Intergenerational equity: sup,inf, lim sup,and lim inf

We study the problem of intergenerational equity for utility streams and a countable set of agents. A numerical social welfare function is invariant to ordinal transformation, satisfies a weak monotonicity condition, and an invariance with respect to concatenation of utility streams if and only if it is either the sup, inf, lim sup, or lim inf. I would like to thank Federico Echenique, Marc Fleurbaey, and Toyotaka Sakai for discussions on intergenerational equity. Two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor also provided very useful comments. All errors are my own.     

“媒介代际”刻板印象的形成研究

改革开放以来我国不断发展变迁的大众媒介,对某些社会现象的解读和传播也日益达成一个共识,如“70后”、“80后”、“90后”等一系列代表代际差异的名词划分,使得代际问题从社会现象逐渐发展成为一个学术议题。现有的研究多集中在代际问题的提出、代际特征个性和共性的描述等方面,而代际刻板印象的形成机制探讨,将是今后研究中需要不断完善的部分。研究发现,“80后”被试在外显和内隐态度上出现了分离,被试在外显报告中表现出了对“90后”的积极偏好的显著倾向,在IAT实验中对“70后”的评价要比“90后”更加积极．由此为积极情境线索的反刻板印象想象实验提供了可以降低被试内隐代际刻板印象的IAT效应理论依据。分析代际刻板现象的形成机制可以使我们正确看待青年的社会适应性问题,增进代际间的理解和沟通,消除代际刻板印象和偏见,从而构建有利于青年身心发展的包容性舆论环境。     

Fuzzy preferences and Arrow-type problems in social choice

There are alternative ways of decomposing a given fuzzy weak preference relation into its antisymmetric and symmetric components. In this paper I have provided support to one among these alternative specifications. It is shown that on this specification the fuzzy analogue of the General Possibility Theorem is valid even when the transitivity restrictions on the individual and the social preference relations are relatively weak. In the special case where the individual preference relations are exact but the social preference relation is permitted to be fuzzy it is possible to distinguish between different degrees of power of the dictator. This power increases with the strength of the transitivity requirement.For comments on an earlier version of the paper I am indebted to an anonymous referee, an anonymous member of the Board of Editors and to participants in the 1991 Annual Conference of the Indian Econometric Society at North Bengal University, India. However, I retain sole responsibility for any error(s) that the paper may contain.     

The Paretian liberal with intuitionistic fuzzy preferences: A result

In the present paper we consider a situation in which the individual preferences and the social preference relation are intuitionistic fuzzy and study the compatibility between the Pareto principle and Sens minimal liberalism condition. A possible factorization of the intuitionistic fuzzy weak preference relation allows us to prove a possibility result for the case of max-min transitive social preference.I am extremely grateful to the Coordinating Editor and an anonymous referee of this journal for their detailed comments and suggestions. The paper was written while I was a Post-doc fellow at the Graduiertenkolleg Allocationstheorie, Wirtschaftspolitik und kollektive Entscheidungen, Ruhr-University Bochum. Thanks are due to Krassimir Atanassov, Luis G. Gonzalez-Morales and Gergana Dimitrova for helpful comments, and to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support.     

Revealed social preference

A preliminary exploration of the possibility of recovering efficient allocations from demand and supply observations in a general equilibrium framework under alternative assumptions about the structure of individual preference.I am grateful to Larry Epstein, Mike Peters, and two referees for their comments, which led to substantial improvements. Of course, any remaining defects are attributable to the author.     

Factorization of fuzzy preferences

In the ordinary framework, the factorization of a weak preference relation into a strict preference relation and an indifference relation is unique. However, in fuzzy set theory, the intersection and the union of fuzzy sets can be represented different ways. Furthermore, some equivalent properties in the ordinary case have generalizations in the fuzzy framework that may be not equivalent. For these reasons there exist in the literature several factorizations of a fuzzy weak preference relation. In this paper we obtain and characterize different factorizations of fuzzy weak preference relations by means of two courses of action which are equivalent in the ordinary framework: axioms and definitions of strict preference and indifference.This work is partially financed by the Junta de Castilla y León (Consejería de Educación y Cultura, Proyecto VA057/02), Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Plan Nacional de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica (I+D+I) (Proyecto BEC2001-2253) and ERDF. I am indebted to José Luis García-Lapresta and an anonymous referee for his helpful comments.     

Intergenerational Coresidence and Family Transitions in the United States, 1850 - 1880

This study uses a new source of linked census data (N = 6,734) to test theories proposed to explain the high intergenerational coresidence in 19th‐century America. Was it a system of support for dependent elderly, or did it reflect intergenerational interdependence? I focus on transitions from middle age to old age, and I assess key predictors of family transitions, including widowhood, retirement, disability, migration, and wealth. The results show that adverse events precipitated changes in the headship of intergenerational families but did not increase the likelihood of residing in an intergenerational family. The findings suggest that 19th‐century intergenerational coresidence was not principally a means of old‐age support; more often, probably, there was a reciprocal relationship between generations.     

Further notes on Craven's conjecture

This paper extends the work of Fishburn [4] and Abello and Johnson [1] by increasing lower bounds on the number of possible value-restricted preference orderings, and by considering cases in which the number of alternatives is not a power of 2.I am grateful to Peter Fishburn for comments on an earlier version, and for drawing my attention to earlier papers on this topic.     

Harsanyi's Social Aggregation Theorem and the Weak Pareto Principle

Harsanyi's Social Aggregation Theorem is concerned with the aggregation of individual preferences defined on the set of lotteries generated from a finite set of basic prospects into a social preference. These preferences are assumed to satisfy the expected utility hypothesis and are represented by von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions. Harsanyi's Theorem says that if Pareto Indifference is satisfied, then the social utility function must be an affine combination of the individual utility functions. This article considers the implications for Harsanyi's Theorem of replacing Pareto Indifference with Weak Pareto.I am grateful to Charles Blackorby, David Donaldson, Philippe Mongin, and an anonymous referee for their comments. The final version of this article was written while I was the Hinkley Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Research support was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

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.     

Freedom of choice and rational decisions

The paper formalizes a notion of preference-based freedom and examines to which extent such a notion is consistent with otherwise standard conditions of rational decision making. The central result is as follows. Suppose that a preference-based ranking of opportunity sets satisfies a very mild condition of preference for freedom of choice. Then, either the ranking is degenerate in being discontinuous, or the underlying preference relation among the basic alternatives is incomplete. Hence, in any case preference-based rankings of freedom will violate at least some of the basic assumptions of traditional choice modelling. This conclusion is enhanced if the conditions on preference-based freedom are slightly strengthened.I would like to thank the participants of seminars held at the Universities of Karlsruhe and Vienna for valuable comments and stimulating discussions. I am especially indebted to Thomas Christ, Egbert Dierker, Georg Kirchsteiger, Dieter Puppe and anonymous referees for helpful comments. The research has been made possible by a fellowship of the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) which is also gratefully acknowledged.     

A case for cardinal utility and non-arbitrary choice of commodity units

With preference changes, cardinal utility is indispensable. For any necessity good, there exists an intermediate consumption level at which a change in preference intensity has no effect on utility, below/above which an increase in preference intensity decreases/increases utility. This is supported by an indicative empirical survey. At the intermediate consumption level, the utility from the relevant good is zero. For a Cobb-Douglas utility function, this intermediate consumption level equals one, making the choice of the unit of measurement non-arbitrary.We are grateful to a referee for some helpful comments     

“A Message on Life to the Young”—Perceiving a Senior Volunteer Activity in Japan from an Intergenerational Perspective

Abstract

Intergenerational programming has gained more recognition in Japan in the last decade or so, as research and reports on the status and case studies of intergenerational programs become available since mid-1990s. This paper examines the case study of a volunteer narrative group called G-117 formed primarily by seniors who are survivors of the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake as an example of an emerging intergenerational program. The research was carried out mainly during fieldwork among senior volunteer groups in Kobe from late 2001 to early 2002, primarily through qualitative approaches of interviews and participant observation. I propose that besides observational research, a more in-depth engagement through ethnographic case study, although much less common in intergenerational program research, is also important in providing rich, contextualized understanding of the development of an intergenerational program, particularly in a cross-cultural setting.     

A Signaling Model of Repeated Elections

I develop a two period model of elections in which voters’ first period actions affect candidates’ estimates of voter preferences and thus affect second period electoral and policy outcomes. I find an equilibrium in which centrist voters abstain in the first election, despite facing zero costs of voting and having a strict preference between the alternatives before them. The reason centrists abstain is to signal their preferences to future candidates and thereby promote future policy moderation.For helpful discussions and comments I thank David Austen-Smith, Tim Feddersen, Roger Myerson, Tom Palfrey, Ronny Razin, two anonymous reviewers, and seminar participants at Kellogg, NYU, and the 2000 World Congress of the Game Theory Society.     

Partial equality-of-opportunity orderings

This paper proposes a partial equality-of-opportunity ordering based on the inequality-of-opportunity curve, a mechanism that gives preference to those who are worse off in terms of opportunity. Moreover, it provides a complete ordering that depends on a sensitivity parameter representing the degree of priority in the equality-of-opportunity policy. The Moreno-Ternero approach is obtained as a particular case. This proposal is applied to a set of 12 countries to compare their degree of equality of opportunity. Results show the relevance for economic policy of observing inequality of opportunity over tranches. Denmark dominates, in terms of post-tax income, all other economies in our sample. This paper was written during my visit to the Department of Political Science at Yale University. I am very grateful for the hospitality and helpful comments of John Roemer. I also acknowledge useful comments and suggestions by Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, the audiences at XIV EEP (Santander) and ECINEQ2007 (Berlin) and two anonymous referees. This paper has benefited from the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology [Project#SEC2003-08397], Fundación BBVA and Instituto de Estudios Fiscales. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Tradition and Change in Vietnamese Family Structure in the Red River Delta

One of the key features of Vietnamese family organization is patrilocality—the preference of married couples to coreside with the husband's parents. With data drawn from a retrospective survey of persons in 1,855 households in the largest province in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam, we found that more than 75% of married respondents reported having lived with the grooms' family after marriage. The proportion of newly married couples that follow the patrilocal custom appears to have increased in recent decades, although the average duration of coresidence has declined. Some aspects of modernization, especially nonagricultural occupations and later age at marriage, contribute to a lower incidence of intergenerational coresidence, but the underlying cultural preference to live with the grooms' parents immediately after marriage appears to have become stronger in Vietnam. In contrast to some features of traditional family life that conflict with modernity, intergenerational coresidence can be quite functional in modernizing societies.     

Introduction: The Glass Coffin: What Age Is Desire?

To invite future contributions to the project taking shape in this special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, I defer making the usual theoretical introductory comments on our topic, What Age is Desire? in preference for what might emerge among the articles as they read and are read, open to elaboration and close wounds, engender desire and spark controversy—as do barfly and passerby eyeing one another at the Glass Coffin.     

Intergenerationale Fertilitätstransmission in Ost- und Westdeutschland

This study addresses intergenerational fertility transmission: How similar is the fertility behavior of parents and their children? I first discuss the implications of intergenerational fertility transmission for population development and review prominent theoretical mechanisms of fertility transmission. Using data from the German National Education Panel (NEPS), fertility transmission in East and West Germany is compared with fertility correlations and quantile regression models for count data. For the analysis cohorts (1944–66) we find relatively strong fertility transmission in West Germany but no effect in East Germany. In West Germany the impact of parents’ fertility is particularly strong in small and in large families. In line with previous research, the results support that intergenerational fertility transmission is stronger in liberal democratic societies compared with regulative restrictive regimes, such as the communist East. The article concludes that the intergenerational continuity in fertility that is usually found in developed societies was disrupted by the regulative communist regime in East Germany. Fertility in one generation therefore is generated at the intersection of family internal dynamics and macro-structural contexts.     

Acyclic social choice from finite sets

This paper characterizes acyclic preference aggregation rules under various combinations of monotonicity, neutrality, decisiveness, and anonymity, in the spirit of Nakamura's (1979) Theorem on the core of simple games. Each of these characterizations can be seen to follow from Ferejohn and Fishburn's (1979) result on acyclic aggregation rules assuming only independence of irrelevant alternatives. We then state as corollaries to these characterizations extant results such as Sen's (1970) liberal paradox, Blau and Deb's (1977) theorem on the existence of vetoers, and Brown's (1975) theorem on the non-emptiness of the collegium.I thank David Austen-Smith, Michel Le Breton, Maurice Salles, and two anonymous referees for numerous enlightening conversations and comments. I also thank the National Science Foundation and Sloan Foundation for generous financial assistance.     

MEASURING AND MODELING INTERGENERATIONAL LINKS IN RELATION TO LONG‐TERM CARE

Long‐term care has profound intergenerational implications. It can be costly for those who need it and onerous for loved ones who provide it. We pinpoint three intergenerational aspects of long‐term care that require further research. One concerns the link between costs of private care and intergenerational wealth transfers. The second concerns the link between participation in care and the work and welfare of family providers. The third relates to intergenerational tensions that these and other late‐in‐life interactions create. We outline innovations in modeling and measurement that would improve understanding of intergenerational linkages and their implementation in appropriate panel data. (JEL D91, I13, J22)