Behavioral Economics Commons^™

The Giver: Vision & Memory, Alexander J. Dontre

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

A memory hole is the banishment of problematic thoughts. We exile that which we prefer not to exist. Enter the perilous Memory Hole: The Psychology of Dystopia, to explore a legion of social and psychological themes through the lens of dystopian literature. The crushing fist of 1984 annihilating thoughts from existence as a means of persuasion. The exquisite seduction of addiction as an agent of control in Brave New World. Incineration of the written word to bask in the embers of peace of mind in Fahrenheit 451. Each chapter weaves in and out of the dystopian realms forged …

Teaching Math With Confidence-Recommendations For Improving Numeracy From The Lens Of Confidence Building, Louie Bernard A. Jacob, Miguel Angelo S. Rabago, Hans Erickson A. Tan, Lawrence Dacuycuy, Gerardo L. Largoza, Maria Fe Carmen L. Dabbay

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Despite the vast amount of literature surrounding the topic of financial literacy and related problems, there is still no universally accepted solution to this issue because the main factors causing financial literacy problems are still not fully understood both by researchers and current policy-makers. A possible new approach was discovered by Skagerlund et al. (2018), as their research suggested that financial literacy is driven by numeracy (the ability to process and perform basic numerical concepts and calculations) rather than direct knowledge about financial concepts. Given that numeracy is an effort based task, this policy brief provides a list of recommendations …

A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach To Portfolio Selection: An Application To The Blue Chip Stocks In The Philippine Stock Exchange (2010-2019), Vishal Bhagia, Colleen Monica K. Chiu, Paulynne J. Castillo, Roberto B. Raymundo, Joel Q. Tanchuco

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

There has been a growing interest in the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a nonparametric approach in portfolio optimization due to its flexibility in overcoming the limitations of the conventional mean-variance portfolio (MVP) model. Therefore, this study aims to validate the allocative efficiency of the DEA cross-efficiency model using blue chip stocks in the Philippine Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2019. This study finds that the proposed model is able to distinguish a unique set of best-performing stocks across each holding period and outperforms the MVP more consistently. The results of this study suggest that the proposed DEA …

Oil Price Fluctuations Impact On The Lebanese Economic Well Being, Hanadi Taher

BAU Journal - Health and Wellbeing

This paper investigates the impact of oil price fluctuation on the Lebanese economic well being during the period from 1988 to 2018 using multivariable ordinary least square method with annual time series. taking the Lebanese GDP per capita as proxy for the economic wellbeing as dependent variable and the crud oil average annual prices as proxy for oil price fluctuations with Labor and gross fixed capital formation as two control variables. The test results show a significant and positive impact for the oil price fluctuations on the Lebanese economic well being and the significant results for control variables. In testing …

Improving Youth Financial Literacy: A Profile Of Middle School Camp Attendees, Jamie Lynn Byram, John Grable, Kenneth J. White, Michael Thomas, Kimberly Watkins

Journal of Extension

The purpose of this paper is to present a profile of middle-school-age youth who participated in a week-long experiential residential camp focused on helping campers learn about and interact with money, personal finance topics, and mainstream financial service providers. Based on pre- and post-test data, it was determined an experiential real-world camp experience can increase the financial confidence and goal-setting abilities of young people.

Projected Versus Actual On-Campus Student Enrollment During The Covid-19 Pandemic For Fall 2020 At Purdue University: A Quantitative Analysis Of Purdue Office Of Enrollment Management Data, Max Bebekoski

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Social Norms And Fertility, Sunha Myong, Junghae Park, Junjian Yi

Research Collection School Of Economics

We document three stylized facts on marriage and fertility patterns in East Asian societies: (i) their marriage rates are among the highest in the world, but their total fertility is the lowest; (ii) although they have the lowest total fertility, almost all married women have at least one child; and (iii) almost no single women have any children. As these societies have been influenced by Confucianism over millennia, marriage and fertility decisions are potentially shaped by two social norms: the unequal gender division of childcare and the stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births. We present a model incorporating the two social …

Other-Regarding Expert Behavior - Economics Experiments, Erik Darwin Hille

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes two experiments where experts are facing other-regarding versus self-interested choices on behalf of their clients. The experimental models isolate and examine singular aspects of the complex varied transactions that transpire between experts and their clients every day. Prior literature modeling experts in dictator games or expert advice games shows that given a clear choice with direct culpability that experts are willing to make “fair” other regarding decisions that sacrifice some of their own monetary outcome to increase the outcome for others. However, in these same experiments with the same subject, experts are willing to hide behind many …

The Price Elasticity Of African Elephant Poaching, Quy-Toan Do, Andrei A. Levchenko, Lin Ma, Julian Blanc, Holly Dublin, Tom Milliken

Research Collection School Of Economics

The objective of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity of elephant poaching with respect to prices. Ivory being a storable commodity subjects its price to Hotelling’s no-arbitrage condition, hence allowing identification of the supply curve. The price of gold, one of many commodities used as stores of value, is thus used as an instrument for ivory prices. The supply of illegal ivory is found to be price inelastic with an elasticity of 0.4, with changes in consumer prices passing-through to prices faced by producers at a rate close to unity. Estimations based on a number of …

Divergent Expectations And Dynamic Price Discovery, Shankar Narayanan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose: To provide empirical evidence supporting the claim that divergent expectations underlie price formation during the U.S. equity market opening hours. We focus on earnings announcements to support this claim. This dissertation argues that the clarity of earnings announcements and a firm’s balance sheets is inversely associated with the quality of price discovery during the opening hours after the earnings announcements, as ambiguities in information underlie divergence in expectation. We look at short-term volatility during the opening half-hours of U.S. equity markets after the earnings announcements to assess the quality of price discovery. We also consider changes in short-term …

Providing Childcare, Christine Ho, Sunha Myong

Research Collection School Of Economics

Women’s economic empowerment has been hailed as one of the most remarkable revolutions in the past 50 years. Yet, women still face the lion’s share of the burden of childcare despite major progress in their education and earnings capacity. This is particularly salient in many Asian countries. This chapter proposes a synthesis of the state of knowledge on childcare and discusses policy-relevant issues applicable to the Singapore context. Selected policies are documented and lessons from the international landscape are discussed. Raising children incurs both direct costs in the form of childcare and opportunity costs in the form of career costs. …

Measuring Palatability As A Linear Combination Of Nutrient Levels In Food Items, Jeffrey S. Young

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

It well known that palatability and nutritional quality of foods and/or diets are viewed as being in tension with one another. While there exist multiple measures of healthiness, there are no such measures for tastiness. This gap limits the degree to which researchers can investigate this tension and its implications for dietary behavior and hence public health and nutrition policy. The scope of future work concerning the dietary behavior of Americans would expand greatly if researchers better understood consumers’ willingness to eat certain foods, which matters as much as recommending those foods for them to eat in the first place. …

The Asymmetric Effect Of Sentiment On Equity Returns, Mishal Ahmed

Dissertations

In the first chapter titled “The Asymmetric Effect of Sentiment on U.S. Equity Returns”, we test the asymmetric impact of investor sentiment, proxied by the Baker-Wurgler (2007) investor sentiment index, on expected stock returns in the U.S. We regress sentiment on market and economy-wide fundamentals, use the residuals as a measure of excess sentiment and estimate long-horizon return regressions using positive and negative components of excess sentiment as predictors. We hypothesize that excessive optimism leads investors to make significant portfolio changes whereas excessive pessimism makes investors more cautious about investing, due to loss aversion. Primary results confirm our hypothesis with …

“Why Am I The Only One Responsible For The Whole Family?”: Expressions Of Economic Filial Piety And Financial Anxiety Among Female Survivors Of Sex Trafficking In Cambodia, Julia M. Smith-Brake, Lim Vanntheary, Nhanh Channtha

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Filial piety has evolved and spread in different ways throughout Asia, with the common thread of deep respect and gratitude towards one’s parents remaining a very strong cultural value. In Khmer culture, filial piety includes the expectation that daughters and daughters-in-law provide daily assistance to parents and parents-in-law. Financial anxiety includes the worry and negative mental health outcomes associated with financial stressors. This article presents findings from the Butterfly Longitudinal Research Study on themes on filial piety and financial anxiety, combining survey results from across multiple years as well as a thematic analysis of themes from focus group discussions and …

Predicting Financial Failure Using The Financial Indicators "An Empirical Study On The Services Sector Companies Listed On The Palestine Stock Exchange", Dr. Khaled Hasan Zubdeh

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

The objective of this study was to examine the predictability of companies' failures by developing a mathematical model consisting of a set of financial ratios. In order to reach precise scientific results, the statistical analysis (SPSS) program was used and the financial data of the companies were subjected to multiple discrimination analysis for the fiscal years 2010-2017. The study was applied to the companies of the services sector listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange, that are ten companies out of 48 public companies listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange in all sectors. The researcher reached to a mathematical model consisting …

Emotional Finance: The Impact Of Emotions On Investment Decisions, Leef H. Dierks, Sonja Tiggelbeck

Journal of New Finance

Emotions have a decisive influence on individual investment decisions and thus on market developments. Collective behavior, which often prevails in markets, can trigger the development of speculative bubbles as, more often than not, investors rely on trust in an attempt to reduce the uncertainty and complexity prevailing in markets. Based on the developments surrounding German financial services provider Wirecard in 2020, this contribution explains why retail and institutional investors decided to trust the company's narrative in an attempt to reduce uncertainty, despite increasingly obvious large-scale accounting inconsistencies.

Squawking About Persistently Higher Inflation?, Thomas Lam

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

All signs point to an uncertain path for inflation in the future. While inflation is set to stay prospectively higher in the US in the near-term, it's unlikely to remain so.

Hedonic Price Of Housing Space, Sumit Agarwal, Yanying Chen, Li Jing, Yi Jin Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article estimates hedonic prices for different levels of housing space, by exploiting a unique space‐adding project in Singapore that added a uniform amount of space to each existing housing unit regardless of the original size. This space adding program was carried out if sufficient residents vote in favor of space adding. Using a difference‐in‐differences (DiD) strategy after restricting our sample to narrow margins around the voting cutoff, we find that the additional space increased the resale price of a housing unit by 7% on average, and the extent of price appreciation varied significantly across the original size of the …

Choice Overload, Information Acquisition, And Gift Incentives In An Altruistic Context: Economic Experiments Exploring Decision Making In Charitable Giving, Jessica Adach White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contains three essays on economic experiments concerning altruistic motives. The first chapter, “Choice Overload and Charitable Giving: Can There Be Too Much of a Good Thing?” concentrates on the effects of list sizes of charitable options on an individual’s decision making. The second chapter, “Is No News Good News? Motivated Reasoning in Charitable Giving,” focuses on the impact of information acquisition on an individual’s altruistic contributions. Finally, the third chapter, “Thank You, but No Thank You: Gift Incentives in Charitable Giving,” investigates gift incentives and their influence on donating behavior.

In the first chapter, “Choice Overload and Charitable …

Information Avoidance And Medical Screening: A Field Experiment In China, Yufeng Li, Juanjuan Meng, Changcheng Song, Kai Zheng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Will individuals, especially high-risk individuals, avoid a disease test because of information avoidance? We conduct a field experiment to investigate this issue. We vary the price of a diabetes test (price experiment) and offer both a diabetes test and a cancer test (disease experiment) after eliciting participants’ subjective beliefs about their disease risk. We find evidence that, first, some people avoid the test even when there is neither a monetary nor a transaction cost, and second, both low- and high-risk individuals select out of the test as the price increases. We explain our findings using three classes of models of …