基于地方政府行为的信贷资源配置效率损失:一个理论分析框架

中国经济转轨的成功很大程度上要归功于自改革开放初期就推行的分权式改革.然而下放权利造就了既得利益者,地方政府为了保护既得利益,便会制造更多的资源扭曲.中国就是在这种资源分配充满扭曲的情况下推进渐进的改革.在总结前人研究的基础上,构建地方政府的效用函数,以此展开地方政府行为分析.在分析金融制度漏洞和地方政府的行为激励与约束机制的基础上,讨论地方政府对信贷资源的干预手段和方式,构建了一个基于地方政府行为的信贷资源配置效率损失的理论分析框架.     

Suicide reports in the news – impact of Chief Coroner's call to open up suicide reporting

ABSTRACT

Aim: In 2010, the then Chief Coroner called for an opening up of suicide reporting in the press. We aimed to discover if this controversial action influenced the nature and extent of reporting of individual suicide cases in the newsprint media.

Method: A Factiva search of news reports from high circulation newspapers was conducted over four years. We counted the number of news reports of individual suicides and examined any mention of demographics, methods, location and contributing factors.

Results: We retrieved 291 individual suicide reports, 161 before and 130 after the Chief Coroners’ call. Reporting was more detailed after the call, with increased reporting of demographics, contributing factors and methods but less reporting of location. Most of these differences did not reach statistical significance.

Conclusion: The press did not appear to take the action of the Chief Coroner as a licence to report more frequently on individual suicide cases.     

Probability weighting for losses and for gains among smallholder farmers in Uganda

Theory and Decision - Probability weighting is a marked feature of decision-making under risk. For poor people in rural areas of developing countries, how probabilities are evaluated matters for...     

R-squared for Bayesian Regression Models

The usual definition of R² (variance of the predicted values divided by the variance of the data) has a problem for Bayesian fits, as the numerator can be larger than the denominator. We propose an alternative definition similar to one that has appeared in the survival analysis literature: the variance of the predicted values divided by the variance of predicted values plus the expected variance of the errors.     

Trace of the Variance-Covariance Matrix in Natural Exponential Families

In this article, we introduce the notion of trace variance function which is the trace of the variance-covariance matrix. Under some conditions, we prove that this trace variance function characterizes the Natural Exponential Family (NEF). We apply this characterization in order to estimate the distribution which belongs to some NEFs. Therefore, we introduce the estimator of this trace variance function. We give the asymptotic properties of this estimator. Finally, we illustrate our results using a simulation study.     

A goodness-of-fit test for the stratified proportional hazards model for survival data

Abstract

Goodness-of-fit testing is addressed in the stratified proportional hazards model for survival data. A test statistic based on within-strata cumulative sums of martingale residuals over covariates is proposed and its asymptotic distribution is derived under the null hypothesis of model adequacy. A Monte Carlo procedure is proposed to approximate the critical value of the test. Simulation studies are conducted to examine finite-sample performance of the proposed statistic.     

信息社会主义的概念界定与若干理论澄清

信息社会主义是彰显信息时代特征的社会主义新形态,是以信息技术与信息资本作为主要生产力,消灭利用信息资本的剥削,消除信息财富的两极分化,推进电子政务的公开化、民主化,增强信息文化的大众化、素质化,倡导人与自然更加和谐相处的社会主义。通过对与信息社会主义概念有关的若干理论问题的分析和解答,让我们认识到了信息社会主义与社会主义在理论渊源上是一脉相承的关系,信息社会主义研究对于“中国特色的社会主义”理论创新与建设发展具有重要意义。     

Becoming a black Jew: cultural racism and anti‐racism in contemporary Israel

Many scholars consider ‘identity’ and ‘identity politics’ to be among the most important means for cultural minority groups to challenge a discriminatory reality. Others caution that these processes might result in the polarisation of differences, potentially fuelling hatred, harsh conflict, exclusion and even violence. The tension between these two views is presented in this article through an examination of the way young Ethiopian Jews whose parents immigrated to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s have developed their own particular identity precisely in the course of and as a result of the encounter with Israeli society and its mechanisms of exclusion, discrimination, and control. The state declared a policy of assimilation, but in practice relegated the new arrivals to a status of inferiority and marginality. As a result, young Ethiopian Jews reconstructed a new, complex and hybrid Israeli identity, in which blackness is one important element. This unique identity is presented in the paper as a crucial response by the youths to a discriminatory reality of cultural racism. However, the essay also raises doubts concerning their success in minimising their subjugation and in ‘de‐racialising’ Israel.     

Helping people to sort it out: The role of social support in the Job Strain Model

This paper reports three studies of occupational stress investigating the role of social support as an intervening variable in the Job Strain Model (Karasek, 1979). A computer simulated mail-sorting work environment was used to assess the effect of demands, control and social support on measures of strain, satisfaction, and perceived and actual task performance. The first experiment ( N =60) tests the basic Job Strain Model by manipulating levels of task demand and control. The second experiment ( N =120) compares high and low levels of two types of social support (informational support and emotional support) to determine whether and how they interact with extreme conditions of the Job Strain Model (high strain and low strain). The final experiment ( N =90) investigates positive and negative forms of social support (praise and criticism) in relation to extreme job strain conditions. Results show that the job strain model is consistent with the stress and performance data, although stress showed no Demand 2 Control interaction. Social supports increased arousal, satisfaction and perceived performance, but did not affect stress or task performance. Moreover, contrary to buffer theories, social supports did not interact with the job strain variables. Congruence between preferred and experienced emotional support levels also predicted performance.