Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Housing Markets Since Shapley And Scarf, Mustafa Oguz Afacan, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

Shapley and Scarf (1974) appeared in the first issue of the Journal of Mathematical Economics, and is one of the journal’s most impactful publications. As we approach the remarkable milestone of the journal’s 50th anniversary (1974–2024), this article serves as a commemorative exploration of Shapley and Scarf (1974) and the extensive body of literature that follows it.

Will The Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 Targets Be Met?, Jesus Felipe

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

EARLY THIS YEAR, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. signed the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 (PDP). The document contains hundreds of targets. Some of the key targets to be attained by 2028 are as follows (in fact, the Plan provides yearly targets):

1.) an annual growth rate of 6.5-8% (since 2024); 2.) a gross national income per capita of $6,044-$6,571 (50% higher than that in 2023); 3.) inflation between 2%-4% (from 2.5%-4.5% in 2023); 4.) a government fiscal deficit of 3% (from 6.1% in 2023); 5.) a debt-to-GDP ratio of 48%-53% (from 60%-62% in 2023); 6.) an unemployment rate of 4%-5% (from …

Monitoring The Philippine Economy State Of The Economy Report, Mitzie Irene P. Conchada, Lawrence B. Dacuycuy, Jesus Felipe, Desher Edgar Empeño, Brendan Emmanuel A. Miranda

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

The Philippine economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022. It posted a very high annual growth rate, 7.6%, although this must be understood in the context of a low base. AKI’s State of the Economy Report focuses on three issues in the context of the new Administration’s 8-Point Socioeconomic Agenda and the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028: growth, inflation, and the fiscal deficit and national debt. Overall, we have a positive view of the economy over the medium and long-term. However, we argue that:

-The focus of economic policy has to shift decisively toward changing the structure of the economy …

The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is a growing debate about whether upzoning is an effective policy response to housing shortages and unaffordable housing. This paper provides empirical evidence to further inform debate by examining the various impacts of recently implemented zoning reforms on housing construction in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area in New Zealand. In 2016, the city upzoned approximately three quarters of its residential land to facilitate construction of more intensive housing. We use a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the short-run impacts of the reform on construction, allowing for potential shifts in construction from non-upzoned to upzoned areas (displacement effects) that would, if …

Measuring Palatability As A Linear Combination Of Nutrient Levels In Food Items, Jeffrey S. Young

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

It well known that palatability and nutritional quality of foods and/or diets are viewed as being in tension with one another. While there exist multiple measures of healthiness, there are no such measures for tastiness. This gap limits the degree to which researchers can investigate this tension and its implications for dietary behavior and hence public health and nutrition policy. The scope of future work concerning the dietary behavior of Americans would expand greatly if researchers better understood consumers’ willingness to eat certain foods, which matters as much as recommending those foods for them to eat in the first place. …

Sunk Or Dunk?: An Empirical Analysis Of The Effect Of Sunk Cost Fallacy In Professional Basketball, Hailey Dicicco

Business and Economics Presentations

This project is divided into two sections. The first section is a comparison between the NBA and WNBA, using performance metrics from game statistics. I researched the history of women in sports and specifically read about how women first became integrated into the game of soccer. In the regression for section one, we used a few selected performance metrics and minutes in order to observe any relationships between specific skills and minutes. We also focused on the difference between the leagues in terms of what game stats are more or less significant.

In the second section of this paper, we …

Commodity Futures Returns And Policy Uncertainty, Deepa Bannigidadmath, Paresh Kumar Narayan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020 Elsevier Inc. This paper investigates whether economic policy uncertainty is predictable using three sets of commodity futures market variables, namely the equal-weighted average of futures excess returns, the excess returns on a portfolio of going long in backwardated commodities, and the excess returns on a portfolio of going short in contango commodities as predictors. We find significant evidence of both in-sample and out-of-sample predictability. Combination forecasts also reveal strong evidence of predictability. Our findings remain unchanged following several robustness tests.

"Bad Hombres" And The Bully Pulpit: A Study Of Presidential Rhetoric On Social Media And Behavioral Responses Of The Immigrant Population, Mary Vlamis

Honors Scholar Theses

For years, social scientists have studied the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion and consumer behavior. This paper adds to the literature on presidential rhetoric by investigating how presidential statements on social media change public behavior in a reaction to these statements. President Trump's immigration policy tweets are used to examine if there is a relationship between the president's statements and changes in behavior using and Google searches. I find no relationship between the instance of a President Trump’s tweet and changes in searching for related topics among both large immigrant populations and Trump supporters.

Pretrial Release And Failure-To-Appear In Mclean County, Il, Jonathan Monsma

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

Actuarial risk assessment tools increasingly have been employed in jurisdictions across the U.S. to assist courts in the decision of whether someone charged with a crime should be detained or released prior to their trial. These tools should be continually monitored and researched by independent 3^rd parties to ensure that these powerful tools are being administered properly and used in the most proficient way as to provide socially optimal results. McLean County, Illinois began using the Public Safety Assessment-Court^TM (PSA-Court or simply PSA) risk assessment tool beginning in 2016. This study culls data from the McLean County Jail …

Does A Better Running Back Mean More Rushing? Game Theory And The Nfl, Eric Lofquist

Honors Scholar Theses

In this paper I attempt to answer the question of whether or not teams in the National Football League (NFL) rush less with a better running back. This seems counterintuitive, but game theory supposes that this is true. Defenses facing a better running back will generally expect the offense to rush more and therefore defend the run more often. The offense, foreseeing the defense’s actions, will choose to pass more to counteract the run defense. This is the basis of the difference between the strategic effect and the direct effect in mixed strategies. The direct effect is when a player …

A Martingale Difference-Divergence-Based Test For Specification, Liangjun Su, Xin Zheng

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we propose a novel consistent model specification test based on the martingale difference divergence (MDD) of the error term given the covariates. The MDD equals zero if and only if error term is conditionally mean independent of the covariates. Our MDD test does not require any nonparametric estimation under the alternative and it is applicable even if we have many covariates in the regression model. We establish the asymptotic distributions of our test statistic under the null and a sequence of Pitman local alternatives converging to the null at the usual parametric rate. Simulations suggest that our …

Singapore’S Life Program: Actuarial Framework, Longevity Risk And Impact Of Annuity Fund Return, Koon Shing Kwong, Yiu Kuen Tse, Wai-Sum Chan

Research Collection School Of Economics

The Central Provident Fund (CPF) is a defined-contribution savings plan forming the key pillar of the pension system in Singapore. The CPF Lifelong Income For the Elderly (LIFE) program, which provides lifetime income for retirees, is a mandatory pension scheme for all Singapore residents. In this paper we construct an actuarial framework to analyze the LIFE program. We use this framework to study the plan payout outcomes with respect to changes in mortality and annuity fund return assumptions. We also examine the effects of some possible changes in the program on the payouts and bequests.

The Retirement Strategy Of Supreme Court Justices: An Economic Approach, Kayla M. Joyce

Honors Scholar Theses

Previous research has identified strategic behavior in the nomination, confirmation, and retirement processes of the Supreme Court, each independently. This paper analyzes the interaction between the justices, the president, and the Senate in these processes. I constructed a game theoretic model to consider the nomination and approval process of Supreme Court justices and the change in dynamics that might result from an impending election. I hypothesize that sitting justices take into account the party affiliations of the president and the Senate when they are deciding whether it is the optimal time to retire to achieve their own strategic objectives. The …

Would You Choose To Be Happy? Tradeoffs Between Happiness And The Other Dimensions Of Life In A Large Population Survey, Matthew D. Adler, Paula Dolan, Georgios Kavetsos

Faculty Scholarship

A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they willing to sacrifice it for other attributes, such as income and health? Tackling this question has largely been the preserve of philosophers. In this article, we find out just how much happiness matters to ordinary citizens. Our sample consists of nearly 13,000 members of the UK and US general populations. We ask them to choose between, and make judgments over, lives that are high (or low) in …

Infant Mortality: Cross Section Study Of The United State, With Emphasis On Education, Daniel C. Sheets-Poling

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

On the surface infant mortality is usually thought of as just a unfortunate part of life in what can happen to an individual family, but infant mortality is part of the factors that affect social capital, which can lead back to overall trust in a community. When that trust starts to wither within a community, economic activity will be affected as community members will not behave as they usually do within their given economic boundaries. While social capital is not solely affected by infant mortality, it does show what type of health status an area has. As a community, state, …

The Impact On Consumer Behavior Of Energy Demand Side Management Programs Measurement Techniques And Methods, Jeffrey L. Pursley

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Much effort has gone into measuring the impact of Demand Side Management (DSM) programs on energy usage, particularly in regards to electric usage. However, there are potential biases in such measurements. This paper explores one of these potential biases, the rebound effect. This effect is caused by changes in consumer behavior as a result of DSM programs. The work of Steven Braithwaite and Douglas Caves provide the starting point for this analysis, although the rebound effect is referenced in many other works in this field.

In an effort the estimate this effect, data from the Nebraska Energy Office’s DSM programs …

How Portable Is Level-0 Behavior? A Test Of Level-K Theory In Games With Non-Neutral Frames, Shaun Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona, Robert Sugden

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We test the portability of level‐0 assumptions in level‐k theory in an experimental investigation of behavior in Coordination, Discoordination, and Hide and Seek games with common, non‐neutral frames. Assuming that level‐0 behavior depends only on the frame, we derive hypotheses that are independent of prior assumptions about salience. Those hypotheses are not confirmed. Our findings contrast with previous research which has fitted parameterized level‐k models to Hide and Seek data. We show that, as a criterion of successful explanation, the existence of a plausible model that replicates the main patterns in these data has a high probability of …

Hierarchical Decomposition Of U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditure: 1984-1991 And 2000-2006, Steven D. Silver

Faculty Publications

We conceptualize structure in personal consumption by explicitly defining categorizations of goods and services that consumers typically make in defining and organizing these objectives in their heuristics. Results from estimation of an Almost Ideal (AI) Demand System in each of two study periods generally support the structural differentiation of consumption goods.

Investigating The Ability Of Pro-Social Emotions To Enhance Cooperative Behavior, Lucía A. Vergara Sobarzo

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This research investigates the use of pro-social emotions to improve cooperation. In particular, it tries to reconcile the results from Noussair and Tucker (2007) and Lopez et al. (2010). To reach this goal the experiment considers different degrees of revelation: no revelation, partial and full disclosure of information. Additionally, I use different microeconometric specifications to accommodate different hypothesis about the motivation of the subjects.

My results diverge from those of Lopez et al. because I find that revealing the decision of a single subject at random does not significantly increase cooperation, which is the main result of these authors. Also, …

Does Information Lead To Household Electricity Conservation?, Devon M. Kristiansen

Economics Honors Projects

This paper estimates the effect of information on residential electricity consumption. Household reading expenditure, education level of the household head, and state “green” electricity pricing program participation rate represent the probability that a household has encountered information relating the carbon emission externalities of energy consumption and human-driven climate change. Reading expenditure has a significant negative effect on household electricity consumption. Initial increases in educational attainment increase electricity consumption, but education beyond high school reduces it. The predicted social norm effect of green pricing participation is insignificant.

Bonds, Stocks Or Dollars? Do Voters Care About Capital Markets In Brazil And Mexico, Anthony Petros Spanakos, Lucio Remuzat Renno Junior

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

How does vote intention in presidential elections vary according to the economic conditions of a country, especially indicators of the financial market? Does the state of the economy, both its fundamentals as well as capital market, affect variation in candidates’ percentage of vote intention in national polls? This paper tests how economic indicators influence vote intention in presidential elections in two emerging markets: Brazil and Mexico. The presidential elections of 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006 in Brazil and 2000 and 2006 in Mexico are analyzed using all poll returns for each electoral period and corresponding economic data. The paper finds …

Why Brazil Has Not Grown: A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian, Indian, And Chinese Economic Management, Fernando Ferrari, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper does not aim to dispute that Brazil would benefit from reforms in any or all of these areas. Rather, the paper offers a skeptical perspective on reform menus and proposes an alternative explanation for the faster growth of Brazil’s peers India and China2. The paper begins by introducing (section 1) the idea of the BRICs countries, to establish the basis for comparisons of most similar cases. It then surveys the results of a generation of Washington Consensus era growth (section 2). Although there is a considerable amount of divergence over what causes growth, it seems that something approaching …

Mapping The Discipline Of The Olympic Games An Author-Cocitation Analysis, Peter Warning, Rosie Ching, Kristine Toohey

Research Collection School Of Economics

The authors conducted an author cocitation analysis on prominent authors writing about the Olympics during the 1990s. Author cocitation is an established bibliometric technique that can be used to measure the relative similarities of topics written about by the cited authors. This enables a visual representation of the “intellectual space” of the discipline, in this case the Olympics, to be created for the period under review. So core and peripheral research areas are identified, along with their major contributors. The representation appears as a two-dimensional cluster-enhanced map. Subject expertise was then applied to the results to place labels on the …

Economic Growth And The Interests Of Future (And Past And Present) Generations: A Comment On Tyler Cowen, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Open Vs Sealed Bid Auctions: Testing For Revenue Equivalence Under Singapore's Vehicle Quota System, Roberto S. Mariano, Winston T. H. Koh, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using data from the auction of vehicle quota licenses in Singapore, we study if revenue equivalence holds when the auction format was switched from a sealed-bid format (May 1990 to June 2001) to an open bidding format since July 2001. Our econometric analysis indicates the change in auction format led to a change in bidding behavior. On average, the quota license premium under the open bidding format is about US$1000 (about 7.5% of the Category E license price in June 2001) lower, compared to the forecast level that would have prevailed if there had been no change in the auction …

Lottery Rather Than Waiting-Line Auction, Winston T. H. Koh, Zhenlin Yang, Lijing Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the allocative efficiency of two non-price allocation mechanisms – the lottery (random allocation) and the waiting-line auction (queue system) – for the cases where consumers possess identical time costs (the homogeneous case), and where time costs are correlated with time valuations (the heterogeneous case). We show that the relative efficiency of the two mechanisms depends critically on a scarcity factor (measured by the ratio of the number of objects available for allocation over the number of participants) and on the shape of the distribution of valuations. We show that the lottery dominates the waiting-line auction for a …

Expectations Formation And Forecasting Of Vehicle Demand: An Empirical Study Of The Vehicle Quota Auctions In Singapore, Sing-Fat Chu, Winston T. H. Koh, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the expectations formation and forecasting of vehicle demand in Singapore under the vehicle quota system. Under the system, a car buyer must first bid for a vehicle license in monthly auctions in order to purchase a new car. We construct an econometric model to test the hypothesis that past bid distributions of the license auctions contain information that car buyers can use to update their expectations about the intensity of market demand, forecast the license premiums and formulate their bidding strategies in future auctions. Our empirical analysis indicates that past bid distributions have a good degree of …

Open Versus Sealed-Bid Auctions: Testing For Revenue Equivalence Under Singapore's Vehicle Quota System, Winston T. H. Koh, Roberto S. Mariano, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using data from the auction of vehicle quota licenses in Singapore, we study if revenue equivalence holds when the auction format was switched from a sealed-bid format (May 1990 to June 2001) to an open bidding format since July 2001. Our econometric analysis indicates the change in auction format led to a change in bidding behavior. On average, the quota license premium under the open bidding format is about US$1,000 (about 7.5% of the Category E license price in June 2001) lower, compared to the forecast level that would have prevailed if there had been no change in the auction …

The Shapley-Shubik Index, The Donation Paradox And Ternary Games, Vincent C. H. Chua, H. C. Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we show that although the Shapley-Shubik index is immune to the donation paradox in weighted binary games, extension of the index to ternary games along the direction suggested in Felsenthal and Machover (1996, 1997) will cause it to be vulnerable to the paradox and this is the case as long as the number of players in the game exceeds three. This undermines the attractiveness of the Shapley-Shubik index as a measure of a priori voting power.

The General Dominance Of Lottery Over Waiting-Line Auction, Winston T. H. Koh, Zhenlin Yang, Lijing Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the allocative efficiency of two popular non-price allocation mechanisms — the lottery (random allocation) and the waiting-line auction (queue system) — for the cases where consumers possess identical time costs (the homogeneous case), and where time costs are correlated with time valuations (the heterogeneous case). We show that the relative efficiency of the two mechanisms depends critically on the scarcity factor (measured by the ratio of the number of objects available for allocation over the number of participants) and on the shape of the distribution of valuations. We obtain a set of analytical results showing that the …