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2015

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Institution
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Articles 19201 - 19230 of 19695

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

What Lies At The Core Of Core Inflation? An Empirical Analysis To Identify The Determinants Of Core Inflation In Pakistan, Mehwish Ghulam Ali, Muhammad Ather Elahi, Qazi Masood Ahmed Jan 2015

What Lies At The Core Of Core Inflation? An Empirical Analysis To Identify The Determinants Of Core Inflation In Pakistan, Mehwish Ghulam Ali, Muhammad Ather Elahi, Qazi Masood Ahmed

Business Review

Core inflation leads to erosion of purchasing power and distorts income distribution in favor of the rich and the creditors. Further, it aggravates poverty due to its regressive effect. By targeting core inflation, the Central Bank attempts to reduce poverty and improve income distribution. The Central Bank does and should target core inflation for the aforementioned objectives, hence it becomes necessary to identify if factors apart from monetary policy affect core inflation. This paper aims to identify the determinants of core inflation in Pakistan. This study is motivated by the lack of work done in identifying the determinants of core …

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Asset Price Bubbles With Specific Focus On Stock Prices In Pakistan, Nawaz Ahmad, Rizwan Raheem Ahmed, Yaseen Ahmed Meenai Jan 2015

Asset Price Bubbles With Specific Focus On Stock Prices In Pakistan, Nawaz Ahmad, Rizwan Raheem Ahmed, Yaseen Ahmed Meenai

Business Review

This research paper is an attempt to investigate Asset Price Bubbles (APB) with reference to Pakistan stock market. The analysis of time series graph shows a linear trend between Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Money Supply Index (M2I) whereas a nonlinear trend with stock prices. Moreover, the graph also shows an unequal spread with the stock prices, which indicate Heteroskedasticity. Then, descriptive statistics test shows high Standard Deviations for stock prices compared with CPI and M2I, which indicate a higher volatility in stock prices. Finally, the hypothesis test for equality of variance concluded the presence of Asset Price Bubbles by …

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Impact Of Board Characteristics And Audit Committee On Financial Performance: A Study Of Manufacturing Sector Of Pakistan, Arfan Ali, Saad Bin Nasir Jan 2015

Impact Of Board Characteristics And Audit Committee On Financial Performance: A Study Of Manufacturing Sector Of Pakistan, Arfan Ali, Saad Bin Nasir

Business Review

The research will examine the role of corporate governance (CG) practices on firm’s financial performance. Population of this research will be manufacture sector of Pakistan. For the purposes of measurement of impact of corporate governance practices such as board size, board independence, CEO/chairman duality and audit committee will take as independent variables and for the measurement of firm’s performance return on assets and return on equity will take as dependent variables. Panel data regression model will used to estimate the impact of CG on firm performance.

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Book Review Of: Why Nations Fail, Ashutosh Mani Dixit Jan 2015

Book Review Of: Why Nations Fail, Ashutosh Mani Dixit

Business Review

The purpose of this article is to assess the contribution of Why Nations Fail about its forefront claim that institution is exclusive determinant of nation’s economic outcome. This paper will examine its findings and put forward arguments and claims of prominent studies about economic development. The paper has been organized in two more section. Immediate section presents chapter wise summary of the book highlighting strengths and key outcomes. While the third section, which is the purpose of the article, offers a critique, than sums up in final section providing some concluding comments.

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Sharing As Risk Pooling In A Social Dilemma Experiment, Todd L. Cherry, E. Lance Howe, James J. Murphy Jan 2015

Sharing As Risk Pooling In A Social Dilemma Experiment, Todd L. Cherry, E. Lance Howe, James J. Murphy

ESI Working Papers

In rural economies with missing or incomplete markets, idiosyncratic risk is frequently pooled through informal networks. Idiosyncratic shocks, however, are not limited to private goods but can also restrict an individual from partaking in or benefiting from a collective activity. In these situations, a group must decide whether to provide insurance to the affected member. In this paper, we describe results of a laboratory experiment designed to test whether a simple sharing institution can sustain risk pooling in a social dilemma with idiosyncratic risk. We test whether risk can be pooled without a commitment device and, separately, whether effective risk …

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Revisiting The Tradeoff Between Risk And Incentives: The Shocking Effect Of Random Shocks, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez Jan 2015

Revisiting The Tradeoff Between Risk And Incentives: The Shocking Effect Of Random Shocks, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez

ESI Working Papers

Despite its central role in the theory of incentives, empirical evidence of a tradeoff between risk and incentives remains scarce. We reexamine this empirical puzzle in a controlled laboratory environment so as to isolate possible confounding factors encountered in the field. In line with the principal-agent model, we find that principals increase fixed pay while lowering performance pay when the relationship between effort and output is noisier. Unexpectedly, agents produce substantially more in the noisy environment than in the baseline despite lesser pay for performance. We show that this result can be accounted for by introducing agents’ loss aversion in …

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The Cognitive Basis Of Social Behavior: Cognitive Reflection Overrides Antisocial But Not Always Prosocial Motives, Brice Corgnet, Antonio M. Espín, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez Jan 2015

The Cognitive Basis Of Social Behavior: Cognitive Reflection Overrides Antisocial But Not Always Prosocial Motives, Brice Corgnet, Antonio M. Espín, Roberto Hérnan-Gonzalez

ESI Working Papers

Even though human social behavior has received considerable scientific attention in the last decades, its cognitive underpinnings are still poorly understood. Applying a dual-process framework to the study of social preferences, we show in two studies that individuals with a more reflective/deliberative cognitive style, as measured by scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), are more likely to make choices consistent with “mild” altruism in simple non-strategic decisions. Such choices increase social welfare by increasing the other person’s payoff at very low or no cost for the individual. The choices of less reflective individuals (i.e. those who rely more heavily …

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Dynamic Directed Search, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim Jan 2015

Dynamic Directed Search, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim

ESI Working Papers

The directed search model (Peters, 1984) is static; its dynamic extensions typically restrict strategies, often assuming price or match commitments. We lift such restrictions to study equilibrium when search can be directed over time, without constraints and at no cost. In equilibrium trade frictions arise endogenously, and price commitments, if they do exist, are self-enforcing. In contrast to the typical model, there exists a continuum of equilibria that exhibit trade frictions. These equilibria support any price above the static price, including monopoly pricing in arbitrarily large markets. Dispersion in posted prices can naturally arise as temporary or permanent phenomenon despite …

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Generalizations Of The General Lotto And Colonel Blotto Games, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson Jan 2015

Generalizations Of The General Lotto And Colonel Blotto Games, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson

ESI Working Papers

In this paper, we generalize the General Lotto game (budget constraints satisfied in expectation) and the Colonel Blotto game (budget constraints hold with probability one) to allow for battlefield valuations that are heterogeneous across battlefields and asymmetric across players, and for the players to have asymmetric resource constraints. We completely characterize Nash equilibrium in the generalized version of the General Lotto game and then show how this characterization can be applied to identify equilibria in the Colonel Blotto version of the game. In both games, we find that there exist sets of non-pathological parameter configurations of positive Lebesgue measure with …

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The Impact Of Social Information On The Voluntary Provision Of Public Goods: A Replication Study, James J. Murphy, Nomin Batmunkh, Ben Nilson, Samantha Ray Jan 2015

The Impact Of Social Information On The Voluntary Provision Of Public Goods: A Replication Study, James J. Murphy, Nomin Batmunkh, Ben Nilson, Samantha Ray

ESI Working Papers

Shang and Croson (2009) found that providing information about the donation decisions of others can have a positive impact on individual donations to public radio. In this study, we attempted to replicate their results, however, we found no evidence of that social comparisons affected donation decisions. Most of our donors were renewing members, a group which Shang and Croson also found were not influenced by social information.

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On The Merit Of Equal Pay: When Influence Activities Interact With Incentive Setting, Brice Corgnet, Ludivine Martin, Peguy Ndodjang, Angela Sutan Jan 2015

On The Merit Of Equal Pay: When Influence Activities Interact With Incentive Setting, Brice Corgnet, Ludivine Martin, Peguy Ndodjang, Angela Sutan

ESI Working Papers

Influence costs models predict that organizations should limit managerial discretion to deter organizational members from engaging in wasteful politicking activities. We test this conjecture in a controlled, yet realistic, work environment in which we allow employees to influence managers’ decisions about rewards. We find that influence activities are pervasive and significantly lower organizational performance. Organizational performance suffers because principals offer weaker incentives when influence activities are allowed than when they are not. Importantly, we show that equal pay incentive schemes perform better when influence activities are available than when they are not. Our results thus support the idea that prevalent …

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When Income Depends On Performance And Luck: The Effects Of Culture And Information On Giving, Pedro Rey-Biel, Roman M. Sheremeta, Neslihan Uler Jan 2015

When Income Depends On Performance And Luck: The Effects Of Culture And Information On Giving, Pedro Rey-Biel, Roman M. Sheremeta, Neslihan Uler

ESI Working Papers

We study how giving depends on income and luck, and how culture and information about the determinants of others’ income affect this relationship. Our data come from an experiment conducted in two countries, the US and Spain, which have different beliefs about how income inequality arises. We find no cross-cultural differences in giving when individuals are informed about the determinants of income, but when uninformed, Americans give less than Spanish. Culture and information not only affect individual giving, but also the determinants of giving and the beliefs about how income inequality arises. Beliefs partially moderate cross-cultural differences in giving.

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Competition Between And Within Universities: Theoretical And Experimental Investigation Of Group Identity And The Desire To Win, Zhuoqiong Charlie Chen, David Ong, Roman M. Sheremeta Jan 2015

Competition Between And Within Universities: Theoretical And Experimental Investigation Of Group Identity And The Desire To Win, Zhuoqiong Charlie Chen, David Ong, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

We study how salient group identity, created through competition between students from different universities, as well as differences in the value of winning impact competitive behavior. Our experiment employs a simple all-pay auction within and between two university subject pools. We find that when competing against their peers, students within the lower tier university bid more aggressively than students within the top-tier university. Also, students from the lower tier university, in particular women, bid more aggressively when competing against students from the top-tier university. These findings, interpreted through a theoretical model incorporating both group identity and differential value of winning, …

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Revisiting Information Aggregation In Asset Markets: Reflective Learning & Market Efficiency, Brice Corgnet, Mark Desantis, David Porter Jan 2015

Revisiting Information Aggregation In Asset Markets: Reflective Learning & Market Efficiency, Brice Corgnet, Mark Desantis, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

The ability of markets to aggregate disperse information leading to prices that reflect the fundamental value of an asset is key to assessing the often-debated efficiency of markets. We study information aggregation in the experimental environment originally created by Plott and Sunder (1988). Contrary to the current belief, we find that markets do not aggregate information. The model that best describes our data, as well as data on information aggregation subsequent to Plott and Sunder (1988), is prior information (Lintner, 1969). That is, traders use their private information but fail to use market prices to infer other traders’ information. We …

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An Experiment On Retail Payments Systems, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari, Stefania Bortolotti Jan 2015

An Experiment On Retail Payments Systems, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari, Stefania Bortolotti

ESI Working Papers

We develop a novel theoretical and experimental framework to study adoption and use of cash versus electronic payments in retail transactions. The design allows us to assess the behavioral impact of sellers’ service fees and buyers’ rewards from using electronic payments. In the experiment, buyers and sellers faced a coordination problem, independently choosing a payment method before trading. Sellers readily adopted electronic payments but buyers did not. Eliminating service fees or introducing rewards significantly increased adoption and use of electronic payments. Buyers’ economic incentives played a pivotal role in the diffusion of electronic payments but cannot fully explain their adoption …

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The Effects Of Make And Take Fees In Experimental Markets, Vince Bourke, David Porter Jan 2015

The Effects Of Make And Take Fees In Experimental Markets, Vince Bourke, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

We conduct a series of experiments to examine the effects of the make and take fee structure currently used by equity exchanges in the U.S. We examine the effects of these fees on measures of market quality (allocative efficiency, trading volume, book depth, and the bid-ask spread). With the exception of increased book depth, we document no significant effects of make and take fees relative to a baseline case in which trading fees are assessed on both sides of a transaction.

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Asymmetric And Endogenous Within-Group Communication In Competitive Coordination Games, Timothy N. Cason, Roman Sheremeta, Jingjing Zhang Jan 2015

Asymmetric And Endogenous Within-Group Communication In Competitive Coordination Games, Timothy N. Cason, Roman Sheremeta, Jingjing Zhang

ESI Working Papers

Within-group communication in competitive coordination games has been shown to increase competition between groups and lower efficiency. This study further explores potentially harmful effects of communication, by addressing the questions of (i) asymmetric communication and (ii) the endogenous emergence of communication. Our theoretical analysis provides testable hypotheses regarding the effect of communication on competitive behavior and efficiency. We test these predictions using a laboratory experiment. The experiment shows that although asymmetric communication is not as harmful as symmetric communication, it leads to more aggressive competition and lower efficiency relative to the case when neither group can communicate. Moreover, groups vote …

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Selective Recognition: How To Recognize Donors To Increase Charitable Giving, Anya Samek, Roman Sheremeta Jan 2015

Selective Recognition: How To Recognize Donors To Increase Charitable Giving, Anya Samek, Roman Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Recognizing donors by revealing their identities is important for increasing charitable giving. We conducted a field experiment to examine how different recognition methods impact giving, and found that all forms of recognition that we examined had a positive impact on increasing donations, whereby recognizing only highest donors (positive recognition) and recognizing only lowest donors (negative recognition) had the most pronounced effect. We argue that selective recognition (both positive and negative) creates tournament-like incentives. Recognizing the highest donors activates the desire to seek a positive prize of prestige, thus increasing the proportion of donors who contribute large amounts. Recognizing the lowest …

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Status And The Demand For Visible Goods: Experimental Evidence On Conspicuous Consumption, David Clingingsmith, Roman M. Sheremeta Jan 2015

Status And The Demand For Visible Goods: Experimental Evidence On Conspicuous Consumption, David Clingingsmith, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Some economists argue that consumption of publicly visible goods is driven by social status. Making a causal inference about this claim is difficult with observational data. We conduct an experiment in which we vary both whether a purchase of a physical product is publicly visible or kept private and whether the income used for purchase is linked to social status or randomly assigned. Making consumption choices visible leads to a large increase in demand when income is linked to status, but not otherwise. We investigate the characteristics that mediate this effect and estimate its impact on welfare.

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Good Things Come To Those Who (Peacefully) Wait: Toward A Theory Of Patience, Caroline R. Lavelock Jan 2015

Good Things Come To Those Who (Peacefully) Wait: Toward A Theory Of Patience, Caroline R. Lavelock

Theses and Dissertations

Patience is among the most common colloquially known virtues, and yet its empirical attention is among the smallest of all virtues. In this dissertation, I focused on the conscientiousness-based virtue of patience in terms of theory and intervention. In my first study, I examined the effects of a preliminary intervention workbook designed to promote patience. In my second study, I examined a number of correlates informed by patience literature as potential antecedents, mechanisms, and outcomes of patience and, using structural equation modeling, present a theory of patience. Finally, in my third study, I beta tested the patience intervention workbook along …

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Impact Of E-Cigarettes On Physician Recommendations Of Tobacco Use Cessation Pharmacotherapy, Omar El Shahawy Jan 2015

Impact Of E-Cigarettes On Physician Recommendations Of Tobacco Use Cessation Pharmacotherapy, Omar El Shahawy

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: E-cigarettes have been marketed as smoking cessation aids and harm reduction strategies. Prior regional surveys found that physicians are recommending them to patients despite the lack of evidence supporting these industry claims. Yet, little is known about physicians’ beliefs regarding e-cigarettes and whether these beliefs are associated with them recommending e-cigarette use in clinical practice. Methods: This three-manuscript dissertation used a mixed-methods approach including both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The aims were to: (1) Uncover the factors associated with primary care physicians’ (PCPs) decisions to recommend e-cigarettes to their patients for tobacco use cessation; (2) Estimate the prevalence …

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Motivation, Mindfulness, And Metabolic Factors Predicting Adolescent Adherence And Attrition In A Multidisciplinary Weight Management Program, Stephen Trapp Jan 2015

Motivation, Mindfulness, And Metabolic Factors Predicting Adolescent Adherence And Attrition In A Multidisciplinary Weight Management Program, Stephen Trapp

Theses and Dissertations

Estimated rates of obesity are notably high in the United States and pose a significant public health concern. A number of deleterious physical and psychosocial conditions are associated with pediatric obesity and the cost of its treatment is considerable. Accordingly, the number of weight management treatments has increased to meet this growing public health challenge. Unfortunately, insufficient participation in weight management treatment, namely low adherence and high attrition, often impede the effectiveness of these programs. Although the barriers associated with inadequate adherence and elevated rates of attrition are documented, there is a dearth of research on the predictors of the …

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Stakeholder Views On Behavioral Health Care In The Pediatric Primary Care Setting: A Qualitative Approach Towards Integration Of Care, Alexis Quinoy Jan 2015

Stakeholder Views On Behavioral Health Care In The Pediatric Primary Care Setting: A Qualitative Approach Towards Integration Of Care, Alexis Quinoy

Theses and Dissertations

The pediatric primary care setting has been discussed as playing a central role for the identification and treatment of behavioral and mental health disorders in youth. Although this setting is in a unique position to provide these services, there are many barriers to the integration of mental health care and pediatric primary care. The aim of this study is to examine perspectives of multiple stakeholders (i.e., patient, parent, nurse, resident, faculty, clinic director) in a pediatric primary care setting to explore barriers, behavioral and mental health needs, and facilitators to the integration and provision of mental health care for children …

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Looking “Upstream”: The Role Of Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction In Service Members’ Future Orientation, Bradley J. Antonides Jan 2015

Looking “Upstream”: The Role Of Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction In Service Members’ Future Orientation, Bradley J. Antonides

Theses and Dissertations

OBJECTIVE: This study explores psychological experiences that may influence service members’ self-concepts and future orientations. As stable, optimistic, future orientations have been associated with resilience to psychological distress and suicidality (Johnson, et al., 2011), it is worthwhile to explore how service members’ attitudes toward the future might be shaped in the context of intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences. METHOD: Data were collected from service members of the Virginia National Guard (N = 192) and included a Transportation unit, an Engineer unit, an Infantry unit and a group with no specific unit affiliation or substantive military experience. The study is a …

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Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt Jan 2015

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

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An Examination Of Weight, Weight Bias, And Health Care Utilization And Attitudes Among Emerging Adults, Jessica M. Mccauley Jan 2015

An Examination Of Weight, Weight Bias, And Health Care Utilization And Attitudes Among Emerging Adults, Jessica M. Mccauley

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with overweight/obesity have been found to exhibit more negative attitudes toward health care and disproportionate rates of health care delay and avoidance, compared to their healthy weight peers. The present study sought to examine potential mechanisms through which weight status influences health care utilization and attitudes. Six hundred and thirty-three students completed a questionnaire measuring weight status, perceived weight bias, patient-provider relationship, and health care utilization and attitudes. Although the majority of the paths in the proposed theoretical mediation model were supported by the present findings, there was no support for the anticipated link between perceived weight bias and …

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Nourish-C: Implementing A Family Based Weight Loss Intervention In A Church Community, Jacqueline Woods Jan 2015

Nourish-C: Implementing A Family Based Weight Loss Intervention In A Church Community, Jacqueline Woods

Theses and Dissertations

Increasing rates of obesity across all race, ethnic, gender, and age groups over the past thirty years have generated significant public health concern. Black children face disproportionately higher risk for overweight and obesity compared with their White peers. Substantial evidence suggests that parent involvement improves pediatric obesity treatment outcomes. Moreover, churches are feasible and culturally congruent places to host health promotion interventions within the Black community. The current study examined the feasibility of disseminating an existing pediatric obesity intervention, NOURISH, in Black church communities. Twenty-five families participated in baseline assessment of the NOURISH-C. Five churches hosted the intervention and eight …

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Variations In Specialized Policing Response Models As A Function Of Community Characteristics- A Survey Of Crisis Intervention Team Coordinators, Anna M. Young Jan 2015

Variations In Specialized Policing Response Models As A Function Of Community Characteristics- A Survey Of Crisis Intervention Team Coordinators, Anna M. Young

Theses and Dissertations

Although a specific program called the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) has been generally recognized as the best-practice model that addresses the needs of the police officers in responding to mental health calls, many jurisdictions across the country have not only adopted the full CIT model but also have taken the liberty of adding new components and/or removing components of the original model in order to create a unique program that fits the needs of their individual community. The issue of differentiated adaptations of the original CIT model has created a controversy around best practice in the area of police response …

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Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg Jan 2015

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

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Using Structural Equation Modeling To Understand The Role Of The Family In Pediatric Asthma Contexts, Nour Al Ghriwati Jan 2015

Using Structural Equation Modeling To Understand The Role Of The Family In Pediatric Asthma Contexts, Nour Al Ghriwati

Theses and Dissertations

Family factors have long been associated with the psychosocial adjustment of children with chronic illnesses, such as asthma (Minuchin, 1975; Rapee, 1997). Research indicates that negative family factors may also contribute to child disease severity, via bio-behavioral mechanisms of effect (Wood et al., 2006); however, these pathways have yet to be examined with a comprehensive focus on more positive family factors. This study sought to examine whether factors such as family cohesion, problem solving abilities, and communication influence asthma symptom severity in children via their effects on child depression and anxiety symptoms. Using structural equation modeling, we identified significant indirect …

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