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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Multiple Dimensions Of Male Social Status In An Amazonian Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan Jun 2008

The Multiple Dimensions Of Male Social Status In An Amazonian Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

"In all human societies, individuals differ in social status depending upon their age and personal ability (Sahlins, 1958; Service, 1971). In laboratory-based small group studies, status hierarchies emerge spontaneously (Bass, 1954; Campbell et al., 2002; Kalma, 1991). Even among “egalitarian” foragers, who are characterized by widespread resource sharing (Kaplan & Gurven, 2005; Winterhalder, 1986) and some degree of status-leveling (Cashdan, 1980), certain individuals consume more resources, get the best pick of mates, and take a more central role in group decision-making (Boehm, 1999; Trigger, 1985; Wiessner, 1996). Whether implicit or overt, classification by social status is a human universal. While …


Economics Works! Experiments In High School Classrooms, Stephen L. Jackstadt, Paul Johnson, Bart J. Wilson Apr 2008

Economics Works! Experiments In High School Classrooms, Stephen L. Jackstadt, Paul Johnson, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Economic experiments are a unique form of active learning. Students apply the scientific method by testing hypotheses and discovering for themselves how markets work. The authors conducted teacher training courses in experimental economics over a three-year period and conducted surveys to track teachers' adoption of classroom experiments. This paper discusses the survey results and describes how the training was revised accordingly. The primary conclusion of this article is that classroom experiments must be compatible with the school environment; that is, they should emphasize non-monetary incentives and hand-run experiments as well as be explicitly tied to school curricula.


Aging And Inflammation In Two Epidemiological Worlds, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Jeffrey Winking, Caleb Finch, Eileen M. Crimmins Feb 2008

Aging And Inflammation In Two Epidemiological Worlds, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Jeffrey Winking, Caleb Finch, Eileen M. Crimmins

ESI Publications

Humans evolved in a world with high levels of infection resulting in high mortality across the life span and few survivors to advanced ages. Under such conditions, a strong acute-phase inflammatory response was required for survival; however, inflammatory responses can also promote chronic diseases of aging. We hypothesize that global historical increases in life span at older ages are partly explained by reduced lifetime exposure to infection and subsequent inflammation. To begin a test of this hypothesis, we compare C-reactive protein (CRP); levels in two populations with different epidemiological environments: the Tsimane of Bolivia and persons in the United States. …


Legacy Of The Clinton Bubble, Timothy Canova Jan 2008

Legacy Of The Clinton Bubble, Timothy Canova

Law Faculty News Articles, Editorials, and Blogs

This article looks at the economy following the Clinton administration period in the White House.


Experimental Gasoline Markets, Cary A. Deck, Bart J. Wilson Jan 2008

Experimental Gasoline Markets, Cary A. Deck, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Zone pricing in wholesale gasoline markets is a contentious topic in the public policy debate. With a controlled laboratory experiment, we investigate the competitive effects of zone pricing on consumers, retail stations, and refiners vis-à-vis the proposed policy prescription of uniform wholesale pricing to retailers. We also examine the issue of divorcement and the “rockets and feathers” phenomenon. The former is the legal restriction that refiners and retailers cannot be vertically integrated, and the latter is the perception that retail gasoline prices rise faster than they fall in response to random walk movements in the world price for oil.


Another Example Of A Credit System That Coexists With Money, Gabriele Camera, Yiting Li Jan 2008

Another Example Of A Credit System That Coexists With Money, Gabriele Camera, Yiting Li

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study an economy in which exchange occurs pairwise, there is no commitment, and anonymous agents choose between random monetary trade or deterministic credit trade. To accomplish the latter, agents can exploit a costly technology that allows limited recordkeeping and enforcement. An equilibrium with money and credit is shown to exist if the cost of using the technology is sufficiently small. Anonymity, record-keeping and enforcement limitations also permit some incidence of default, in equilibrium.


Interior Optima And The Inada Conditions, C. D. Aliprantis, Gabriele Camera, F. Ruscitti Jan 2008

Interior Optima And The Inada Conditions, C. D. Aliprantis, Gabriele Camera, F. Ruscitti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We present a new proof of the interiority of the policy function based on the Inada conditions. It is based on supporting properties of concave functions.


Lessons From The Emu For Asian Regional Integration, Sarkis Joseph Khoury, Clas Wihlborg Jan 2008

Lessons From The Emu For Asian Regional Integration, Sarkis Joseph Khoury, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Critical costs and benefits of creating an EMU-like structure in Asia are identified. Analyzing the EU, we pay particular attention to two kinds of economic benefits and costs that do not appear much in conventional economic analysis. First, there are benefits and costs of harmonization in different areas including the monetary area. Second, giving up sovereignty within a policy area can provide many countries with a kind of insurance against domestic institutional, legal, and political weaknesses. Although we emphasize economic arguments it is necessary to recognize that the EU is very much a politically motivated project. Politics may well be …


High Stakes Behavior With Low Payoffs: Inducing Preferences With Holt-Laury Gambles, John Dickhaut, Daniel Houser, Jason A. Aimone, Dorina Tila, Cathleen Johnson Jan 2008

High Stakes Behavior With Low Payoffs: Inducing Preferences With Holt-Laury Gambles, John Dickhaut, Daniel Houser, Jason A. Aimone, Dorina Tila, Cathleen Johnson

ESI Working Papers

A continuing goal of experiments is to understand risky decisions when the decisions are important. Often a decision’s importance is related to the magnitude of the associated monetary stake. Khaneman and Tversky (1979) argue that risky decisions in high stakes environments can be informed using questionnaires with hypothetical choices (since subjects have no incentive to answer questions falsely.) However, results reported by Holt and Laury (2002, henceforth HL), as well as replications by Harrison (2005) suggest that decisions in “high” monetary payoff environments are not well-predicted by questionnaire responses. Thus, a potential implication of the HL results is that studying …


Can Manipulators Mislead Prediction Market Observers?, Ryan Oprea, David Porter, Chris Hibbert, Robin Hanson, Dorina Tila Jan 2008

Can Manipulators Mislead Prediction Market Observers?, Ryan Oprea, David Porter, Chris Hibbert, Robin Hanson, Dorina Tila

ESI Working Papers

We study experimental markets where privately informed traders exchange simple assets, and where uninformed third parties are asked to forecast the values of these assets, guided only by market prices. Although prices only partially aggregate information, they signicantly improve the forecasts of third parties. In a second treatment, a portion of traders are given preferences over the forecasts made by observers. Although we find evidence that these traders attempt to manipulate prices in order to influence the beliefs of observers, we find no evidence that observers make less accurate forecasts as a result.


Generating Ambiguity In The Laboratory, Jack Douglas Stecher, Timothy W. Shields, John Dickhaut Jan 2008

Generating Ambiguity In The Laboratory, Jack Douglas Stecher, Timothy W. Shields, John Dickhaut

ESI Working Papers

This article develops a method for drawing samples from which it is impossible to infer any quantile or moment of the underlying distribution. The method provides researchers with a way to give subjects the experience of ambiguity. In any experiment, learning the distribution from experience is impossible for the subjects, essentially because it is impossible for the experimenter. We describe our method mathematically, illustrate it in simulations, and then test it in a laboratory experiment. Our technique does not withhold sampling information, does not assume that the subject is incapable of making statistical inferences, is replicable across experiments, and requires …