Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Supersuit Up Or Get Left Behind: Why A Personal Agentic Os Is Required For Commercial Viability In The New Economy, Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

In my first article, The Writing on the Wall, we laid out the case: self-improving AI has arrived, the economy is splitting, and every organization faces an existential choice. This paper answers the question we heard most after that piece: “Okay, I believe you. What do I do on Monday morning?” The answer is your Personal Agentic OS. It is the minimum viable infrastructure that turns you from a passive consumer of AI into a sovereign operator of it. And in April 2026, three events converged to make this the most urgent professional skill in the world: Andrej Karpathy’s LLM …

The Hypocrisy Of The Wizards—A Proposal To Correct Incentives In Higher Education Loan Financing, Caden Benedict

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper explores the origins of the student loan debt crisis and proposes tying university incentives to graduates' repayment plans and disclosing median earnings for degrees before students apply. Specifically, while there are numerous factors explaining why the price of education has increased dramatically since the 1970s, this paper proposes solutions that will specifically target university moral hazards by requiring universities fund: (1) the current subsidies to federal student loan repayments under income-driven plans as the House of Representatives intended before the Senate removed "risk-sharing," and (2) bankruptcy law discharge amounts. Moreover, requiring universities to disclose the median earnings of …

Financial Literacy And Fraud Vulnerability In Digital Finance: Evidence From The 2024 Nfcs, Mercedes Palacios Diaz

Posters - 2026

Digital finance has expanded rapidly through fintech platforms and cryptocurrency markets, increasing access to financial services while also exposing individuals to higher levels of financial fraud. Most research treats fraud vulnerability as a single outcome, without distinguishing between financial loss and the ability to recognize scams. This study examines how financial literacy shapes fraud vulnerability through its effects on fraud victimization and scam awareness, highlighting its dual role in reducing financial losses and improving scam recognition. Fraud vulnerability is therefore analyzed across two distinct dimensions: realized financial loss and scam awareness.

Social Media Microtrends And The Economic Realities Of Young Consumers, Camila Berumen

Posters - 2026

This study expects to reveal how social media microtrends act as indicators of the economic realities' young consumers experience, including financial pressure, shifting spending habits, and changing values around consumption. By analyzing how these realities are expressed through digital trends, the research will provide a deeper understanding of how economic conditions are communicated in everyday online behavior. This research addresses the issue that traditional economic measures often overlook lived experience, especially among younger generations. By focusing on microtrends, the study offers a more nuanced and accessible way to understand how economic realities are felt and expressed, rather than just measured. …

Gender Norms, Socio-Organizational Ergonomics, And Female Labor Force Participation In South Asia, Huma Maqsood, Nor Fatimah Che Sulaiman, Suriyani Muhamad, Nor Aizal Akmal Binti Rohaizad, Sana Mukhtar

The Qualitative Report

Socio-organizational ergonomics encompasses workplace social and cultural factors that influence inclusion, performance, and well-being. Gender-based socio-organizational ergonomics has both microeconomic and macroeconomic implications. In this context, underutilization of women’s economic potential, evidenced by low female labor force participation, emerges as a critical factor that compromises sustainable growth in developing countries. To study the phenomenon, we examined the impact of gender norms on socio-organizational ergonomics and female labor force participation in South Asia. Qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 20 female participants are thematically analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s TA framework. Our findings highlight that socio-organizational ergonomics in South Asia is …

The Writing On The Wall: The Rise Of Applied Ai And The Life-Or-Death Choice Every Ceo Must Make Now, Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

Applied AI is putting AI to its highest and best use: running your organization as autonomously as possible so you can deliver value for humanity while maximizing the scale of the value. The economy is splitting. Organizations that adopt applied AI are expanding their capacity, accelerating their impact, and pulling ahead. Those that don't are quietly becoming irrelevant, not because they're doing bad work, but because the gap between what they can do and what the moment requires is widening every day. This is not a technology question. It is a leadership question. This paper is written for organizational leaders, …

Financial Valuation Of Retirement Village Via Stochastic Modelling Of Disability Prevalence Rates, Jackie Li, Mingke Wang, Jia Liu, Jessica Wai Yin Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Global mortality rates continue to decline, and life expectancy continues its upward trend. Besides mortality levels, policymakers and providers of financial and health services would also be interested in disability prevalence and its potential future trajectories. The length of time in good health versus the duration with major disabilities or long-term illnesses has significant financial implications for both individuals and society. In this paper, we develop Bayesian common factor models to analyse Australian age- and sex-specific disability prevalence rates. In particular, there are one or more common factors shared by both sexes, as well as specific factors for each sex. …

Cash Or Crash: Return To Player Percentages And Expected Value Of Crash Games, Robert H. Scott Iii, Mikhail M. Sher, Jonathan Daigle

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Crash games are a new type of casino game offered on some online gambling sites. The first crash game was created by the online cryptocurrency casino Bustabit. Other cryptocurrency casinos started offering their own versions of crash games. Now mainstream online casinos have developed their own crash games—notably Rocket by DraftKings. Crash games are easy to learn and play. They offer the opportunity to increase your bet by many hundreds of multiples—though, as we show when deriving expected values, these outcomes are rare. In this paper, we study the history of crash games and calculate theoretical values of crash game …

Strategic Decision-Making For Greenomina Decarbonization Efforts At Pt Pertamina (Persero), Fransisca Fitriastuti, Yos Sunitiyoso

BISNIS & BIROKRASI: Jurnal Ilmu Administrasi dan Organisasi

This study explores the strategic decision-making process in implementing Greenomina, a digital transformation platform developed by PT Pertamina (Persero), a reputable state-owned energy company in Indonesia, to support decarbonization initiatives through carbon emission tracking and management. The analysis draws upon two frameworks: the Business Model Canvas (BMC) and the Digital Transformation Canvas (DTC). Greenomina primarily targets Scope 3 emissions, or indirect emissions from business travel and activities, by enabling employees to measure, document, and offset their carbon footprints. This study employed a qualitative approach, combining in-depth interviews and document analysis. The findings highlight key components of a successful digital business …

The Profitability Of Racial Diversity And Gender Balance In Modern Hollywood, M. Garrett Roth, William Mcandrew

The Journal of Economics and Politics

This paper investigates the effects of racial and gender diversity in modern Hollywood. The primary objective is to determine if an objectively measurable increase in diverse casting over the last two decades has had a positive or negative impact on profits, and a secondary objective to measure diversity’s impact on critic scores. The study utilizes data focusing on the fifty most expensive films from 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, and 2023. The findings indicate that profit is neither positively nor negatively affected by diversity, whether in ethnicity or gender. However, movie critic ratings are negatively affected by ethnic diversity when using …

Airbnb And The End Of The Local, Nadia Beyersdorf

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how second-home ownership and self-catered tourism reshape community life in Tenby, Wales. While gentrification research often focuses on permanent displacement, less attention has been given to the movement of temporary residents that erodes local culture, social ties, and transforms everyday relationships in coastal towns.

Algorithmic Trading In Idiosyncratic-Payoff Markets: A Multi-Agent System For On-Chain Prediction Contracts, Saif Aldeen A.K. Agha

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis documents the design, deployment, and forward-test evaluation of an evolutionary multi-agent algorithmic trading system on Polymarket, the largest decentralized prediction market. The system pairs a locally-hosted 72-billion-parameter language model with a gradient-boosted statistical filter and an evolutionary selection mechanism that maintains a population of approximately 500 autonomous trading agents. Each agent generates a probability estimate for an event, compares it to the prevailing market price, and trades the resulting disagreement.

The central empirical exercise estimates a panel regression of trade-level profit on the absolute disagreement between the agent's probability estimate and the market price, controlling for agent identity, …

Ceo Linguistic Stress And Abnormal Stock Returns Evidence From S&P 500 Earnings Conference Calls, Yiqi Sun

CMC Senior Theses

Stress is pervasive among corporate executives, yet its effect on firms' future abnormal return remains largely unexplored. This paper examines whether CEO's Linguistic stress exhibited during earnings conference calls predicts future abnormal stock returns. I provided a Large Language Model (Claude Sonnet 4.6) psychology-backed prompts to analyze CEO stress from linguistic patterns in 7491 earnings call transcripts from 470 companies in the S&P 500 during 2020-2024. I found three main results. First, the CEO linguistic stress is negatively and significantly associated with the immediate market reaction, with a one-unit increase in stress score associated with a 0.9% decrease in the …

Procedural Rhetoric And Prosociality: How Game Mechanics Shape Altruistic Decision-Making, Elijah Emory-Muhammad

CMC Senior Theses

This study investigates how different prosocial video game designs influence subsequent altruistic behavior, specifically comparing interactive narratives with procedural rhetoric. While prior research demonstrates that prosocial games can prime helpful behaviors, less is known about the underlying mechanical structures driving these effects. Fifteen participants engaged with either an Interactive Narrative Game (ING) or a Procedural Rhetoric Game (PRG) before completing a resource allocation task (Dictator Game). Results revealed no statistically significant differences between the two conditions in promoting sacrificial altruism or satisfying basic psychological needs. Instead, participants across both groups demonstrated a strong adherence to an equality-seeking norm, consistently choosing …

Trading Volume And Forecast Accuracy In Kalshi Prediction Markets, Nicholas Smole

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the accuracy of Kalshi prediction markets and how different measures of trading volume shape their calibration and predictive power. Expanding upon previous models, use nonparametric calibration curves, pseudo-likelihood regressions, and Brier-score regressions on a large panel of Kalshi contracts to compare the effects of ex-post total volume and cumulative trading volume on market accuracy. Markets are typically well-calibrated near expiration; however, at longer horizons, low-volume markets exhibit substantially more miscalibration. Holding time to expiration fixed, greater cumulative volume is associated with higher accuracy. In comparison, higher ex-post total volume is associated with lower accuracy, highlighting the importance …

Factors Correlated With State-Level Variation In Grocery Consumption Changes During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sun Young Byun

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I employ a two-part empirical strategy to explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on grocery consumption across U.S. states. First, I use the United States Department of Agriculture's Weekly Retail Food Sales data from 2018-2023 to estimate a time-series panel model. I use the results to test three hypotheses regarding state-level variation in consumption changes and impacts in the initial pandemic period, the remaining pandemic period, and the post-pandemic period. Second, I use the estimated state-level effects as dependent variables in cross-sectional regressions to test three hypotheses linking variation in state-level consumption patterns to economic, demographic, …

Unlocking Organizational Support Through Psychological Empowerment: Identification And Test Of Transformational Leadership As A Catalyst Of Perceived Organizational Support, Ryan L. Klinger, Nathapon Siangchokyoo, Tipat Sottiwan

Management Faculty Publications

Organizational support theory (OST) explains how employees develop and respond to beliefs about their organization, with perceived organizational support (POS) representing a central construct within this framework. Integrating psychological empowerment theory, we examine an intrinsic motivational pathway through which POS relates to employee in-role performance and identify transformational leadership as a contextual catalyst that may strengthen this process. We test a multilevel moderated mediation model using multisource and multi-time data from 217 employees and 41 supervisors. Results indicate that POS is positively related to in-role performance through the psychological empowerment dimensions of competence and self-determination. Moreover, transformational leadership strengthens the …

Interpreting Legal Standards Of Proof: An Experimental Study Of Probabilistic Decision-Making, Hayley Leopold

Honors Theses

Legal standards of proof play a central role in structuring decision-making under uncertainty, yet they are typically communicated using qualitative language rather than precise probabilities. This raises an important question: how do individuals interpret and apply these standards when making decisions based on probabilistic evidence? This study examines whether individuals apply legal standards of proof in a manner consistent with their commonly associated probabilistic thresholds, and whether quantification and incentives improve alignment with normative decision-making.

To address these questions, I conducted a controlled behavioral experiment in which participants made legal-style decisions under uncertainty. Participants were assigned roles in a simplified …

C.A.S. Full Assessment Report: State Of Florida Government Portal, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the cognitive overhead, transparency, and attentional integrity of

official State of Florida digital interfaces using the Cognitive Attentional Standards (C.A.S.) platform.

While the Florida Digital Bill of Rights (FDBR) establishes strict regulatory guardrails for consumer data

transparency, tracking opt-outs, and attentional safeguards, the State of Florida explicitly exempts its own

government agencies, public universities, and non-profit entities from complying with these rules.

This assessment serves to investigate the tension between legislative intent and government execution. By

analyzing public sector websites through the C.A.S. platform, this project will establish a “state-enforced vs.

state-executed” …

Essays In Housing And Consumer Finance, Spencer Stone

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I show how consumer left-digit bias affects borrowing costs in the US residential mortgage market. I find that the distribution of mortgage rates bunch at .99-ending rates just below left-digit changing thresholds, and that this bunching is greater in the distribution of rates selected by borrowers than those simply offered by lenders. Comparing observably similar borrowers within the same 1-bp interest rate band, selecting similar mortgage products, in the same census tract and origination month, I show that borrowers receiving .99-ending rates pay significantly more fees than borrowers receiving the nearest whole-number rate just above them, …