Social security reforms and early retirement

Many reform proposals of the social security systems in various OECD economies suggest to scale down the non-actuarial parts of the pension systems. These reforms have a flavor of increased efficiency at the costs of welfare losses for low-income individuals. Assessing the economic effects, we investigate five different reform proposals by means of a numerical overlapping generations model for the Norwegian economy. The model features an endogenous retirement age and heterogeneous individuals within generations. It turns out that the various reforms, which scale down the public non-actuarial pension system, lead to increases in the retirement age and steady-state welfare gains for all income classes. Received: 7 December 2000/Accepted: 29 January 2002 All correspondence to ?ystein Th?gersen. Financial support from the Research Council of Norway (The Economic Research Program on Taxation) is gratefully acknowledged. We are indebted to Lans Bovenberg, John Ermisch, Erling Steigum and two referees for valuable comments and useful discussion. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Intergenerational reliance on social assistance: Evidence from Canada

This paper provides the first analysis of the intergenerational transmission of participation in a Canadian social assistance program. Two sources of intergenerational transmission are taken into account: one that is due to a possible causal link between parents' and children's participation, and one that is due to a correlation between individual and environment specific characteristics across generations. The basic data come from the Québec government's administrative records and cover 17,203 young people who were 18 years old in 1990 and whose parents were recipients of social assistance during at least one month between 1979 and 1990. The results reveal that, on average, a one-percentage unit increase in parental participation during the youth's pre-adult years (age 7–17) raises the youth's participation rate by 0.29 percentage unit during early adulthood (age 18–21). This impact is stronger during the early stages of childhood (age 7–9) and during late adolescence (age 16–17).     

Optimal age of retirement and population growth

The purpose of this paper is to study intergenerational optimal resources sharing when the social planer can choose the retirement age in addition to consumptions and investment. We use the extension of the Diamond analysis by Hu [1979] that incorporates endogenous retirement age. We found that the optimal retirement age is an increasing function of the population growth rate if the elasticity of substitution of old agents' labor for young agents' labor is lower than one. In the millian case, when the size of a population does not matter, and when the elasticity of substitution of old agents' labor for young agents' labor is strictly higher than one, the optimal retirement age is a decreasing function of the population growth rate. In the benthamite case, the change in the optimal retirement age is indeterminate. Received: 19 February 1999/Accepted: 27 February 2001 All correspondence to Bertrand Crettez. We would like to thank Jean-Pierre Vidal for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. An anonymous referee provided insightful comments on a previous version of this paper. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

PREFERENCES FOR REDISTRIBUTION AND PERCEPTION OF FAIRNESS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how demand for redistribution of income depends on self‐interest, insurance motives, and social concerns relating to inequality and efficiency. Our choice environments feature large groups of subjects and real‐world framing, and differ with respect to the source of inequality (earned or arbitrary), the cost of taxation to the decision maker, the dead‐weight loss of taxation, uncertainty about own pretax income, and whether the decision maker is affected by redistribution. We estimate utility weights for the different sources of demand for redistribution, with the potential to inform modeling in macroeconomics and political economy     

DO TRANSFER TAXES REDUCE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSFERS?

We estimate the effect of taxes on intergenerational transfers by exploiting a sequence of Italian reforms culminating with the abolishment of transfer taxes. We use the Surveys of Household Income and Wealth from 1993 to 2006, which have data on real estate transfers, and information on potential donors and recipients. Difference‐in‐differences estimates indicate that the abolition of transfer taxes increases the probability of high‐wealth donors making a transfer by two percentage points and increases the area transferred by 9.3 square meters relative to poorer donors.     

概念隐喻与意识形态关系研究：以甲流话语为例

基于建构主义对语言和社会现实的观点,本文应用认知语言学中概念隐喻的理论,采用定性的方法,分析了《中国日报》上甲流报道中的隐喻系统。研究发现该报把甲流隐喻化为一个贪婪和狡诈的凶手,威胁着整个人类的健康;在这个基本的隐喻体系下,存在多个分隐喻,这些隐喻构成层级关系的网络。在此基础之上,本文进而讨论了使用概念隐喻的动因;认为通过隐喻网络,该报纸向读者传递了一个隐性的陈述,同时表明该报的立场和态度。本研究不但拓展了van Dijk的价值对立方块理论,为话语分析开辟了新的路径;而且以媒体话语为分析对象,说明了概念隐喻与意识形态之间的互构关系。     

Price perception and confirmation bias in the context of a VAT increase

This paper examines a potential confirmation bias in price perception in consequence to a real-world event and different explanations for such a confirmation bias. In a panel design conducted 2 months before and after a raise in value-added tax (VAT), 303 participants had to estimate the current prices for four products affected and four products not affected by this raise in VAT and the anticipated or recalled prices of these products. Before the VAT increase, an undifferentiated belief in strong future price increases was prevalent. After the VAT increase, a confirmation bias was found: in retrospect, participants reported price increases that were significantly higher than the official price development and in line with an undifferentiated belief in marked price increases. Two theoretical explanations for confirmation bias, i.e., the biased use of price information and the selective distortion of memory, fit the data.     

对B_2H_6、B_3H_5和B_4H_6分子结构的对比研究

为了正确理解氢桥键的本质,采用MP2/6-31＋＋（D,P）方法对B2H6,B3H5和B4H6分子的结构进行了研究。比较了这3种分子中处于分子平面上下方的两个氢原子的距离变化引起的各原子带电情况的变化图和分子轨道图,结果显示,在某种程度上,B3H5和B4H6中分子平面上下方的两个氢原子具有类似B2H6分子中两个桥氢原子的性质,并在此基础上通过B2H6,B3H5和B4H6的分子轨道图得出了这3种分子中的氢桥键结构均可以看成π键电子云吸附两个带正电的质子构成的结论。     

PROXYING FOR UNOBSERVABLE VARIABLES WITH INTERNET DOCUMENT‐FREQUENCY

The internet contains billions of documents. We show that document frequencies in large decentralized textual databases can capture the cross‐sectional variation in the occurrence frequencies of social phenomena. We characterize the econometric conditions under which such proxying is likely. We also propose using recently‐introduced internet search volume indexes as proxies for fundamental locational traits, and discuss their advantages and limitations. We then successfully proxy for a number of economic and demographic variables in US cities and states. We further obtain document‐frequency measures of corruption by country and US state and replicate the econometric results of previous research studying its covariates. Finally, we provide the first measure of corruption in American cities. Poverty, population size, service‐sector orientation, and ethnic fragmentation are shown to predict higher levels of corruption in urban America.     

碰撞、交织、融合——中国现代主义诗人与奥登的历史渊源

中国现代诗歌受W·H·奥登的影响颇深,对这种影响作出如实的整理和辩证的分析,廓清他们之间的关系无疑是必要的。中国现代主义诗人与奥登的联系有着一种内在的必然性,他们在思想上与奥登产生碰撞的火花。而共同的生命体验和自觉追求诗歌的丰富性和深刻性架起了他们沟通的桥梁。