Western Michigan University
SelectedWorks
University of Kentucky
University of Warwick
Cornell University
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
University of the Sunshine Coast
Connecticut College
Iowa State University
Wesleyan University
Accounting For The International Quantity-Quality Trade-Off,
2019
Iowa State University
Accounting For The International Quantity-Quality Trade-Off, Juan Carlos Cordoba, Xiying Liu, Marla Ripoll
Economics Working Papers
We investigate what accounts for the observed international differences in schooling and fertil- ity, and draw lessons for the underlying sources of cross-country income differences. For this purpose, we extend a life-cycle dynastic model to include features relevant for schooling and fertility choices. Our approach allows for country-specific human capital technologies in addi- tion to differences in TFP, public education policies, and demographic factors. We find that differences in human capital production functions, specifically in the degree of complementarity of educational investments, are key to match schooling data, and result in novel estimates of human capital stocks and TFP levels ...
Endogenous Market Formation And Monetary Trade: An Experiment,
2019
Chapman University
Endogenous Market Formation And Monetary Trade: An Experiment, Gabriele Camera, Dror Goldberg, Avi Weiss
ESI Working Papers
The theory of money assumes decentralized bilateral exchange and excludes centralized multilateral exchange. However, endogenizing the exchange process is critical for understanding the conditions that support the use of money. We develop a “travelling game” to study the emergence of decentralized and centralized exchange, theoretically and experimentally. Players located on separate islands can either trade locally, or pay a cost to trade elsewhere, so decentralized and centralized markets can both emerge in equilibrium. The former minimize trade costs through monetary exchange; the latter maximizes overall surplus through non-monetary exchange. Monetary trade emerges when coordination is problematic, while centralized trade emerges ...
Slogans Appropriate To The Legacy Of Martin Luther King Jr.,
2019
Southern Methodist University
Slogans Appropriate To The Legacy Of Martin Luther King Jr., Theodore Walker
Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events
For printing signs, banners, posters, tee shirts, and bumper stickers (and for preaching sermons) that are appropriate to the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., please consider the following slogans: ABOLISH WAR, ABOLISH POVERTY, AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, SUPPORT AN ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS, JOBS FOR ALL, GUARANTEED INCOME FOR ALL, SUPPORT UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME, and GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR - Luke 4:14-19.
Notes On The Gridlab-D Household Equivalent Thermal Parameter Model,
2019
Iowa State University
Notes On The Gridlab-D Household Equivalent Thermal Parameter Model, Leigh Tesfatsion, Swathi Battula
Economics Working Papers
GridLab-D (GLD) is an agent-based platform, developed by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, that permits users to accurately simulate the state dynamics of power distribution systems at time scales ranging from sub-seconds to years. The purpose of this study is to present, in careful comprehensive form, a complete analytical state-space control representation for a version of the GLD Household Equivalent Thermal Parameter Model as support documentation for model users. This model is a physically-based implementation of a household with multiple price-responsive and conventional appliances whose thermal dynamics are determined over successive days by resident appliance usage and external weather ...
Carrots And Sticks: Optimal Contracting With Skewness Preference And Ambiguity Aversion,
2019
Lafayette College
Carrots And Sticks: Optimal Contracting With Skewness Preference And Ambiguity Aversion, Joaquín Gómez Miñambres, Mark Schneider
ESI Working Papers
Employment contracts often have a three-tiered structure, offering a base salary, a bonus for high performance and a penalty for poor performance. None of the standard models in contract theory generate such a contract. We show that such coarse contracts are optimal in a model where the agent exhibits two of the most robust deviations from expected utility theory: skewness preference and ambiguity aversion. The analysis identifies conditions where the optimal contract is simple and both carrots and sticks are optimal. Our analysis has implications for performance evaluation, corporate compensation structure, prize-linked savings accounts, and the determinants of intrinsic motivation.
A Bias Aggregation Theorem,
2019
Chapman University
A Bias Aggregation Theorem, Mark Schneider
ESI Working Papers
In a market where some traders are rational (maximize expected utility) and others are systematically biased (deviate from expected utility due to some bias parameter, q), do equilibrium prices necessarily depend on q? In this note, focusing on the case where there is an aggregate and systematic bias in the population, we show that market prices can still be unbiased. Hence, we establish that systematically biased agents do not necessarily imply biased market prices. We show that the parametric model we use also predicts observed deviations from expected utility in laboratory and market environments.
Cooperation Among Strangers With And Without A Monetary System,
2019
University of Bologna
Cooperation Among Strangers With And Without A Monetary System, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari
ESI Working Papers
Human societies prosper when their members move beyond local exchange and cooperate with outsiders in the creation of wealth. Collaboration of this type presents formidable challenges because interaction is impersonal, reciprocity is unfeasible and trust cannot be easily established. Here we study this cooperation problem by modeling strategic interaction among strangers through an Intertemporal Exchange Game. The setup can be easily implemented in the laboratory to study a variety of cooperation-enhancing institutions. In particular, we study the role of a fiat monetary system by introducing intrinsically worthless tokens that can be offered in exchange for cooperation. The experiments show that ...
An Examination Of The Stock Market's Effect On Economic Inequality,
2019
The University of Akron
An Examination Of The Stock Market's Effect On Economic Inequality, Nicholas Golina
Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects
The economic literature on economic inequality has shown that it can negatively impact aggregate demand because it indicates a higher concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 10% as opposed to the poor and middle class, who are more likely to consume. The literature has identified many factors that can lead to increasing inequality. The stock market could be one of those factors since it can either create an upward redistributive effect towards the top 10% or redistributive effect towards the middle class. This paper tested the effect of the stock market on inequality. This study contributes to ...
Modeling Interactions Between Risk, Time, And Social Preferences,
2018
Chapman University
Modeling Interactions Between Risk, Time, And Social Preferences, Mark Schneider
ESI Working Papers
Recent studies have observed systematic interactions between risk, time, and social preferences that constitute violations of `dimensional independence' and are not explained by the leading models of decision making. This note provides a simple approach to modeling such interaction effects while predicting new ones. In particular, we present a model of rational-behavioral preferences that takes the convex combination of `behavioral' System 1 preferences and `rational' System 2 preferences. The model provides a unifying approach to analyzing risk, time, and social preferences, and predicts how these preferences are correlated with reliance on System 1 or System 2 thinking.
Money Is More Than Memory,
2018
University of Bologna
Money Is More Than Memory, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari
ESI Working Papers
Impersonal exchange is the hallmark of an advanced society and money is one key institution that supports it. Economic theory regards money as a crude arrangement for monitoring counterparts’ past conduct. If so, then a public record of past actions—or memory—should supersede the function performed by money. This intriguing theoretical postulate remains untested. In an experiment, we show that the suggested functional equivalence between money and memory does not translate into an empirical equivalence: money removed the incentives to free ride, while memory did not. Monetary systems performed a richer set of functions than just revealing past behaviors.
A Dual System Model Of Risk And Time Preferences,
2018
Chapman University
A Dual System Model Of Risk And Time Preferences, Mark Schneider
ESI Working Papers
Discounted Expected Utility theory has been a workhorse in economic analysis for over half a century. However, it cannot explain empirical violations of 'dimensional independence' demonstrating that risk interacts with time preference and time interacts with risk preference, nor does it explain present bias or magnitude-dependence in risk and time preferences, or correlations between risk preference, time preference, and cognitive reflection. We demonstrate that these and other anomalies are explained by a dual system model of risk and time preferences that unless models of a rational economic agent, models based on prospect theory, and dual process models of decision making.
Using Response Times To Measure Ability On A Cognitive Task,
2018
Chapman University
Using Response Times To Measure Ability On A Cognitive Task, Aleksandr Alekseev
ESI Working Papers
I show how using response times as a proxy for effort coupled with an explicit process-based model can address a long-standing issue of how to separate the effect of cognitive ability on performance from the effect of motivation. My method is based on a dynamic stochastic model of optimal effort choice in which ability and motivation are the structural parameters. I show how to estimate these parameters from the data on outcomes and response times in a cognitive task. In a laboratory experiment, I find that performance on a Digit-Symbol test is a noisy and biased measure of cognitive ability ...
Prophylactic Merger Policy,
2018
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Prophylactic Merger Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law
An important purpose of the antitrust merger law is to arrest certain anticompetitive practices or outcomes in their “incipiency.” Many Clayton Act decisions involving both mergers and other practices had recognized the idea as early as the 1920s. In Brown Shoe the Supreme Court doubled down on the idea, attributing to Congress a concern about a “rising tide of economic concentration” that must be halted “at its outset and before it gathered momentum.” The Supreme Court did not explain why an incipiency test was needed to address this particular problem. Once structural thresholds for identifying problematic mergers are identified there ...
Free Trade And Corporate Social Responsibility: Ethical Dilemmas In Global Economic Development,
2018
California State University, Monterey Bay
Free Trade And Corporate Social Responsibility: Ethical Dilemmas In Global Economic Development, Sarah Papion
Capstone Projects and Master's Theses
Through the lens of the free-trade-optimist, it is black and white: corporations bring jobs, and jobs equal a happy and healthy economy. A major oversight in this neoliberal Utopian ideology is that corporations are not in the business of building communities, nor do they have an interest in keeping their operations stationary enough to allow economic growth to occur over a span of years. Corporations abandon communities as quickly as they arrive to find their next cheap labor hub. Quite contradictory to the original purpose of free trade, economic growth in Free Trade Zones is not long term or secure ...
Semiparametric Maximum Likelihood Inference For Survey Sampling Problems With Nonignorable Nonresponses And Callbacks,
2018
Singapore Management University
Semiparametric Maximum Likelihood Inference For Survey Sampling Problems With Nonignorable Nonresponses And Callbacks, Zhong Guan, Denis H. Y. Leung, Jing Qin
Research Collection School Of Economics
We model the nonresponse probabilities as logistic functions ofthe outcome variable and other covariates in the survey sampling study withcallback. The identification aspect of this callback model is investigated. Semiparametricmaximum likelihood estimators of the parameters in the responseprobabilities are proposed and studied. As a result, an efficient estimator ofthe mean of the outcome variable is constructed using the estimated responseprobabilities. Moreover, if a regression model for conditional mean of the outcomevariable given some covariate is available, then we can obtain an evenmore efficient estimate of the mean of the outcome variable by fitting the regressionmodel using an adjusted least squares ...
Risk And Return Comparisons Of Pre-Harvest Marketing Strategies,
2018
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Risk And Return Comparisons Of Pre-Harvest Marketing Strategies, John Leander Turner V
Theses and Dissertations
This paper analyzes risk and returns associated with pre-harvest corn grain marketing strategies for the state of Arkansas. Farming is characterized by a volatile environment. Numerous risks are taken by producers in order to provide commodities that are bought and sold by various parties in the supply chain. Price, yield, and production costs vary daily and can have large variation between years. Risk and Return Comparisons of Pre-harvest Marketing Strategies examines the effectiveness of using pre-harvest marketing strategies to enhance returns and to mitigate inherent price risk in the Memphis cash corn market. Thirteen strategies are compared to the October ...
Slow-Fast Analysis Of A Multi-Group Asset Flow Model With Implications For The Dynamics Of Wealth,
2018
Chapman University
Slow-Fast Analysis Of A Multi-Group Asset Flow Model With Implications For The Dynamics Of Wealth, Mark Desantis, David Swigon
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The multi-group asset flow model is a nonlinear dynamical system originally developed as a tool for understanding the behavioral foundations of market phenomena such as flash crashes and price bubbles. In this paper we use a modification of this model to analyze the dynamics of a single-asset market in situations when the trading rates of investors (i.e., their desire to exchange stock for cash) are prescribed ahead of time and independent of the state of the market. Under the assumption of fast trading compared to the time-rate of change in the prescribed trading rates we decompose the dynamics of ...
On Booms That Never Bust: Ambiguity In Experimental Asset Markets With Bubbles,
2018
Chapman University
On Booms That Never Bust: Ambiguity In Experimental Asset Markets With Bubbles, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán-González, Praveen Kujal
ESI Working Papers
We study the effect of ambiguity on the formation of bubbles and on the occurrence of crashes in experimental asset markets à la Smith, Suchanek, and Williams (1988). We extend their framework to an environment where the fundamental value of the asset is ambiguous. We show that, when the fundamental value is ambiguous, asset prices tend to be lower than when it is risky although bubbles form in both the ambiguous and the risky environments. Additionally, bubbles do not crash in the ambiguous case whereas they do so in the risky one. These findings regarding depressed prices and the absence ...
Conditional Independence In A Binary Choice Experiment,
2018
Chapman University
Conditional Independence In A Binary Choice Experiment, Nathaniel Wilcox
ESI Working Papers
Experimental and behavioral economists, as well as psychologists, commonly assume conditional independence of choices when constructing likelihood functions for structural estimation. I test this assumption using data from a new experiment designed for this purpose. Within the limits of the experiment’s identifying restriction and designed power to detect deviations from conditional independence, conditional independence is not rejected. In naturally occurring data, concerns about violations of conditional independence are certainly proper and well-taken (for well-known reasons). However, when an experimenter employs contemporary state-of-the-art experimental mechanisms and designs, the current evidence suggests that conditional independence is an acceptable assumption for analyzing ...
Selection In The Lab: A Network Approach,
2018
Chapman University
Selection In The Lab: A Network Approach, Aleksandr Alekseev, Mikhail Freer
ESI Working Papers
We study the selection problem in economic experiments by focusing on its dynamic and network aspects. We develop a dynamic network model of student participation in a subject pool, which assumes that students' participation is driven by the two channels: the direct channel of recruitment and the indirect channel of student interaction. Using rich recruitment data from a large public university, we find that the patterns of participation and biases are consistent with the model. We also find evidence of both short- and long-run selection biases between males and females, as well as between cohorts of students. Males tend to ...
