PRICING RISK IN ECONOMIES WITH HETEROGENEOUS AGENTS AND INCOMPLETE MARKETS

Habit formation has been proposed as a possible solution to the equity premium puzzle. This paper extends the class of models that support the habits explanation in order to account for heterogeneity in earnings, wealth, habits, and consumption. I find that habit formation does indeed increase the equity premium. However, contrary to earlier results, the habit hypothesis does not imply a price for risk as largeas the one measured in the data. There are three reasons for this. First, households in a habits economy modify their consumption/savings decision. Second, they modify their portfolio choice. These two changes in behavior diminish the consumption fluctuations faced by households. Third, the composition of the set of agents pricing risk in the economy changes so that relatively better self‐insured households end up pricing risk. (JEL: D52, G12, E21, C68)     

Customer Behavior Modeling in Revenue Management and Auctions: A Review and New Research Opportunities

Customer behavior modeling has been gaining increasing attention in the operations management community. In this paper we review current models of customer behavior in the revenue management and auction literatures and suggest several future research directions.     

The Educated Russian's Curse: Returns to Education in the Russian Federation during the 1990s

Abstract. This paper uses a representative sample of the Russian Federation, the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, to estimate the returns to education in this ex‐communist country. We tackle this classic issue in labor economics with the realistic expectation of obtaining results for Russia comparable in quality and reliability to those available in developed countries and other economies in transition. Using standard regression techniques we find that the returns to education in Russia are quite low compared with those reported in the literature on countries throughout the world, in almost no specification reaching higher than 5 per cent. Moreover, there is virtually no improvement in returns to education in the 1992–99 period, a result somewhat at odds with other studies using Russian data from similar time periods. When we instrument our main regressor using policy experiments from the 1960s, we find comparable results. We also perform a selectivity correction and discover even lower returns to education for men, although they become slightly higher for women. Additionally, we find extremely low returns to tenure, which can even become negative in certain specifications.     

Ranked Items Auctions and Online Advertisement

We study auctions for a set of commonly‐ranked items where each buyer has unit demand. This setting has promising applications in areas such as keyword auctions in the search engine advertising industry, the sale of quality‐ranked raw materials, etc. An auction mechanism suitable for this setting is the simultaneous pooled auction (SPA), where each bidder simultaneously submits a single bid and is allocated an object based on the rank of his bid among all the bids. We study how to improve the seller's expected revenue by enforcing a reserve price in an SPA. We find that the use of an appropriate reserve price may significantly increase the seller's revenue, especially when the number of items for sale is relatively large compared to the number of participating bidders. One inherent problem in the SPA is that some bidders may incur ex post losses; that is, they pay more than what they value the received objects. We propose a tailored VCG mechanism that generates the same expected revenue as the SPA does, while bidders do not incur any ex post loss. We also discuss the potential applications of this research to keyword auctions.     

Intra‐household Allocation of Time to Household Production Activities: Evidence from Swedish Household Data

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to study the intra‐household allocation of time to different household production activities using Swedish cross‐sectional household data. The Tobit model is rejected in favor of the Cragg model, suggesting that an empirical model has to take into consideration that allocation of time within the household is determined by two separate processes. Moreover, the results indicate that valuable information concerning the intra‐household allocation of time may be missing when household production is defined as the sum of different household activities, but there is no indication that statistically significant effects are wiped out in an aggregated analysis.     

Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s Through the 1990s

This article examines trends in family attitudes and values across the last 4 decades of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the past 2 decades. The article focuses on attitudes toward a wide range of family issues, including the roles of men and women, marriage, divorce, childlessness, premarital sex, extramarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, and unmarried childbearing. More generally, the article considers trends in 3 broad contemporary values: freedom; equality; and commitment to family, marriage, and children. Five data sets are used for the article: Monitoring the Future, General Social Survey, International Social Science Project, Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, and the National Survey of Families and Households. These 5 data sets reveal substantial and persistent long‐term trends toward the endorsement of gender equality in families, which may have plateaued at very high levels in recent years. There have also been important and continuing long‐term trends toward individual autonomy and tolerance toward a diversity of personal and family behaviors as reflected in increased acceptance of divorce, premarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, remaining single, and choosing to be childless. At the same time, marriage and family life remain important in the cultural ethos, with large and relatively stable fractions of young people believing that marriage and family life are important and planning marriage and the bearing and rearing of children.     

Computer‐Based Career Planning Systems: Dreams and Realities

The authors look back more than 30 years to those who introduced the use of the computer as an important new tool to assist students in the area of career development. To what extent have dreams been realized and concerns allayed? Rapid advances in technology, not included in the authors' vision, have transformed the world into a different place. How have these advances affected the use of computers in counseling? The article concludes with a list of current concerns, along with recommendations for further action and research.     

价值是人关于客体对主体意义的合理认识

哲学价值范畴的实质是什么?哲学界主要存在着“属性说”和“关系说”之争。我认为,哲学价值范畴的实质既不是客体所固有的某种属性,也不是客体满足主体需要这种关系本身,而是主体的一种认识,即主体对客体满足主体需要这种关系(或称客体对主体意义)的合理的认识,这应是哲学价值范畴最一般的规定,如果不这样规定,那将矛盾百出,不能说明哲学价值的本质。