信托政治论

信托政治,就是以信任和委托为支点的政治。在信托政治关系中,包括两类主体:政治的委托者和政治的受托者。受托者基于委托者的信任和托付,既获得了执掌政治的权力,但也必须承担作为受托者的、不容推卸的政治责任和道德义务。信托政治的观念在中国传统文化中源远流长,是数千年来封建王朝更迭的理论基础;在现代中国,信托政治理论也蕴含着值得进一步挖掘的潜力。信托政治的观念不但有助于解释当代中国的政治现实,而且还具有强烈的实践指向性。     

Resolving the Trust Predicament: A Quantum Game-theoretic Approach

Developing a good theoretical understanding of the role of trust in IR (such as in the events leading to the end of the Cold War) is still an open problem. Most game-theoretic studies of trust do not go beyond the limitations of an (ontologically) individualistic paradigm, thus assuming a pre-defined set of individual strategies. Yet, it is a fact that the predicament of collective trust is empirically resolved in many situations. This paper suggests a new game-theoretic approach—Quantum Game Theory (QGT)—to understand and explain how the predicament of trust is resolved. In a quantum game of trust the actors play the game by simultaneously collectively reconstructing the strategic environment in such a way as to become mutually strategically entangled. Quantum strategic entanglement allows trust to emerge between the two actors without assuming a need for signaling, prior “contract” type of arrangement, or any form of third-party communication. The paper develops and solves such a model of quantum game of trust     

Confidence in Australian Institutions 1983–2005

This paper examines changes in the level of institutional confidence in Australia between 1983 and 2005. The principal aim of the paper is to disaggregate the general trend in social trust and overall institutional confidence. Using data drawn from three waves of the World Values Survey undertaken in 1983, 1995 and 2005 we examine whether social trust and confidence have declined and the differing patterns of confidence for different birth cohorts in Australia. The results show a significant decrease in social trust and a large decline in confidence between 1983 and 1995. There was little change in confidence between 1995 and 2005, but social trust returned to the 1983 level over that period. A cohort analysis shows that the oldest cohort, those born before WWII, reported the largest decline in confidence, while by 2005 the baby boomers (or middle cohort born between 1944 and 1955) were the most confident, with the oldest group reporting the least confidence. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s confidence has been at a much lower level than in the early 1980s.     

Reputation and influence in charitable giving: an experiment

Previous experimental and observational work suggests that people act more generously when they are observed and observe others in social settings. However, the explanation for this is unclear. An individual may want to send a signal of her generosity to improve her own reputation. Alternately (or additionally) she may value the public good or charity itself and, believing that contribution levels are strategic complements, give more to influence others to give more. We perform the first series of laboratory experiments that can separately estimate the impact of these two social effects, and test whether realized influence is consistent with the desire to influence, and whether either of these are consistent with anticipated influence. Our experimental subjects were given the opportunity to contribute from their endowment to Bread for the World, a development NGO. Depending on treatment, “leader” subjects’ donations were reported to other subjects either anonymously or with their identities, and these were reported either before these “follower” subjects made their donation decisions. We find that “leaders” are influential only when their identities are revealed along with their donations, and female leaders are more influential than males. Identified leaders’ predictions suggest that are aware of their influence. They respond to this by giving more than either the control group or the unidentified leaders. We find mixed evidence for “reputation-seeking.”     

Competence effects for choices involving gains and losses

We investigate how choices for uncertain gain and loss prospects are affected by the decision maker’s perceived level of knowledge about the underlying domain of uncertainty. Specifically, we test whether Heath and Tversky’s (J Risk Uncertain 4:5–28, 1991) competence hypothesis extends from gains to losses. We predict that the commonly-observed preference for high knowledge over low knowledge prospects for gains reverses for losses. We employ an empirical setup in which participants make hypothetical choices between gain or loss prospects in which the outcome depends on whether a high or low knowledge event occurs. We infer decision weighting functions for high and low knowledge events from choices using a representative agent preference model. For gains, we replicate the results of Kilka and Weber (Manage Sci 47:1712–1726, 2001), finding that decision makers are more attracted to choices that they feel more knowledgeable about. However, for losses, we find limited support for our extension of the competence effect.     

An Evolutionary Analysis of Buyer Insurance and Seller Reputation in Online Markets

Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and a buyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthiness and trust in markets with moral hazard problems. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedback determine the gains from trade that can be obtained in equilibrium. Buyer insurance, on the other hand, can affect the trading dynamics and equilibrium selection. We find that, under reasonable conditions, buyer insurance crowds out trust, and trustworthiness. Ockenfels gratefully acknowledges the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Mengel’s research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (grant SEJ 2004-02172).     

Parties,Institutional Control,and Trust in Government*

Objectives. Partisanship should affect evaluations of Congress just as it affects evaluations of the president, and these institutional evaluations should affect political trust. We argue that the relationship between partisanship and trust is dependent on partisan control of Congress and that much of party identification's influence on trust occurs indirectly through approval of governmental institutions. Methods. Using data collected before and after the 2002 congressional elections by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut, we examine changes in frequency distributions and mean values for trust and institutional approval. We use multivariate regression models and a path model to estimate the causes of political trust and self‐perceived change in trust. Results. We find evidence that party control of government and party identification are important in explaining trust and institutional approval. The Republican takeover of the Senate led Republicans to evaluate the Senate more favorably and to become more trusting of the government, while having the opposite effect on Democrats. Conclusions. The changes in approval and trust resulting from the 2002 elections suggest that at least some segment of the population is cognizant of changes in the political environment and updates its views of government when the political environment changes.     

Infinity in the lab. How do people play repeated games?

We introduce a novel mechanism to eliminate endgame effects in repeated prisoner’s dilemma experiments. In the main phase of a supergame our mechanism generates more persistent cooperation than finite horizon or random continuation rules. Moreover, we find evidence for cooperation-enhancing “active/reactive” strategies which concentrate in the initial phase of a supergame as subjects gain experience.     

Exploring the Relationship Between Trust in Government and the Provision of Social Services in Countries of the Global South: The Case of Palestine

ABSTRACT

Using a data set combining two surveys that were conducted by Birzeit University in Palestine, the study investigates the role that trust in government plays in the provision of social services in Palestine (N= 1,314). The relationship between trust in government and selected sociodemographic characteristics is also explored. Results from the bivariate and regression analyses performed reveal that perceived trust in government is significantly related to government performance and a respondent's gender, income, education, and political affiliation. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

The Population's Confidence in the Child Protection System – A Survey Study of England,Finland, Norway and the United States (California)

This article examines the confidence the population (N = 4,003) has in the child welfare system in four countries – England, Finland, Norway and the USA (California). We find that about half or less of the population reports having confidence in the system, which is slightly higher than the confidence in the civil servants in the same countries. The Nordic countries display more confidence in the child welfare system than the Anglo‐American countries. The similarity between the countries is, however, greater than anticipated. As for independent variables that can shed light on differences in confidence levels, we find three variables to be related to a higher confidence level, and these are a left wing political orientation, lower age, and higher education. This study contributes in filling a knowledge gap on studies about trust in the child welfare system, but we emphasize that we have studied an aspect of trust that rests on the population's impressions of a system, and not their substantial knowledge about, or identification with, this system.     

社会流动与政治信任：基于CGSS2006数据的实证研究

本文通过中国综合社会调查（CGSS2006）数据,详细分析了中国的社会流动对民众政治信任的影响。研究表明,中国30年的改革开放和经济发展为民众提供了大量向上流动的机会,并给他们带来改善生活的希望。人们所经历的向上代际流动和代内流动,以及对向上流动的感知与预期都显著增强了他们的政治信任。结果显示,社会经济发展为人们带来的向上流动的经历与期望有助于维护社会政治稳定。     

A linear generalization of Stackelberg’s model

We study an extension of Stackelberg’s model in which many firms can produce at many different times. Demand is affine, while cost is linear. In this setting, we investigate whether Stackelberg’s results in a two-firm game are robust when the number of firms increases. We show that firms may not need to anticipate further entries, leaders might earn less than in the simultaneous game, and, whatever its cost and its time of entry, the firm’s entry always improves welfare.     

Overconfidence in tournaments: evidence from the field

This paper uses a field survey to investigate the quality of individuals’ beliefs of relative performance in tournaments. We consider two field settings, poker and chess, which differ in the degree to which luck is a factor and also in the information that players have about the ability of the competition. We find that poker players’ forecasts of relative performance are random guesses with an overestimation bias. Chess players also overestimate their relative performance but make informed guesses. We find support for the “unskilled and unaware hypothesis” in chess: high-skilled chess players make better forecasts than low-skilled chess players. Finally, we find that chess players’ forecasts of relative performance are not efficient.     

Simple methods for evaluating and comparing binary experiments

We consider a confidence parametrization of binary information sources in terms of appropriate likelihood ratios. This parametrization is used for Bayesian belief updates and for the equivalent comparison of binary experiments. In contrast to the standard parametrization of a binary information source in terms of its specificity and its sensitivity, one of the two confidence parameters is sufficient for a Bayesian belief update conditional on a signal realization. We introduce a confidence-augmented receiver operating characteristic for comparisons of binary experiments for a class of “balanced” decision problems, relative to which the confidence order offers a higher resolution than Blackwell’s informativeness order.

Where observation is concerned, Chance favors only the prepared mind. —Louis Pasteur (1822–1895).

     

On the Robustness of the Winner’s Curse Phenomenon

We set out to find ways to help decision makers overcome the “winner’s curse,” a phenomenon commonly observed in asymmetric information bargaining situations, and instead found strong support for its robustness. In a series of manipulations of the “Acquiring a Company Task,” we tried to enhance decision makers’ cognitive understanding of the task. We did so by presenting them with different parameters of the task, having them compare and contrast these different parameters, giving them full feedback on their history of choices and resulting outcomes, and allowing them to interact with a human opponent instead of a computer program. Much to our surprise, none of these manipulations led to a better understanding of the task. Our results demonstrate and emphasize the robustness of the winner’s curse phenomenon.      

The hot hand belief and the gambler’s fallacy in investment decisions under risk

We conduct experiments to analyze investment behavior in decisions under risk. Subjects can bet on the outcomes of a series of coin tosses themselves, rely on randomized ‘experts’, or choose a risk-free alternative. We observe that subjects who rely on the randomized experts pick those who were successful in the past, showing behavior consistent with the hot hand belief. Obviously the term ‘expert’ suffices to attract some subjects. For those who decide on their own, we find behavior consistent with the gambler’s fallacy, as the frequency of betting on heads (tails) decreases after streaks of heads (tails).     

Does sorry work? The impact of apology laws on medical malpractice

Physicians’ apologies for adverse medical events are acknowledged as a factor in patients’ decisions to litigate. Apology laws which render physicians’ apologies inadmissible in court are written to encourage patient-physician communication and to overcome the physicians’ disinclination to apologize because apologies could invite lawsuits. We present a novel model of apologies and malpractice in order to examine whether state-level apology laws have an impact on malpractice lawsuits and settlements. Using a difference-in-differences estimation, we find that apology laws could expedite the resolution process. We also find that apology laws result in the greatest reduction in average payment size and settlement time in cases involving severe patient outcomes.     

An experimental study of the generosity game

We study ultimatum and dictator variants of the generosity game. In this game, the first mover chooses the amount of money to be distributed between the players within a given interval, knowing that her own share is fixed. Thus, the first mover is not confronted with the typical trade-off between her own and the other’s payoff. For each variant of the game, we study three treatments that vary the range of potential pie sizes so as to assess the influence of these changes on the first movers’ generosity. We find that removing the trade-off inspires significant generosity, which is not always affected by the second mover’s veto power. Moreover, the manipulation of the choice set indicates that choices are influenced by the available alternatives.     

Focusing the mediating role of institutional trust: How does interpersonal trust promote organizational commitment?

Numerous organization scholars point out that trust is crucial for well-functioning organizations. However, trust in organizational settings could differ according to the objects of trust. This study compares two conceptually different models: main-effect model and mediation-effect model. The main-effect model assumes that both interpersonal trust and institutional trust promote organizational commitment independently, but the mediation-effect model assumes that institutional trust is cultivated by interpersonal trust and increases organizational commitment. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) show that the mediation-effect model fits better than the main-effect model and that the structural coefficients of the mediation-effect model are neatly interpreted by social scientific studies of trust. This study's findings have two important implications: First, there seems to be sequential order between different types of trust in organizational settings. Second, interpersonal trust promotes organizational commitment only if it facilitates institutional trust, providing an explanation for the inconsistent findings of previous studies.     

It is not just scale that matters: Political trust in Utah

While the traditional assumption is residents have more confidence in governments that are closest to them, empirical studies supporting this claim remain limited. In this study, we test the claim that ‘small is beautiful’ by comparing citizen reactions to similar types of decisions affecting Utah residents made by political leaders at different levels of governance. Our primary goal is to test the claim that trust is higher for local governments. Our secondary goal is to examine potential determinants of trust and whether they vary across levels of governance. The central finding from this study is that, despite claims to the contrary, citizens are not necessarily more trusting of government closer to the people and higher levels of government can engender as much trust as more local levels of government. Our findings also emphasize that regardless of the level of governance considered, interrelations exist between residents’ views of procedural justice and trust in these officials.