Exploitation aversion: When financial incentives fail to motivate agents

Studies of the principal-agent relationship find that monetary incentives work in many instances but that they can also backfire. Various mechanisms for this failure have been examined (e.g., intrinsic motivation, image concerns). We posit that an aversion to being exploited, i.e., being used instrumentally for another’s benefit, can also cause incentives to fail. Using an experiment we find that compliance is lower for exploitative principals compared to neutral ones despite using the same contracts. To corroborate our results we show that surveyed “exploitation aversion” mediates this effect. Our results have implications for the design and implementation of incentives within organizations.     

中国"十五"计划经济发展速度的引证

论证"十五"计划经济发展速度的前提是要正确分析和判断经济发展趋势、经济现象与经济规律的吻合程度,经济运行的工作质量和寻求解决问题的途径和办法。影响国内生产总值增长速度的因素有全社会固定资产投资总额、社会消费品零售总额、价格指数、进出口总额、实际利用外资、财政收入、居民储蓄和城镇居民人均可支配收入及农民人均纯收入八项。固定资产投资、消费品零售总额、进出口总额是经济增长可持续发展的关键因素,必须重视价格指数的正面影响,关注资本的投入量和资本的使用效率,关注财政投资对宏观调控能力的影响,增加城镇中低收入居民的可支配收入和增加农民收入是启动消费市场带动经济全面回升的重要步骤。     

试析埃德蒙·金的比较教育方法论

埃德蒙·金是当代较有影响的比较教育学家,其比较教育方法论在比较教育领域具有重要的地位和深远的影响.作为比较教育相对主义研究范式的典型代表,他提出了文化相对主义的比较研究分析框架,并在研究方法上提出了教育洞察法,从而形成了自成一派的比较教育方法论.     

以学生学习为导向的小学语文作业设计探讨

教师的作业设计,从一个侧面体现了教师的教育思想、教育观念、教育追求,密切联系着学生的成长。小学语文作业设计应该回归教师设计原点,紧扣语文学科的特点,从学生的学习特点、学习需要出发,注重学生的语感培养和语文实践活动,达到提高学生的语文素养的目的。     

Childhood family structure and young adult behaviors

This paper examines a wide variety of forms, and full histories, of family structure to test existing theories of family influences and identify needs for new theories. The focus is on links between childhood family structure and both completed schooling and risk of a nonmarital birth. Using a 27-year span of panel (PSID) data for U.S. children, we find that: (a) change is stressful, (b) timing during childhood is relevant, (c) adults other than parents are important, and (d) two more recently studied family structures (mother-with-grandparent(s) and mother-with-stepfather) do not fit the molds of existing theories. The findings suggest that new theories should consider allocation of resources and reasons people group into family structures. Received: 11 September 1998/Accepted: 27 March 2000     

Ecosystem resilience, specialized adaptation and population decline: A modern Malthusian theory

The purpose of this article is to construct a theoretical framework characterizing the interactions among economic development, ecosystem equilibrium and possible population decline, and to discuss the population dynamics in the very long run. In our framework, economic activities bridge population and environment. On the one hand, human beings reform the environment through economic activities; on the other hand, economic activities decrease environmental resilience and increase the possibility of an environmental change in a discontinuous and irreversible pattern, as described in Arrow et al. (1995). Furthermore, a highly developed economy also causes over-specialization of human adaptation, which tends to exaggerate the impact of an environmental change on human population size. Received: 19 January 1999/Accepted: 3 July 1999     

A two phases queueing system with Bernoulli vacation schedule under multiple vacation policy

This paper deals with a single server Poisson arrival queue with two phases of heterogeneous service along with a Bernoulli schedule vacation model, where after two successive phases service the server either goes for a vacation with probability p (0≤p≤1) or may continue to serve the next unit, if any, with probability q(=1−p). Further the concept of multiple vacation policy is also introduced here. We obtained the queue size distributions at a departure epoch and at a random epoch, Laplace Stieltjes Transform of the waiting time distribution and busy period distribution along with some mean performance measures. Finally we discuss some statistical inference related issues.     

The cost of children: May the collective approach to household behavior help?

The collective approach to household consumption behavior tries to infer from variables supposed to affect the general bargaining position of household members information on the allocation of consumptions goods and tasks among them. This paper investigates the extension of previous work to the case where children may be considered as a public consumption good by the two adult members of a household. The main question being asked is whether it is possible to retrieve from the aggregate consumption behaviour of the household and the relative earnings of the parents information on the allocation of goods between them and children. This alternative approach to the estimation of the ‘cost of children’ is contrasted with the conventional approach based on a ‘unitary’ representation of and demographic separability assumptions on household consumption behaviour. Received: 29 August 1997/Accepted: 26 November 1998