The Value of Safety as Revealed in the Swedish Car Market: An Application of the Hedonic Pricing Approach

In this article the hedonic regression technique is used to estimate the value of traffic safety, using information from the Swedish market for automobiles. The results from the study show that the market price of an automobile is negatively correlated with its inherent risk level, i.e. Swedish car consumers pay a safety premium for safer cars. In comparison to previous Swedish stated-preference studies, this study reveals a lower willingness to pay for additional car safety, which might be a result of the interaction between government interventions and individual self-insurance and self-protection.JEL Classification: C51, D61, J28     

Left-Side strong increases in risk and their comparative statics

This paper introduces a new concept of left-side strong increases in risk (L-SIR) that extends the definition of strong increases in risk (SIR). We also provide somewhat stronger restrictive set of risk-averse decision-makers with a non-negative third derivative utility (prudence) to obtain an appealing comparative statics result for L-SIR.The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of an anonymous referee     

Lebensstile und Wohnstandortwahl

Life style research and various disciplines dealing with regional studies argue that life styles are explanatory relevant for decisions in different behavioral areas, in particular for residential choices. However, the results of previous research are rather mixed. To specify the conditions for the explanatory relevance of life style based preferences for locational choices, this article ties in with a parsimonious decision theoretic model, which has been applied both in the sociology of the city and in life style research. Based on this theoretical framework an empirical study is presented, which tests the explanatory relevance of life styles for residential choices. The study is based on neighborhood survey data from Leipzig, representing a context, in which a strong impact of life styles may be expected. However, even in this context the empirical study shows rather limited explanatory power of life style based preferences for residential choices, whereas household arrangements and economic resource endowments of persons show much more explanatory power.     

On optimising the estimation of high quantiles of a probability distribution

One of the major aims of one-dimensional extreme-value theory is to estimate quantiles outside the sample or at the boundary of the sample. The underlying idea of any method to do this is to estimate a quantile well inside the sample but near the boundary and then to shift it somehow to the right place. The choice of this “anchor quantile” plays a major role in the accuracy of the method. We present a bootstrap method to achieve the optimal choice of sample fraction in the estimation of either high quantile or endpoint estimation which extends earlier results by Hall and Weissman (1997) in the case of high quantile estimation. We give detailed results for the estimators used by Dekkers et al. (1989). An alternative way of attacking problems like this one is given in a paper by Drees and Kaufmann (1998).     

中国经济发展机制及其解释

本文从中国经济现实出发 ,阐释了以土地集体所有、个人使用的农业制度为基础的中国经济 ,在以消除剩余劳动力为特征的经济发展过程中可能表现出来的若干基本趋势 ,从而提出了中国经济长期发展的一种可能机制     

The Prevalence of Destructive Leadership Behaviour

This study investigates the prevalence of the four types of destructive leadership behaviour in the destructive and constructive leadership behaviour model, in a representative sample of the Norwegian workforce. The study employs two estimation methods: the operational classification method (OCM) and latent class cluster (LCC) analysis. The total prevalence of destructive leadership behaviour varied from 33.5% (OCM) to 61% (LCC), indicating that destructive leadership is not an anomaly. Destructive leadership comes in many shapes and forms, with passive forms prevailing over more active ones. The results showed that laissez‐faire leadership behaviour was the most prevalent destructive leadership behaviour, followed by supportive–disloyal leadership and derailed leadership, while tyrannical leadership behaviour was the least prevalent destructive leadership behaviour. Furthermore, many leaders display constructive as well as destructive behaviours, indicating that leadership is not either constructive or destructive. The study contributes to a broader theoretical perspective on what must be seen as typical behaviour among leaders.