Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Inattention To Deferred Increases In Tax Bases: How Michigan Homebuyers Are Paying For Assessment Limits, Sebastien J. Bradley

Sebastien J Bradley

Teleinvestmentevangelists: Celebrity, Ritual And Religion And The Quest To “Beat The Market”, E. Douglas, Mary Keller, Elton Mcgoun

Mary L Keller

Purpose – This paper aims to offer a cultural understanding of investor faith in stock picking despite overwhelming evidence questioning its efficacy. Why, in the face of very widely communicated findings calling into question the advice and assistance offered by financial professionals to help them pick stocks or manage their mutual funds, do so many people persist in these practices? The authors believe that the best way to understand investor faith in the efficacy of stock picking is through teleinvestmentevangelists such as Jim Cramer, whose fusion of celebrity and religion taps into the ritualistic elements of investment that usually lie …

Pay-What-You-Want Pricing: Can It Be Profitable?, Yong Chao, Jose Fernandez, Babu Nahata

Yong Chao

Using a game theoretic framework, we show that not only can pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing generate positive profits, but it can also be more profitable than charging a fixed price to all consumers. Further, whenever it is more profitable, it is also Pareto-improving. We derive conditions in terms of two parameters, namely the marginal cost of production and the psychological cost of the consumer for paying too little compared to her reference price.

The paper makes the following contributions to the existing literature. First, we endogenize the choice of pricing strategies—PWYW vs. fixed price. Thus rather than solely focusing on the …

The Relation Between Variance And Information Rents In Auctions, Brett Katzman, Julian Reif, Jesse Schwartz

Jesse A. Schwartz

This paper examines the conventional wisdom, expressed in McAfee and McMillan's (1987) widely cited survey paper on auctions, that links increased variance of bidder values to increased information rent. We find that although the conventional wisdom does indeed hold in their (1986) model of a linear contract auction, this relationship is an artifact of that particular model and cannot be generalized. Using Samuelson's (1987) model, which is similar but allows for unobservable costs, we show that increased variance does not always imply increased information rent. Finally, we give the appropriate measure of dispersion (different from variance) that provides the link …

Collusive Bidding In The Fcc Spectrum Auctions, Peter Cramton, Jesse Schwartz

Jesse A. Schwartz

This paper describes the bid signaling that occurred in many of the FCC spectrum auctions. Bidders in these auctions bid on numerous spectrum licenses simultaneously, with bidding remaining open on all licenses until no bidder is willing to raise the bid on any license. Simultaneous open bidding allows bidders to send messages to their rivals, telling them on which licenses to bid and which to avoid. This “code bidding” occurs when one bidder tags the last few digits of its bid with the market number of a related license. We examine how extensively bidders signaled each other with retaliating bids …

Pay-What-You-Want Pricing And Competition: Breaking The Bertand Trap, Yong Chao, Jose Fernandez, Babu Nahata

Yong Chao

Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing is a recent participative pricing strategy where a seller offers a good or service for any price consumers want to pay, including zero or some minimum payment. This paper provides a theoretical framework to study strategic effects of the PWYW pricing under duopoly by incorporating behavioral considerations of consumers in making voluntary payments when they could be freeloaders. Without identifying any particular behavioral factor, we assume that consumers feel a sense of guilt when they pay less than their reference points. It is shown that the PWYW pricing can be a profitable marketing strategy than the conventional …

Women’S Decision Making: A Contextual Assessment, Safdar Khan

Safdar Khan

No abstract provided.

Are Ceos Expected Utility Maximizers?, John List, Charles Mason

Charles F Mason

Are individuals expected utility maximizers? This question represents much more than academic curiosity. In a normative sense, at stake are the fundamental underpinnings of the bulk of the last half-century’s models of choice under uncertainty. From a positive perspective, the ubiquitous use of benefit-cost analysis across government agencies renders the expected utility maximization paradigm literally the only game in town. In this study, we advance the literature by exploring CEO’s preferences over small probability, high loss lotteries. Using undergraduate students as our experimental control group, we find that both our CEO and student subject pools exhibit frequent and large departures …

Prediction Markets To Forecast Electricity Demand, Peter Cramton, Luciano De Castro

Luciano I. de Castro

Forecasting electricity demand for future years is an essential step in resource planning. A common approach is for the system operator to predict future demand from the estimates of individual distribution companies. However, the predictions thus obtained may be of poor quality, since the reporting incentives are unclear. We propose a prediction market as a form of forecasting future demand for electricity. We describe how to implement a simple prediction market for continuous variables, using only contracts based on binary variables. We also discuss specific issues concerning the implementation of such a market.

Inflation Monitor, Muhammad Arby, Fida Hussain, Safdar Khan

Safdar Khan

Extract:
Although inflationary pressures persisted in the economy for the second year in a row, the headline inflation fell to 7.6 percent year-on-year in June 2006 that was 1 percentage point less than inflation in corresponding month last year.1 The inflation containment was more visible in the last six months of FY06 as compared to first six months (Jul 05 to Dec 05): the average CPI inflation during the first half of the year was 8.4 percent which declined to 7.4 percent in the second half primarily due to fall in food inflation. Inflation measured by sensitive price indicator also …

Dynamics Of Energy Consumption, Safdar Khan

Safdar Khan

Extract:
Dynamics of Energy Consumption Pakistan has been facing severe imbalances in energy demand and supply for the last couple of decades. During early 1980s domestic supply of energy was fulfilling almost 86 percent of total domestic energy demand; a gap of 14 percent was being filled by imports. However, the demand – supply gap started increasing since then and reached to almost 47 percent by the year 2000 (see Figure S2.1).

Economic Growth, Saving And Investment, Safdar Khan

Safdar Khan

Extract:
Despite an evident slowdown in major economies around the global amidst a sustained rise in international oil prices, the domestic economy surpassed its growth target by a wide margin for the third consecutive year, witnessing a growth rate of 8.4 percent in FY05, the highest during the last two decades (see Figure 2.1 & 2.2).

Macroeconomic And Financial Sector Comparison With Saarc And Asean Countries, Safdar Khan

Safdar Khan

Extract:
Two distinct regional associations, SAARC and ASEAN, comprise over seventeen different economies of Asia. These economies differ from each other in terms of their age, size and economic performance. However, some comparisons can be drawn between these intra-regional economies on the basis of economic and financial performance for a uniform period of observation, spanning from 1990 to 2003.1 This chapter discusses the financial sector indicators of the SAARC and ASEAN countries under the framework of macroeconomic performance, with the objective of assessing the level of Pakistan’s performance in comparison with these countries.

Financial Sector Deepening And Economic Growth In Pakistan, Safdar Khan

Safdar Khan

No abstract provided.