Politics and Scientific Expertise: Scientists, Risk Perception, and Nuclear Waste Policy

To study the homogeneity and influences on scientists'perspectives of environmental risks, we have examined similarities and differences in risk perceptions, particularly regarding nuclear wastes, and policy preferences among 1011 scientists and engineers. We found significant differences ( p 0.05)in the patterns of beliefs among scientists from different fields of research. In contrast to physicists, chemists, and engineers, life scientists tend to: (a)perceive the greatest risks from nuclear energy and nuclear waste management; (b)perceive higher levels of overall environmental risk; (c)strongly oppose imposing risks on unconsenting individuals; and (d)prefer stronger requirements for environmental management. On some issues related to priorities among public problems and calls for government action, there are significant variations among life scientists or physical scientists. We also found that–independently of field of research–perceptions of risk and its correlates are significantly associated with the type of institution in which the scientist is employed. Scientists in universities or state and local governments tend to see the risks of nuclear energy and wastes as greater than scientists who work as business consultants, for federal organizations, or for private research laboratories. Significant differences also are found in priority given to environmental risks, the perceived proximity of environmental disaster, willingness to impose risks on an unconsenting population, and the necessity of accepting risks and sacrifices.     

中国近年来消费需求增长乏力的原因探析

消费需求增长乏力是近年来我国宏观经济面临的突出问题,这是居民消费能力、消费动力和消费环境三方面因素共同作用的结果。首先,居民收入增加与GDP增长不同步导致居民消费能力有限,而收入差距不断拉大则引起消费能力分配失衡;其次,未来收入和支出的预期不稳定、消费信贷制度滞后等在很大程度上降低了居民消费动力;最后,相关配套体制和设施不健全、与市场经济不协调的消费习惯等也都影响了消费需求的增加。     

Improving the contributions of technology assessment to the health care system of the U.S.A.

Summary Based on 14 case studies of highly effective therapies and the reasons they succeeded less frequently than they could, we propose a variety of steps to improve the health care system of the U.S.A. Whatever proposal emerges from current national debates until innovations are shown to be safe and effective, they should not be supported; when slightly better technologies are much more expensive than other good ones we need to consider appropriate choices carefully; simplified billing and bookkeping would reduce our costs; when a technology is rapidly introduced cautionnary measures may be needed; tracking immunization and repairing their omissions requires a new system; educational programs such as seen effective in hypertension should be applied in other areas such as vaccination; in organ transplantation the nation should consider “presumed consent”; our payment system sometimes creates perverse incentives and therefore needs review; and the preferences of the public in allocation of health resources need to be discovered once the public is informed about the issues. Research supported by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.     

论大众文化消费及其特征

文化消费是现代人在物质生活得到丰富的同时进行精神状态的自我调整,充实感情和复归人性的一种重要方式。大众文化更是掀起了一股文化消费的大众化浪潮,以满足人们的娱乐消费需求,大众文化也成为大众传媒时代满足大众闲暇时间的文化消费需求的最好形式。大众文化消费有其独特的消费文化特征。     

The Effects of Spousal Health on the Decision to Smoke: Evidence on Consumption Externalities, Altruism and Learning Within the Household

Married individuals are healthier than single individuals though the reasons are not well understood. Individuals with spouses/or partners are less likely to smoke. We explore the relationship between health and marital status by analyzing three potential channels through which marriage affects smoking, i.e., consumption externalities (one spouse's smoking affects the other spouse's welfare), altruism (one spouse reduces smoking in response to the other spouse's bad health), and learning about risks of smoking from the health experience of one's spouse. We find spousal health does not affect smoking due to altruism or learning within the household but do find evidence for consumption externalities.     

Government Risk Management Priorities: A Comparison of the Preferences of Asian Indian Americans and Other Americans

A survey was conducted of approximately 200 Asian Indian Americans and 200 other residents of New Jersey in order to understand the risk management priorities that they want government to have. We found that Asian Indian Americans, especially younger women, focused on personal/family risks, such as alcohol and drug abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. The New Jersey comparison group, in contrast, placed war/terrorism and loss of health care services and insurance at the top of their priorities for government. These results suggest stressful acculturation-related issues within the Asian Indian community. Both populations want more risk management from government than they believe government is currently providing. Respondents who wanted more from government tended to dread the risk, be fearful of the consequences, trust government, and have a feeling of personal efficacy. Within the Asian Indian American sample, wide variations were observed by language spoken at home and religious affiliation. Notably, Muslims and Hindi language speakers tended not to trust government and hence wanted less government involvement. This study supports our call for studies of recent migrant populations and Johnson's for testing ethnic identity and acculturation as factors in risk judgments.     

Subjective probabilities and utility with event-dependent preferences

This article generalizes Savage's theory to include event-dependent preferences. The state space is partitioned into finitely many events. The induced preferences over consequences are assumed independent of the underlying states within, but not across, these events. This results in an additively separable representation of preferences over acts. The dependence of the preference relation over consequences on the events is represented by event-dependent mappings of the set of consequences onto itself. Given these mappings, the preferences on acts are represented by the expectation of event-dependent utilities on the consequences with respect to unique subjective probabilities on the states.Helpful discussions with David Schmeidler are gratefully acknowledged.     

冲突视角下运输订单商业竞争战略研究

运用图模型理论研究冲突视角下中欧班列运营过程中运输订单商业竞争战略,构建“渝新欧”班列运营商、“苏满欧”班列运营商和昆山IT企业之间的商业竞争冲突模型。利用TOPSIS法评估班列的运输效率,确定决策者偏好,通过计算均衡解获得符合各决策者利益的理性对策。借助灵敏度分析研究决策者偏好改变对模型冲突结果的影响。研究表明:在竞争中,运输效率较低的一方可以通过降低价格弥补自身劣势而获得订单;运输效率较高的一方只有通过降价才能获得订单。该研究为班列运营商提供利益冲突中的商业竞争战略,能为顾客企业选择高效合理的运输线路提供有效的战略决策,同时亦能为宏观调控者规范市场、提高市场运输效率提供有效的政策启示。