经理行为偏差与企业绩效激励指标的确定

股东在面对具有行为偏差的经理时,如何设计剩余收益作为激励指标,以促使双方的目标一致,一直是学界和实务界关注的一个问题。如果股东继续沿用传统的基于公司资本成本率计算得到的剩余收益,将使得损失厌恶的经理投资不足,过度自信的经理投资过度。为了改进投资决策,股东需要针对不同行为特征类型的经理设计较公司资本成本率更低或更高的激励相容资本成本率,以有效激励经理做出符合股东利益的投资决策。     

文本语境与复义

"文本语境"的内涵除了"上下文"之外,还曾被瑞恰兹和巴赫金分别加以语义层面和话语层面的拓展,形成了另外两种更具广阔内涵的文本语境。三种文本语境都具有复义功能,为文学文本创造并保留复义。上下文的文本语境通过语词之间的语义交感,在语词的概念意义之外重组出新的整体意义,构成文学文本的基本意义;语义层面深邃而广阔的文本语境,以引入新信息的方式为解读意义提供更多可能,使文本意义呈现出复杂的复义状态;话语层面的文本语境,由语境和话语的多重性实现复义的创造,使某一话语在周围各种话语所构成的不同语境的折射中呈现不同的意义。     

论陈先发的诗歌修辞

独特的修辞更能成就个性化的诗人。近些年来,陈先发在诗歌创作上的修辞探索引起人们的关注：借故翻新的互文性写作,古诗意象的唤醒和现代灵魂的注入,使诗歌表现出对生存与写作的多重焦虑;人与物的通灵及轮回意识增强了诗的魔幻色彩,产生了第三者观察视角和意象指向不确定等美学效应。设置非象征与象征的迷宫,通过自然隐晦揭示生死意识;感觉的具象化与自然的典故化,使诗歌形象灵动;复杂的简单与意义的含混使诗歌语言节奏自然,语义多重可解,蕴藉深厚。     

Performance of weather-conditional rebates under different risk preferences

Retailers who sell seasonal products often face challenges in demand management due to weather uncertainty. In many cases, they make their ordering and pricing decisions prior to the regular selling season but the vast majority of sales do not occur until after the season starts, during which unfavorable weather conditions may result in high monetary losses. To protect against such adverse financial outcomes, retailers may offer weather-linked promotions such as weather rebates and induce customers to make early purchases. Specifically, weather-conditional rebates are incentives offered in an advance promotional period to be paid to the early buyers if the weather state in the regular season is unfavorable. In the presence of seasonal weather uncertainty, risk attitudes of retailers and buyers may play an important role on the effectiveness of these promotions. In this paper, we analyze the performance of weather-conditional rebates by explicitly considering the impact of different risk behaviors. First, we study the case in which the retailer and customers are risk-neutral and show that the weather-conditional rebates are effective in increasing the retailer's profits. Under the assumption of the retailer's risk-neutrality, we conduct a simulation study to investigate the impact of customers' alternative early-purchase behaviors on the performance of the rebate program. Next, we consider a risk-averse retailer. We model the retailer's risk aversion primarily in the mean–variance framework and find that the rebate program can be designed to increase the mean profit and reduce the profit variance simultaneously. Furthermore, by combining the rebate program with a financial instrument such as binary weather options, the retailer can obtain greater benefits from weather-conditional rebates.     

Conditional payments and self-protection

Self-protection can be financed either by upfront payments or by conditional payments (or contingent fees) in which individuals pay a provider only when a favorable outcome is realized. We find that, from the vantage point of a risk-averse individual, conditional payments welfare dominate upfront payments in the state-independent framework, but upfront payments welfare dominate conditional payments in the state-dependent framework. Moreover, more risk aversion always implies more self-protection under conditional payments, for both state-independent and state-dependent frameworks. In contrast, it has been previously argued that more risk aversion does not necessarily imply more self-protection under upfront payments.

中国文学现代性的空间体验——兼与李欧梵先生商榷

李欧梵先生挖掘中国文学现代性的颓废面向意义重大,但他认为此种现代性的被压抑源于西方启蒙思想的影响,进而提出西方启蒙思想对中国影响最大的是时间观念的论断,这是值得商榷的。启蒙思想对中国时间观念的影响,并非如李先生所言如此巨大。从中国现代性的发生,利玛窦的地图开始部分瓦解中国天朝中心观念,到中国文学世界由于发现另一空间,由之更重视自身的空间体验,都可看出对现代性的空间的重视。     

Risk preferences and changes in background risk

We present two theorems that yield necessary and sufficient conditions for first- and second-degree stochastic dominance deteriorations of background risk to increase risk aversion with respect to foreground risk. We require that any change in a foreground risk that is undesirable remains so after a background risk changes in a way that is either unfair, undesirable in the sense of reducing expected utility, or undesirable in the sense of increasing expected marginal utility. Our results thus characterize utility functions that are, respectively, vulnerable, proper, or standard with respect to changes in background risk.

Ambiguity and Cooperation in the Implementation of Adult Protection Policy

Using a classification of public policy developed by Matland, we examine implementation of policy on adult protection as outlined in ‘No Secrets’, the government's guidance to local agencies. This policy appears to exemplify a ‘high‐ambiguity/low‐conflict’ model. Detailed interviews with staff charged with developing multi‐agency procedures, in local authority departments, health authorities, the police and the voluntary sector, confirmed the ambiguity of the policy and the uncertainty experienced by staff as a consequence. However, the interviews also revealed a number of areas of conflict, particularly as people gave precedence to their own professional norms and organizational priorities over partnership working.     

Preferences Representable by a Lower Expectation: Some Characterizations

We propose two different characterizations for preference relations representable by lower (upper) expectations with the aim of removing either fair price or completeness requirements. Moreover, we give an explicit characterization for comparative degrees of belief on a finite algebra of events representable by lower probabilities.     

Risk Aversion when Gains are Likely and Unlikely: Evidence from a Natural Experiment with Large Stakes

In the television show Deal or No Deal a contestant is endowed with a sealed box, which potentially contains a large monetary prize. In the course of the show the contestant learns more information about the distribution of possible monetary prizes inside her box. Consider two groups of contestants, who learned that the chances of their boxes containing a large prize are 20% and 80% correspondingly. Contestants in both groups receive qualitatively similar price offers for selling the content of their boxes. If contestants are less risk averse when facing unlikely gains, the price offer is likely to be more frequently rejected in the first group than in the second group. However, the fraction of rejections is virtually identical across two groups. Thus, contestants appear to have identical risk attitudes over (large) gains of low and high probability.