Economics Commons^™

Natural Selection Of Immune And Metabolic Genes Associated With Health In Two Lowland Bolivian Populations, Amanda J. Lea, Angela Garcia, Jesusa Arevalo, Julien F. Ayroles, Kenneth Buetow, Steve W. Cole, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Maguin Gutierrez, Heather M. Highland, Paul L. Hooper, Anne Justice, Thomas Kraft, Kari E. North, Jonathan Stieglitz, Hillard Kaplan, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

A growing body of work has addressed human adaptations to diverse environments using genomic data, but few studies have connected putatively selected alleles to phenotypes, much less among underrepresented populations such as Amerindians. Studies of natural selection and genotype–phenotype relationships in underrepresented populations hold potential to uncover previously undescribed loci underlying evolutionarily and biomedically relevant traits. Here, we worked with the Tsimane and the Moseten, two Amerindian populations inhabiting the Bolivian lowlands. We focused most intensively on the Tsimane, because long-term anthropological work with this group has shown that they have a high burden of both macro and microparasites, as …

Unfair Commercial Practices In A Pit Market: Evidence From An Artefactual Field Experiment, Francesco Bogliacino, Rafael Charris, Cristiano Codagnone, Frans Folkvord, Felipe Montealegre, Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva

ESI Publications

Commercial practices such as drip pricing, reference pricing and best-price guarantee can be used to set higher prices and mislead consumers, but protective measures can restore efficiency. In a placebo-controlled market experiment, we examined a treatment allowing for the use and misuse of commercial practices. Three additional treatments tested the effects of formal sanctions, informal sanctions and a regret nudge. We found that commercial practices led to higher prices, cheating was systematic and regret nudging was ineffective. Furthermore, formal and informal sanctions reduced both the likelihood of using commercial practices and the likelihood of cheating, leading to welfare increases.

Cultural Transmission Vectors Of Essential Knowledge And Skills Among Tsimane Forager-Farmers, Eric Schniter, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Humans transmit cultural information to others in a variety of ways that can affect productivity, cultural success, and ultimately fitness. Not all potential transmitters are expected to be equally preferred by learners or equally willing to influence their culture acquisition. Across socioeconomic opportunities and ages in the human life course, costs and benefits to both learners and potential transmitters are expected to vary, affecting rates of culture transmission from different vectors. Here we examine reported patterns of culture transmission contributing to 92 essential skills among a sample of 421 Tsimane forager-farmers native to Bolivia. Consistent with the expectation that the …

The Primacy Of Property; Or, The Subordination Of Property Rights, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Publications

A property right, the standard view maintains, is a proper subset of the most complete and comprehensive set of incidents for full ownership of a thing. The subsidiary assumption is that the pieces that are property rights compose the whole that is ownership or property, i.e., that property rights explain property. In reversing the standard view I argue that (1) a custom of intelligent and meaningful human action explains property and that (2) as a custom, property is a historical process of selecting actions conditional on the context. My task is to explain how a physical world of human bodies …

When Do Security Markets Aggregate Dispersed Information?, Brice Corgnet, Cary Deck, Mark Desantis, Kyle Hampton, Erik O. Kimbrough

ESI Publications

We attempt to replicate a seminal paper that offered support for the rational expectations hypothesis and reported evidence that markets with certain features aggregate dispersed information. The original results are based on only a few observations, and our attempt to replicate the key findings with an appropriately powered experiment largely fails. The resulting poststudy probability that market performance is better described by rational expectations than the prior information (Walrasian) model under the conditions specified in the original paper is very low. As a result of our failure to replicate, we investigate an alternate set of market features that combines aspects …

Social Norms And Dishonesty Across Societies, Diego Aycinena, Lucas Rentschler, Benjamin Beranek, Jonathan F. Schulz

ESI Publications

Social norms have long been recognized as an important factor in curtailing antisocial behavior, and stricter prosocial norms are commonly associated with increased prosocial behavior. In this study, we provide evidence that very strict prosocial norms can have a perverse negative relationship with prosocial behavior. In laboratory experiments conducted in 10 countries across 5 continents, we measured the level of honest behavior and elicited injunctive norms of honesty. We find that individuals who hold very strict norms (i.e., those who perceive a small lie to be as socially unacceptable as a large lie) are more likely to lie to the …

A Universally Translatable Explication Of Adam Smith's Famous Proposition On "The Extent Of The Market", Bart J. Wilson, Gian Marco Farese

ESI Publications

Following Adam Smith’s line of argument, we examine the semantics of four economic principles in Chapter III of the Wealth of Nations that compose his famous proposition “that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market.” We apply the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework in linguistics to produce a series of explications that are clear and plain, cross-translatable into any language, intelligible to twenty-first-century readers, and faithfully close to the original text. Our paper explicates Smith’s logical argument in Chapter III and demonstrates how his ideas can be shared among speakers with different linguacultural backgrounds in line …

Preventing (Panic) Bank Runs, Hubert János Kiss, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, Alfonso Rosa-Garcia

ESI Publications

We study experimentally an instrument to prevent bank runs in healthy banks. In particular, we extend the basic bank-run game, where depositors choose between withdrawing or keeping their money deposited, with a third option, the possibility to relocate funds to a priority account that is less profitable, but which guarantees a payoff even in a bank run. Theoretically, the use of this instrument dominates withdrawals for depositors without liquidity needs, and given this fact, depositors should optimally keep their deposits in the bank, so no bank run shall happen. In our experiment, we find evidence that the mechanism reduces not …

Review Of Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism, Jared Rubin

ESI Publications

A review of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Benjamin M. Friedman

Prevalence Of Dementia And Mild Cognitive Impairment In Indigenous Bolivian Forager-Horticulturalists, Margaret Gatz, Wendy J. Mack, Helena C. Chui, E. Meng Law, Giuseppe Barisano, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Raul Quispe Gutierrez, Juan Copajira Adrian, Jesus Bani Cuata, Amy R. Borenstein, Ellen E. Waters, Andrei Irimia, Christopher J. Rowan, L. Samuel Wann, Adel H. Allam, Randall C. Thompson, Michael I. Miyamoto, David E. Michalik, Daniel K. Cummings, Edmond Seabright, Angela R. Garcia, Paul L. Hooper, Thomas S. Kraft, Caleb E. Finch, Gregory S. Thomas, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael D. Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Introduction

We evaluated the prevalence of dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in indigenous Tsimane and Moseten, who lead a subsistence lifestyle.

Methods

Participants from population-based samples ≥ 60 years of age (n = 623) were assessed using adapted versions of the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination, informant interview, longitudinal cognitive testing and brain computed tomography (CT) scans.

Results

Tsimane exhibited five cases of dementia (among n = 435; crude prevalence = 1.2%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.4, 2.7); Moseten exhibited one case (among n = 169; crude prevalence = 0.6%, 95% CI: 0.0, 3.2), all age ≥ 80 years. …

Laboratory Experiments Of Land Assembly Without Eminent Domain, Mark Desantis, Matthew W. Mccarter, Abel Winn

ESI Publications

The authors use laboratory experiments to test two self-assessment tax mechanisms for facilitating land assembly. One mechanism is incentive compatible with a complex tax function, while the other uses a flat tax rate to mitigate implementation concerns. Sellers publicly declare a price for their land. Overstating its true value is penalized by using the declared price to assess a property tax; understating its value is penalized by allowing developers to buy the property at the declared price. The authors find that both mechanisms increase the rate of land assembly and gains from trade relative to a control in which sellers’ …

Human Milk Oligosaccharide Compositions Illustrate Global Variations In Early Nutrition, Anita Vinjamuri, Jasmine C. C. Davis, Sarah M. Totten, Lauren D. Wu, Laura D. Klein, Melanie Martin, Ea Quinn, Brooke Scelza, Alicia Breakey, Michael Gurven, Grazyna Jasienska, Hillard Kaplan, Claudia Valeggia, Katie Hinde, Jennifer T. Smilowitz, Robin M. Bernstein, Angela M. Zivkovic, Michael J. Barratt, Jeffrey I. Gordon, Mark A. Underwood, David A. Mills, J. Bruce German, Carlito B. Lebrilla

ESI Publications

Background

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are an abundant class of compounds found in human milk and have been linked to the development of the infant, and specifically the brain, immune system, and gut microbiome.

Objectives

Advanced analytical methods were used to obtain relative quantitation of many structures in approximately 2000 samples from over 1000 mothers in urban, semirural, and rural sites across geographically diverse countries.

Methods

LC-MS−based analytical methods were used to profile the compounds with broad structural coverage and quantitative information. The profiles revealed their structural heterogeneity and their potential biological roles. Comparisons of HMO compositions were made between …