Behavioral Economics Commons^™

In Defense Of The Self-Help Book, Owen Barrott

Marriott Student Review

"In Defense of the Self-Help Book" explores the relationship between behavioral economics and the effects that self-help and management books have. It explores loss aversion and the optimism bias paradox and applies it to those who use success literature to improve their own abilities.

East Asia Pacific Economies: Looking Good, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The World Bank expects recovering global trade and commodity prices to buoy regional prospects

Will Politics Trump Economic Growth?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

While economic uncertainties remain, investors should not worry about the White House jeopardising the U.S. economy

Foreign Business Entrepreneurship In Cape Town: How To Start A Business - Stories Of 6 Cape Town Based Immigrants, Aleksandra Bogoevska

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

South Africa has become a shelter for immigrants from all over the world (Wilkinson, 2015). Combined with its internationally recognized economy, it is a tempting location for foreigners to establish a business (“Starting a Business in South Africa as a Foreigner – A Complete Guide”, n.d.). With this in mind, the intent of this study is twofold. First, this project aims at analyzing how foreigners establish businesses in Cape Town. Its objective is to trace the entrepreneurial process from the initial stages to its recent development. Second, it aims at outlining their experiences in Cape Town, thus serve as a …

Social Media Influence: Metrics Matter, Juliana Houldcroft

Honors Projects in Marketing

It is imperative for companies to engage in social media marketing as consumers are often dependent on online information and electronic word-of-mouth. Past literature claims that consumers evaluate the influence of communications differently on social media than they would in a traditional environment because of the nature of the internet. This study aims to analyze user’s perceptions of social media marketing influence and determines if user’s perception of influence changes based on the number of social media metrics (likes, comments, and shares) that accompany a Facebook post. The study also investigates if perceptions of influence vary depending on a user’s …

Rationality Vs Reality: The Dissonance Between Economic Models And Experimental Data, Piotr Broda

College Honors Program

Rationality was not embedded in economic theory from its onset. In fact, the discipline started with a more holistic approach to human nature, incorporating notions of empathy and altruism. It was not until economics progressed and became more concerned with mathematical models and abstract theories that rationality entered the fray. Game theory, developed in the 1940s, established several axioms about human behavior that presented people as perfectly rational economic agents. It was not until behavioral researchers started investigating the question of rationality that the economic worldview was critically challenged. This research was the driving force in the development of behavioral …

Why A Dorm Room Is Like A Climate Treaty, Mariam Khan

Colby Magazine

Nathan Chan shows how economic principles are at play in our everyday lives.

Factors Affecting Student Graduation Rates, Kaleb Luse

Research in the Capitol

Over the past few years, colleges and the United States government have become increasingly interested in raising graduation rates. This paper uses data from a survey given to students during their freshman year to analyze factors specific to an individual student that makes them more or less likely to graduate. Previous research shows that high school GPA and SAT scores are the two most statistically significant factors. In my study, I use a logit regression model to determine which factors are significant to a student’s likelihood of graduating. As with previous research I found high school GPA to be the …

Effect Of Price Reduction And Increased Service Frequency On Public Transport Travel, Inge Brechan

Journal of Public Transportation

A random effects meta-analysis of the results from 15 projects involving price reduction and 9 projects involving increased service frequency showed that both price reduction and increased service frequency generated public transport travels. On average, the increased service frequency projects generated more travels by public transport than the price reduction projects. In the increased service frequency projects the proportion of travels generated by the increased frequency was strongly influenced by the size of the frequency increase. In the price reduction projects, we did not find a significant effect of the size of the price reduction on the proportion of travels …

Local And Global Sd-Strategy-Proofness Of Ordinal Mechanisms On Block-Connected Domains, Peng Liu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The adjacency by Monjardet (2009) is weakened to a flip between two adjacently ranked blocks and called block-adjacency. The connectedness defined accordingly, blockconnectedness, covers some interesting unconnected domains. An ordinal mechanism on a block-connected domain is block-adjacent sd-strategy-proof if reporting the true preference always leads to a lottery that stochastically dominates the lottery delivered by reporting any preference block-adjacent to the sincere one.A condition on a block-connected domain called path-nestedness is proposed and shown sufficient for the equivalence between sd-strategy-proofness and block-adjacent sd-strategy-proofness. The sequentially dichotomous domain by Liu (2017) is an application. In addition, we systematically search for the …

Coordination When There Are Restricted And Unrestricted Options, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona, Robert Sugden

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

One might expect that, in pure coordination games, coordination would become less frequent as the number of options increases. Contrary to this expectation, we report an experiment which found more frequent coordination when the option set was unrestricted than when it was restricted. To try to explain this result, we develop a method for eliciting the general rules that subjects use to identify salient options in restricted and unrestricted sets. We find that each such rule, if used by all subjects, would generate greater coordination in restricted sets. However, subjects tend to apply different rules to restricted and unrestricted sets.

Decoding Chinese Foreign Policy, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

States need to understand Beijing’s practice of ‘false dilemmas’ and its revanchist narrative, and stand firm without provoking China unnecessarily

Housing Market Liquidity And The Effect On Unemployment In The United States: An Application To The U.S. Housing Market, Isolating Regional Housing Market Liquidity And The Associated Effect On Unemployment, Lindsey M. Piegza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study proposes a measure of price spread between the bid (or the offer price from the buyer) and the ask (or the list price of the seller) in order to isolate the effect of housing market liquidity on unemployment. Housing market liquidity is defined as its impact on labor market equilibrium and unemployment at the state and regional levels. This proxy for housing market liquidity offers a more thorough measure of housing liquidity or market clearing ability compared with the current literature, which has relied on price or price changes alone as the primary measure of activity in the …

By Beauty Damned: Millennial Feminism And The Exploitation Of Women's Empowerment In Pop Culture And Corporate Advertising, Maria L. Carreon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Feminism has become a trendy cultural identity, leaving it open to exploitation by capitalists. Notions relating to “women’s empowerment” are used by capitalists to sell products to women, and yet many of those capitalists fund political campaigns that directly seek to quash or inhibit the advancement of women’s rights. With a little effort, any consumer can find out who their big purveyors are supporting politically. For example, Procter Gamble, who makes many products bought by women, gives the majority of its political contributions to republicans who oppose women’s reproductive rights. The same is true of McAndrews & Forbes, the parent …

Education, Income, And Social Behavior Across Missouri, Gail Heyne Hafer, R. W. Hafer

Center for Applied Economics

This study investigates the relationship between education and several economic and social outcomes. On the economic side we consider the link between education and income. We also look at how education is related to health choices and social cohesion. Our basic question is: “What is the relationship between educational decisions made in the past and economic and social outcomes today?” Answers to this question reflect not only personal educational choices, but also shed light on the policy issue of why it is important to improve educational attainment.

To Nudge Or Not To Nudge: Promoting Environmentally Beneficial Behaviors, Emma Jean Cooper

Bard Center for Environmental Policy

In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, humans need to change how they act toward the environment. Unfortunately, as much as we may want to act in ways that would be best for us and for the environment, we often struggle to do just that due to cognitive biases. Nudge theory attempts to remedy this problem by helping us make the decision that would be in our best interests. To explore this issue, I conduct an extended review of the literature to examine how well nudge theory can be applied to the realm of environmental policy. Specifically, I …

Environmental Behavior Factors Influencing The Outlook Of Chinese College Students On The Domestic Adoption Of Solar Photovoltaic Technology, Emmanuel Amoako, John Taylor Wilson

Undergraduate Review

Over the last century, China has soared in economic growth and now stands as the world’s second-largest economy. However, rapid economic growth has given rise to environmental degradation. New visions and innovative technological systems, such as domestic solar photovoltaic systems, have been introduced to mitigate pollution from power generation. Despite the positive individual and environmental benefits associated with adopting this innovative system, adoption rates of solar PV system remain comparatively low in China. Survey data targeting environmental behavior factors were distributed among Chinese college students in Shanghai and Beijing to facilitate understanding of the low adoption rate and to shed …

Loss Aversion, Upset Preference, And Sports Television Viewing Audience Size, Brad Humphreys, Levi Pérez

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

A growing body of research examines the effect of loss aversion (LA) on consumers’ decisions to watch or attend sporting events. Much of this research focuses on live game attendance. In contrast to the predictions of uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH), loss-averse consumers prefer watching either potential upsets, or dominant performances by strong favorites, to events with uncertain outcomes. We test for LA vs. UOH effects in television viewing audience data for free over-the-air broadcasts of 304 Spanish football matches from 2008/09 to 2015/16. This setting generates substantial variation home team win probabilities because of the presence of Real Madrid …

Who Reacts To Income Tax Rate Changes? The Relationship Between Income Taxes And The Motivation To Work: The Case Of Azerbaijan, Orkhan Nadirov, Bruce Dehning, Khatai Aliyev, Minura Iskandarova

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

This research investigates the effects of income taxation on the motivation to work by employing a survey method for the Azerbaijan population. The two research questions of interest are, if subjects consider income taxes when deciding how many hours to work and how subjects would react to a hypothetical 5% income tax rate increase. Also examined are the responses to these questions between subjects with different socio-economic characteristics. Examining cross-sectional data of 326 respondents reveals that income taxes do not influence Azerbaijan labour market participants’ motivation to work, regardless of their socio-economic characteristics. Empirical results indicate that reactions to hypothetical …

The Nature Of Sequential Innovation, Christopher Buccafusco, Stefan Bechtold, Christopher Jon Sprigman

Faculty Scholarship

When creators and innovators take up a new task, they face a world of existing creative works, inventions, and ideas, some of which are governed by intellectual property (IP) rights. This presents a choice: Should the creator pay to license those rights? Or, alternatively, should the creator undertake to innovate around them? Our Article formulates this “build on/build around decision” as the fundamental feature of sequential creativity, and it maps a number of factors—some legal, some contextual—that affect how creators are likely to decide between building on existing IP or building around it. Importantly, creators are influenced by more than …

Life Insurance: Nudges And Adverse Selection, Timothy F. Harris

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Death of a breadwinner can have devastating financial consequences on surviving dependents through lost earnings and medical expenses. Life insurance is designed to help mitigate these financial burdens. Nonetheless, there are documented shortages in life insurance coverage. Adverse selection---where higher risk individuals are more likely to purchase coverage leading to market failure---could be one of the causes of uninsured vulnerabilities. I analyze both the existence of and welfare costs from adverse selection in individual term life insurance and employer-sponsored life insurance (ESLI) at a large public university. In the individual term market, using a representative sample of purchasers, I do …

The Role Of Behavior In The Effectiveness Of Indoor Air Pollution Interventions: Results From The Artis Study, Madison J. Cole

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using panel data from a randomized placebo-controlled trial of a wood stove changeout and air filter interventions, this study addresses the role of behavior in the efficacy of air quality interventions. The effectiveness of an intervention in improving air quality depends on how households respond to and use them. Two important responses are whether the target population complies with the requirements of the intervention and whether users adjust other behaviors that can affect air quality.

This paper’s results are consistent with prior studies in finding that in the absence of interventions, a number of behaviors can affect indoor air pollution, …

The Moral High Road In The Undercity: An Examination Of Ethics In A Mumbai Slum, Mary L. Bauer

Catholic Studies Faculty Publications

As of 2016, 1.6 billion people around the globe lacked proper shelter and of these, one billion lived in informal settlements, also called slums, according to data collected by the United Nations (UN-Habitat 2016). Investigative journalist Katherine Boo spent four years, between 2007 and 2011, interviewing and shadowing the residents of one such slum on the outskirts of Mumbai. Her goal was to draw attention to socio-economic inequality (Boo, 2014 pp. 247-248), but in the course of collecting data about the consequences of poverty and residents’ attempts to rise out of it, she also recorded information about their moral choices, …

Behavioral Economics, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes: 

• Shaikh, A. (2017, May 4). Thank-you card from students [Handwritten greeting card]. The New School for Social Research. Unpublished. Signed by multiple students expressing gratitude for instruction in behavioral economics.
• Shaikh, A. (2017). Behavioral economics: Course outline [Handwritten lecture notes, partial draft]. The New School for Social Research. Unpublished. 
• Shaikh, A. (2017). Annotations on Richard Thaler and nudging [Handwritten sticky note and marginalia on printed article]. The New School for Social Research. Unpublished. 
• Shaikh, A. (2017, December 5). Behavioral economics: Class discussion notes [Handwritten lecture notes]. The New School for Social Research. Unpublished. T
• [Author unknown]. (n.d.). …

Chinese Superstition And Real Estate Prices: Transaction-Level Evidence From The Us Housing Market, Brad Humphreys, Adam Nowak, Yang Zhou

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

We investigate the impact of Chinese superstition on prices paid by Chinese home buyers in Seattle, Washington. Chinese consider 8 lucky and 4 unlucky. Empirical results indicate Chinese buyers pay a 1-2% premium for addresses including an 8 and a 1% discount for addresses including a 4. These results are unrelated to unobserved property quality: no premium exists when Chinese sell to non-Chinese. Absent explicit identfiers for Chinese individuals, we develop a binomial name classifier using methods from the biomedical and document classification literature, allowing for falsification tests using other ethnic groups and mitigating ambiguity attributable to transliteration of Chinese …

Emotions, Intuitions And Risk Perception In Critical Care, Oleksandr Dubov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The theory of decision-making as it applies to bioethics and healthcare assumes a rational decision maker: someone who knows all his alternatives, has clear preferences, can rank and weigh risks and benefits of an intervention, and always acts in his own best interests. However, the growing body of research from the field of decision science shows that, in reality, such a purely rational decision maker does not exist. Instead, patients are rational within personal or environmental constraints such as uncertainty or ambiguity in which non-rational approaches such as emotion and intuition are instrumental. This issue is particularly important in critical …

Nudging Towards Social Change: The Application Of Psychology And Behavioral Economics In Promoting Responsible Consumption, Larissa Chern

CMC Senior Theses

With workplace disasters in developing countries increasingly in the news, a major question is how to encourage consumers to use corporate social responsibility as a criterion in purchasing. Distinct from environmental concerns, social responsibility is defined here with respect to the humanitarian aspects of corporate practice, including fair wages and working conditions, equitable treatment of the disadvantaged, and restriction of child labor. Although the idea of socially responsible consumption (SRC) was first identified over forty years ago, most recent research on changing consumption habits focuses specifically on environmentally responsible consumption (ERC). Combining the psychological concept of social norms with economic …

Robert Parker’S Wine Advocate And The Consequential Pricing Of Provençal Wines, Gweneth Marter

Scripps Senior Theses

Robert Parker is an esteemed, somewhat controversial wine-critic. Since 1978, Parker has assigned every wine he tastes a score between 50 and 100. He uses this method to communicate to both consumers and producers his opinion of the quality, taste, and aging potential of the wine. Between the years 2005 and 2015, Robert Parker graded 115 wines from the French region of Provence. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether and to what extent Robert Parker’s grades affect the price of wine. Through descriptive statistics and regression analysis of Robert Parker’s grade and year of production on the …

Empathy Conservation: Experiments Suggest A Need For More Attention In Policymaking, Natalia V. Czap, Hans J. Czap, Gary Lynne, Mark E. Burbach

CAFIO: Policy Research Group Policy Pagers

One of the major challenges of environmental policy with regard to conservation is that it must often rely on voluntary and non-selfish actions of individuals. Traditionally policy makers rely on direct regulation and financial incentives, but both approaches face problems. Regulations may lead to resentment and the costs of perfect enforcement are prohibitively high. Financial incentives can be perverse and may lead to unintended consequences, including crowding out of intrinsic motivation. In addition, behavioral economics and economic psychology studies demonstrate that the assumptions of the neoclassical economic models (such as self-interest only, rationality, and willpower) on which the policy design …

Renewable Portfolio Standards May Reduce Green Energy Used In Electricity Production, Karina Schoengold, Suparna Bhattacharya, Konstantinos Giannakas

CAFIO: Policy Research Group Policy Pagers

Rising energy prices, dependence on foreign oil supplies, and consequences of climate change have prompted governments worldwide to initiate policies to shift from fossil fuels to renewables for electricity generation. One of the most commonly used policy instruments is the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires electricity providers to procure green energy (e.g., wind, solar, biomass) for a portion of their electricity supplies. To date, RPS has been a state-mandated program in the United States. As of February 2017, 29 states, Washington DC, and 3 territories have adopted RPS policies.