衡量企业生产效率,并从制度改革与市场环境的视角,深入考察国有企业相对外资企业的全要素生产率(TFP)变化以及动态趋势。具体而言,我们基于双重差分模型检验了国企生产效率是否有相对外企(包括港澳企业)存在追赶特征,以及该现象背后的影响机制。研究发现,国企生产效率虽然一直低于外企,但确实有显著地逐年追赶趋势。其原因主要在于:第一,国企改革政策效应带来国企内部治理的完善和代理成本的下降;第二,市场环境的变化,主要是市场化进程的加深和行业竞争的加剧带来了国企TFP的追赶。我们的研究结果为当前进一步推进国有企业改革与提升企业效率提供了明晰的政策借鉴。     

卖空交易机制、波动性和流动性--一个基于香港股市的经验研究

本文利用中国香港股票市场上的数据来实证研究卖空交易机制与市场波动性、流动性间的内在联系,研究结果表明,对于整个股票市场而言,卖空机制推出后,市场波动性加大、流动性先减弱后增强,但Granger因果检验结果证实市场波动性的增加和流动性的增强并非是由卖空交易引发的。卖空机制对整个市场的影响是一个复杂的过程,最终的影响方向(加剧市场波动或平抑市场波动)还要取决于市场中卖空交易者的类型、操作策略及交易信息的公开程度。     

Trust, confidence, procedural fairness, outcome fairness, moral conviction, and the acceptance of GM field experiments

In 2005, Swiss citizens endorsed a moratorium on gene technology, resulting in the prohibition of the commercial cultivation of genetically modified crops and the growth of genetically modified animals until 2013. However, scientific research was not affected by this moratorium, and in 2008, GMO field experiments were conducted that allowed us to examine the factors that influence their acceptance by the public. In this study, trust and confidence items were analyzed using principal component analysis. The analysis revealed the following three factors: "economy/health and environment" (value similarity based trust), "trust and honesty of industry and scientists" (value similarity based trust), and "competence" (confidence). The results of a regression analysis showed that all the three factors significantly influenced the acceptance of GM field experiments. Furthermore, risk communication scholars have suggested that fairness also plays an important role in the acceptance of environmental hazards. We, therefore, included measures for outcome fairness and procedural fairness in our model. However, the impact of fairness may be moderated by moral conviction. That is, fairness may be significant for people for whom GMO is not an important issue, but not for people for whom GMO is an important issue. The regression analysis showed that, in addition to the trust and confidence factors, moral conviction, outcome fairness, and procedural fairness were significant predictors. The results suggest that the influence of procedural fairness is even stronger for persons having high moral convictions compared with persons having low moral convictions.     

产权安排、治理机制、政企关系与企业效率——以“科龙”和“美的”为例

本文通过对“科龙”和“美的”两个案例的剖析 ,探讨企业产权安排、政企关系、治理机制与企业效率的关系。研究表明 ,产权清晰程度和产权的流动性是产权安排的两个方面 ,我国的产权改革主要是循着产权清晰的方向迈进;作为产权安排的一个极其重要的方面 ,虽然产权清晰并不能必然带来企业效率的提高 ,但却是提高企业长期效率的前提 ,它通过激励、外部竞争等治理机制对企业效率起了决定性的影响 ,同时又决定了不同的治理机制对企业发挥作用的程度 ,即使是相同或相似的治理机制 ,在不同的产权安排下也会产生不同的效果;无产权保障的治理机制也能在特定条件下解决企业的效率问题 ,但却不能永久解决;产权安排不同的变迁路径不仅体现了政府作为大股东的不同理性行为 ,而且也是管理者人力资本和财务资本积累差别的产物。因此 ,通过各种形式的民营化优化企业的产权安排将是公有制企业改革的必然出路 ,而这种优化产权安排的改革能否成功主要取决于多方利益博弈下政府作为大股东的代理行为能否得到有效约束 ,以及管理者的人力资本产权能否得到尊重和确认 ,而管理者是否具备足够的人力资本和财务资本则是这一改革的必要条件。     

HRD,the science of the artificial

Innovation is the bedrock of organizational and national competitiveness across the globe. Leaders of research and development (R&D) teams have an especially important role to play given their direct influence on leading, organizing, rallying, and managing the operations of innovative tasks. However, when it comes to how leaders influence R&D innovation in different contexts, researchers' opinions diverge. This study explores leadership characteristics and their contextual contingencies, using the approach of a multiple case study. This paper is situated in the stream of research focusing on the interactions of leadership and contextual factors in innovation. We collected qualitative data from four highly innovative teams residing in two national laboratories in the US. The results suggest that while leadership demonstrates similarities across the four teams – a simultaneous focus on the internal and external domains, it also displays different characteristics in teams that differ on three contextual factors: funding model, nature of tasks, and team structure. Theoretical and practical implications are drawn.