Higher Social Welfare Research Articles

Research on Resource Carbon Emission Allocation Efficiency Based on Blockchain Consensus Algorithm

This paper takes the secondary low-carbon supply chain composed of a manufacturer and a retailer as the research object and takes the government subsidy strategy of low-carbon supply chain as the research theme, the government invests in the construction of blockchain technology application platform, and supply chain enterprises use blockchain technology for compensation. Under this background, considering consumers’ low-carbon preference and green trust, a three-stage game model dominated by the government and followed by manufacturers and retailers under the four scenarios of emission reduction technology input subsidy and low-carbon product output subsidy before and after the application of blockchain technology is established. By comparing the optimal social welfare, carbon emission reduction rate, and low-carbon product output under the four scenarios, the optimal problem of government low-carbon subsidy strategy is discussed. It is found that when the product of consumers’ low-carbon preference coefficient and green trust coefficient is greater than a certain fixed value, the government can obtain higher social welfare and promote enterprises’ emission reduction through output subsidies. The government can always promote the demand for low-carbon products through output subsidies. When the emission reduction cost coefficient approaches infinity, the demand for low-carbon products when the government implements output subsidies are four times that when the government implements technology subsidies. When the single cycle shared cost of the blockchain platform and the unit cost of enterprise application of blockchain technology are less than a certain threshold, the government’s construction of the blockchain platform can obtain higher social welfare, promote enterprise emission reduction, and improve consumers’ demand for low-carbon products.

The Effect of Green Technology Adoption Strategy on Duopoly Competition

Abstract Given consumers’ trade-offs between conventional economic and environmental attributes of products, we provide a game-theoretic model to explore the role of GTA strategy in duopoly competition by incorporating two salient features: Two product types — The green product produced by a firm with GTA strategy and the ordinary product produced by a firm without GTA strategy, and two consumer segments, i.e., the green consumers who are willing to pay for green products and the ordinary consumers who are willing to pay for ordinary products. Our analysis shows that GTA strategy may either increase or decrease the green firm’s quality provision. The subtle relationship between the green firm’s quality strategy and GTA strategy not only affects its own equilibrium performances but its rival’s. We also find that two consumer segments may be better off in the presence of a lower GTA intensity. Additionally, although the GTA strategy benefits the environment, the GTA investment is not the more the better. Finally, we find that GTA strategy would lead to higher social welfare only when the GTA efficiency is high enough. Our work not only provides an alternative economic explanation why some firms choose to implement GTA strategy and some do not in reality, but gives managerial insights for firms with different GTA strategies as well as policy insights for the social planner.

Double Auction Mechanism for Resource Allocation in Satellite MEC

With the rapid popularity of IoT devices and smart city technologies, mobile edge computing considered as a promising technology appears, which can support real-time applications at the edge of the network. In this paper, we focus on the auction mechanism in mobile edge computing to allocate resources between IoT devices regarded as buyers and edge servers regarded as sellers and establish a two-sided relationship based on network economics to depict the process of resource allocation. Next, two double auction mechanisms named TMF and EMF are proposed, which aim at optimizing the rationality of resource allocation by considering successful trades and social welfare. Both TMF and EMF are applied to the scenario that each seller services to multi-buyers and each buyer also requests for multi-sellers with different sizes of resources requirements. The TMF mechanism we proposed is a truthful mechanism for both buyers and sellers and EMF is an efficient mechanism with high successful trades and social welfare. Then, a theoretical analysis is given and our proposed mechanisms are proved to be computational efficiency, individual rationality and incentive compatibility. Finally, the simulation results indicate that our mechanisms perform better than traditional mechanisms and improve successful trades and social welfare in mobile edge computing.

A Multi-level Analysis of Factors Affecting Participation in Health Screenings in Korea: A Focus on Household and Regional Factors.

ObjectivesThis study divided the factors that affect participation in health screenings into individual, household, and regional levels and conducted a multi-level analysis to identify the factors related to participation in health screenings.MethodsParticipants from the 2017 Community Health Survey were classified into 2 groups (under 40 and 40 or older). A multi-level logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the factors that affected participation in health screenings.ResultsThe screening rate of the participants was 69.7%, and it was higher among participants aged 40 and older (80.3%) than it was among participants younger than 40 (49.8%). At the individual level, the factors that influenced participation in health screenings included age, economic activity, smoking status, physician-diagnosed hypertension, and a moderate or high physical activity level. At the household level, the odds ratio of participation in health screenings was high for participants who lived in single-person households, lived with a spouse, earned a high monthly household income, and were not beneficiaries of national basic livelihood security. At the regional level, the odds ratio at the 95% confidence interval level of participation in health screenings was high for participants who had trust in the local community and lived in an area with a proportionally high social welfare budget.ConclusionsThis study analyzed nationalwide data and confirmed that individual, household, and regional characteristics affected participation in health screenings. Therefore, policies that prioritize the improvement of regional level factors and especially household level factors are likely to be the most effective for improving the screening rate.

Blockchain-enabled feedback-based combinatorial double auction for cloud markets

The fast-growing cloud computing market puts tremendous provisioning pressure on cloud service providers. Instead of keeping investing in costly cloud infrastructures, trading resources among different cloud service providers is another cost-effective way to expand the capacity. The key is to design an effective market-based mechanism to facilitate resource trading and motivate high-quality service provisioning. This paper proposes a distributed Feedback-based Combinatorial Multi-unit Double Auction mechanism backed by blockchain to establish a cloud resource market that not only produces high social welfare but also motivates participants to provide high-quality service. We first design an improved greedy allocation mechanism with a novel sorting method to achieve high social welfare. Then we propose a feedback-based second-price pricing mechanism to limit strategic manipulation. Finally, we design a feedback system combined with the auction mechanism to motivate high-quality service provisioning. All these mechanisms are implemented in the form of smart contracts on a consortium blockchain which guarantees the effectiveness of the feedback system and eliminates the dependence on a central auctioneer. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the proposed auction mechanism maintains budget balance, individual rationality, truthfulness on the buyer side and computational efficiency. In comparison with other popular mechanisms, extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate higher efficiency of the allocation mechanism, good limitation on strategic manipulation of the pricing mechanism and effectiveness of the feedback system.

Under What Conditions Does the Manager Withhold Segment Information?

This paper considers how a manager decides to disclose or withhold segment information in a capital market setting. In particular, we develop a multi-period model in which a manager in each period decides how to allocate her effort between two businesses. The profit earned in each segment is determined by the manager’s effort and ability as well as each segment’s market profitability and inherent uncertainty. In this setting, in contrast to the expectation of segment disclosure being withheld due to conflicts of interest between managers and shareholders, we identify the conditions under which the manager rationally withholds segment information and achieves higher social welfare. In a setting where the manager is concerned about the current stock price, disclosing more disaggregated information to the stock market does not necessarily lead to more efficient monitoring. The capital market values various segment earnings differently, and in response to this valuation, a rational manager may greatly alter her behavior, leading to inefficient outcomes.

The psychopathology of the elderly with multimorbidity. Is an integrated training model feasible?

IntroductionThe aging of the population implies a greater risk of psychopathological events; at the same time multimorbidity constitutes the rule rather than the exception in the manifestations of the health problems of the elderly. Multimorbidity involves many diagnostic-therapeutic interventions, from general practitioners to neurology, geriatrics, psychiatry but these interventions do not appear integrated with each other.ObjectivesEvaluate the availability of psychogeriatrics training programs to increase the interest and skills of the medical profession on the multimorbidity of the elderly.MethodsWe have conducted a review of the scientific literature on integrated training programs in the field of psychogeriatrics over the past decade on pubmed, comparing the different training models proposed.ResultsA still limited amount of articles on integrated psychogeriatric training have been published although the demand for psychogeriatric care continues to increse. The frail elderly seems to have a connotation in terms of costs rather in terms of care; moreover, everything concerning the elderly is reduced to the organic dimension alone, neglecting psychopathology.ConclusionsThe feasibility of integrated training programs between primary care and specialists such as neurologists, geriatricians, psychiatrists is a priority in the field of psychogeriatrics in consideration of the relevant multimorbidity. It is appropriate both to update knowledge and to review the organizational models of care so that the frailty of the elderly with multimorbidity does not quickly translate into disabilities with high social welfare needs. It is also necessary for generalist psychiatry to return to the value of psychopathology of the elderly.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

On relevant equilibria in reachability games

We study multiplayer reachability games played on a finite directed graph equipped with target sets, one for each player. In those reachability games, it is known that there always exists a Nash equilibrium. But sometimes several equilibria may coexist. For instance we can have two equilibria: a first one where no player reaches his target set and an other one where all the players reach their target set. It is thus very natural to identify “relevant” equilibria. In this paper, we consider different notions of relevant Nash equilibria including Pareto optimal equilibria and equilibria with high social welfare. We also study relevant subgame perfect equilibria in reachability games. We provide complexity results for various related decision problems for both Nash equilibria and subgame perfect equilibria.

Is older residents' exposure to road traffic noise associated with civic engagement for noise protection? A cross-sectional path analysis

BackgroundGiven the absence of binding standards for noise action planning according to the European Noise Directive, citizens' engagement in public information and consultation processes are crucial for procedural environmental justice. Drawing on a conceptual model on cognitive-motivational determinants, we examined (1) engagement-specific self-efficacy and communal mastery as conceptual links between exposure to road traffic noise and intended and performed civic engagement for noise protection, (2) condition and object resources as additional predictors, and (3) residents’ social position (gender, individual education, and social welfare rates in the residential neighbourhood) as vulnerability-related effect modifiers in these associations. MethodsOur cross-sectional analysis included 1691 participants aged 60–90 years from the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study, a population-based study in the Ruhr Area, Germany. We merged our questionnaire data with exposure to road traffic noise (Lden) at the most exposed façade. Assumed relations were investigated by a path model consisting of linear regressions on engagement-specific self-efficacy and communal mastery scales and probit regressions on binary intended and performed engagement variables. We applied the path model to the whole sample and to stratified samples to detect potential effect modification as assessed by Chi-Square difference tests. ResultsExposure to road traffic noise was negatively associated with engagement-specific self-efficacy and communal mastery that both emerged as predictors of intended engagement. While engagement-specific self-efficacy was estimated to predict performed engagement directly, communal mastery appeared to effect performed engagement through intended engagement. We observed a positive association between intended and performed engagement. Difference tests indicated a few group-specific vulnerabilities, e.g. in the association of engagement-specific self-efficacy and performed engagement among participants living in neighbourhoods with higher social welfare while being affected by higher exposure levels. ConclusionsWithin our conceptual frame, our results give indications of how engagement-specific self-efficacy and communal mastery can contribute to procedural environmental justice.

Best-response dynamics in combinatorial auctions with item bidding

In a combinatorial auction with item bidding, agents participate in multiple single-item second-price auctions at once. As some items might be substitutes, agents need to strategize in order to maximize their utilities. A number of results indicate that high social welfare can be achieved this way, giving bounds on the welfare at equilibrium. Recently, however, criticism has been raised that equilibria of this game are hard to compute and therefore unlikely to be attained.In this paper, we take a different perspective by studying simple best-response dynamics. Often these dynamics may take exponentially long before they converge or they may not converge at all. However, as we show, convergence is not even necessary for good welfare guarantees. Given that agents' bid updates are aggressive enough but not too aggressive, the game will reach and remain in states of high welfare after each agent has updated his bid at least once.

Reimbursement policy in a healthcare system with priorities: fee for priority versus bundled priority

Abstract This paper studies a healthcare system under two priority charging schemes. The first is a fee-for-priority (FFP) scheme under which the patients can choose to buy the priorities or not at their admission or readmission to the healthcare provider (HCP). The second is a bundled priority (BP) scheme under which the HCP receives a lump sum priority payment from patients for the entire episode of priority visits (regardless of the number of readmissions). Under both schemes, a certain proportion of revenue of the HCP (the reimbursement) is used to improve the service quality for patients. A two-stage Stackelberg game is established that captures the non-cooperative interactions between the HCP and patients, where the HCP is the leader who sets a price of priority and patients are the followers who decide whether to buy the priorities or not. We first characterize the Pareto-dominant equilibrium strategy of patients under the FFP and BP schemes, and we find that the total cost (including delay disutility and priority fee) of patients can be reduced if the patient pool is large. Although patients' minimum cost, including waiting cost and priority payment, is obtained under both the FFP and BP schemes, the prices are more flexible under the former than the latter. Finally, we demonstrate that implementing the FFP scheme can induce higher social welfare than the BP scheme.

The incentive effects of different government subsidy policies on green buildings

This study aimed to examine the incentive effects of government subsidy policies to promote the development of green buildings. In particular, four different designs of subsidy policy were investigated: a) subsidies paid to developers alone, b) subsidies paid to consumers alone, c) subsidies paid to both, and d) no subsidy. Two-stage models involving developers, consumers, and the government were constructed to examine the effects of the different subsidy policies. In the models, developers supply and sell buildings with different green effort levels; consumers purchase the buildings according to their green preferences. The results of the numerical analysis indicated that the subsidies were a positive incentive for the development of green buildings. Simultaneously subsidizing both developers and consumers resulted in the greatest profits for developers and the highest social welfare. The incentive effect of subsidies on consumers was superior to that of subsidies on developers, revealing the increasingly important role of consumer behavior in the green building market. Furthermore, the incentive effects of the four subsidy policies were significantly enhanced with the improvement of consumers' green preferences and the unit potential benefit for developers.

A better buy‐one‐give‐one business model

AbstractBuy‐one‐give‐one is a prevailing business model among social enterprises nowadays. Under this model, for every product sold, a social enterprise will donate the same or a similar product to a person in need. However, two questions arise: Should the social enterprise stick to donating the same product? Should the social enterprise stick to donating one product? In this paper, we explore different formats of buy‐one‐give‐one and compare buy‐one‐give‐one with cross‐subsidy with regard to social welfare, including both financial payoff and social payoff. The findings show that the social enterprise can generate more social welfare by differentiating its products into high‐end products for purchasers (the rich) and low‐end products for recipients (the poor) instead of providing these two segments products of the same quality. Also, giving more than just one product to the poor when one product is sold is an effective way to increase social welfare. We find that buy‐one‐give‐one results in higher social welfare than cross‐subsidy when either the social enterprise is highly socially responsible or the social gap between the rich and the poor is significant. However, when the size of the rich population is negligible, the buy‐one‐give‐one business model no longer pays. The social welfare under cross‐subsidy is at least the same as that under buy‐one‐give‐one in this case.

Impacts of financing mechanism and power structure on supply chains under cap-and-trade regulation

This paper develops a low-carbon supply chain consisting of a capital-constrained manufacturer and a capital-abundant retailer where bank loans and early payment are investigated. Under each power structure, there always exists a financing equilibrium, i.e., early payment. Compared with bank loans, early payment could produce lower carbon emissions and higher social welfare in the retailer-led power structure; but it damages environment and social welfare, and leads to the conflict between profitability and environmental goals in the manufacturer-led case. Finally, impacts of power structure on financing mechanism, carbon emissions, and performance are analyzed to provide more managerial implications.

Corporate social responsibility and stock price informativeness: The public interest perspective

AbstractIn this paper, we propose a new theory that sheds a different light on the potential relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Stock Price Informativeness (PI). More specifically, we explain why a neutral association between CSR and PI can be an indicator of high economic and social welfare, while a positive association can be an indicator of both markets and governments failure. Under a neutral relationship, we argue that mandatory disclosure is getting firms to disclose near their optimal level. Therefore, any voluntary disclosure beyond the mandatory regime (such as CSR disclosure) should not improve PI. We base our hypothesis on public interest theory that suggests that regulators promote the public interest when a market failure is identified. On the other hand, under a positive association between CSR and PI, we argue that regulators do not offer adequate incentives for firms to disclose at their socially optimal levels because the level of voluntary disclosure by socially responsible firms is optimal in comparison to the level of mandatory disclosure provided by other firms with weak CSR engagement.

Internalization of social cost in congestion games

Congestion models may be studied from either the users’ point of view or the social one. The first perspective examines the incentives of individual users, who are only interested in their own, personal payoff or cost and ignore the negative externalities that their choice of resources creates for the other users. The second perspective concerns social goals such as the minimization of the mean travel time in a transportation network. This paper studies a more general setting, in which individual users attach to the social cost some weight r that is not necessarily 0 or 1. It examines the comparative statics question of whether higher r necessarily means higher social welfare at equilibrium.

An online auction mechanism for time-varying multidimensional resource allocation in clouds

Multidimensional resource allocation is a hot topic in cloud computing, but current cloud platforms support only fixed resource allocation, that is, the user resource requirements are consistent throughout the usage period, which may cause a waste of resources and reduce the revenue of resource providers. Therefore, time-varying multidimensional resource allocation and the corresponding pricing mechanism represent a new challenge in cloud computing. We address the problem of online time-varying multidimensional resource allocation and pricing in clouds. Specifically, (1) we propose a novel integer programming model for the time-varying multidimensional resource allocation problem and (2) we design a truthful online auction mechanism for resource allocation in a competitive environment. For the resource allocation algorithm, we propose a waiting period strategy and dominant-resource-based strategy to improve the social welfare and resource utilization. Simultaneously, a payment pricing algorithm based on critical value theory is proposed. Finally, we prove that the mechanism is truthful and individual rationality. Compared with existing research, our approach is characterized by high social welfare, high resource utilization and short execution time.

A Simple, Fast, and Safe Mediator for Congestion Management

Congestion is a severe problem in cities. A large population with little information about each other's preferences hardly reaches equilibrium and causes unexpected congestion. Controlling such congestion requires us to collect information dispersed in the market and to coordinate actions among agents. We aim to design a mediator that a) induces a game with high social welfare in equilibrium, b) computes an equilibrium efficiently, c) works without common prior, and d) performs well even when only some of the agents in the market use the mediator. We propose a mediator based on a version of best response dynamics (BRD). We prove that, in a simple setting with two resources, “good behavior” (reporting truthfully and following the recommendation) forms an (approximate) ex-post Nash equilibrium in the mediated game; in the equilibrium, the welfare is close to the first-best when preferences diverge enough. Furthermore, under a certain behavioral assumption, those who are not using the mediator can always enjoy non-negative payoff gain by joining it even without the full participation of others. Additionally, our experimental results suggest that such results remain valid for more general settings.

Endogenously choosing the timing of setting strategic contracts’ levels and content in a managerial mixed duopoly with welfare-based and sales delegation contracts

This paper explores the full observable delay game—which involves the timing of setting one public firm’s and one private firm’s strategic contracts’ levels and content—in a managerial mixed duopoly with a welfare-based delegation a la Nakamura (Int Rev Econ Finance 35:262–277, 2015, J Ind Compet Trade 19:235–261, 2019b, J Ind Compet Trade 19:679–737, 2019c). In this paper, we first show that both the following types of market frameworks can be equilibrium market structures: (1) a market formation in which the manager of the public firm, which has a quantity contract, is the leader and manager of the private firm, which has a price contract and is the follower, and (2) a market configuration in which the manager of the public firm, which has a quantity contract, is the follower, and the private firm, which also has a quantity contract, is the leader. Second, we demonstrate that the form of highest social welfare is achieved under market structure (2). Hence, in such a managerial mixed duopoly, from the perspective of social welfare, it is not as necessary for the relevant authority (including the government) to regulate owners’ free determination of the timing of setting public and private firms’ strategic contracts’ levels and content.

Optimal pricing strategy of a bike-sharing firm in the presence of customers with convenience perceptions

In the bike-sharing industry, convenience is a critical factor that impacts customers’ travel behavior and bike-sharing firms’ profits. In this paper, we investigate how a bike-sharing firm should develop its pricing strategy when its customers are concerned about the convenience of the trip. Specifically, we develop a model in which a monopolistic bike-sharing firm leases bikes to customers. We use hassle costs to measure the convenience factors. We first examine customers’ travel behavior in the absence of hassle costs. We find that customers’ valuation of the trip and the time-saving advantages of bike-sharing make potential customers more likely to use the bike-sharing service. We analyze the bike-sharing firm’s decision in different scenarios by examining its profit-maximizing pricing strategies. We present several interesting and useful results that are somewhat counterintuitive. When bike-sharing has an advantage in hassle costs, increasing prices increases the demand for bike-sharing because reducing hassle costs saves time for many high-valuation customers, who transition from public transit systems to bike-sharing. By contrast, when bike-sharing has a relative disadvantage in hassle costs, even if the firm reduces prices to attract customers, the lower price cannot neutralize the adverse effects of the hassle cost advantage enjoyed by public transit systems. Public transit systems thus dominate all travel choices. Second, improving the convenience of transportation may not always increase customer surplus, but a low hassle cost yields high social welfare. We also provide guidelines for bike-sharing firms that may help them increase participation in bike-sharing and improve their profits.