Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Counterfactual Conditional Analysis Using The Centipede Game, Ahmed Bilal

CMC Senior Theses

The Backward Induction strategy for the Centipede Game leads us to a counterfactual reasoning paradox, The Centipede Game paradox. The counterfactual reasoning proving the backward induction strategy for the game appears to rely on the players in the game not choosing that very same backward induction strategy. The paradox is a general paradox that applies to backward induction reasoning in sequential, perfect information games. Therefore, the paradox is not only problematic for the Centipede Game, but it also affects counterfactual reasoning solutions in games similar to the Centipede Game. The Centipede Game is a prime illustration of this paradox in …

The Seller’S Curse And The Underwriter’S Pricing Pivot: A Behavioral Theory Of Ipo Pricing, Patrick M. Corrigan

Journal Articles

From the Article

Canonical theories of law and economics predict that issuing firms in initial public offerings (IPOs) demand — and that competitive markets produce — a transaction structure that maximizes value to issuers. Yet, since 1980, corporate America has left approximately 19 cents of foregone proceeds on the table for every dollar it has raised in IPOs. Moreover, the standard IPO contract appears designed to exacerbate rather than resolve agency costs, information asymmetries, and other foreseeable causes of IPO underpricing. This Article studies a new puzzle: why don’t issuers anticipate their transactional vulnerability and bargain for a sale of …

The Working Wife: A Three-Pronged Model Of Marriage And Women's Employment, Karris Mccollum

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

What literature exists on women’s labor suggests that as women gain financial and economic freedom, their role in the family and home shifts as well. The sharp rise in women’s labor force participation in the latter half of the 20th century provides fertile grounds for testing this hypothesis and quantifying the effect of working on the institution of marriage. Employment could potentially help or harm an existing marriage or contribute to the selection of compatible partners. In this paper, I examine the impact of rising women's labor force participation rates on divorce rates, marital satisfaction, and women's age at first …

Relations Between Young Adults’ Knowledge And Understanding, Experiences, And Information Behavior In Personal Finance Matters, Manuel Förster, Roland Happ, William Walstad

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

Background: In Germany, general secondary education offers few opportunities for young adults to acquire knowledge and understanding of personal finance. Hence, apart from parents’ influence as role models, important influences on young adults’ financial knowledge and understanding likely include their personal experience with financial products and their behavior of informally seeking information about specific financial products.

Methods: In this paper, we investigate the relationships between these latter variables based on a sample of 1108 young adults from Germany, aged 17–25, beginning their studies in higher education. Knowledge and understanding of personal finance was assessed using the German adaptation of the …

Elaborations On Multiattribute Utility Theory Dominance, David L. Vairo

Theses and Dissertations

ELABORATIONS ON MULTIATTRIBUTE UTILITY THEORY DOMINANCE

By David L. Vairo

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019.

Major Director: Dissertation director’s name, Dr. Jason Merrick, Supply Chain Management and Analytics

Multiattribute Utility Theory (MAUT) is used to structure decisions with more than one factor (attribute) in play. These decisions become complex when the attributes are dependent on one another. Where linear modeling is concerned with how factors are directly related or correlated with each other, MAUT is concerned with how a decision maker …

Patient-Centered Medical Homes And Hospital Value-Based Purchasing: Investigating Provider Responses To Incentives, Lauryn Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Provider incentives are a commonly used policy tool to mold provider behaviors.¹ However, while we frequently measure the change in patient outcomes, failure to consistently produce changes in outcomes does not mean that providers are not changing their behavior. This paper focuses on two programs with null or inconsistent quality outcomes to try to identify why such inconsistency occurs. The two programs, both ratified in the Affordable Care Act, are 1) patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), and 2) the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program.

Chapter 1: Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel survey (MEPS), I match provider characteristic …

Socialization Agents That Puerto Rican College Students Use To Make Financial Decisions, Enid Alvarez, Steven Tippins

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Using consumer socialization theory as theoretical framework, the purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental, cross-sectional study was to identify the information sources that Puerto Ricans college students use to gather financial knowledge. A sample of 198 Puerto Rican college students answered a portion of the College Student Financial Literacy Survey. The research question addressed the preference of four financial information sources, including parents, peers, media, and school. A combination of descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance, repeated-measures analysis of variance, and multiple linear regression confirmed that participants preferred to gather financial knowledge from parents. Researchers, educators, and policymakers may use this …

Examining The Utility Of Behavioral Economic Demand In Addiction Science, Justin Charles Strickland

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The marriage of perspectives from behavioral economic theory and learning theory has the potential to advance an understanding of substance use and substance use disorder. Behavioral economic demand is a central concept to this interdisciplinary approach. Evaluating demand in the laboratory and clinic can improve previous research on the relative reinforcing effects of drugs by accounting for the multi-dimensional nature of reinforcement rather than viewing reinforcement as a unitary construct. Recent advances in the commodity purchase task methodology have further simplified the measurement of demand values in human participants. This dissertation project presents a programmatic series of studies designed to …

Neurobehavioral Measurements Of Natural And Opioid Reward Value, Aaron Paul Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

In the last decade, (non)prescription opioid abuse, opioid use disorder (OUD) diagnoses, and opioid-related overdoses have risen and represent a significant public health concern. One method of understanding OUD is as a disorder of choice that requires choosing opioid rewards at the expense of other nondrug rewards. The characterization of OUD as a disorder of choice is important as it implicates decision- making processes as therapeutic targets, such as the valuation of opioid rewards. However, reward-value measurement and interpretation are traditionally different in substance abuse research compared to related fields such as economics, animal behavior, and neuroeconomics and may be …

Development Of A Translational Model Of Co-Use Of Alcohol And Nicotine For Testing Potential Pharmacotherapies, Sarah Elizabeth Maggio

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Co-users of alcohol and nicotine are the largest group of polysubstance users worldwide. Although pharmacotherapies are available for alcohol (EtOH) or tobacco use disorders individually, it may be possible to develop a single pharmacotherapy to treat heavy drinking tobacco smokers through capitalizing on the commonalities in their mechanisms of action. Towards this goal, several models of concurrent access to EtOH and nicotine were explored as potential preclinical models of co-use using female alcohol-preferring (P) rats. Additionally, potential pharmacotherapeutics for the treatment of EtOH and nicotine co-use disorder were tested using different variations of our model. Treatments tested included (1) varenicline, …

Circadian Variations And Risky Decision Making, Sana Sra

Scripps Senior Theses

Over the past decades, decision making under risk has garnered a great amount of attention both in the field of economics and psychology. Although state-dependent variabilities of risk taking are well-documented, little is known about the effects of a person’s preferred time of day, or chronotype, in risky decision making. Under circumstances of circadian mismatch (e.g., when an “early bird” makes decisions in the evening), research suggests that decision making may reflect a greater reliance on heuristics, such as using stereotypes in social judgments. However, the effects of circadian mismatch on heuristics in risky decision making are relatively unexplored. This …

Actual And Self-Assessed Financial Literacy Among Employees Of A South African University, Gizelle D. Willows

Numeracy

This study examines the level of financial literacy and self-assessed financial literacy amongst members of a South African tertiary institution’s retirement fund. Based on surveys of the fund’s members, I employ descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analyses to examine differences in financial literacy within and across groups. The results show that, despite working for an employer implementing many best practices identified by financial literacy advocates, respondents from all demographic subgroups possess relatively low levels of financial knowledge. Men, White respondents, and those with a higher cost of employment or higher educational attainment were more likely to have a higher level …

Incentives And Economic Decisions: Evidence From Sports Data, Iuliia Chikish

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation presents three essays which demonstrate how sports data can be applied to answer economic questions. Essay 1 explores whether multiple reference points can affect individuals behavior using data from professional figure skating competitions. The second essay examines the role of professional sports facilities and teams in generating local amenities. Using data from eSports tournaments, the third essay aims at understanding whether tournament theory predictions hold in competitions involving mostly mental effort.

The first chapter, ``Incentives and Economic Decisions: Evidence from Sports Data'' studies the effect of multiple reference points on decisions made by professional athletes. Unique design features …

Data Disparity: Tiered Pricing As An Alternative To Consumer Iot Data Privacy Regulations, Matthew Lostocco

Honors Theses and Capstones

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) devices have exploded on the consumer scene. These emerging products bring new technological capabilities into our everyday lives. IoT is projected to contribute anywhere from $4-11 trillion to the global economy and companies are investing billions of dollars into the technology. However, with the vast amount of data that IoT devices collect, consumers are burdening the risk of having their personal data breached or sold to third parties. This paper first identifies why consumers may be weary or willing towards providing their personal data and how unconscious biases in the purchasing process cause …

Differences In Sexual Delay Discounting Among In-Treatment Adults With Opioid Use Disorder, Jonathan J.K. Stoltman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Previous research has found impulsive decision-making to be a core component of addiction (Moody, Franck, Hatz, & Bickel, 2016). One way to measure impulsive choice is through the use of a delay discounting task. The delay discounting task provides a way to measure choice of immediate, smaller rewards compared to delayed, larger rewards (Odum, 2011b). An emerging area of research in addiction science is the intersection of addiction and sexual health. Previous sexual delay discounting research has focused on whether attractiveness or STD risk can shift the likelihood of waiting until a condom was available (Johnson & Bruner, 2012). This …

A Snowball's Chance: Debt Snowball Vs. Debt Avalanche, Evan Mcallister

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Traditional mathematical analysis states that the most efficient way to pay off interest-bearing consumer debt is to pay the individual debts in order from largest to smallest interest rate. In doing this, the debtor will eliminate the largest sources of interest first, thus shortening the overall time-to-pay. This method is known as the “Debt Avalanche.” The “Debt Snowball” method, popularized in large part by investor-author David Ramsey, recommends that consumers pay debts in order from smallest to largest, regardless of interest rate. In this paper, I conduct an empirical analysis of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF), calculating …

Why Trust Out-Groups? The Role Of Punishment Under Uncertainty, Xiaofei Pan, Daniel Houser

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We conducted a hidden-effort trust game, in which we assigned subjects to one of two groups. The groups, which were formed through two different group formation processes, included a “social” group that required sharing and exchange among its members, and a “non-social” group that did not. Once assigned, subjects participated in the game with members from both groups, either with or without the opportunity to punish a trustee who may have defected on them. We found that for investors in the non-social group, the opportunity to punish a trustee worked to promote trust, but only when the trustee was a …

Consumer Resilience And Consumer Attitude Towards Traumatic Events, Dongjun Rew, Michael Minor

Faculty Publications - College of Business

The purpose of this study is to explore consumer resilience’s role and effect on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and consumer attitude. There is little research on consumer resilience in the marketing disciplines even though the relevance of the construct has increased in other fields of study. To explore the role and effect of resilience, this study developed hypothetical conditions, in which this study assumes that each respondent is exposed to news of a traumatic incident or an experience, such as a terrorist attack or gun violence. Confirmatory factor analysis is conducted to verify each construct’s validity, and …

"Integrated Science 3002a: Big Bike Giveaway: Changing London's Environment, Health, And Economy One Bike At A Time", Jermiah Joseph, Katelyn Melo, Devanshi Shukla, Tony Nguyen, Katherine Teeter

Community Engaged Learning Final Projects

There are significant benefits that manifest when an individual chooses to ride a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation. To investigate these benefits, the environmental, health, economic, and social impacts of biking were evaluated through research and data analyses. This revealed that numerous advantages can be obtained at an individual and local scale through citizens choosing to adopt a biking lifestyle. However, it was found that many Londoners are deterred from biking due to poor biking infrastructure. This paper calls into question the current cycling framework in London and it’s limitations on achieving the numerous benefits that biking offers. …

Three Essays On Corruption And Collusion, Arlo Redwine

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies corruption and collusion with data derived from a laboratory experiment and household data. In Chapter 1 I study experimental procurement auctions with bribery and a public reserve to test for the tacitly collusive equilibrium described by Compte et al. (2005). Three sellers compete for 40 periods to sell a single item to a computerized buyer who accepts bribes and determines ties in bids and bribes randomly. In the closing periods, only 13.5% of auctions display the collusive equilibrium, but 58.7% of selling prices are noncompetitive. In comparison with simulated predictions for auctions that are corrupt but competitive, …