Characterizing QALYs under a General Rank Dependent Utility Model

This paper provides a characterization of QALYs, the most important outcome measure in medical decision making, in the context of a general rank dependent utility model. We show that both for chronic and for nonchronic health states the characterization of QALYs depends on intuitive conditions. This facilitates the assessment of the validity of QALYs in rank dependent non-expected utility theories and a comparison with other utility based measures of health.     

和而不同之“中”

“中”在中西哲学上占有相当重的分量 ,中国的儒道释和西方的亚里士多德都给予“中”以强烈关注 ,不同的是 ,儒家为道德之“中” ,道家为自然之“中” ,释家为性空之“中” ,亚里士多德为德性之“中” ,四家之“中”各有特色 ,“和”而不“同”。     

Characterizing referenda with quorums via strategy-proofness

The paper works with a formal model of referenda, where a finite number of voters can choose between two options and abstention. A referendum will be invalid if too many voters abstain, otherwise the referendum will return one of the two options. We consider quorum rules where an option is chosen if it is preferred by the majority of voters and if at least a certain number of voters (the quorum) votes for the alternative. The paper characterizes these rules as the only referenda which are strategy-proof over certain preferences.     

China's Revolutionary Transition towards Carbon Neutrality and Prevention of Relevant Risks

Achieving carbon neutrality requires the fundamental transformation of the development paradigm, the disruptive technologies. With efficiency-improving technologies and carbon removal technologies alone, it is possible to move further towards low carbon but hard to achieve carbon neutrality. It can only be realized through thorough decoupling from fossil energy with disruptive technologies. This revolution aiming at carbon neutrality has not only made new ground in the energy market, but also th...     

美国文官"政治中立"问题的历史考察

本文运用历史学与政治学相结合的研究方法,讨论与研究美国文官"政治中立"的问题。通过对这一问题的讨论与研究,不仅有助于从政治学的角度来认识政府的政治与行政功能及它们的相互联系与区别,而且有助于从历史学的角度来梳理这一问题的历史线索及其未来走势,进而对我国的政府体制建设提供理论借鉴。     

论阎锡山的“中的哲学”思想在抗战时期的体现

“中的哲学”思想是阎锡山统治山西的根本指导思想 ,它有四方面的内容和特点 :一、自存自固是其出发点和归宿 ;二、不偏不倚 ,保持中立 ,见风使舵 ,从中渔利 ;三、制造矛盾 ,利用矛盾 ,巩固统治 ;四、追附形势 ,标新立异 ,独立特群 ,彰显个性。这些特点在山西近现代历史发展中得到充分体现 ,尤其在抗日战争这一特殊的历史时期体现得淋漓尽致     

契约法和国家的伦理中立:关于自由主义和社群主义的几点想法

在国家应该如何对待道德多元现象的方式上,社群主义者和自由主义者的意见不一致。自由主义者认为,国家必须在竞争的善的概念之间保持中立,社群主义者则争辩说,国家应该强化在社群内部占主导地位的道德观念。论文通过对契约法的讨论,阐述了自由主义国家和社群主义国家对待契约法的不同态度。     

国家出资企业防范制度创新风险对策研究

国家出资企业制度创新风险包括决策风险和实施风险两类。制度创新风险具有可管理性、无向后传递性、效应滞后性与温和性的特征,依据风险概率和风险影响两个维度选择风险管理策略,包括避免风险、转移风险和慎重管理风险,建立以董事会风险管理委员会和监事会为主体的风险管理组织,监控制度创新风险。国家出资企业防范制度创新风险的对策是促使企业成为制度创新主体,建立制度创新实施机制,有效增加制度供给,实现正式制度与非正式制度兼容。

Abstract：

Systematic innovation Risks in enterprises capitalized by state consist of decision making risk and implementation risk.They have the properties such as being manageable,devoid of transmitting backward,lagging effect and being mild.Risk management strategies can be made according to risk probability and risk effect,including avoiding risk,transferring risk and prudent management of risk.The risk management organization can be established based on risk management committee made up of board of directors and board of supervisors in order to supervise systematic innovation risk.The study of the counter plan aims at turning the enterprises to the subject of this innovation,establishing the implementation mechanism,increasing the provision to the system and realizing the compatibility of formal system and informal one.     

Rethinking Risk Attitude: Aspiration as Pure Risk

There exists no completely satisfactory theory of risk attitude in current normative decision theories. Existing notions confound attitudes to pure risk with unrelated psychological factors such as strength of preference for certain outcomes, and probability weighting. In addition traditional measures of risk attitude frequently cannot be applied to non-numerical consequences, and are not psychologically intuitive. I develop Pure Risk theory which resolves these problems – it is consistent with existing normative theories, and both internalises and generalises the intuitive notion of risk being related to the probability of not achieving one’s aspirations. Existing models which ignore pure risk attitudes may be misspecified, and effects hitherto modelled as loss aversion or utility curvature may be due instead to Pure Risk attitudes.     

国家审计防御国家经济安全风险辨析与借鉴

国家审计与国家经济安全的内在逻辑与外在联系都表明二者存在密切相关性。一些发达国家将国家经济安全风险防御重任赋予国家审计。文章通过比较分析后,笔者认为我国经济安全正在倒逼国家审计承担责任,但由于我国国家审计风险防御系统存在缺陷,风险防御能力较低,国家审计只有转变和创新审计职能才可肩负此任。我国政府应尽快考虑和部署国家经济风险防御战略,构建国家经济安全平台和完善国家经济安全防御系统,建设国家经济安全风险评价体系,监测和防御国家经济安全风险,国家审计应当成为经济安全风险防御和风险评价的核心主体。     

Arrow-Pratt Risk Aversion, Risk Premium and Decision Weights

This paper analyzes two issues: (a) the effect of decision-weights on risk premium, and (b) whether risk-aversion characterizes most investors. We theoretically show that cumulative prospect theory decision-weights systematically increase Arrow's risk premium, and may induce a positive risk premium even in the absence of risk-aversion. However, decision-weights may either increase or reduce Pratt's risk premium. We present three experiments revealing a striking result: a large proportion of the subjects' choices contradicts risk-aversion. This may be due to non-concave preferences, or to decision-weights. This result may have a dramatic impact on equilibrium models in economics and finance.     

Comparative Gerontolinguistics: Characterizing Discourses in Caring Institutions in South Africa and the United Kingdom

This article compares and contrasts the interactions between caregivers and care–recipients in two nursing homes in the United Kingdom and South Africa. It is argued that the discourse of caring in the two settings is similar in terms of how residents and nurses use interactional strategies to negotiate role relationships. It is also argued that it is the context of the "total" institution that gives rise to these strategies. Differences in the two settings are most noticeable in compliance–gaining situations. The "power struggle" between nurses and residents is much more overt in the South African data where it is reflected and constructed in racist discourse.     

Compensating Wage Differentials for Fatal and Nonfatal Injury Risk by Gender and Race

Our research examines risk compensation by gender and race using occupation, gender, and race specific fatal and nonfatal injury rates and a data set sufficiently large to produce accurate estimates across fairly narrow groups. The data provide strong evidence that men earn compensating differentials for both fatal and nonfatal injury risk and women earn compensating differentials for nonfatal injury risk. Female wage premiums for nonfatal injury risk exceed male wage premiums by a factor of more than three. Nonfatal injury risk compensation is widespread among the various demographic groups although largest for white women. Fatal injury risk compensation is more isolated with only white and Hispanic males earning significantly higher pay for greater amounts of fatal injury risk.     

Proof by Certainty Equivalents That Diversification-Across-Time Does Worse,Risk Corrected,Than Diversification-Throughout-Time

For those with constant relative-risk-aversion, one can calculate an easy and exact measurement of their risk-corrected total return per period by use of an appropriate "power mean". For them, this approach can dramatize the inefficiency of being (say) half the time in each of two independent and identically distributed securities; 100% is then lost of the benefit from being all the time 50-50 in each; actually, being half the time in each is as bad as being all the time in either one, which is equivalent to being completely undiversified. More generally, there is proved here that, for any risk-averse U(W) and time-independent probabilities, optimal diversification within each time period outperforms generically any and all patterns of across-time diversification. The variety of proposed risk-corrected returns can give useful approximations for different classes of investors–widows and orphans, pension fiduciaries, high-flying plungers, and so forth–to replace or extend Markowitz, Sharpe, Treynor, or Modigliani-Modigliani measures of corrected performance.     

Assessing Child Protection Risk

Correspondence to Lorraine Waterhouse, Lecturer, Edinburgh Centre for Social Welfare Research, 23 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN. Summary The article outlines a set of child protection criteria usedby social workers for the evaluation of risk in sexual abusecases. The criteria were distilled from research findings basedon a sample of 51 child sexual abuse cases drawn from ChildProtection Registers in Scotland in 1987/89. Criteria dividebetween two types: primary (child care) criteria which concentrateon assessing circumstances prevailing within the family home;and secondary (disclosure) criteria which serve to either substantiateor refute disclosure. Primary criteria include attitude of non-abusingparent to alleged perpetrator; access between referred childand alleged perpetrator; type of abuse; age of child or youngperson; attitude of alleged perpetrator to allegations; andparental attitude to social work investigation. Secondary criteriainclude belief or disbelief of child; psychological symptomsin child; physical signs of abuse; children's attitudes towardsremaining at home; and criminal or psychiatric history includingalcohol or drug abuse. In practice the criteria tend to be usedlike a set of building blocks: tall towers represent higherrisk; low towers lesser risk. Given the enormous stakes involvedin child protection decisions, front-line practitioners wereunder considerable pressure to ‘play it safe’.     

Risk Aversion and Self-Insurance-cum-Protection

Self-insurance and self-protection have been discussed separately in the literature. However, as observed in practice, many actions individuals take to modify a potential loss serve both as self-insurance and as self-protection. Given this practical importance of self-insurance-cum-protection activities, this paper examines the effect of increased risk aversion on such activities. The analysis shows that the effect depends in part on the shape of the loss function and that of the probability function.     

On Bivariate Risk Premia

This note examines the conditions under which the bivariate risk premium for one risk may be negative even if both risks are positively correlated, using a mean variance setting. The link between the bivariate risk premium and the partial bivariate risk premia is also investigated.     

Greater Downside Risk Aversion

Although investors are concerned foremost with mean and variance, they are also sensitive to downside risk. In this paper, we introduce an index of downside risk aversion to distinguish risk aversion from higher-order aspects of risk preference, including prudence. We show that the index of downside risk aversion S increases with monotonic downside risk averse transformations of utility, thereby directly linking S to the definition of downside risk aversion introduced by Menezes et al. (American Economic Review, 70, 921–932, 1980). Although the index S applies equally to risk averse and risk loving decision makers, for a given positive degree of risk aversion, S is greater when the index of prudence is greater and vice versa.