Is There Any Social Principle for LLM-Based Agents?

Focus on Large Language Model based agents should involve more than "human-centered" alignment or application. We argue that more attention should be paid to the agent itself and discuss the potential of social sciences for agents.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figur

Can I live with you after I retire? Retirement, old age support, and internal migration of older adults in China

This study examines the causal impact of retirement on migration decisions. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design approach, combined with a nationally representative sample of 228,855 Chinese older adults, we find that retirement increases the probability of migration by 12.9 p.p. (an 80% increase in migration). Approximately 38% of the total migration effects can be attributed to inter-temporal substitution. Retirement-induced migrants are lower-educated, have restricted access to social security, and come from origins with high living costs. Relying on old age support from adult children in migration is a likely mechanism. These findings are consistent with a simple theoretical model of migration for older adults.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

The retirement migration puzzle in China

We examine whether and how retirement affects migration decisions in China. Using a regression discontinuity (RD) design approach combined with a nationally representative sample of 228,855 adults aged between 40 and 75, we find that retirement increases the probability of migration by 12.9 percentage points. Approximately 38% of the total migration effects can be attributed to inter temporal substitution (delayed migration). Retirement-induced migrants are lower-educated and have restricted access to social security. Household-level migration decisions can reconcile different migration responses across gender. Retirees migrate for risk sharing and family protection mechnisms, reducing market production of their families in the receiving households

Determinants of successful disease control through voluntary quarantine dynamics on social networks

In the wake of epidemics, quarantine measures are typically recommended by health authorities or governments to help control the spread of the disease. Compared with mandatory quarantine, voluntary quarantine offers individuals the liberty to decide whether to isolate themselves in case of infection exposure, driven by their personal assessment of the trade-off between economic loss and health risks as well as their own sense of social responsibility and concern for public health. To better understand self-motivated health behavior choices under these factors, here we incorporate voluntary quarantine into an endemic disease model -- the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model -- and perform comprehensive agent-based simulations to characterize the resulting behavior-disease interactions in structured populations. We quantify the conditions under which voluntary quarantine will be an effective intervention measure to mitigate disease burden. Furthermore, we demonstrate how individual decision-making factors, including the level of temptation to refrain from quarantine and the degree of social compassion, impact compliance levels of voluntary quarantines and the consequent collective disease mitigation efforts. We find that successful disease control requires either a sufficiently low level of temptation or a sufficiently high degree of social compassion, such that even complete containment of the epidemic is attainable. In addition to well-mixed populations, our simulation results are applicable to other more realistic social networks of contacts, including spatial lattices, small-world networks, and real social networks. Our work offers new insights into the fundamental social dilemma aspect of disease control through non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as voluntary quarantine and isolation, where the collective outcome of individual decision-making is crucial.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

The Asymmetric Spillover Effects of Retirement on Disability: Evidence From China

Background and Objectives: Recent research has explored the spillover effects of retirement on spousal well-being, yet limited attention has been given to the short-term impact on spousal disability. This study explored the asymmetric spillover impact of retirement on spouses’ disability severity among a national cohort of urban residents in China. Research Design and Methods: Utilizing 4 waves of data (2011–2018) from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, we employ a nonparametric regression discontinuity design to estimate the short-term effect of retirement on spousal disability severity. Disability is assessed based on their ability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). Furthermore, we conduct heterogeneity analysis stratified by factors such as the husband’s retirement status, health conditions, lifestyle behaviors, and the wife’s educational level. Additionally, we explore potential mechanisms including changes in health behaviors, emotions, and disease diagnoses. Results: Our findings indicate that wives’ retirement has a significant favorable short-term effect on husbands’ ADL scores, with a magnitude of −0.644 points (−9.78% relative to baseline). A significant beneficial effect of wives’ retirement on the prevalence of husbands’ difficulty in dressing, bathing, and eating was observed with substantial magnitudes of 0.075, 0.201, and 0.051 points, respectively. Various heterogeneity analyses and sensitivity tests confirmed the robustness of our results. The positive spillover effect of wives’ retirement likely results from reduced negative emotions in husbands. In contrast, husbands’ retirement does not affect the prevalence of ADL/IADL disability in their wives. Discussion and Implications: Underscoring the gender asymmetry in the effects of spousal retirement on disability, this study emphasizes the need for tailored policies considering men’s and women’s distinct disability experiences

Visual Prompt Multi-Modal Tracking

Visible-modal object tracking gives rise to a series of downstream multi-modal tracking tributaries. To inherit the powerful representations of the foundation model, a natural modus operandi for multi-modal tracking is full fine-tuning on the RGB-based parameters. Albeit effective, this manner is not optimal due to the scarcity of downstream data and poor transferability, etc. In this paper, inspired by the recent success of the prompt learning in language models, we develop Visual Prompt multi-modal Tracking (ViPT), which learns the modal-relevant prompts to adapt the frozen pre-trained foundation model to various downstream multimodal tracking tasks. ViPT finds a better way to stimulate the knowledge of the RGB-based model that is pre-trained at scale, meanwhile only introducing a few trainable parameters (less than 1% of model parameters). ViPT outperforms the full fine-tuning paradigm on multiple downstream tracking tasks including RGB+Depth, RGB+Thermal, and RGB+Event tracking. Extensive experiments show the potential of visual prompt learning for multi-modal tracking, and ViPT can achieve state-of-the-art performance while satisfying parameter efficiency. Code and models are available at https://github.com/jiawen-zhu/ViPT.Comment: Accepted by CVPR202

Regional mobility and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from China

China’s Zero-COVID Policy imposed stringent restrictions on citizens’ mobility to curb the spread of COVID-19. While effective in reducing viral transmission, these measures may have inadvertently delayed or deterred vaccine uptake by fostering a heightened sense of security. This study examines the relationships between intra- and inter-regional travel mobility and individual hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccines (HCV), leveraging the Baidu Mobility Index and data from a cross-sectional survey of 12,000 participants. Our descriptive analysis reveals that (a) individual attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines are more polarized across regions with different mobility levels than toward vaccines in general and (b) regions with higher population mobility exhibit lower levels of hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines. Our OLS and IV results further demonstrate that a one-standard-deviation increase in inter-provincial travel rates is associated with a decrease of 0.0112–0.0195 standard deviations in HCV, whereas intra-provincial mobility is not correlated. Overall, this paper suggests prioritizing the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines or similar initiatives in areas with higher mobility levels, where residents perceive greater risks and exhibit a higher likelihood of seeking vaccination.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio