Contents of special issue

We prove Arrow's theorem for tree quasi-orders and discuss it in the context of attempting to construct the evolutionary history of a group of species. We then characterize axiomatically two natural classes of consensus rules for classifications.     

政府对科技保险的最优财政补贴规模研究

运用机制设计理论建立信息激励模型,在完全信息、不完全信息、不完全信息加入可调整项三种情形下,对科技保险进行险种划分,得到在不同信息激励影响下的政府对保险公司的最优补贴规模.运用期望收益理论,针对科技研发成功或不成功、科技企业投保或不投保的情形,建立政府补贴投保企业的最优补贴规模模型,得出政府对投保企业补贴规模的限制范围.     

Fused deposition modeling-based additive manufacturing (3D printing): techniques for polymer material systems

While the developments of additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have been remarkable thus far, they are still significantly limited by the range of printable, functional material systems that meet the requirements of a broad range of industries; including the health care, manufacturing, packaging, aerospace, and automotive industries. Furthermore, with the rising demand for sustainable developments, this review broadly gives the reader a good overview of existing AM techniques; with more focus on the extrusion-based technologies (fused deposition modeling and direct ink writing) due to their scalability, cost efficiency and wider range of material processability. It then goes on to identify the innovative materials and recent research activities that may support the sustainable development of extrusion-based techniques for functional and multifunctional (4D printing) part and product fabrication.     

专利政策视角下的序贯创新决策分析

在序贯创新中, 前期创新者因为专利政策的保护, 其技术的“专有性”可能会对后续创新者产生“钳制”(holdup)。信息对称下, 事前报价机制可以避免holdup问题, 但是信息不对称时, 事前报价机制可能失效。我们分析了在成本信息不对称和收益信息不对称这两种情况下的序贯创新的决策问题, 给出了holdup发生的条件和概率, 并且指出了社会福利最优下的专利政策函数。     

考虑产品环境质量和消费者惯性的电动汽车供应链策略分析

按是否拥有传统汽车将潜在消费者分成两类,基于不同购买行为的消费者,根据消费者购买行为理论,针对每一类消费者分别建立效用模型,运用斯坦伯格博弈理论求解得到厂商的最优定价策略和政府的最优补贴策略,进而分析政府考虑包括厂商收益、消费者剩余、政府支出以及环境效益在内的社会福利最大化时电动汽车的环境质量、传统汽车原拥有比例以及消费者惯性三因素对电动汽车普及率、政府补贴以及生产商收益的影响。研究结果表明:当生产成本小于某阀值时,电动汽车的市场需求随电动汽车的环境质量的增加而增大,传统汽车的市场需求则随之减小,反之亦然。电动汽车的生产效率较高时,政府的最优补贴随产品环境质量的增加而增大,生产效率较低时,最优补贴随之减小,政府通过增大补贴的方式鼓励生产商提高生产效率。最后通过数值实验验证了以上结论,并分析得到以上三方面因素对生产商收益的影响。     

低碳经济下政企博弈与政府补贴策略研究

在低碳经济的背景下,研究了政府补贴策略对政企博弈关系及企业决策行为的影响。通过引入两阶段动态博弈的方法,深入分析了不同政府补贴模式对需求量、产品价格、制造商的收益、消费者剩余以及社会福利所产生的影响。研究表明,价格对需求的影响系数以及政府补贴消费者对需求的影响系数等因素会影响政府补贴策略的选择,并得出了不同政府补贴策略下消费者剩余、制造商收益以及社会福利与单位产品补贴额的关系,本文为政府科学制定补贴政策以及在政府补贴背景下制造商和消费者应采取何种应对策略提供一定的决策支持。     

AN APPLICATION OF MULTI‐CRITERIA DECISION MAKING INCORPORATING STOCHASTIC PRODUCTION FRONTIERS: A CASE STUDY OF ORGANIC COFFEE PRODUCTION IN KONA,HAWAII

Abstract In this paper, we develop a land use allocation model to search for the optimal ratio of organic (nonchemical) and conventional (chemical‐use) farming acreage. The idea is to incorporate stochastic production frontiers (SPFs) to a multi‐criteria decision making (MCDM) model as technological constraints. The objectives of this model are to maximize net returns, minimize chemical inputs, and optimize organic inputs given environmental and ecological concerns. The compromise solutions suggest the desirable ratio of organic and conventional farming acreage and targetable operations for each farming system to improve regional welfare. This method was applied to the Kona coffee belt, Hawaii, and the analysis determined the optimal proportion of organic and conventional Kona coffee farming fields as 0.265 to 0.735 in terms of optimizing community benefits or regional welfare.     

New optimality principles for economic efficiency and equilibrium

This paper develops several optimization principles relating the fundamental concepts of Pareto efficiency and competitive equilibria. The beginning point for this development is the introduction of a new function describing individual preferences, closely related to willingness-to-pay, termed the benefit function. An important property of the benefit function is that it can be summed across individuals to obtain a meaningful measure of total benefit relative to a given set of utility levels; and the optimization principles presented in the paper are based on maximization of this total benefit.Specifically, it is shown that, under appropriate technical assumptions, a Pareto-efficient allocationX maximizes the total benefit relative to the utility levels it yields. Conversely, if an allocationX yields zero benefit and maximizes the total benefit function, then that allocation is Pareto efficient. The Lagrange multipliersp of the benefit maximization problem serve as prices; and the (X,p) pair satisfies a generalized saddle-point property termed a Lagrange equilibrium. This in turn is equivalent, under appropriate assumptions, to a competitive equilibrium.There are natural duals to all of the results stated above. The dual optimization principle is based on a surplus function which is a function of prices. The surplus is the total income generated at pricesp, minus the total income required to obtain given utility levels. The dual optimization principle states that prices that are dual (or indirect) Pareto efficient minimize total surplus and render it zero. Conversely, a set of prices that minimizes total surplus and renders it zero is a dual Pareto efficient set of prices.The results of the paper can be viewed as augmenting the first and second theorems of welfare economics (and their duals) to provide a family of results that relate the important economic concepts of Pareto efficiency, equilibrium, dual (or indirect) Pareto efficiency, total benefit, Lagrange equilibrium, and total surplus.The author wishes to thank Charles R. Bowman and Andrew J. Yates for several valuable suggestions and corrections.