Does fairness matter in tax reporting behavior?

Experimental results show that taxpayers who receive no public transfer generally perceive their exchange equity with the government to be less equitable than taxpayers who receive a public transfer. Furthermore, the effect of the public transfer on reported income depends on the extent to which the taxpayers use the perception of equity in their tax reporting decisions. Subjects who perceive equity to be important in their tax reporting decisions report more income when they receive a public transfer, but report less income when they receive no public transfer, as predicted by equity theory. In contrast, subjects who perceive equity to be less important in their tax reporting decisions act directionally consistent with the economic effect. That is, taxpayers who receive no public transfer tend to report more income than those who receive a public transfer.     

解读《河图》、《洛书》

河图洛书在我国流传最广,但先秦典籍中只有文字记载而无图案,加上文学的想象,把它作为神秘哲学的重要组成部分,致使历代学者争论不休。本文摒弃了它的神秘色彩,以辩证的历史观和自然观,从古代哲学、数学、天文历法等去审视解读,河图洛书是古人在长期生产实践中,观察探索宇宙规律,将天文历法、数学和阴阳五行等汇集起来的综合系统,是我国最早的纵横图和宇宙结构模型,简明朴素而内蕴博大。     

数控系统配套产品的质量模糊排序法

以数控系统关键配套产品质量排序为目标,引入模糊数学中的相关理论,建立产品质量排序模型,提出了一种较为实用的排序方法,并以实例证明其有效性。     

A NONPARAMETRIC TEST OF SYMMETRY VERSUS ASYMMETRY FOR RANKED-SET SAMPLES

This paper introduces a nonparametric test of symmetry for ranked-set samples to test the asymmetry of the underlying distribution. The test statistic is constructed from the Cramér-von Mises distance function which measures the distance between two probability models. The null distribution of the test statistic is established by constructing symmetric bootstrap samples from a given ranked-set sample. It is shown that the type I error probabilities are stable across all practical symmetric distributions and the test has high power for asymmetric distributions.     

目光深远的统计学大师 ——张尧庭先生逝世五周年纪念

 张尧庭先生是一位目光深远的统计学大师。本文认为他生前提出的下述观点即“统计学的发展全靠数学与实际问题的推动”,“为反映整体的、动态的东西统计学必须要有新突破”,以及“促进数理统计和经济统计的学术交流”等,在今天仍然具有现实意义,可为我们现时的统计学教学与研究的深入发展提供有益参考。     

Dictator game variants with probabilistic (and cost-saving) payoffs: A systematic test

Driven by methodological concerns, theoretical considerations, and previous evidence, I systematically test the validity of common dictator game variants with probabilistic payoffs. Using a unified experimental framework, I include four approaches and compare them to a standard dictator game: involving fewer receivers than dictators, paying only some players, paying only some decisions, and role uncertainty. I also relate transfers in the dictator game variants to established complementary individual difference measures of prosociality: social value orientation, personal values, a donation to charity, and the Big Five personality factor agreeableness. My data shows that the standard dictator game presents the expected correlations with the complementary measures of prosociality. Involving fewer receivers yields comparably valid results. By contrast, when only some players or decisions are paid or, particularly, when subjects face role uncertainty, the expected associations with complementary prosociality measures are distorted. Under role uncertainty, generosity is also significantly biased upward. I conclude that the validity of dictator game outcomes is highly sensitive to the applied methods. Not all dictator game variants can be recommended for the valid measurement of social preferences.     

Network brokerage and the perception of leadership

We renovate a classic experiment to define a research platform that provides data on network behavior and the causal effect of access to structural holes. Our hypothesis is that people are perceived to be leaders when they behave as network brokers, which is to say, when they coordinate information across structural holes. We focus on the perception of leadership to connect with the many field studies in which access to structural holes predicts success measures keyed to leadership. Our hypothesis is clearly supported. The broker-leader association we report is very similar in strength and form to broker-success associations reported in previous research. At the same time, it is also clear that people adapt to their randomly assigned network, re-shaping it to suit preferences that in some part emerge in team deliberations or outside the experiment. A modification to our hypothesis — at least for these small laboratory teams — is that monopoly brokerage is key to being cited as team leader. Leadership is ambiguous when multiple people are positioned to be brokers unless one person emerges by his or her network behavior as a monopoly broker. Our summary conclusion is that access to structural holes can be causal to the perception of leadership, a characteristic implicit in many success measures used to document the broker-success association.     

Trust in humans and robots: Economically similar but emotionally different

Trust-based interactions with robots are increasingly common in the marketplace, workplace, on the road, and in the home. However, a valid concern is that people may not trust robots as they do humans. While trust in fellow humans has been studied extensively, little is known about how people extend trust to robots. Here we compare trust-based investments and self-reported emotions from across three nearly identical economic games: human-human trust games, human-robot trust games, and human-robot trust games where the robot decision impacts another human. Robots in our experiment mimic humans: they are programmed to make reciprocity decisions based on previously observed behaviors by humans in analogous situations. We find that people invest similarly in humans and robots. By contrast the social emotions (i.e., gratitude, anger, pride, guilt) elicited by the interactions (but not the non-social emotions) differed across human and robot trust games. Emotional reactions depended on the trust game interaction, and how another person was affected.     

Why is dishonesty difficult to mitigate? The interaction between descriptive norm and monetary incentive

We examine whether changes in perceived norm of dishonesty can offset the effects of changes in benefit from the dishonest action. We find partial support for the hypothesis in laboratory experiments on lying behavior in a cheap-talk sender-receiver game, conducted in two countries. In the experiments, we vary benefit from lying and shift senders’ norm perception by providing them information on lying from prior sessions. The findings suggest that senders adjust their perceived norm as expected, but they respond to norm in a somewhat self-serving manner. Specifically, when benefit from lying is lowered but senders are induced to believe in a higher norm of lying, they lie significantly more than when norm is not intervened. However, when benefit from lying is raised, our intervention to shift perceived norm of lying downward succeeds in altering senders’ belief as intended, but does not lower lying significantly. The results can be conceived as an indirect evidence of the challenge in curbing dishonesty by reducing private pecuniary gains in a society with a culture of dishonesty, while suggesting that even societies with history of low dishonesty may succumb to dishonesty when pecuniary incentives for dishonesty rise.     

创新试点政策能够引领企业创新吗?———来自国家创新型试点城市的微观证据

本文在理论分析的基础上,以国家创新型试点城市设立为“准自然实验”,采用2005-2016年沪深两市A 股上市公司为样本,利用双重差分法检验了国家创新型城市试点政策对企业创新的影响。研究结果表明:国家创新型城市试点政策显著提高了企业创新水平,并且所得结论经过一系列的稳健性检验依然成立。试点政策不存在时滞效应,且具有持续的促进作用,但因企业规模、技术水平、控股性质和城市规模不同存在显著差异,具体表现为创新试点政策对于中小规模企业、高新技术企业、民营控股企业和大城市企业的创新具有显著的促进作用。作用机制检验表明,创新型城市试点政策主要通过政府财政补贴、提高企业集聚程度、降低制度交易成本作用于企业创新。本文的研究为合理评估国家创新型城市试点政策效应提供了微观证据以及进一步推进企业创新有着重要的政策启示意义。