Digital Commons Network^™

Why Is Dishonesty Difficult To Mitigate? The Interaction Between Descriptive Norm And Monetary Incentive, Arnab Mitra, Quazi Shahriar

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examine whether changes in perceived norm of dishonesty can offset the effects of changes in benefit from the dishonest action. We find partial support for the hypothesis in laboratory experiments on lying behavior in a cheap-talk sender-receiver game, conducted in two countries. In the experiments, we vary benefit from lying and shift senders’ norm perception by providing them information on lying from prior sessions. The findings suggest that senders adjust their perceived norm as expected, but they respond to norm in a somewhat self-serving manner. Specifically, when benefit from lying is lowered but senders are induced to believe in …

The Political-Economy Trilemma, Joshua Aizenman, Hiro Ito

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper investigates Rodrik’s political-economy trilemma: policy makers face a trade-off of choosing two out of three policy goals or governance styles, namely, (hyper-) globalization, national sovereignty, and democracy. We develop a set of indexes that measure the extent of attainment of the three factors for 139 countries in the period of 1975-2016. Using these indexes, we examine the validity of the hypothesis of the political-economy trilemma by testing whether the three trilemma variables are linearly related. We find that, for industrialized countries, there is a linear relationship between globalization and national sovereignty (i.e., a dilemma), and that for developing …

More Effective Than We Thought: Central Bank Independence And Inflation In Developing Countries, Ana Caolina Garriga, Cesar M. Rodriguez

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study examines the effect of legal central bank independence on inflation in developing countries. In spite of the policy consensus suggesting that central bank independence is an effective tool to control inflation, the evidence is still limited, particularly for developing countries. Using a novel dataset, we analyze the effect of central bank independence on inflation for a sample of 118 developing countries between 1980 and 2013. We find that higher central bank independence is associated with lower inflation rates. This effect on inflation is stronger the more democratic a country is, but it is also present in non-democratic countries. …

Wage Differences Matter: An Experiment Of Social Comparison And Effort Provision When Wages Increase Or Decrease, Jose A. Rojas-Fallas, J. Forrest Williams

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wage rates, efficiency wages, and gift exchange in a labor market are all crucial aspects in regard to designing contracts to ensure high effort from workers. We extend this literature by discussing the relationship between known differences in wages (social comparison) and workers’ effort provision. We conduct an experiment in which subjects perform effort tasks for piece-rates. All subjects are paid the same wage rate in the first half of the experiment, but in the second half are paid different wage rates; the primary variable we study is the information about others’ wage rates given to a subset of subjects. …

Do Farmers Manage Weeds On Owned And Rented Land Differently? Evidence From U.S. Corn And Soybean Farms, George Frisvold, Joshua Albright, David Ervin, Micheal Owen, Jason Norsworthy, Katherine E. Dentzman, Terrance M. Hurley, Raymond A. Jussaume, Jeffrey Gunsolus, Wesley Everman

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

BACKGROUND

It has been frequently argued that growers have less incentive to manage the evolution and spread of herbicide‐resistant weeds on leased than on owned land. This is because resistance management provides long‐term rather than short‐term benefits that operators may be less assured of capturing on land they do not own. Yet, empirical evidence supporting this argument has been lacking.

RESULTS

This study reports on results from a large‐scale national survey of weed management and other crop production practices on US agricultural fields. Up to 11 weed management practices were compared across owner‐operated versus renter‐operated fields. Analysis of survey data …

Optimizing Conservation Planning For Multiple Cohabiting Species, Yichen Wang, Qiaoling Fang, Sahan T.M. Dissanayake, Hayri Önal

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Conservation planning often involves multiple species occupying large areas including habitat sites with varying characteristics. For a given amount of financial resources, designing a spatially coherent nature reserve system that provides the best possible protection to targeted species is an important ecological and economic problem. In this paper, we address this problem using optimization methods. Incorporating spatial criteria in an optimization framework considering spatial habitat needs of multiple species poses serious challenges because of modeling and computational complexities. We present a novel linear integer programming model to address this issue considering spatial contiguity and compactness of the reserved area. The …