Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Financial Contagion And Financial Lockdowns, Gabriele Camera, Alessandro Gioffré

ESI Working Papers

Extreme financial shocks often elicit extraordinary policy interventions that preclude financial activity on a large scale, for example as the 1933 U.S. “bank holiday.” We study these interventions using a random matching framework where the financial contagion process is explicit and the diffusion of the initial shock can be analytically characterized. The study suggests that there is scope for forced closures of individual firms or even economy-wide financial lockdowns only when firms are financially vulnerable and policy institutions are not well-functioning. Here, ordinary policy alone cannot prevent or sufficiently mitigate contagion, while complementing it with a lockdown or individual closures …

Evolution Of Primate Vocal Repertoires: Vocalization Systems As Embodied Capital For Mediating Within-Group Conflict, Eric Schniter, Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre

ESI Working Papers

Phylogenetic studies of communication help us understand evolutionary changes that led to human language – a form of primate communication, extraordinarily complex in terms of its varied vocalizations. Here we describe the macro-evolutionary role of life history traits on primate vocalization systems, informing our understanding of the relationships between social complexity and primate vocal repertoire size. We reviewed the primatological literature and collected information on the vocal repertoire size, social conflict, group size, endocranial volume, and maximum longevity of 42 non-human primate species. We conducted a set of analyses to examine the role of these factors on the macroevolution of …

Human-Robot Interactions: Insights From Experimental And Evolutionary Social Sciences, Eric Schniter

ESI Working Papers

"Experimental research in the realm of human-robot interactions has focused on the behavioral and psychological influences affecting human interaction and cooperation with robots. A robot is loosely defined as a device designed to perform agentic tasks autonomously or under remote control, often replicating or assisting human actions. Robots can vary widely in form, ranging from simple assembly line machines performing repetitive actions to advanced systems with no moving parts but with artificial intelligence (AI) capable of learning, problem-solving, communicating, and adapting to diverse environments and human interactions. Applications of experimental human-robot interaction research include the design, development, and implementation of …

Enlightenment Ideals And Belief In Progress In The Run-Up To The Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis, Ali Almelhem, Murat Iyigun, Austin Kennedy, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

We trace the evolution of the language of science, religion, and political economy in the centuries leading to the British Industrial Revolution. Using textual analysis of 173,031 works printed in England between 1500 and 1900, we test whether British culture manifested a belief in progress associated with science and industry. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, there was a separation in the language of science and religion beginning in the late-17th century. Second, volumes using language at the nexus of science and political economy became more progress-oriented during the Enlightenment. Third, volumes using industrial language—especially those at the science-political …

Joining A Currency Union To Improve Financial Development And Competitiveness: The Case Of Slovakia, Etsub Tekola Jemberu, Bruce Dehning

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

Enhancing competitiveness is a priority for nations seeking to promote economic growth. One of the critical drivers of a nation’s sustainable competitiveness is financial system development. However, whether joining a currency union has a positive impact on a country’s financial system development requires further investigation. This study evaluates the impact of euro adoption on Slovakia’s financial system development using a synthetic control method with lasso regularization methodology. A comprehensive index that captures the depth, access, and efficiency of financial institutions and markets is used to measure financial system development. Based on a donor pool composed of non-euro OECD countries, the …

The Effect Of Wage Proposals On Efficiency And Income Distribution☆, Lara Ezquerra, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Natalia Jiminez, Praveen Kujal

ESI Publications

Pre-play non-binding communication in organizations is prevalent. We study the implications of pre-play, private and public, wage proposals in labor markets. To that end, we develop a theoretical model from which we derive certain hypothesis that we test through a laboratory experiment. In the baseline, that depicts a typical labor market interaction, the employer makes a wage offer to the worker who may then accept or reject it. In subsequent treatments, workers, moving first, make private, non-binding, wage proposals to the employer. In a following treatment, the proposals are made public. Our findings suggest that both private and public wage …

Suggested Versus Extended Gifts: How Alternative Market Institutions Mitigate Moral Hazard, Daniel Houser, Jason Shachat, Weiwei Zheng

ESI Working Papers

Gift exchange can partially mitigate supply-side moral hazard, even in anonymous market interactions. In a market where quality is not fully contractable, the amount that a price exceeds the market-clearing price for the lowest quality is a gift from the buyer. We show that the gift formation process, inextricably linked with a market institution’s price formation process, greatly influences the size and effectiveness of the gift. When the market institution dictates that prices are formed by bids posted by buyers, the gift is extended to the seller. When the market institution dictates that prices are formed by offers posted by …

Match Stability With A Costly And Flexible Number Of Positions, James Gilmore, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

One of the objectives of two-sided matching mechanisms is to pair two groups of agents such that there is no incentive for pair deviation. The outcome of a match can significantly impact participants. While much of the existing research in this field addresses the matching with fixed quotas, this is not always applicable. We introduce the concept of slot stability, recognizing the potential motivation for organizations to modify their quotas after the match. We propose an algorithm designed to create stable and slot stable matches by employing flexible, endogenous quotas to address this issue.

Religion And Growth, Sascha O. Becker, Jared Rubin, Ludger Woessmann

ESI Working Papers

We use the elements of a macroeconomic production function—physical capital, human capital, labor, and technology—together with standard growth models to frame the role of religion in economic growth. Unifying a growing literature, we argue that religion can enhance or impinge upon economic growth through all four elements because it shapes individual preferences, societal norms, and institutions. Religion affects physical capital accumulation by influencing thrift and financial development. It affects human capital through both religious and secular education. It affects population and labor by influencing work effort, fertility, and the demographic transition. And it affects total factor productivity by constraining or …

Selection Homophily And Peer Influence For Adolescents’ Smoking And Vaping Norms And Outcomes In High And Middle-Income Settings, Jennifer M. Murray, Sharon Sánchez-Franco, Olga L. Sarmiento, Erik O. Kimbrough, Christopher Tate, Shannon C. Montgomery, Rajnish Kumar, Laura Dunne, Abhijit Ramalingam, Erin L. Krupka, Felipe Montes, Huiyu Zhou, Laurence Moore, Linda Bauld, Blanca Llorente, Frank Kee, Ruth F. Hunter

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The MECHANISMS study investigates how social norms for adolescent smoking and vaping are transmitted through school friendship networks, and is the first study to use behavioral economics methodology to assess smoking-related social norms. Here, we investigate the effects of selection homophily (the tendency to form friendships with similar peers) and peer influence (a social process whereby an individual’s behavior or attitudes are affected by peers acting as reference points for the individual) on experimentally measured smoking and vaping norms, and other smoking outcomes, in adolescents from high and middle-income settings. Full school year groups in six secondary schools in Northern …

The Impact Of Vaccinations And Chronic Disease On Covid Death Rates, James L. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This study presents a theoretical and empirical regression model to measure the efficacy of vaccinations in reducing COVID death rates across states over the 3/10/21 to 12/28/22 period. During that period, it was estimated that the availability of vaccinations resulted in a reduction of 427,000 COVID deaths in the nation. To arrive at that estimate, other covariants were held constant. In particular, it was found that chronic disease should be included as an explanatory variable to arrive at unbiased measures of the efficacy of vaccinations in reducing deaths. In addition, the percentage of people over the age of 65 was …

Metapopulation Dynamics Of Sars-Cov-2 Transmission In A Small-Scale Amazonian Society, Thomas Kraft, Edmond Seabright, Sarah Alami, Samuel M. Jenness, Paul L. Hooper, Bret Beheim, Helen Davis, Daniel K. Cummings, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Maguin Gutierrez Cayuba, Emily J. Miner, Xavier De Lamballerie, Lucia Inchauste, Stéphane Priet, Benjamin Trumble, Jonathan Stieglitz, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

The severity of infectious disease outbreaks is governed by patterns of human contact, which vary by geography, social organization, mobility, access to technology and healthcare, economic development, and culture. Whereas globalized societies and urban centers exhibit characteristics that can heighten vulnerability to pandemics, small-scale subsistence societies occupying remote, rural areas may be buffered. Accordingly, voluntary collective isolation has been proposed as one strategy to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 and other pandemics on small-scale Indigenous populations with minimal access to healthcare infrastructure. To assess the vulnerability of such populations and the viability of interventions such as voluntary collective isolation, we …

Apolipoprotein-Ε4 Is Associated With Higher Fecundity In A Natural Fertility Population, Benjamin Trumble, Mia Charifson, Tom Kraft, Angela R. Garcia, Daniel K. Cummings, Paul L. Hooper, Amanda J. Lea, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Stephanie V. Koebele, Kenneth Buetow, Bret Beheim, Riana Minocher, Maguin Gutierrez, Gregory S. Thomas, Margaret Gatz, Jonathan Stieglitz, Caleb E. Finch, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

In many populations, the apolipoprotein-ε4 (APOE-ε4) allele increases the risk for several chronic diseases of aging, including dementia and cardiovascular disease; despite these harmful effects at later ages, the APOE-ε4 allele remains prevalent. We assess the impact of APOE-ε4 on fertility and its proximate determinants (age at first reproduction, interbirth interval) among the Tsimane, a natural fertility population of forager-horticulturalists. Among 795 women aged 13 to 90 (20% APOE-ε4 carriers), those with at least one APOE-ε4 allele had 0.3 to 0.5 more children than (ε3/ε3) …

Group Identity And The Formation Of Conditional Social Preferences Among Chinese Youth, Timo Heinrich, Jason Shachat, Qinjuan Wan

ESI Working Papers

Con icts between local and migrant populations have been ubiquitous in modern China. We examine the potential for longer-term amelioration of this conflict through successive generations and intergroup contact within integrated schooling. We adopt the perspective that in- and out-group biased behaviour structurally arises from group conditional social preferences. We assess the group-conditional social preferences of local and migrant children in a second-tier Chinese city, Xiamen, and the extent these preferences correlate with those of their parents. We find that local students have a greater likelihood of Egalitarian preferences and a lower likelihood of Generous preferences when allocating with locals …

Energetic Costs Of Testosterone In Two Subsistence Populations, Benjamin C. Trumble, Herman Pontzer, Jonathan Stieglitz, Daniel K. Cummings, Brian Wood, Melissa Emery Thompson, David Raichlen, Bret Beheim, Gandhi Yetish, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Objective

Testosterone plays a role in mediating energetic trade-offs between growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Investments in a high testosterone phenotype trade-off against other functions, particularly survival-enhancing immune function and cellular repair; thus only individuals in good condition can maintain both a high testosterone phenotype and somatic maintenance. While these effects are observed in experimental manipulations, they are difficult to demonstrate in free-living animals, particularly in humans. We hypothesize that individuals with higher testosterone will have higher energetic expenditures than those with lower testosterone.

Methods

Total energetic expenditure (TEE) was quantified using doubly labeled water in n = 40 Tsimane forager-horticulturalists …

Discrete Rule Learning In First Price Auctions, Jason Shachat, Lijia Wei

ESI Working Papers

We present a hidden Markov model of discrete strategic heterogeneity and learning in first price independent private values auctions. The model includes three latent bidding rules: constant absolute mark-up, constant percentage mark-up, and strategic best response. Rule switching probabilities depend upon a bidder's past auction outcomes and a myopic reinforcement learning dynamic. We apply this model to a new experiment that varies the number of bidders and the auction frame between forward and reverse. We find the proportion of bidders following constant absolute mark-up increases with experience, and is higher when the number of bidders is large. The primary driver …

Trust In Public Programmes And Distributive (In)Justice In Taxation, Orkhan Nadirov, Bruce Dehning

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

In the tax psychology literature, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the degree of distributive justice in taxation. This article aims to test the relationship between trust in public programmes and distributive justice in taxation at the cross-country level. The sample consists of 47 countries. Trust in public programmes and distributive justice in taxation are measured based on data collected from Wave 7 of the World Values Survey, which took place worldwide in 2017-2022. An Ordered Probit Model was utilised for the empirical analysis. This study finds that if taxpayers support preferential organisations like the police and universities, …

Endogenous Political Legitimacy: The Tudor Roots Of England’S Constitutional Governance, Avner Greif, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post-Reformation Tudor monarchs of the 16th century promoted Parliament to enhance their legitimacy, thereby changing the legislative process from the “Crown and Parliament” to the “Crown in Parliament” that still prevails in England.

Reproductive Inequality In Humans And Other Mammals, Cody T. Ross, Paul L. Hooper, Jennifer E. Smith, Adrian V. Jaeggi, Eric Alden Smith, Sergey Gavrilets, Fatema Tuz Zohora, John Ziker, Dimitris Xygalatas, Emily E. Wroblewski, Brian Wood, Bruce Winterhalder, Kai P. Willführ, Aiyana K. Willard, Kara Walker, Christopher Von Rueden, Eckart Voland, Claudia Valeggia, Bapu Vaitla, Samuel Urlacher, Mary Towner, Chun-Yi Sum, Lawrence S. Sugiyama, Karen B. Strier, Kathrine Starkweather, Daniel Major-Smith, Mary Shenk, Rebecca Sear, Edmond Seabright, Ryan Schacht, Brooke Scelza, Shane Scaggs, Jonathan Salerno, Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Daniel Redhead, Anne Pusey, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Eleanor A. Power, Anne Pisor, Jenni Pettay, Susan Perry, Abigail E. Page, Luis Pacheco-Cobos, Kathryn Oths, Seung-Yun Oh, David Nolin, Daniel Nettle, Cristina Moya, Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Karl J. Mertens, Rita A. Mcnamara, Richard Mcelreath, Siobhan Mattison, Eric Massengill, Frank Marlowe, Felicia Madimenos, Shane Macfarlan, Virpi Lummaa, Roberto Lizarralde, Ruizhe Liu, Melissa A. Liebert, Sheina Lew-Levy, Paul Leslie, Joseph Lanning, Karen Kramer, Jeremy Koster, Hillard S. Kaplan, Bayarsaikhan Jamsranjav, A. Magdalena Hurttado, Kim Hill, Barry Hewlett, Samili Helle, Thomas Headland, Janet Headland, Michael Gurven, Gianluca Grimalda, Russell Greaves, Christopher D. Golden, Irene Godoy, Mhairi Gibson, Claire El Mouden, Mark Dyble, Patricia Draper, Sean Downey, Angelina L. Demarco, Helen Elizabeth Davis, Stefani Crabtree, Carmen Cortez, Heidi Colleran, Emma Cohen, Gregory Clark, Julia Clark, Mark A. Caudell, Chelsea E. Carminito, John Bunce, Adam Boyette, Samuel Bowles, Tami Blumenfield, Bret Beheim, Stephen Beckerman, Quentin Atkinson, Coren Apicella, Nurul Alam, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

ESI Publications

To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while nevertheless falling within the mammalian range. Additionally, female reproductive skew is higher in polygynous human populations than in polygynous nonhumans mammals on average. This patterning of skew can be attributed in part to the prevalence of monogamy in humans compared to the predominance of polygyny in nonhuman mammals, to the limited …

An Economic And Regulatory Analysis Of Breast Cancer Drugs Approved By The Us Food And Drug Administration, Abdullah Althomali

Pharmaceutical Sciences (MS) Theses

Introduction

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. The pharmacological options for breast cancer include chemotherapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy, which are used for the prevention or treatment of breast cancer. This study assessed trends in FDA approvals and prices at the market entry of new drugs indicated for breast cancer in the period 1980-2022. The study also evaluated the factors associated with the price of the new breast cancer drugs at market entry.

Material and Methods

Regulatory data were collected from the FDA website, and …

Deciding For Others: Local Public Good Contributions With Intermediaries, Andrej Angelovski, Praveen Kujal, Christos Mavridis

ESI Working Papers

Given the prevalence of local public goods, whose broader use is often limited by distance and borders, we propose a potential solution to the free-riding problem by having each participant/beneficiary delegate the public good contribution decision to a non-local intermediary who neither puts in own endowment into the public good nor benefits from it. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where the incentives for the intermediary are either non-aligned (fixed) or aligned (variable) with those of the beneficiary. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of whether their compensation is aligned or not with that of the beneficiary, …

Atherosclerosis In Indigenous Tsimane: A Contemporary Perspective, Randall C. Thompson, Gregory S. Thomas, Angela D. Neuneubel, Ashna Mahadev, Benjamin Trumble, Edmond Seabright, Daniel K. Cummings, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

The Horus and other research teams have found that atherosclerosis is not uncommon in ancient people through the study of their mummified remains (Murphy et al., 2003; Allam et al., 2009, 2011; Thompson et al., 2013, 2014). However, some have postulated that traditional hunter-gatherers are in some ways healthier than modern people and that they had very little atherosclerotic disease (O’Keefe et al., 2010). The aim of this study was to evaluate the burden of atherosclerosis in a population alive today but living a traditional lifestyle similar to that experienced by past populations. This led to the Tsimane Health and …

Brain Volume, Energy Balance, And Cardiovascular Health In Two Nonindustrial South American Populations, Hillard Kaplan, Paul L. Hooper, Margaret Gatz, Wendy J. Mack, E. Meng Law, Helena C. Chui, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Christopher J. Rowan, L. Samuel Wann, Adel H. Allam, Randall C. Thompson, David E. Michalik, Guido Lombardi, Michael I. Miyamoto, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Juan Copajira Adrian, Raul Quispe Gutierrez, Bret A. Beheim, Daniel K. Cummings, Edmond Seabright, Sarah Alami, Angela R. Garcia, Kenneth Buetow, Gregory S. Thomas, Caleb E. Finch, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael D. Gurven, Andrei Irimia

ESI Publications

Little is known about brain aging or dementia in nonindustrialized environments that are similar to how humans lived throughout evolutionary history. This paper examines brain volume (BV) in middle and old age among two indigenous South American populations, the Tsimane and Moseten, whose lifestyles and environments diverge from those in high-income nations. With a sample of 1,165 individuals aged 40 to 94, we analyze population differences in cross-sectional rates of decline in BV with age. We also assess the relationships of BV with energy biomarkers and arterial disease and compare them against findings in industrialized contexts. The analyses test three …

Choice Flexibility And Long-Run Cooperation, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim, David Rojo Arjona

ESI Working Papers

Understanding how incentives and institutions help scaling up cooperation is important, especially when strategic uncertainty is considerable. Evidence suggests that this is challenging even when full cooperation is theoretically sustainable thanks to indefinite repetition. In a controlled social dilemma experiment, we show that adding partial cooperation choices to the usual binary choice environment can raise cooperation and efficiency. Under suitable incentives, partial cooperation choices enable individuals to cheaply signal their desire to cooperate, reducing strategic uncertainty. The insight is that richer choice sets can form the basis of a language meaningful for coordinating on cooperation.

Connecting Higher Education To Workplace Activities And Earnings, Hung Chau, Sarah H. Bana, Baptiste Bouvier, Morgan R. Frank

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Higher education is a source of skill acquisition for many middle- and high-skilled jobs. But what specific skills do universities impart on students to prepare them for desirable careers? In this study, we analyze a large novel corpora of over one million syllabi from over eight hundred bachelors’ granting US educational institutions to connect material taught in higher education to the detailed work activities in the US economy as reported by the US Department of Labor. First, we show how differences in taught skills both within and between college majors correspond to earnings differences of recent graduates. Further, we use …

Failed Secular Revolutions: Religious Belief, Competition, And Extremism, Jean-Paul Carvalho, Jared Rubin, Michael Sacks

ESI Working Papers

All advanced economies have undergone secular revolutions in which religious belief and institutions have been subordinated to secular forms of authority. There are, however, numerous examples of failed secular transitions. To understand these failures, we present a religious club model with endogenous entry and cultural transmission of religious beliefs. A spike in the demand for religious belief, due for example to a negative economic shock, induces a new and more extreme organization to enter the religious market and exploit the dissatisfaction of highly religious types with the religious incumbent. The eect is larger where institutional secularization is more advanced, for …

Introducing New Forms Of Digital Money: Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera

ESI Publications

Central banks may soon issue currencies that are entirely digital (CBDCs) and possibly interest bearing. A strategic analytical framework is used to investigate this innovation in the laboratory, contrasting a traditional “plain” tokens baseline to treatments with “sophisticated” interest-bearing tokens. In the experiment, this theoretically beneficial innovation precluded the emergence of a stable monetary system, reducing trade and welfare. Similar problems emerged when sophisticated tokens complemented or replaced plain tokens. This evidence underscores the advantages of combining theoretical with experimental investigation to provide insights for payments systems innovation and policy design.

Competing Social Influence In Contested Diffusion: Luther, Erasmus And The Spread Of The Protestant Reformation, Sascha O. Becker, Steven Pfaff, Yuan Hsiao, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

The spread of radical institutional change does not often result from one-sided pro-innovation influence; countervailing influence networks in support of the status quo can suppress adoption. We develop a model of multiple and competing network diffusion. To apply the contested-diffusion model to real data, we look at the contest between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the two most influential intellectuals of early 16th-century Central Europe. Whereas Luther championed a radical reform of the Western Church that broke with Rome, Erasmus opposed him, stressing the unity of the Church. In the early phase of the Reformation, these two figures utilized influence …

An Experimental Test Of Algorithmic Dismissals, Brice Corgnet

ESI Working Papers

We design a laboratory experiment in which a human or an algorithm decides which of two workers to dismiss. The algorithm automatically dismisses the least productive worker whereas human bosses have full discretion over their decisions. Using performance metrics and questionnaires, we find that fired workers react more negatively to human than to algorithmic decisions in a broad range of tasks. We show that spitefulness exacerbated this negative reaction. Our findings suggest algorithms could help tame negative reactions to dismissals.

God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This paper uses a novel lab experiment to test claims about the origins and functions of religion. We modify the standard public goods game, adding a computer-based agent that adjusts earnings in ways that might depend on players' contributions. Our treatments employ three different descriptions of the adjustment process that loosely correspond to monotheistic, atheistic, and agnostic interpretations of the computer's role. The adjustments neither mask players' contributions nor magnify their impact. Yet players in all three adjustment treatments contribute much more than those who play the standard public goods game. Players' contributions and survey responses show that adjustments induce …