Intertemporal utility smoothing under uncertainty

This paper axiomatizes a recursive utility model that captures both intertemporal utility smoothing defined across time and ambiguity aversion defined over states. The resulting representation adapts Wakai (Econometrica 76:137–153, 2008) model of intertemporal utility smoothing as an aggregator function, where the utility of the certainty equivalent of future uncertainty is computed by Gilboa and Schmeidler (J Math Econ 18:141–153, 1989) multiple-priors utility. The model also permits the separation of intertemporal utility smoothing from ambiguity aversion.     

空海携回日本的《悟空入竺记》及悟空行程

本文主要介绍9世纪初日本入唐僧空海抄本《悟空入竺记》在日本的流传状况,并对唐释悟空入竺及归国经行的某些地点进行了考证。     

Empowering rural women through a community development approach in Nepal

This paper explores a community development strategy to empowerrural women through educational and small-scale household economicactivities. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis methodswere used to assess the impact of a community development projectlaunched in a remote hill district of Nepal. Focusing on twoproject components, the paper concludes that a functional literacyprogramme is a good start, which has revealed its dynamism withpractical extensions in a post-literacy period. On the otherhand, group savings and credit programmes provide the drivingforce to help illiterate rural women start small-scale economicactivities that are effective in absorbing the female workforcein these communities. Community development programmes shouldbe ready to meet changing needs of the target population tomake them truly self-reliant after the completion of the project.     

A Model of Utility Smoothing

Experimental studies have found that a decision maker prefers spreading good and bad outcomes evenly over time. We propose, in an axiomatic framework, a new model of discount factors that captures this preference for spread. The model provides a refinement of the discounted utility model while maintaining dynamic consistency. The derived discount factors incorporate gain/loss asymmetry recursively: the difference between average future utility and current utility defines a gain or a loss, and gains are discounted more than losses. This notion of utility smoothing can induce a preference for spread: if bad outcomes are concentrated on future periods, moving one of the bad outcomes to today would be beneficial because such an operation eliminates a large loss and replaces it with a small gain.