Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Life Satisfaction And Tax Morale In Azerbaijan: Mediating Role Of Institutional Trust And Financial Satisfaction, Orkhan Nadirov, Khatai Aliyev, Bruce Dehning, Ilaha Sharifzada, Rafiga Aliyeva

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

This paper examines the relationship between life satisfaction (measured as the self-reported satisfaction of each individual with their past life and goal achievements) and tax morale (measured as the likelihood of an individual’s intrinsic motivation to pay taxes). Using a large-scale survey dataset from Azerbaijan, it is documented that life satisfaction is positively associated with tax morale. Life satisfaction plays a significant role in increasing tax compliance practices. It is also important to note that there is a positive mediating effect of life satisfaction on tax morale through financial satisfaction and institutional trust. In line with our hypotheses, the results …

Big Five Personality Traits And Political Orientation: An Inquiry Into Political Beliefs, Ian E. Phillips

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Personality research centered on the Big Five personality traits has heavily impacted our understanding in regards to what forces orient a person on a political spectrum. Examining how personality differences interact with political orientation, this research seeks to provide information on what makes someone either more or less likely to be liberal or conservative based on their temperament. In this paper, previous personality research is synthesized into one discussion, centered on what the effects of each trait are and how they impact political orientation, the heritability of personality, and what implications there are for such research in the realm of …

Are You Ready For Some Football? Estimating The Effect Of American Football Season On Labor Supply In The United States, Luke Petach, Dustin Rumbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

American football season reduces the Monday labor hours of employed men by two-thirds of an hour. A similar effect is found for Friday labor hours. We term these effects the “hangover effect” and “happy hour effect.” Consistent with a wide class of labor market models, the labor supply effect varies over the business cycle, increasing in expansions. The hangover effect implies an intertemporal elasticity of labor supply on the order of 0.014. Evaluated at the median hourly wage, our estimates imply an annual economic cost of foregone earnings associated with football season in the neighborhood of $5.06 billion.

Three Essays In Applied Econometrics: Agricultural And Energy Economics, Kuan-Ming Huang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines three empirical issues in energy and agricultural economics using econometrics models whose titles are: 1) Do Natural Hazards in the Gulf Coast Still Matter for State-Level Natural Gas Prices in the US? Evidence After the Shale Gas Boom; 2) Do Exploitations of Marcellus and Utica Shale Formations Improve Regional Economy in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia? A Synthetic Control Analysis; and 3) How Did Covid-19 Impact US Household Food Spending? An Analysis Six Months In.

The first essay assesses the impact of natural hazards on state-level natural gas prices and evaluates the effects of the shale gas …

Writing Tips For Economics Research Papers, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Discovering The Relationship Between Investor Attention And Trade Volume In The Philippine Stock Exchange Using Google Search Analysis, Patrick Allan G. Morando, Isabel Louise D. Banico, Martin Stevens C. Ng, Riggs Mattieu M. Villardo

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

This study investigates the relationship between daily Google search volume and trade volume in the Philippine Stock Exchange. This is completed by employing a sample consisting of listed stocks in the Philippine Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2019 and testing the veracity of three different keyword categories in proxying investor attention. The empirical results indicate that when using company names and stock tickers as Google search keywords, there is a strong positive relationship between Google search volume and trade volume. This implies that the more investors search for a stock’s company name or ticker, the more likely that there will …

Predictors Of Social Distancing And Mask-Wearing Behavior: Panel Survey In Seven U.S. States, Plamen Nikolov, Andreas Pape, Ozlem Tonguc, Charlotte Williams

Economics Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents preliminary summary results from a longitudinal study of participants in seven U.S. states during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to standard socio-economic characteristics, we collect data on various economic preference parameters: time, risk, and social preferences, and risk perception biases. We pay special attention to predictors that are both important drivers of social distancing and are potentially malleable and susceptible to policy levers. We note three important findings: (1) demographic characteristics exert the largest influence on social distancing measures and mask-wearing, (2) we show that individual risk perception and cognitive biases exert a critical role in influencing …

Data For "Consistent Differences In A Virtual World Model Of Ape Societies", Bart J. Wilson, Sarah F. Brosnan, Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf, Crickette M. Sanz

Business and Economics Faculty Data Sets

The zip file contains the data for the paper entitled "Consistent Differences in a Virtual World Model of Ape Societies" which appears in Scientific Reports.

Rationing Social Contact During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Transmission Risk And Social Benefits Of Us Locations, Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some types of public spaces have been shut down while others remain open. These decisions constitute a judgment about the relative danger and benefits of those locations. Using mobility data from a large sample of smartphones, nationally representative consumer preference surveys, and economic statistics, we measure the relative transmission reduction benefit and social cost of closing 26 categories of US locations. Our categories include types of shops, entertainments, and service providers. We rank categories by their trade-off of social benefits and transmission risk via dominance across 13 dimensions of risk and …

The Effect Of Piracy Website Blocking On Consumer Behavior, Brett Danaher, Jonathan Hersh, Michael D. Smith, Rahul Telang

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In this study, we ask what drives the success or failure of various supply-side anti-piracy enforcement actions such as piracy website blocking. We do this in the context of three court-ordered events affecting consumers in the United Kingdom: We first study Internet Service Providers’ blocking of 53 video piracy sites in 2014 and of 19 piracy sites in 2013, and we then study the blocking of a single dominant site, “The Pirate Bay,” in 2012.

We show that blocking 53 sites in 2014 caused treated users to decrease piracy and to increase their usage of legal subscription sites between 7% …

Citizen-Consumers Wanted: Revitalizing The American Dream In The Face Of Economic Recessions, 1981-2012, Gokcen Coskuner-Balli

Business Faculty Articles and Research

This article brings sociological theory of governmentality to bear on a longitudinal analysis of American presidential speeches to theorize the formation of the citizen-consumer subject. The 40-year historical analysis which expands through four economic recessions and the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Hussein Obama, illustrates the ways in which the national mythology of American Dream myth has been linked to the political ideology of the state to create the citizen-consumer subject in the United States. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data demonstrates first, the consistent emphasis on responsibility as a …

Using Behavior Economic Nudges To Facilitate Client Follow-Through In Financial Coaching, Charlene Hurst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While benevolence-based programs have been a large part of meeting immediate financial needs of the poor, they lack the relational aspect needed to facilitate long-term behavior change. Recently many social service organizations have adopted financial coaching as a promising replacement for benevolence programming. The field of coaching has dealt with its own challenges. Most coaching practitioners surveyed in 2016 and 2019 acknowledged lack of client follow-through as their number one challenge. Behavior economics offered nudges as a solution. Nudges are cues placed within the physical environment to prod clients toward behavior change. A quantitative field study was conducted to evaluate …

Socioeconomic Influences On Property Crime Rates: A Study In Virginia's Counties, Mary Passley

Student Scholar Showcase

Most research on factors and causes of crime, whether property or violent crime, focuses on individuals’ behavior or their surrounding environment. In this research, I explore the idea of socioeconomic factors correlated to property crime. I conducted a retrospective design to fully explore United States Census data and crime data gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to discover statistically significant variables connected to property crime. Significant findings were shown by average people per house and retail sales per capita in all counties. Additional significant findings were percent employment change and percent with high school degree or higher in low …

One Step At A Time: Does Gradualism Build Coordination?, Maoliang Ye, Jie Zheng, Plamen Nikolov, Sam Asher

Economics Faculty Scholarship

This study investigates a potential mechanism to promote coordination. With theoretical guidance using a belief-based learning model, we conduct a multi-period, binary-choice, and weakest-link laboratory coordination experiment to study the effect of gradualism – increasing the required levels (stakes) of contributions slowly over time rather than requiring a high level of contribution immediately – on group coordination performance. We randomly assign subjects to three treatments: starting and continuing at a high stake, starting at a low stake but jumping to a high stake after a few periods, and starting at a low stake while gradually increasing the stakes over time …

Incentives And Economic Decisions: Evidence From Sports Data, Iuliia Chikish

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation presents three essays which demonstrate how sports data can be applied to answer economic questions. Essay 1 explores whether multiple reference points can affect individuals behavior using data from professional figure skating competitions. The second essay examines the role of professional sports facilities and teams in generating local amenities. Using data from eSports tournaments, the third essay aims at understanding whether tournament theory predictions hold in competitions involving mostly mental effort.

The first chapter, ``Incentives and Economic Decisions: Evidence from Sports Data'' studies the effect of multiple reference points on decisions made by professional athletes. Unique design features …

Why Trust Out-Groups? The Role Of Punishment Under Uncertainty, Xiaofei Pan, Daniel Houser

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We conducted a hidden-effort trust game, in which we assigned subjects to one of two groups. The groups, which were formed through two different group formation processes, included a “social” group that required sharing and exchange among its members, and a “non-social” group that did not. Once assigned, subjects participated in the game with members from both groups, either with or without the opportunity to punish a trustee who may have defected on them. We found that for investors in the non-social group, the opportunity to punish a trustee worked to promote trust, but only when the trustee was a …

Spending Too Little In Hard Times, Alessandro Del Ponte, Peter Descioli

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

People’s decisions to consume and save resources are critical to their wellbeing. Previous experiments find that people typically spend too much because of how they discount the future. We propose that people’s motive to preserve their savings can instead cause them to spend too little in hard times. We design an economic game in which participants can store resources for the future to survive in a harsh environment. A player’s income is uncertain and consumption yields diminishing returns within each day, creating tradeoffs between spending and saving. We compare participants’ decisions to a heuristic that performed best in simulations. We …

Centrality And Cooperation In Networks, Boris Van Leeuwen, Abhijit Ramalingam, David Rojo Arjona, Arthur Schram

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate the effects of centrality on cooperation in groups. Players with centrality keep a group together by having a pivotal position in a network. In some of our experimental treatments, players can vote to exclude others and prevent them from further participation in the group. We find that, in the presence of exclusion, central players contribute significantly less than others, and that this is tolerated by those others. Because of this tolerance, teams with centrality manage to maintain high levels of cooperation.

A Portable Method Of Eliciting Respect For Social Norms, Erik O. Kimbrough, Alexander Vostroknutov

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Recent models of prosociality suggest that cooperation in laboratory games may be better understood as resulting from concern for social norms than from prosocial preferences over outcomes. Underlying this interpretation is the idea that people exhibit heterogeneous respect for shared norms. We introduce a new, abstract task to elicit a proxy for individual norm-following propensity by asking subjects to choose from two actions, where one is costly. We instruct subjects that “the rule is” to take the costly action. Their willingness to incur such a cost reveals respect for norms. We show that choices in this task are similar across …

Preference Conformism: An Experiment, Enrique Fatas, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This paper reports on an experiment designed to test whether people’s preferences change to become more alike. Such preference conformism would be worrying for an economics that takes individual preferences as given (‘de gustibus es non disputandum’). So the test is important. But it is also difficult. People can behave alike for many reasons and the key to the design of our test, therefore, is the control of the other possible reasons for observing apparent peer effects. We find evidence of preference conformism in the aggregate and at the individual level (where there is heterogeneity). It appears also to be …

Entrepreneurship Education Empowers Youth To Change Their Lives, Marianna Brashear, Jason Riddle

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) aims at equipping Title 1 schools with free, hands-on, engaging materials that any teacher can facilitate either individually or in a classroom setting with no background in entrepreneurship necessary. These versatile lessons, courses, and workshops teach the entrepreneurial mindset optimizing opportunities for grades 8-12 students no matter which life/career path they choose.

Time Delay And Investment Decisions: Evidence From An Experiment In Tanzania, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Attitudes toward risk underlie virtually every important economic decision an individual makes. In this experimental study, I examine how introducing a time delay into the execution of an investment plan influences individuals’ risk preferences. The field experiment proceeded in three stages: a decision stage, an execution stage and a payout stage. At the outset, in the Decision Stage (Stage 1), each subject was asked to make an investment plan by splitting a monetary investment amount between a risky asset and a safe asset. Subjects were informed that the investment plans they made in the Decision Stage are binding and will …

Wildfire Risk Perception And Homeowner Mitigation: Evidence From Montana, Madison G. Nagle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fire prevention managers find that homeowners often do not perform mitigation actions that could reduce the damage and spread of wildfire. There is widespread belief among these fire professionals that one of the primary reasons that homeowners do not perform mitigation actions is that homeowners misperceive the risk that wildfire poses. Thus, a significant component of fire prevention programs’ focus on increasing homeowner awareness of the risk. However, it is possible that homeowners are aware of the fire risk but choose not to mitigate because of a variety of reasons, to include the costs of mitigation, limited monetary liability that …

The Perceived Return On College Investment In Relation To Economic Expectations Of Students At The University Of Maryland, Joshua S. Roston

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper presents the results of a survey conducted in the spring semester of 2017 of University of Maryland students. The results illustrate how University of Maryland students weigh the decision to attend college in terms of their perceived current economic situation and future expectations as well as predicted return on investment. A body of economic literature on the perception of return on investment from attending college exists already and this study hopes to add to the discussion as its results are unexpected. The results imply that the current generation of college students feels uncertain over the worthwhileness of higher …

A Cross-Sectional Exploration Of Household Financial Reactions And Homebuyer Awareness Of Registered Sex Offenders In A Rural, Suburban, And Urban County., John Charles Navarro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As stigmatized persons, registered sex offenders betoken instability in communities. Depressed home sale values are associated with the presence of registered sex offenders even though the public is largely unaware of the presence of registered sex offenders. Using a spatial multilevel approach, the current study examines the role registered sex offenders influence sale values of homes sold in 2015 for three U.S. counties (rural, suburban, and urban) located in Illinois and Kentucky within the social disorganization framework. Homebuyers were surveyed to examine whether awareness of local registered sex offenders and the homebuyer’s community type operate as moderators between home selling …

Advancing Rationality With Sustainability: An Analysis Of Agent-Based Simulation, Osman Goktug Tanrikulu

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

Today, falling trends of species and ecosystem in the world due to overconsumption and destruction of natural resources are at critical levels. It is vital for humanity to operate with sustainable and resilient modes of production and consumption. In this regard, this paper examines the basic premise of rationality and introduces sustainability as an advancement to the theoretical concept of rationality. Thus, a rational mindset and a sustainable mindset are compared under depletion of environmental resources. The understanding of rationality in the analysis is based on Garett Hardin’s (1968) ‘the tragedy of the commons’ model, in which actors are self-interested …

A Dual-Role Analysis Of Game Form Misconception And Cognitive Bias In Financial And Economic Decision Making, Chinedum D. Nwadiora

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The endowment and the framing effect are widely examined cognitive biases. The experimental economics literature, using choice data gathered through an elicitation device, commonly finds evidence of these biases. Recent work by Cason & Plott (2014) shows that the interpretation of choice data as consistent with biases related non-standard preference theory could also be consistent with confusion or misconception of the game type used to elucidate preferences. I use the Cason and Plott card auction framework to analyze offers of buyers and sellers in an experimental setting with subjects from the University of New Orleans simulating 97 sellers and 90 …

Unemployment, Does It Really Hurt?, Claudia Vargas

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the consequences of changes in the unemployment rate in Colombia on the level of education attained for adolescents. Increases in the unemployment rate are associated with an increase in the average number of years of education. No significant effect was found for men of the same age.

A Process For Field Studies In Behavioral Economics, Victoria Ferraro

Senior Honors Projects

Field experiments enable economists to test whether theory adequately captures behavior in natural settings, or whether evidence supports reevaluating the reasoned abstractions comprising the theory. Economics, and social science more generally, has increasingly valued the evidence provided by field studies. These studies typically require a relationship with an external partner site providing the environment for the study, but existent research offers little guidance for developing these relationships and designing procedures for effective collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to provide greater insight into what is necessary to conduct field experiments in economics, particularly behavioral economics in private market settings. …

Consequences Of Information Asymmetry On Corporate Risk Management, Howard J. Merrill Iii

Applied Economics Theses

This paper will demonstrate the impact information asymmetry has on risk management. There is a noticeable impact within the context of consumer credit risk. If a firm is able to recognize this, they can make improved credit decisions that will reduce the consequences. The theoretical impact will be presented while depicting areas of risk management that are susceptible to information asymmetry. We find a direct impact on the development of scoring models, credit policies, and origination volume. These results hold for banks with portfolios consisting of consumer credit products and small business loans. Once known, banks can better tailor their …