Other Economics Commons^™

From Personal To Personalized Goals: How Goal Nudges Improve Production, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán González

ESI Working Papers

We study how workers’ non-binding self-set goals affect their production and whether goal nudges (ability-calibrated goal hints) make goal setting more effective. In a real-effort task, participants first complete an ability pretest and are then assigned to one of three treatments: a no-goal baseline, a personal goal treatment with no external hint, or a personalized goal nudge that participants may accept or modify. We document a positive link between goals and production. However, merely asking workers to set goals is ineffective: when left unguided, workers anchor on conservative goals well below those induced by goal nudges, leading to underperformance. In …

Generosity After Negative Random Shocks, Hernán Bejarano, Joris Gillet, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara

ESI Working Papers

We report the results of three preregistered experiments examining the effects of negative random endowment shocks on generosity. Using a dictator game, we show that generosity is greater towards those who experience a negative random shock, and this effect is larger than the effect inequality has on giving. Our data provide evidence that people do not expect this additional level of generosity after a shock and that injunctive norms cannot explain it either. Taken together, our findings suggest that the (high) level of generosity observed after negative random shocks is unexpected and exceeds what people consider to be socially appropriate. …

Identity-Dependent Externalities Can Mitigate Overbidding In Tullock Contests: Theory And Evidence, Dan Kovenock, Jian Song, Francesco Trevisan

ESI Working Papers

We investigate how identity-dependent externalities infuence bidding behavior in Tullock lottery contests. While experimental studies of standard contests, in which losers are indiferent to the winner’s identity, consistently document overbidding, the role of identity-dependent preferences remains less explored. We address this gap by frst showing that the class of three-player Tullock lottery contests with identity-dependent externalities considered here can be mapped into a standard Tullock lottery contest with appropriately chosen prize valuations and endowments, yielding identical Nash equilibrium predictions. We then use this mapping to design a laboratory experiment that directly compares the two “equilibrium-equivalent” contest formats. In our three-player …

Second-Layer Money Or Fiduciary Media? A Full-Reserve Critique Of Bitcoin Price Stabilization: A Comment On Blasco And García De Enterría, Philipp Bagus, Joel Serrano

Journal of New Finance

This article critically examines Blasco and García de Enterría’s proposal that certain Bitcoin-denominated second-layer instruments—real bills, private scrip, and cash notes—could reduce Bitcoin’s short-term volatility and function as media of exchange. From a full-reserve Austrian perspective, it argues that the relevant distinction is not between base money and higher layers as such, but, within those layers, between fully backed monetary certificates and fiduciary media. Although second-layer instruments may smooth short-term volatility, those that operate as fiduciary media introduce counterparty risk, redemption risk, and credit expansion unsupported by real saving, potentially generating long-term instability.

Conflict-Mediated Group Size Regulation: A Theory Of Supraoptimal And Suboptimal Group Size, Eric Schniter

ESI Working Papers

Observed group sizes rarely match the size that would maximize what each member gets from belonging. We propose a two-part theory in which group size is regulated by two related conflicts: insider-outsider conflict over admission, and within-group conflict as crowding, competition, and social tensions intensify with size. Three strategies are available: admission, exclusion, and fission. The first part shows that even when exclusion is unavailable, fission dynamics alone drive group size away from the optimum in both directions, with the pattern set by how prospective joiners encounter groups and by the geometry of fission. When joiners compare groups across a …

Expanding The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform Through Artificial Influence Assessment (Aia): Rationale, Development, And Measurement Design, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping how individuals access information, make decisions, and interact with digital environments. The Cognitive Attentional Standards Platform (C.A.S.) was developed to assess attention related harms, cognitive safety, digital autonomy, and platform influence across digital systems (Clark, 2026). However, the growth of generative AI, conversational agents, and algorithmic decision support technologies has introduced new forms of influence that may not be fully captured by existing assessment domains. This paper proposes the Artificial Influence Assessment (AIA) as an expansion of the C.A.S. framework designed to measure AI mediated influence on cognition, behavior, autonomy, and information processing. Drawing on …

[Review Of] The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete For Wealth, Power And People, Steven Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Paul Seabright's The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People.

The Dictatorial Public Goods Game, Gabriele Camera, Gary Charness, Nir Chemeya, Ro'i Zultan

ESI Working Papers

We propose a novel game, the Dictatorial Public Goods Game, to study the interplay between collective resource generation and centralized provision of public goods. After making choices in a standard Voluntary Contribution Mechanism (VCM), one player is selected from the group to administrate the contributions: either provide the public good or expropriate the collected resources for personal gain. We find that adding this centralized mechanism reduces efficiency compared to the standard VCM. Although higher contributions increase the material incentive to expropriate, they lead to more provision. Thus, pro-social choices in the contribution and in the provision stages act as …

Should Dams Respond To Power Prices? Environmental Economics And Emissions Effects Of Hydropower Peaking, Levi Stephen Konrad-Shankland

Environmental Studies Senior Theses

Hydroelectricity stands to be particularly important to a decarbonizing power grid because unlike many renewables it is dispatchable. However, ramping up and down hydropower production at short notice to respond to power demand—hydropeaking—worsens many of the environmental harms of hydroelectricity (Bipa et al., 2024). In Chapter 1, I create a microeconomic framework to explain how and why revenue-motivated dams hydropeak.

In Chapter 2, I assess the extents to which six different case study dams around the US hydropeak, first by decomposing actual flow regime into combinations of counterfactual management objectives, and second with an index of flow variation alignment with …

Essays On The Economics Of Aging: Structural And Machine Learning Approaches, Alexander S. Kwon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Population aging has made the study of older workers’ economic behavior increasingly important for understanding labor markets, retirement systems, and public policy. In many advanced economies, rising old-age dependency ratios have increased the need to understand labor-supply, retirement, and savings decisions later in life (OECD, 2025). In the United States, these issues are especially important because Social Security faces long-run financing pressure, with the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund projected to be depleted around 2033 (U.S. Social Security Administration, Office of the Chief Actuary, 2025). Longer life expectancy increases the expected length of retirement and raises the fiscal importance …

Art And Social Context Adorno, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Shaikh, A. (n.d.). Art and social context: Adorno [Unpublished lecture notes and outline]. The New School for Social Research. Unpublished.
• Adorno, T. W. (n.d.). Aesthetic theory [Unpublished excerpt or reading]. Unpublished.
• Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (n.d.). Dialectic of enlightenment [Unpublished excerpt or reading]. Unpublished.
• Adorno, T. W. (n.d.). The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception [Unpublished excerpt or reading]. Unpublished.
• Shaikh, A. (n.d.). Handwritten annotations on Adorno and social context of art [Handwritten marginalia]. The New School for Social Research. Unpublished.

Essays On Development Economics, Environmental Economics, And Political Economy, Weihong Li

Economics Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 1 explores the strategic behavior of provincial leaders in China in response to visits by central government leaders. I find that such behavior is correlated with provincial leaders’ personal characteristics and their connections with the visitors. Meanwhile, acting strategically during these visits has a positive and significant effect on overall promotions, but a positive and insignificant effect on promotions to the most important positions in the Politburo.

Chapter 2 examines the impact of the Confucian norms on the spatial heterogeneity of fertility rates and sex-selective abortions in contemporary China. To overcome the challenge of quantifying cultural norms, I construct …

Bayesian Spatiotemporal Model For Counterfactual Estimation In Socioeconomic Studies, Duwani W. Gonzalez

Statistical Science Theses and Dissertations

Impact evaluations of regional development programs often require estimating counterfactual outcomes for a small number of treated regions using survey-based areal data. In practice, evaluators typically rely on two-group quasi-experimental methods such as propensity score matching (PSM) and Difference-in-Differences (DiD). These approaches perform poorly when only a few regions receive treatment, and when the set of observed covariates is limited or only partially relevant. Moreover, they typically do not explicitly exploit the spatial and temporal dependence present in survey-based areal data such as in ACS (American Community Survey). This dissertation develops a family of Bayesian spatial predictive models for directly …

More Than The Sum Of Its Sexes: Functional Constraints, Embodied Capital, And Age-Structured Labor In Human Forager Economies, Eric Schniter, Hillard Kaplan, Brenda Bowser, Cari Goetz

ESI Publications

"The paper's rough consensus attributes the SDoL to differential variance in food returns across male- and female-typical foraging domains, sourcing this primarily to Bird and Codding (2015) and Kelly's (2013) reframe of the classic 'hunting vs. gathering' axis as 'risky vs. non-risky foraging.' Indeed, the data show that males more often pursue large game and honey, resources that yield higher caloric returns but with high unpredictability, injury risk, and failure rates. Females, especially those with dependent young, more often target plant foods and small game that produce steadier, lower-variance returns. But variance-buffering is a proximate ecological account, not a life …

Centralization Vs. Decentralization: First Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera, Gary Charness, Nir Chemaya

ESI Working Papers

The future architecture of financial systems is a subject of contention, with centralized and decentralized governance proponents. Here we ask: would the architecture affect the quality of decision-making? We propose a game where financial network participants demarcate the ownership of claims to income. This governance task can be decentralized (shared authority), centralized (single authority), or hybrid (alternating authority). Without communication all architectures supported poor outcomes. With communication, decentralization ensured good governance and maximum profits, while centralization did not—lowering communication’s potency in promoting socially optimal decisions. This indicates there is scope for decentralization in innovating financial institutions.

Climate Policy Uncertainty And Housing Prices: Analyzing Bidirectional Transmission Across U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Sourav Batabyal, Alper Gormus

Finance and Economics

This study examines the relationship between climate policy uncertainty (CPU) and residential housing prices across U.S. metropolitan areas using the U.S. CPU index developed by Gavriilidis in 2021 and monthly S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, covering January 1991 to May 2024. Employing a Fourier-augmented Toda–Yamamoto causality framework that accounts for both abrupt and gradual structural breaks, we document significant CPU → housing prices transmission in multiple metropolitan markets, with bidirectional transmission dynamics emerging in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco, as well as at the U.S. national level. The results reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity across various …

Fascism Usa: Class And Identity Politics In The Age Of Trump, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

This essay argues that Trump’s triumph in the 2024 presidential contest represents the consolidation of an oligarchical authoritarian project, backed by a multi-class and (surprisingly, for some) multi-racial electorate. It brought intensified state and freelance attacks on immigrants, labor unions, women, LGBTQ+ people, journalists, civil servants, assorted “political enemies,” and other groups that the MAGA movement targets. It is institutionalizing authoritarian governance structures in ways that will be exceedingly difficult to undo. The paper first addresses the experience of growing up in the shadow of fascism. It analyzes various sectors that supported Trump and the impacts of inflation, incumbency, economic …

Exploring Self-Sufficiency And Economic Behavior In Economic Education Students, Rizza Megasari, Sheerad Sahid

International Conference on Business and Management Research (ICBMR)

This study investigates the self-sufficiency and economic behaviors of economics education students, focusing on how independent living shapes their financial management, consumption habits, and overall approach to life. Data was collected through in-depth interviews, using a question list informed by literature on 21st-century skills, sustainable development, and self-sufficiency. The interview explored the student's understanding and practice of self-sufficiency, examining their experiences with financial management (budgeting, saving, spending), living arrangements (boarding house choices, facilities, and habits), consumption patterns (food, clothing, transportation), and engagement in self-reliant activities (cooking, minor repairs). The study highlights the interplay between economic knowledge, personal values, and practical …

A Labor Market Unleashed: College Football Labor Substitution In The Transfer Portal Era, Adrian M. Simion, Jeremy M. Losak, Catalina Bush

Sport Management - All Scholarship

College football's labor market has been transformed by litigation-driven regulatory change eliminating long-standing mobility restrictions. Central to this transformation is a new roster construction dilemma — whether to acquire experienced collegiate talent through the transfer portal or invest in traditional high school recruiting. Using a fixed effects panel of 127 Football Bowl Subdivision programs across six recruiting cycles (2019–2024), we examine whether schools substitute transfers for high school recruits. Three findings emerge. First, portal activity is associated with reduced three-star recruiting but no relationship with four-star or five-star prospects, with substitution driven by quantity rather than quality. Second, substitution is …

Employment Contracts, Working Time, And The Well-Being Of Schoolteachers In Japan, Haojun Gong, Shinpei Sano

Japanese Society and Culture

This paper quantitatively analyzes trends in the working hours of schoolteachers in Japan using Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) data from three survey waves. The analysis focuses on differences between fixed-term and permanent employment contracts and on school environment variables, and their relationships with working hours and teacher well-being. Teachers on permanent contracts tend, on average, to work longer hours than those on fixed-term contracts, largely because of greater time spent on administrative duties and extracurricular activities. School environmental characteristics and principal leadership show only weak statistical associations with total working hours. Subjective job satisfaction is lower, and workload …

Segmentation And Morphometry Of Intracranial Internal Carotid Artery Calcification In Relation To Brain Atrophy, Xiao Xu, Nikhil N. Chaudhari, Phoebe E. Imms, Nahian F. Chowdhury, Fangyun C. Liu, Jorge A. Solis Galvan, Bavrina Bigjahan, Grant Schleifer, Maria Ashna, Blake Hannagan, Giuseppe Barisano, Daniel K. Cummings, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Paul L. Hooper, Edmond Seabright, Randall C. Thompson, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael D. Gurven, Jonathan Stieglitz, Caleb E. Finch, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Helena C. Chui, Margaret Gatz, Wendy J. Mack, Hillard Kaplan, Andrei Irimia

ESI Publications

Purpose

Intracranial internal carotid artery calcification (iICAC) is a form of intracranial arteriosclerosis and is associated with an elevated risk of stroke and dementia. However, iICAC’s relationship with brain atrophy remains poorly understood. We aimed to automatically quantify iICAC morphometric characteristics and evaluate their associations with regional brain volumes (BVs).

Methods

We developed an automated approach to compute iICAC surface area and thickness from CT brain scans in a sample of physically active South American subsistence farmers (n = 1,232, age range: 40 years to 92 years, 48.1% female, 794 Tsimane and 438 Moseten). Linear regression models were used …

On The Origins Of Modern East Asia: Knowledge And The Economic Transformation Of Japan And China In The Late 19th Century, Debin Ma, Jared Rubin, Weiwen Yin

ESI Working Papers

This paper revisits the old thesis of the contrasting paths of modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of knowledge acquisition (propositional vs. prescriptive) and political centralization as the key drivers behind these contrasting paths. Our model and historical data highlight how the introduction of these elements contributed to Meiji Japan’s decisive turn towards the West and Qing China’s lethargic response to Western imperialism. Our analytical framework, developed from a comparative historical narrative and quantitative data, sheds new light on the importance of knowledge acquisition in enabling developing countries to reach the world’s …

Markets, Agency, And Trust: Ai Agents And The Knowledge Problem, Brennan Mcdavid, Lynne Kiesling, David Chassin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming market participation, raising key epistemological questions: Do AI agents enhance or diminish the aggregation of local, private, and tacit knowledge Hayek saw as essential to market processes? How does trust in both markets and AI shape willingness to engage in AI-mediated exchange? This paper examines these issues through market epistemology, agency relationships, and trust epistemology, analyzing how agentic AI reshapes the knowledge problem and principal-agent dynamics. Applying this framework to transactive energy markets, we show that AI shifts decision-making from human cognition to algorithmic processes that require user trust despite epistemic opacity, although it is …

The Poverty Of Algebra, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes.

• Anwar Shaikh. (n.d.). The poverty of algebra: Critical notes on neo-Ricardian economics (Unpublished manuscript). Department of Economics, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY.

Stated Preferences For Public Provision Of Services: Experimental Evidence From Latin America, Hernán Bejarano, Matias Busso, Juan Francisco Santos

ESI Working Papers

We study how individuals in six Latin American countries value public versus private provision of education and healthcare using a survey experiment. Respondents were randomly assigned to vignettes that vary income, service quality, and provider type. Reported service quality is the main driver of choices: the probability of selecting a private provider roughly doubles when reported quality of the public option falls from 80 to 20 percent, while income has a smaller effect. Higher institutional trust lowers the likelihood of switching to private providers but does not affect willingness to pay once individuals choose private provision.

Existence Of Equilibrium Mechanisms In Generalized Principal-Agent Problems With Interacting Teams, Brian Roberson

ESI Working Papers

We study incentive design when multiple principals simultaneously design mechanisms for their respective teams in environments with strategic spillovers. In this environment, each principal’s set of incentive-compatible mechanisms—those that satisfy their own agents’ incentive compatibility constraints— depends on the mechanisms offered by the other teams. Following a classic example by Myerson (1982), such games may lack equilibrium due to discontinuities in the correspondence of incentive-compatible mechanisms. We establish general conditions for equilibrium existence by introducing a novel approach that involves tracking both the outcome distributions along the truthful-obedient path and the sets of outcome distributions achievable through unilateral deviations, thereby …

Authoritarianism And Conspiracism Around The World, Valerie Capraro, Folca Panizza, Joseph A. Vitriol, Mikey Biddlestone, Andrè Krouwel, Yordan Kutiyski, Alberto López Ortega, Ana Ebert, Max Wan, Praveen Kujal, Karen M. Douglas, Christopher M. Federico, Jolanda Jetten, Sander Van Der Linden, Flávio Azevedo

ESI Working Papers

Authoritarian leaders frequently deploy conspiracy narratives to justify power concentration and delegitimize opponents, yet the link between authoritarianism and conspiracism remains underresearched. Integrating data across six studies from multiple international surveys (N=63,403; 20 countries), expert-coded party systems (71 countries; 14 datasets), and longitudinal panel studies, we demonstrate that individuals with stronger authoritarian orientations are consistently more prone to conspiracism across diverse cultures, political contexts, and time. These results remain robust when controlling for populist attitudes and multiple political, psychological, and demographic variables. The link between authoritarianism and conspiracism appears to constitute a durable and generalizable psychological relationship. This may help …

Kerentanan Kemiskinan Di Sulawesi Selatan: Analisis Vulnerability As Expected Poverty Dan Klaster Spasial, Nur Hilda Triany

Jurnal Ekonomi Kependudukan dan Keluarga

This study aims to analyze the determinants of poverty vulnerability in South Sulawesi by integrating spatial dimensions into risk estimation models. Using micro-data from the March 2024 National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas) with individuals as the unit of analysis, this study applies the Vulnerability as Expected Poverty (VEP) and Local Indicator of Spatial Association (LISA) methods, estimated through an integrated logistic regression model. Empirical results indicate that while the average vulnerability is relatively low, risk distribution is highly concentrated in specific regional clusters. Key findings reveal that health insurance ownership and household assets are the dominant protective factors that drastically reduce …

High Prevalence Of Cerebrovascular Calcifications And Clinical Correlates In Indigenous Bolivian Forager‐Horticulturalists: A Population‐Based Observational Study, Giuseppe Barisano, Bavrina Bigjahan, Grant Schleifer, Maria Ashna, Wendy J. Mack, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Helena C. Chui, Meng Law, Thomas J. Fischbach, Andrei Irimia, Nikhil N. Chaudhari, Daniel K. Cummings, Paul L. Hooper, Jacob E. Aronoff, Ellen E. Walters, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Raul Quispe Gutierrez, Jesus Bani Cuata, Kenneth Buetow, Caleb E. Finch, Michael D. Gurven, Jonathan Stieglitz, Gregory S. Thomas, Randall C. Thompson, Benjamin Trumble, Hillard Kaplan, Margaret Gatz

ESI Publications

Background

Methods

For Whom Do Labels Work? Heterogeneous Effects Of Popularity And Environmental Information In Coffee Choice, Dede Long, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Hongxing Liu

ESI Publications

We examine the impact of two common food labels on consumers’ choices: environmental certification and popularity cues. In a randomized experiment, participants chose between two similar coffee products, with treatments varying the presence of environmental and/or popularity information. We also collected measures of conformity preferences, environmental concern, political identity, and demographics. At the aggregate level, the environmental and combined labels significantly increased the selection of the target coffee, whereas popularity information alone had no effect. These averages conceal substantial heterogeneity: high-conformity participants responded to all labels, especially popularity cues, while those with domain-specific environmental concerns responded only to environmental and …