Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Money And The Scale Of Cooperation, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

This study reveals the existence of a causal link between the availability of money and an expanded scale of interaction. We constructed an experiment where participants chose the group size, either a low-value partnership or a high-value group of strangers, and then faced an intertemporal cooperative task. Theoretically, a monetary system was inessential to achieve cooperation. Empirically, without a working monetary system, participants were reluctant to expand the scale of interaction; and when they did, they ended up destroying surplus compared to partnerships, because cooperation collapsed in large groups. This economic failure was reversed only when participants managed to concurrently …

Helminth Infection, Fecundity, And Age Of First Pregnancy In Women, Aaron D. Blackwell, Marilyne D. Tamayo, Bret Beheim, Benjamin C. Trumble, Jonathan Stieglitz, Paul L. Hooper, Melanie Martin, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Infection with intestinal helminths results in immunological changes that influence the odds of comorbid infections, and might also affect fecundity by inducing immunological states supportive of conception and pregnancy. Here we investigate associations between intestinal helminths and fertility in human females, utilizing nine years of longitudinal data from 986 Bolivian forger-horticulturalists, experiencing natural fertility and a 70% helminth prevalence. We find that different species of helminth are associated with opposing effects on fecundity. Infection with roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) is associated with earlier first births and shortened interbirth intervals, while infection with hookworm is associated with delayed first pregnancy and extended …

Cognitive Reflection And The Diligent Worker: An Experimental Study Of Millennials, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán-González, Ricardo Mateo

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Recent studies have shown that despite crucially needing the creative talent of millennials (people born after 1980) organizations have been reluctant to hire young workers because of their supposed lack of diligence. We propose to help resolve this dilemma by studying the determinants of task performance and shirking behaviors of millennials in a laboratory work environment. We find that cognitive ability is a good predictor of task performance in line with previous literature. In contrast with previous research, personality traits do not consistently predict either task performance or shirking behaviors. Shirking behaviors, as measured by the time participants spent browsing …

Natural Sleep And Its Seasonal Variations In Three Pre-Industrial Societies, Gandhi Yetish, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven, Brian Wood, Herman Pontzer, Paul R. Manger, Charles Wilson, Ronald Mcgregor, Jerome M. Siegel

ESI Publications

How did humans sleep before the modern era? Because the tools to measure sleep under natural conditions were developed long after the invention of the electric devices suspected of delaying and reducing sleep, we investigated sleep in three preindustrial societies[1–3]. We find that all three show similar sleep organization, suggesting that they express core human sleep patterns, likely characteristic of pre-modern era Homo sapiens. Sleep periods, the times from onset to offset, averaged 6.9–8.5-h, with sleep durations of 5.7–7.1-h, amounts near the low end of those industrial societies[4–7]. There was a difference of nearly 1-h between summer and winter sleep. …

Optimal Taxation And Debt With Uninsurable Risks To Human Capital Accumulation, Piero Gottardi, Atsushi Kajii, Tomoyuki Nakajima

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider an economy where individuals face uninsurable risks to their human capital accumulation and analyze the optimal level of linear taxes on capital and labor income together with the optimal path of government debt. We show that in the presence of such risks, it is beneficial to tax both labor and capital and to issue public debt. We also assess the quantitative importance of these findings, and show that the benefits of government debt and capital taxes both increase with the magnitude of idiosyncratic risks and the degree of relative risk aversion.

Calcaneal Quantitative Ultrasound Indicates Reduced Bone Status Among Physically Active Adult Forager-Horticulturalists, Jonathan Stieglitz, Felicia C. Madimenos, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Six months of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) is considered optimal for infant health, though globally most infants begin complementary feeding (CF) earlier—including among populations that practice prolonged breastfeeding. Two frameworks for understanding patterns of early CF emerge in the literature. In the first, maternal and infant needs trade-off, as “maternal-centric” factors—related to time and energy demands, reproductive investment, cultural influences, and structural barriers— favor supplanting breastfeeding with earlier and increased CF. A second framework considers that “infant-centric” factors—related to infant energetic needs—favor CF before six months to supplement breastfeeding.

We apply these two frameworks in examining early CF among the Tsimane—a …

Cointegration Of Matched Home Purchases And Rental Price Indexes –Evidence From Singapore, Badi Baltagi, Jing Li

Center for Policy Research

This paper exploits the homogeneity feature of the Singapore private residential condominium market and constructs matched home purchase price and rental price series using the repeated sales method. These matched series allow us to conduct time series analysis to examine the long-term present value relationship in the housing market. Three key findings are obtained. First, we fail to establish a cointegrating relationship between the home purchase price and rental price based on nationally estimated indexes. Second, area-specific indexes demonstrate strong cross-correlations, invalidating the use of first generation panel unit root tests that ignore these cross-correlations. Third, Pesaran’s CIPS test indicates …

Tug-Of-War In The Laboratory, Cary Deck, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Tug-of-war is a multi-battle contest often used to describe extended interactions in economics, management, political science, and other disciplines. While there has been some theoretical work, there is scant empirical evidence regarding behavior in a tug-of-war game. To the best of our knowledge, this paper provides the first experimental study of the tug-of-war. The results show notable deviations of behavior from theory. In the first battle of the tug-of-war, subjects exert fewer resources, while in the follow-up battles, they exert more resources than predicted. Also, contrary to the theoretical prediction, resource expenditures tend to increase in the duration of the …

Can Simple Mechanism Design Results Be Used To Implement The Proportionality Standard In Discovery?, Jonah B. Gelbach

All Faculty Scholarship

I point out that the Coase theorem suggests there should not be wasteful discovery, in the sense that the value to the requester is less than the cost to the responder. I use a toy model to show that a sufficiently informed court could design a mechanism under which the Coasean prediction is borne out. I then suggest that the actual information available to courts is too little to effect this mechanism, and I consider alternatives. In discussing mechanisms intended to avoid wasteful discovery where courts have limited information, I emphasize the role of normative considerations.

Agreeing To Agree And Dutch Books, Yi-Chun Chen, Ehud Lehrer, Jiangtao Li, Dov Samet, Eran Shmaya

Research Collection School Of Economics

We say that agreeing to agree is possible for an event E if there exist posterior beliefs of the agents with a common prior such that it is common knowledge that the agents' posteriors for E coincide. We propose a notion called Dutch book which is a profile of interim contracts between an outsider and the agents based on the occurrence of E, such that the outsider makes positive profit in all states. We show that in a finite state space, when the agents cannot tell whether Eoccurred or not, agreeing to agree is possible for E if and only …

Wealth Inequality And Financial Development: Revisiting The Symmetry Breaking Mechanism, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

Building A Better Model: Variable Selection To Predict Poverty In Pakistan And Sri Lanka, Marium Afzal, Jonathan Hersh, David Newhouse

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Numerous studies have developed models to predict poverty, but surprisingly few have rigorously examined different approaches to developing prediction models. This paper applies out of sample validation techniques to household data from Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to compare the accuracy of regional poverty predictions from models derived using manual selection, stepwise regression, and Lasso-based procedures. It also examines how much incorporating publically available satellite data into the model improves its accuracy. The five main findings are that: 1) Lasso tends to outperform both discretionary and stepwise models in Pakistan, where the set of potential predictors is large. 2) Lasso and …

Adam Smith: Homo Socialis, Yes; Social Preferences, No; Reciprocity Was To Be Explained, Vernon L. Smith

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

I argue that the authors accept too casually the neo-classical framework of thought that was incapable of predicting choices in 2-person and other experimental games in the 1980s and 1990ss. The ex post hoc hypothesis that social preference can describe homo socialis reduces inevitably to a rescue of neo-classical economics in which Max-U (own payoff, other payoff) substitutes mechanically for Max-U (own payoff) in our personal groupings. This static procedure unnecessarily and inappropriately robs human conduct of its sociality as a process relationship. The model I articulate was masterfully developed by Adam Smith, which back-predicts the results of these earlier …

Does Market Integration Buffer Risk, Erode Traditional Sharing Practices And Increase Inequality? A Test Among Bolivian Forager-Farmers, Michael Gurven, Adrian V. Jaeggi, Christopher Von Rueden, Paul L. Hooper, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Sharing and exchange are common practices for minimizing food insecurity in rural populations. The advent of markets and monetization in egalitarian indigenous populations presents an alternative means of managing risk, with the potential impact of eroding traditional networks. We test whether market involvement buffers several types of risk and reduces traditional sharing behavior among Tsimane Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazon. Results vary based on type of market integration and scale of analysis (household vs. village), consistent with the notion that local culture and ecology shape risk management strategies. Greater wealth and income were unassociated with the reliance on others for …

Mountain Monitor - 1st Quarter 2015, Kenan Fikri, Siddharth Kulkarni

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

This analysis of employment, output, unemployment, and house prices finds that the 10 major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West, despite significant economic headwinds, weathered the first quarter of 2015 with robust economic growth. Eight of the region’s 10 major metro areas advanced on all four metrics of economic performance, and the remaining two metro areas slipped only on a single front.

The national economic slowdown that arrived in early 2015 did not entirely bypass the Mountain West, but the region resisted the drag better than any other. As U.S. economic output contracted by 0.3 percent in the first quarter, …

Working Paper No. 07, Evsey Domar And The Keynesian Tradition, Cesar Maldonado

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry seeks to establish that Evsey Domar extends Keynes’s thinking and in this manner helps to establish a post-Keynesian tradition. First, I shall consider Keynes’s ideas concerning problems facing market capitalism as appears in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Then I shall continue with this inquiry and consider Domar’s insights into expansion and employment and his concerns regarding capital accumulation, as well as his confronting a theory posited by Keynes concerning investment and employment, raising the issue of whether Keynes’s understanding is accurate. The last part of this inquiry deals with Domar’s concerns …

A Royal Problem: Planning Induced Supply Constraints In London, Elizabeth P. Armstrong

Lawrence University Honors Projects

We explore the impact of regulatory supply constraints on house price levels following boom and bust periods in London. We hypothesize that when regulatory restrictiveness increases during a boom period, house prices will be higher in the following year compared to house prices in less restricted areas. We also hypothesize that when regulatory restrictiveness increases during a bust period, house prices will be lower in the following year compared to house prices in less restricted areas. We empirically test our hypothesis using a multilevel mixed-effects model with a panel data set of 32 boroughs of London, ranging from 2001 to …

Depression As Sickness Behavior? A Test Of The Host Defense Hypothesis In A High Pathogen Population, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Melissa Emery Thompson, Aaron D. Blackwell, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Sadness is an emotion universally recognized across cultures, suggesting it plays an important functional role in regulating human behavior. Numerous adaptive explanations of persistent sadness interfering with daily functioning (hereafter “depression”) have been proposed, but most do not explain frequent bidirectional associations between depression and greater immune activation. Here we test several predictions of the host defense hypothesis, which posits that depression is part of a broader coordinated evolved response to infection or tissue injury (i.e. “sickness behavior”) that promotes energy conservation and reallocation to facilitate immune activation. In a high pathogen population of lean and relatively egalitarian Bolivian foragerhorticulturalists, …

Public Goods With Punishment & Payment For Relative Rank, Terence C. Burnham

ESI Working Papers

A laboratory experiment designed to investigate the role of relative performance-based payoffs on cooperation in the context of punishment. Subjects play a repeated public goods game with high-powered punishment (50:1) and additional payoffs based on relative performance. Contributions to the public good are nearly maximal. Punishment levels are substantial, higher than the same game without relative rank payoffs, and sufficiently high that total payoffs are negative. The group would make much more money in the same setting without punishment. This study contributes to investigation of the role of altruism in human cooperation.

Do Footprint-Based Cafe Standards Make Car Models Bigger?, Brianna Marie Jean

Economics

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards have historically been set equal across all manufacturer fleets of the same type. Concerns about varying costs across firms and safety implications of standards that are set homogeneously across firms and models resulted in a policy shift towards footprint-based standards. Under this type of standard, individual car models face targets based on the size of the area between the wheelbase and wheel track, so that larger models face less stringent standards, and manufacturers who make, on average, larger cars will face a lighter fleet standard. Theoretical models have shown that this type of policy …

Firing Threats: Incentive Effects And Impression Management, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez, Stephen J. Rassenti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study the effect of firing threats in a virtual workplace that reproduces features of existing organizations. We show that organizations in which bosses can fire up to one third of their workforce produce twice as much as organizations for which firing is not possible. Firing threats sharply decrease on-the-job leisure. Nevertheless, organizations endowed with firing threats underperformed those using individual incentives. In the presence of firing threats, employees engage in impression management activities to be seen as hard-working individuals in line with our model. Finally, production levels dropped substantially when the threat of being fired was removed, whereas on-the-job …

Robust Determinants Of Bilateral Trade, Marianne Baxter, Jonathan Hersh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

What are the policies and country-level conditions which best explain bilateral trade flows between countries? As databases expand, an increasing number of possible explanatory variables are proposed that influence bilateral trade without a clear indication of which variables are robustly important across contexts, time periods, and which are not sensitive to inclusion of other control variables. To shed light on this problem, we apply three model selection methods – Lasso reguarlized regression, Bayesian Model Averaging, and Extreme Bound Analysis -- to candidate variables in a gravity models of trade. Using a panel of 198 countries covering the years 1970 to …

Better Lucky Than Good: The Role Of Information In Other-Regarding Preferences, Matthew J. Mcmahon

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

There is anecdotal evidence that people often treat income earned by effort differently than that gained by luck, yet economists often overlook this distinction. Furthermore, others’ income sources may often be (at least partially) obfuscated. I adapt a common inequality aversion model to allow for income distinction by source, both for own income and others’, and for uncertainty over others’ sources. I empirically test resulting hypotheses in a dictator game experiment wherein subjects gain income via both effort and luck. Dictators know recipients’ income by source in control, but only total income in treatment. I find that partially informed dictators …

Benefits Of Eu Membership For The Transition Countries: The Case Of Latvia, Marko Martinovic

Economics Honors Projects

This paper estimates the benefits of EU membership for Latvia, a former communist country and a member of the former USSR. It is widely believed that the EU membership significantly contributes to raising living standards and growth of the economies of new members. Using counterfactual analysis with the official date of accession of 2003 I find that Latvia demonstrates stronger economic growth from the EU membership, but only up to 2009. After the 2009 financial crisis Latvia’s economic growth is severally compromised as a consequence of joining the EU. When 1999 is treated as the treatment year, the year when …

Inefficiency In The Shadow Of Unobservable Reservation Payoffs, Madhav S. Aney

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the problem of allocating an object between two players in an environment with one sided asymmetric information when their reservation payoffs depend on the type of the informed player, causing the reservation payoff of the uninformed player to be unobservable to her. Inefficiency arises naturally in this setting and can be characterized by a simple condition on the reservation payoffs that is necessary and sufficient. I derive the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an implementable allocation that at least weakly dominates the reservation payoffs. Under a mild assumption on the distribution of types, I …

Inclusive Fitness And Differential Productivity Across The Life Course Determine Intergenerational Transfers In A Small-Scale Human Society, Paul L. Hooper, Michael Gurven, Jeffrey Winking, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Transfers of resources between generations are an essential element in current models of human life-history evolution accounting for prolonged development, extended lifespan and menopause. Integrating these models with Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness, we predict that the interaction of biological kinship with the age-schedule of resource production should be a key driver of intergenerational transfers. In the empirical case of Tsimane’ forager–horticulturalists in Bolivian Amazonia, we provide a detailed characterization of net transfers of food according to age, sex, kinship and the net need of donors and recipients. We show that parents, grandparents and siblings provide significant net downward transfers …

Working Paper No. 06, Towards A Veblenian Theory Of Economic Development: Drawing From Imperial Germany, Cesar Maldonado

Working Papers in Economics

This inquiry summarizes and analyzes Thorstein Veblen’s explanations for Imperial Germany’s rapid industrialization. In his book Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, Thorstein Veblen introduces a comprehensive understanding of processes affecting economic development. Technology transfer, human capital and state intervention are the variables that transformed an agrarian feudal Germany into industrialized Imperial Germany. Instead of developing technology over time by trial and error, Germany just transferred already established technology to their country. Since Germany had no established institution they could set up the most modern technologies. The machine process of the industrial system renders it easy to train workers …

Does Online Availability Increase Citations? Theory And Evidence From A Panel Of Economics And Business Journals, Mark J. Mccabe, Christopher M. Snyder

Dartmouth Scholarship

Does online availability boost citations? Using a panel of citations to economics and business journals, we show that the enormous effects found in previous studies were an artifact of their failure to control for article quality, disappearing once fixed effects are added as controls. The absence of aggregate effects masks heterogeneity across platforms: JSTOR has a uniquely large effect, boosting citations around 10%. We examine other sources of heterogeneity, including whether JSTOR disproportionately increases cites from developing countries or to ‘‘long-tail’’ articles. Our theoretical analysis informs the econometric specification and allows citation increases to be translated into welfare terms.

Mountain Monitor - 4th Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

With the national economy gaining steam, the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West ended 2014 with another quarter of strong economic performance. On the four indicators of economic vitality measured by the Mountain Monitor—employment growth, output growth, changes in unemployment, and house price growth—with only a few exceptions, every metro area registered advances on every indicator. Such widespread progress heretofore eluded the region, where recovery from the Great Recession has been characterized by unevenness.

In aggregate, the 10 Mountain metro areas ended 2014 with their fastest quarter of job growth of the year. Employment increased by 0.8 …

Slides: Practicing Sustainability In Natural Resource Industries, Gary D. Libecap

Natural Resource Industries and the Sustainability Challenge (Martz Winter Symposium, February 27-28)

Presenter: Gary D. Libecap, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Economics Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

10 slides