Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Are They Worth Reading? An In-Depth Analysis Of Online Trackers’ Privacy Policies, Candice Hoke, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Pedro Giovanni Leon, Alyssa Au

Lorrie F Cranor

We analyzed the privacy policies of 75 online tracking companies with the goal of assessing whether they contain information relevant for users to make privacy decisions. We compared privacy policies from large companies, companies that are members of self-regulatory organizations, and nonmember companies and found that many of them are silent with regard to important consumer-relevant practices including the collection and use of sensitive information and linkage of tracking data with personally-identifiable information. We evaluated these policies against self-regulatory guidelines and found that many policies are not fully compliant. Furthermore, the overly general requirements established in those guidelines allow companies …

Incentive Based Residential Demand Aggregation, Qinran Hu

Doctoral Dissertations

From the beginning of the twenty-first century, the electrical power industry has moved from traditional power systems toward smart grids. However, with the increasing amount of renewable energy resources integrated into the grid, there is a significant challenge in power system operation due to the intermittency and variability of the renewables. Therefore, the utilization of flexible and controllable demand-side resources to maintain power system efficiency and stability has become a fundamental goal of smart grid initiatives.

Meanwhile, due to the development of communication and sensing technologies, intelligent demand-side management with automatic controls enables residential loads to participate in demand response …

The Behavioral Impacts Of Property Tax Relief: Salience Or Framing?, Phuong Nguyen-Hoang, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

New York State’s School Tax Relief Program, STAR, provides state-funded exemptions from school property taxes. From 2006-07 to 2008-09, these exemptions were supplemented with rebates, which arrived as a check in the mail. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether these two algebraically equivalent but administratively distinct policies of tax relief led to different behavioral responses. Drawing on behavioral economics, we explore the impact of STAR on the price elasticity of demand for school quality based on the concepts of salience and framing. Our main results are that the behavioral impact of the STAR provisions are larger (1) …

The Social Relations Of Consumption: Corporate Law And The Meaning Of Consumer Culture, David G. Yosifon

BYU Law Review

A mature assessment of the society we are making for ourselves, and the legacy we are leaving to the future, must come to terms with consumer culture. Theoretical discourse, as well as common experience, betray persistent ambiguity about what consumerism means to and says about us. In this Article, I argue that this ambiguity can in part be explained by examining the social relations of consumption in contemporary society. These involve, crucially, the relationship between producer and consumer that is dictated by corporate governance law, and embodied in the decision-making dynamics of the directors who command corporate operations. The enigmatic …

Ancillary Revenue And Price Fairness: An Exploratory Study Pre & Post Flight, Blaise P. Waguespack, Tamilla Curtis

Dr. Tamilla Curtis

The growing impact of Ancillary Revenue on consumer choice and shopping behavior continues to be a highly debated issue. In the US, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has stepped into the debate and is investigating the possibility of new rules on how airlines must report and display such ancillary offerings. While the DOT collects data, reports on the amount of ancillary revenue earned by the airlines continue to rise. Examining past research on price fairness from the marketing literature and the impact of revenue management on price fairness from the aviation literature, this article joins new research appearing on the …

Behavioral Finance: Its History And Its Future, Robert Christopher Hammond

Selected Honors Theses

The field of behavioral finance has attempted to explain a litany of biases, heuristics, and

inefficiencies present in financial markets since its creation in the 1980’s. This paper is structured as a comprehensive literature review of behavioral finance, and includes both the seminal works as well as more recent papers. The various subtopics of behavioral finance will also be analyzed, which include loss aversion, corporate finance, and momentum/contrarian investing. Finally, this paper will draw unique conclusions across behavioral finance and hypothesize about what topics within behavioral finance are likely to yield the most interesting research in the near future.

Real Estate Investments In Asia: More Than A Place To Call Home, John Lim

Asian Management Insights

Real estate investment in Asia is currently trending. But what does the future hold?

The Effect Of New York City Sports Outcomes On The Stock Market, Nir Levy

Undergraduate Economic Review

This thesis investigates whether sports outcomes for New York City based teams affect the daily returns, volatility or trading volume of major stock indexes in the United States. I research whether events that affect local mood in a major financial center can influence national stock indexes by swaying the sentiment of workers in the financial sector. By performing an event study I found evidence that returns are abnormally high following championships won by New York City professional sports teams. Returns are abnormally low and volume is abnormally high following elimination from a championship round.

Behavioral Economics And Poverty [En Español] Behavioral Economics Y Pobreza, Daniel A. Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Process, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Indiana Law Journal

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …

Sense And Sensibility Of Ownership: Type Of Ownership Experience And Valuation Of Goods, Xiao-Tian Wang, Lay See Ong, Jolene Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study examined how the type of ownership experience affects the valuation of a good. We hypothesized that the sense of ownership is a psychological derivative of resource acquisition and allocation. We predicted a valuation order of stable ownership or no-ownership

Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slaviša Tasić

Faculty Scholarship

Behavioral public choice is the study of irrationality among political actors. In this context, irrationality means systematic bias, a deviation from rational expectations, or other departure from economists’ conception of rationality. Behavioral public choice scholars extend the insights of behavioral economics to the political realm and show that irrational behavior is an important source of government failure. This Article makes an original contribution to the legal literature by systematically reviewing the findings of behavioral public choice and explaining their implications for the law and legal institutions. We discuss the various biases and heuristics that lead political actors to support and …

Essays On International Risk-Return Trade-Off Relations, Liang Meng

Finance Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays on the international risk-return trade-off relations. The first essay is titled “The Role of the US Market on International Risk-Return Trade-Off Relations” and the second essay is titled “The Role of Investor Sentiment on International Risk-Return Trade-Off Relations”.

In our first essay, we study the intertemporal risk-return trade-off relations based on returns from 18 international markets. Our main contribution is that we find the US market plays an important role affecting the international risk-return trade-off. We present striking new empirical evidence that the inclusion of US market variables significantly changes the estimated risk-return trade-off …

Retirement Planning Among Middle-Aged And Older Hispanics, Luisa Blanco, Emma Aguila, Arturo Gongora, Beverly Weidmer, O. Kenrik Duru

Luisa Blanco

The goal of this study is to deepen the understanding of how middle age and older Hispanics plan for retirement, where we conducted four focus groups in the Los Angeles area with a total of 38 participants. Our study provides interesting findings, specifically for women since 84 percent of the participants were female. We find that that most participants, whether they were already retired or not, are not well prepared for retirement since they have been unable to save for retirement and have not made specific retirement plans, such as determining desired retirement age, estimating retirement budget, and collecting information …

Cynicism In Negotiation: When Communication Increases Buyers’ Skepticism, Eyal Ert, Stephanie J. Creary, Max H. Bazerman

Stephanie J. Creary

The economic literature on negotiation shows that strategic concerns can be a barrier to agreement, even when the buyer values the good more than the seller. Yet behavioral research demonstrates that human interaction can overcome these strategic concerns through communication. We show that there is also a downside of this human interaction: cynicism. Across two studies we focus on a seller-buyer interaction in which the buyer has uncertain knowledge about the goods for sale, but has a positive expected payoff from saying “yes” to the available transaction. Study 1 shows that most buyers accept offers made by computers, but that …

Impact Of International Remittances On Schooling In The Philippines: Does The Relationship To The Household Head Matter?, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the impact of international remittances on schooling in the Philippines, taking into account the school-age individual's relationship to the household head. This consideration is important because employment opportunities abroad may be taken at the expense of the quality of child rearing. Our estimation results indicate that there are, indeed, significant negative guardian effects on school attendance and education expenditures when children with overseas parents are looked after by a relative other than a parent or grandparent. However, these negative effects tend to be outweighed by the positive impact of remittance flows from overseas.

How Does The Stock Market Value The Renewable Energy Sector: A Public Announcement Analysis And Test Of The Efficient Market Hypothesis, Jack Crampton

Journal of Environmental and Resource Economics at Colby

This study analyzes the market reaction to public announcements in the stock market. The efficient market hypothesis is put to test and similar studies are reexamined in the context of the renewable energy sector. Through fixed effects models, we can assess the validity to the efficient market hypothesis and assess how the market values the clean energy sector.

The Effects Of Trade Competition On Health, And Determinants Of Workplace Behavior, Thomas Clayton Mcmanus

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation consists of three essays related to workplace behavior. In the first paper, we design a controlled laboratory experiment to study image motives in a setting where decisions signal intelligence. The experiment results show that in some settings social scrutiny can discourage individuals from making choices that signal their intelligence, despite evidence that the signal was privately valuable. In the second paper, we study the effect of Chinese import competition on occupational safety and health at US manufacturers. We find that a change in US trade policy and Chinese import shocks significantly increases worker injury and illness rates in …

Mechanisms For Social Influence, Jeremy David Auerbach

Masters Theses

Throughout the thesis, I study mathematical models that can help explain the dependency of social phenomena in animals and humans on individual traits. The first chapter investigates consensus building in human groups through communication of individual preferences for a course of action. Individuals share and modify these preferences through speaker listener interactions. Personality traits, reputations, and social networks structures effect these modifications and eventually the group will reach a consensus. If there is variation in personality traits, the time to reach consensus is delayed. Reputation models are introduced and explored, finding that those who can best estimate the average initial …

The Existence And Perception Of Redundancy In Consumer Information Environments, Michael D. Johnson, Jerome M. Katrichis

Michael D. Johnson

Two studies are reported which examine the existence of attribute redundancy as well as consumers' ability to perceive attribute redundancy in consumer information environments. The results of the first study suggest that attribute redundancy varies widely from product category to product category. The results of the second study suggest that consumers' ability to perceive attribute relationships improves with product knowledge. Unexpected was an observed U-shaped relationship between consumers' perceptions of attribute redundancy and attribute knowledge. Together the results suggest a number of policy implications regarding the value of consumer information programs.

The Effects Of Fatigue On Judgments Of Interproduct Similarity, Michael D. Johnson, Donald R. Lehmann, David A. Horne

Michael D. Johnson

Similarity scaling often requires subjects to produce such a large number of judgments that fatigue may become a problem. Yet it remains unclear just how respondent fatigue affects similarity perceptions and resulting judgments. The present study uses a categorization perspective to examine the effects of fatigue on similarity judgments. The results suggest that subjects rely increasingly on category membership as they progress through a similarity judgment task.

Price Knowledge And Search Behavior For Habitual, Low Involvement Food Purchases, Jouni T. Kujala, Michael D. Johnson

Michael D. Johnson

Existing models of price search presume a direct link between knowledge and search behavior. We argue that these models are not well suited to more habitual, low involvement purchase situations where search behavior and price knowledge are more independent. An alternative, adaptive rationality model is proposed in which these constructs are only indirectly related. An empirical study of Finnish consumers' purchases of fresh produce and meat products is reported which supports the adaptive rationality model.

Attribute Abstraction, Feature-Dimensionality, And The Scaling Of Product Similarities, Michael D. Johnson, Donald R. Lehmann, Claes Fornell, David A. Horne

Michael D. Johnson

This paper examines the attributes that consumers use when making product similarity judgments and their effect on similarity scaling. Previous research suggests that concrete brands are judged using dichotomous features while more abstract product categories are judged using continuous dimensions. This, in turn, suggests that the appropriateness of spatial scaling increases relative to tree scaling as one moves from brands to product categories. The results of two studies support an increase in the fit of spaces relative to trees from brands to categories. However, the abstractness of the judgments appears to be driving the effect, not the use of features …

Boom & Bust: The Perils Of Guaranteed Long Term Contracts. Evidence From Ops100 Performance Over The Contract Cycle, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

This study focuses on panel data of 256 MLB free agent hitters under the 2006-2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to demonstrate that hitters, on average, increase their offensive production, measured by OPS100, during the last year of their contract and subsequently underperform the first year of the newly signed long term contract. The contract year phenomenon arises from the incentive to land a lucrative guaranteed contract for players not intending to retire. Signing a long term guaranteed contract creates an incentive to shirk (underperform) the first year of the new contract because performance and pay become unlinked and the need …

Teoría De Negociación, Francisco Carlos Ruiz Diaz

Francisco Carlos Ruiz Diaz

¿Cómo negociar? ¿Cómo Rambo? ¿Cómo Bambi? ó ¿Cómo Rambi? Este documento contiene la presentación de tres estilos distintos de negociación. El primero se refiere al estilo competitivo. El segundo se centra en el enfoque cooperativo y sigue los principios de la teoría de negociación de Harvard. El tercer estilo es un mix de los dos enfoques.

Three Essays On Dividend Policy, Mehmet Deren Caliskan

Finance Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation considers paying earnings out as dividends a conservative policy as opposed to investing earnings in to value-increasing projects. Based on this view, this dissertation explores the effect of chief executive officers’ (CEO) risk preferences on dividend policy, market’s reaction to dividend policy changes, and the effect of dividend policy on firm financial distress. The first chapter hypothesizes that risk seeking CEOs will be less likely to pay dividends compared to conservative CEOs. The second chapter hypothesizes that when the market sentiment is high (i.e., when investors are willing to take risk) firms that omit dividends should outperform the …

An Analysis Of Evacuation Behavior During Hurricane Ike, Yuanyuan Lu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hurricanes have been considered one of the most costly disasters in United State, which lead to both economic loss and human fatalities. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of those who evacuated and of those who did not evacuate have been principal focus of some previous researches related to hurricane evacuation behavior. This research presents two sets of decision-making models for analyzing hurricane evacuation behavior, using two statistical methods: standard logistic model and mixed logistic model.The receipt of evacuation order, elevation, expenditure, the presence of children and elderly people, ownership of a house, and receipt of hurricane warning are found to be …

Inference Under Stability Of Risk Preferences, Levon Barseghyan, Francesca Molinari, Joshua C. Teitelbaum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We leverage the assumption that preferences are stable across contexts to partially identify and conduct inference on the parameters of a structural model of risky choice. Working with data on households' deductible choices across three lines of insurance coverage and a model that nests expected utility theory plus a range of non-expected utility models, we perform a revealed preference analysis that yields household-specific bounds on the model parameters. We then impose stability and other structural assumptions to tighten the bounds, and we explore what we can learn about households' risk preferences from the intervals defined by the bounds. We further …

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Timothy D. Lytton

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …

Assessing Alabama Consumer Attitudes And Beliefs About Locally Or Regionally Produced Livestock And Products, Nii O. Tackie, Jannette R. Bartlett, Akua Adu-Gyamfi

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

Abstract

Local and regional food production has gained increased interest of consumers in recent years. The study, therefore, focused on assessing consumer attitudes and beliefs on local or regional livestock products. Data were obtained from a convenience sample of 432 participants from South Central Alabama, and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including chi-square tests. A majority of respondents thought using chemicals and additives in locally or regionally produced beef or goat meat was a serious hazard. Therefore, many were willing to pay more for meat certified as locally or regionally produced. Also, most agreed or strongly agreed with statements on …