POLITICAL SELECTION IN CHINA: THE COMPLEMENTARY ROLES OF CONNECTIONS AND PERFORMANCE

Who becomes a top politician in China? We focus on provincial leaders—a pool of candidates for top political office—and examine how their chances of promotion depend on their performance in office and connections with top politicians. Our empirical analysis, based on the curriculum vitae of Chinese politicians, shows that connections and performance are complements in the Chinese political selection process. This complementarity is stronger the younger provincial leaders are relative to their connected top leaders. To provide one plausible interpretation of these empirical findings, we propose a simple theory in which the complementarity arises because connections foster loyalty of junior officials to senior ones, thereby allowing incumbent top politicians to select competent provincial leaders without risking being ousted. Our findings shed some light on why a political system known for patronage can still select competent leaders.     

Personal income taxation under mobility, exogenous and endogenous welfare weights, and asymmetric information

This paper analyses how governments should tax labour income accruing to a group of highly skilled and geographically mobile individuals who divide their time or career between several jurisdictions. The analysis differs from previous models on migration and taxation by addressing optimal regulation when agents work for several principals. Optimal taxation is developed for social welfare functions with exogenous and endogenous welfare weights. Marginal income taxes are applied for screening purposes, and the rates are lower with endogenous than with exogenous welfare weights. Received: 22 January 1998/Accepted: 3 July 1999)     

Reconsidering the philanthropic foundation minimum payout policy under a “new normal”

With the increasing salience of foundations in many policy fields, and recent changes in market conditions, policies towards foundations designed decades ago seem outdated. In this article we suggest reassessing foundation payout minimums. To examine the impact of payout rates on grantmaking foundations lifespan and performance under “new normal” economics, we simulate multiple foundations lifecycles using Monte Carlo methods in diverse capital market conditions, with varied investment and payout strategies.We find that while under past market regime perpetuity seems to be a given, under more probable future scenarios, foundations might face increasingly early mortality and endowment depletion, limiting their potential impact. Furthermore, lower payout rates allow for higher lifetime grantmaking, higher mean annual grantmaking, and lower giving volatility. Accordingly, we suggest a tiered payout policy, in line with foundations’ missions and proper financial planning.     

How much is too much: Does the size of income support transfers affect labor supply?

Cash transfer programs pursue mainly protective objectives, but can also impact rural livelihoods by inducing investments in productive activities and changing household labor allocation. We adopt a continuous treatment approach to quantify how households’ labor supply responds to transfer size. We find a shift from paid labor to own farm labor and find that the transfer size is well within a level that would have disincentive effects on time spent on own farm activities. The switch from paid to own farm labor occurs at lower levels of transfers for labor-constrained households, and at higher levels for non-labor constrained households.     

A critical approach to wage devaluation: The case of Spanish economic recovery

In line with the orientation of EU economic policy, the Spanish government has favoured a strategy of internal devaluation as a way of adjusting price levels within the currency union. The results of empirical studies indicate that the internal devaluation applied in Spain does not seem to have attained the desired goals in terms of reducing the relative prices of exports and consolidating a model of growth based on external demand. Indeed, the estimates drawn up show that tailwinds – the depreciation of the euro and the fall in risk premium as results of the measures taken by the ECB, greater economic activity by trading partners and the fall in the price of oil – exercised a decisive influence in the trends followed by the prices of exports and the balance of trade during the period of crisis management in Spain.     

‘Warren Buffet is my cousin’: shaping public understanding of big data biotechnology,direct-to-consumer genomics,and 23andMe on Twitter

Scholars, educators, regulators, pundits, and other observers are advocating for regulation and oversight of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic testing. As a result, the technology has been subject of highly visible public and regulatory controversy. In this article, we explore the nature and the shape of the sentiment of public discourse about the DTC company, 23andMe. We conduct a quantitative content analysis and qualitative framing analysis on Tweets. We find that the discourse surrounding DTC genomics and 23andMe is largely positive. We also identify a number of frames users deploy to debate, discuss, and share their experiences with DTC genomics and 23andMe. We argue that these frames create meaning around this emerging technology for its users.     

浅谈张学良的军队教育理念

张学良的政治生涯始终与军人紧密地联系在一起.纵观张学良的戎马军旅生涯,他对提高军队战斗力、改善军队素质、造就军事人才有着独特的教育理念和实践.在军事技术教育方面,张学良强调要训练精兵强将;在军队政治思想教育方面,张学良强调要为民族争生存;在军纪风纪教育方面,张学良强调要造就文明之军人;在军队文化教育方面,张学良强调要培养有文化的士兵.张学良的军队教育理念是其爱国主义思想的重要组成部分,深刻地诠释着他抵御外侮、强国富民、抗日救亡、复兴民族的爱国主义思想.     

Feminism and science in Masters of Sex

This article examines the fictional characterization of the real-life sex researchers and scientists William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson in the Showtime television program Masters of Sex (2013–2016). The historical Johnson had a complicated relationship with second-wave feminism: she disdained the movement and was interested primarily in improving heterosexual marriages and the sex lives of married couples. The Johnson character speaks in a language of postfeminism with minimal interest in collective action and broader social change. However, second-wave feminists later used her and Masters’ research in order to support their own beliefs about sexual autonomy and freedom, within and beyond marriage and heterosexuality. The television program demonstrates Johnson’s importance to both phases of her and Masters’ research—in the first phase, when they are based in a hospital and university environment, and in the second, when they establish their own research institute and raise funds directly from the clients that they serve. Johnson exemplifies postfeminist depictions of ambitious women in prestige television, her aim to have a successful career and marriage conflict, and while she is willing to compromise scientific values to serve her own goals, her male colleagues temper that ambition in service of “objective” science.     

Influencing behaviour: The mindspace way

The ability to influence behaviour is central to many of the key policy challenges in areas such as health, finance and climate change. The usual route to behaviour change in economics and psychology has been to attempt to ‘change minds’ by influencing the way people think through information and incentives. There is, however, increasing evidence to suggest that ‘changing contexts’ by influencing the environments within which people act (in largely automatic ways) can have important effects on behaviour. We present a mnemonic, MINDSPACE, which gathers up the nine most robust effects that influence our behaviour in mostly automatic (rather than deliberate) ways. This framework is being used by policymakers as an accessible summary of the academic literature. To motivate further research and academic scrutiny, we provide some evidence of the effects in action and highlight some of the significant gaps in our knowledge.     

Sex, self-interest and health care priorities

In this questionnaire study, individuals were asked to prioritise publicly provided preventive health care services, one of which would be unavailable to them by virtue of their sex. The aim was to establish whether men and women would exhibit different degrees of self-interest when making a constrained choice. Around 1800 subjects from east-central England prioritised three different types of cancer screening. Most also provided written explanations for their rankings and these were classified into explanatory themes. Logistic regressions using socio-demographic and attitude data predicted the type of screening chosen as first priority. The analysis revealed that many men and women did indeed assign similar priorities to the different types of screening and, even when the priorities differed, these were often justified by similar arguments relating to technical aspects of the interventions and to self-interest. However, women were far more likely than men to prioritise a type of screening from which they themselves would benefit directly and the variations in preferences and explanations between the sexes occurred primarily because of differences in other-regarding attitudes. The bias towards screening of females was driven by women's greater worries about the disease in question and by men's “benevolent sexism” with respect to women's wellbeing.