Other Economics Commons^™

The Effect Of Changes In Racial Composition On Housing Prices: A Study Of The Most Diverse Place In The World, Youseph Anwar

Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to illustrate that increases in minority residents may lead to decreases in housing prices. I observe the effects of changes in racial composition on housing prices in Queens, NY from 2011-2015. The following econometric tools are implemented: a fixed effects model, quantile, hedonic, and OLS regressions.

Individualism, Collectivism, And Trade, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Erik O. Kimbrough

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

While economists recognize the important role of formal institutions in the promotion of trade, there is increasing agreement that institutions are typically endogenous to culture, making it difficult to disentangle their separate contributions. Lab experiments that assign institutions exogenously and measure and control individual cultural characteristics can allow for clean identification of the effects of institutions, conditional on culture, and help us understand the relationship between behavior and culture, under a given institutional framework. We focus on cultural tendencies toward individualism/collectivism, which social psychologists highlight as an important determinant of many behavioral differences across groups and people. We design an …

Information Transmission And The Oral Tradition: Evidence Of A Late-Life Service Niche For Tsimane Amerindians, Eric Schniter, Nathaniel T. Wilcox, Bret A. Beheim, Hillard S. Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Storytelling can affect wellbeing and fitness by transmitting information and reinforcing cultural codes of conduct. Despite their potential importance, the development and timing of storytelling skills, and the transmission of story knowledge have received minimal attention in studies of subsistence societies that more often focus on food production skills. Here we examine how storytelling and patterns of information transmission among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists are predicted by the changing age profiles of storytellers’ abilities and accumulated experience. We find that storytelling skills are most developed among older adults who demonstrate superior knowledge of traditional stories and who report telling stories most. We …

New Hampshire Effect: Behavior In Sequential And Simultaneous Multi-Battle Contests, Shakun D. Mago, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Sequential multi-battle contests are predicted to induce lower expenditure than simultaneous contests. This prediction is a result of a “New Hampshire Effect” – a strategic advantage created by the winner of the first battle. Although our laboratory study provides evidence for the New Hampshire Effect, we find that sequential contests generate significantly higher (not lower) expenditure than simultaneous contests. This is mainly because in sequential contests, there is significant over-expenditure in all battles. We suggest sunk cost fallacy and utility of winning as two complementary explanations for this behavior and provide supporting evidence.

Poverty Mapping Using Convolutional Neural Networks Trained On High And Medium Resolution Satellite Images, With An Application In Mexico, Boris Babenko, Jonathan Hersh, David Newhouse, Anusha Ramakrishnan, Tom Swartz

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Mapping the spatial distribution of poverty in developing countries remains an important and costly challenge. These “poverty maps” are key inputs for poverty targeting, public goods provision, political accountability, and impact evaluation, that are all the more important given the geographic dispersion of the remaining bottom billion severely poor individuals. In this paper we train Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to estimate poverty directly from high and medium resolution satellite images. We use both Planet and Digital Globe imagery with spatial resolutions of 3-5 m2 and 50 cm2 respectively, covering all 2 million km2 of Mexico. Benchmark poverty estimates come from …

Nebraska Snaps Back, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

Nebraska will fully participate in stronger U.S. economic growth. While the farming sector will continue to face challenges, farm income will rise slightly during the forecast period, and consequently, will no longer detract from Nebraska economic growth. Nebraska will match U.S. job growth, with job growth particularly strong in services, construction, and retail trade. The agricultural processing sector also will expand employment. Projected growth rates for 2018 through 2020 are presented in Table 1.

Employment will grow by 1.1% to 1.2% per year, matching the national job growth rate in 2019 and 2020. Non-farm income will grow between 3.9% and …

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 …

From Local To Global: The Role Of Interdisciplinary Place-Based Research In Teaching Environmental Economics, Sean P. Macdonald

Publications and Research

This chapter examines the value of student engagement in interdisciplinary place-based research - where the exploration of “place” assumes a central component of students’ semester research projects in an undergraduate Environmental Economics class. It considers the benefits of teaching from an interdisciplinary perspective while employing the resources of the local community as a laboratory where students engage in research linked to place - the local community, urban space or a virtual location - encouraging students to make meaningful connections between the theoretical study of local and global environmental problems and the actual observation and investigation of those challenges in real …

Who’S Holding Out? An Experimental Study Of The Benefits And Burdens Of Eminent Domain, Abel Winn, Matthew W. Mccarter

ESI Publications

A substantial literature identifies seller holdout as a serious obstacle to land assembly, implying that eminent domain is an appropriate policy response. We conduct a series of laboratory experiments to test this view. We find that when there is no competition and no eminent domain, land assembly suffers from costly delay and failed assembly: participants lose 18.8% of the available surplus on average. Much of the inefficiency is due to low offers from the buyers (“buyer holdout”) rather than strategic holdout among sellers. When buyers can exercise eminent domain the participants lose 19.4% of the surplus on average. This loss …

Fossil Fuel Opportunities For West Virginia: 2017 Update, Eric Bowen, Christiadi

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

Information (Non)Aggregation In Markets With Costly Signal Acquisition, Brice Corgnet, Cary Deck, Mark Desantis, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

Markets are often viewed as a tool for aggregating disparate private knowledge, a stance supported by past laboratory experiments. However, traders’ acquisition cost of information has typically been ignored. Results from a laboratory experiment involving six treatments varying the cost of acquiring signals of an asset’s value suggest that when information is costly, markets do not succeed in aggregating it. At an individual level, having information improves trading performance, but not enough to offset the cost of obtaining the information. Although males earn more through trading than females, this differential is offset by the greater propensity of males to buy …

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: September 20, 2017, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) 1 fell by 0.38% during August of 2017. The decline in the LEI-N, which is designed to predict economic activity six months into the future, suggests that the Nebraska economy will grow slowly during the first few months of 2018. The drop in the indicator was primarily due to a decline in manufacturing hours-worked during August. Building permits for single-family homes and airline passenger enplanements also dropped slightly. There were two positive components of the LEI-N. Businesses responding to the August Survey of Nebraska Business reported plans to increase sales and employment over …

The Welfare Effects Of Civil Forfeiture, Michael Preciado, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Publications

Using a laboratory experiment we explore competing claims on the welfare effects of civil forfeiture. Experiment participants are tasked with making trade-offs in allocating resources “to fight crime” with and without the ability to seize and forfeit assets. It is an open question whether the societal impact of reducing crime is greater in a world with or without civil forfeiture. Proponents of civil forfeiture argue that the ill-gotten gains of criminals can be used by law enforcement to further fight crime. Opponents claim that the confiscation of assets by law enforcement distorts the prioritization of cases by focusing attention, not …

No Mere Tautology: The Division Of Labor Is Limited By The Division Of Labor, Andrew Smyth, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Working Papers

We explore the intersection of growth theory and the theory of the firm with an experiment. Economic growth is possible in our experiment when agents specialize to exploit increasing returns. We find that low opportunity costs are sufficient for Marshallian internal economies, but that Marshallian external economies are slow to emerge in four probing treatment conditions. Transaction costs do not hamper external economies as we anticipated prior to collecting data. When external economies falter, it is because new ideas about the cost and value of more extensive specialization fail to emerge. Ideas are what make further divisions of the …

Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: September 1, 2017, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

Nebraska’s consumer and business confidence fell during August. The Consumer Confidence Index – Nebraska (CCI-N) stood at 100.9 in August, below the reading of 102.5 from July. Notably, the CCI-N remained above the neutral value of 100.0 during August. The outlook of Nebraska businesses remained strong. The Business Confidence Index – Nebraska (BCI-N) stood at 104.2 in August, close to the value of 105.1 during July, and well above the neutral value of 100.0. When asked about the most important issue facing their business, customer demand was mentioned by 35 percent of business respondents. Businesses also faced growing competition in …

A Micro-Invstigation Of The Reasons Behind Demographic Transition In Egypt: Will Egypt Witness A Demographic Window?, Sarah El-Khishin, Magued Osman, Heba Nassar

Economics

Abstract: The paper investigates the factors behind the slowdown in demographic transition in Egypt across different geographical and socio-economic groups. The authors relax the assumption of a uniform fertility behavior across households and re-visit interrelationships between demography and economic indicators from a micro perspective. Empirical findings reject mainstream beliefs that slow demographic transition in Egypt is attributed to the poorer, south-located and less-educated households. Fertility behaviors in Urban Egypt and among the high-educated females are found to be key contributors to the slowdown of demographic transition. Unemployment among the high-educated females in addition to lower public and foreign spending on …

The Attack And Defense Of Weakest Link Networks, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

We experimentally test the qualitatively different equilibrium predictions of two theoretical models of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets. In such a network, the attacker’s objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender’s objective is to defend all targets. The models differ in how the conflict at each target is modeled — specifically, the lottery and auction contest success functions (CSFs). Consistent with equilibrium in the auction CSF model, attackers utilize a stochastic “guerrilla-warfare” strategy, which involves randomly attacking at most one target with a random level of force. Inconsistent with equilibrium in …

Loss Aversion And The Quantity-Quality Tradeoff, Jared Rubin, Anya Samek, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Firms face an optimization problem that requires a maximal quantity output given a quality constraint. But how do firms incentivize quantity and quality to meet these dual goals, and what role do behavioral factors, such as loss aversion, play in the tradeoffs workers face? We address these questions with a theoretical model and an experiment in which participants are paid for both quantity and quality of a real effort task. Consistent with basic economic theory, higher quality incentives encourage participants to shift their attention from quantity to quality. However, we also find that loss averse participants shift their attention from …

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: August 23, 2017, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) 1 rose by 0.56% during July of 2017. The increase in the LEI-N, which is designed to predict economic activity six months into the future, suggests that the Nebraska economy will grow through the first month of 2018. Four components of the indicator improved during July. Business expectations were solid and manufacturing hours grew. The value of the U.S. dollar continued its recent decline, a positive sign for Nebraska’s export-oriented businesses. Further, in a positive sign for the labor market, there also was a drop in initial claims for unemployment insurance. In terms …

Credit Risk And Corporate Governance, Olivier Mugisho Mudekereza

Theses and Dissertations

Is the executive’s compensation structure influenced by the credit rating assigned to his company? I analyze a panel of U.S. public firms using the random-effects and fixed-effects estimations. Compared to firms with lower credit risk, I find that firms facing higher probability of default provide more incentives for their CEOs.

Human And Monkey Responses In A Symmetric Game Of Conflict With Asymmetric Equilibria, Sarah F. Brosnan, Sara A. Price, Kelly Leverett, Laurent Prétôt, Michael Beran, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Publications

To better understand the evolutionary history of human decision-making, we compare human behavior to that of two monkey species in a symmetric game of conflict with two asymmetric equilibria. While all of these species routinely make decisions in the context of social cooperation and competition, they have different socio-ecologies, which leads to different predictions about how they will respond. Our prediction was that anti-matching would be more difficult than matching in a symmetric coordination with simultaneous moves. To our surprise, not only do rhesus macaques frequently play one asymmetric Nash equilibrium, but so do capuchin monkeys, whose play in the …

Historical Cost And Conservatism Are Joint Adaptations That Help Identify Opportunity Cost, Sudipta Basu, Gregory B. Waymire

ESI Publications

Braun (The ecological rationality of historical costs and conservatism. Accounting, Economics and Law: A Convivium, this issue) argues that the traditional accounting principles underlying the revenue-expense approach such as Historical Cost and Conservatism are ecologically rational in that they help organizations survive better in uncertain economic environments. More importantly, Braun argues that the revenue-expense approach generates new private information, which informs markets and makes them more effective (Hayek, 1945, The use of knowledge in society. The American Economic Review, 35(4), 519–530), as opposed to merely reflecting back market data under the asset-liability approach (e.g. Sunder, 2011, IFRS monopoly: …

Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: August 4, 2017, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

Consumer and business confidence remained strong in Nebraska during July but fell from June levels. The Consumer Confidence Index – Nebraska (CCI-N) stood at 102.5 in July after a reading of 104.7 during June. Despite the decline of 2.2, the CCI-N remained above the neutral value of 100.0, indicating strong consumer confidence. The outlook of Nebraska businesses also was strong. The Business Confidence Index – Nebraska (BCI-N) fell to 105.1 in July from 109.2 in June. The BCI-N remained well above the neutral value in July, despite the 4.1 point decline, which indicates that business confidence is also strong in …

Exchange In The Absence Of Legal Enforcement: Reputation And Multilateral Punishment Under Uncertainty, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Prinicpal-agent problems can reduce gains from exchange available in long distance trade. One solution to mitigate this problem is multilateral punishment, whereby groups of principals jointly punish cheating agents by giving them bad reputations. But how does such punishment work when there is uncertainty regarding whether an agent actually cheated or was just the victim of bad luck? And how might such uncertainty be mitigated—or exacerbated—by nonobservable, pro-social behavioral characteristics? We address these questions by designing a simple modified trust game with uncertainty and the capacity for principals to employ multilateral punishment. We find that a modest amount of uncertainty …

Experimenting With Contests For Experimentation, Cary Deck, Erik O. Kimbrough

ESI Publications

We report an experimental test of alternative rules in innovation contests when success may not be feasible and contestants may learn from each other. Following Halac, Kartik, and Liu (in press), the contest designer can vary the prize allocation rule from Winner‐Take‐All (WTA) in which the first successful innovator receives the entire prize to Shared in which all successful innovators during the contest duration share in the prize. The designer can also vary the information disclosure policy from Public in which at each period, all information about contestants' past successes and failures is publicly available, to Private, in which contestants …

How Product Innovation Can Affect Price Collusion, Andrew Smyth

ESI Working Papers

Price conspiracies appear endemic in many markets. This paper conjectures that low expected returns from product innovation can affect price collusion in certain markets. This conjecture is tested—and supported—by both archival and experimental data. In particular, average market prices in low innovation experiments are significantly greater than those in high innovation, but otherwise identical experiments, because price collusion is more successful in the low innovation experiments.

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 …

The Effects Of Employment On Recidivism Among Delinquent Juveniles, Leigh Kassem

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current research indicates an association between intense adolescent work (twenty hours or more per week) and delinquent behavior. It has been widely speculated that this relationship is spurious, occurring only as a result of other factors which are common to both offending and intense employment. The current study attempts to fill a gap in the literature by utilizing the Pathways to Desistance dataset to examine the evolution of the relationship between work and self-reported offending in a longitudinal sample of juvenile offenders. Work intensity and consistency, social capital, and expectations for success were analyzed as potential predictors of recidivism or …

The Optimal Defense Of Networks Of Targets, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson

ESI Working Papers

This paper examines a game-theoretic model of attack and defense of multiple networks of targets in which there exist intra-network strategic complementarities among targets. The defender’s objective is to successfully defend all of the networks and the attacker’s objective is to successfully attack at least one network of targets. Although there are multiple equilibria, we characterize correlation structures in the allocations of forces across targets that arise in all equilibria. For example, in all equilibria the attacker utilizes a stochastic ‘guerrilla warfare’ strategy in which a single random network is attacked.

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: July 26, 2017, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) 1 rose by 2.75% during June of 2017. The rapid increase in the LEI-N indicates that the Nebraska economy will grow quickly at the end of 2017. All components of the indicator rose during June. Business expectations were strong while the value of the U.S. dollar fell, a positive sign for Nebraska’s export-oriented businesses. There also was a sharp increase in building permits for single-family homes during the month.