Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Impact Of Natural Disaster Exposure On Prosocial Preferences And Public Goods Provision: Evidence From The Solomon Islands, Heather Belfor

Master's Theses

Natural disaster exposure can impact prosocial preferences, which indicate the level of social capital, as well as create a shift in investments from public to private goods. Both are important mechanisms to study in order to create optimal climate change adaptation policies. This study evaluates the impact of natural disaster exposure on prosocial preferences and public goods provision in the evaluated communities. The data used in this research comes from a process evaluation that was carried out in the Solomon Islands on the Rural Development Program (RDP) and a Structured Community Activity (SCA) experiment, which took place in 80 villages …

Handling Risk: Testosterone And Risk Preference, Evidence From Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tobias Sytsma

Master's Theses

The relationship between testosterone and risk aversion is of increasing interest in the experimental economics. Using the ratio of the second digit to the fourth digit (2D:4D) as a rough indicator of level of prenatal testosterone exposure, this study attempts to replicate recent results from Garbarino et al., (2011), which found that individuals with digit ratios above the sample average were significantly more risk averse, and individuals with digit ratios one standard deviation below the sample average were significantly more risk seeking in a subject pool of male and female Caucasian students. Here, a subject pool from Dhaka, Bangladesh, is …

Experimental Evidence For Heterogeneous Expectations In A Simple New Keynesian Framework, Atticus David Holm Graven

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper is a two-dimensional analysis of agent behavior in a standard New Keynesian (NK) Macroeconomic model. On the dimension of pure mathematics, we analyze the parameters of the NK model and of possible prediction rules. On the other dimension we continue a practice of empirical study of heterogeneous expectations with an experiment. The experiment will ask participants to make predictions of future output and inflation. Their responses will create a data-set upon which analysis will be performed to illuminate and corroborate current theories of economic decision making. The literature has shown that most agents' forecasting rules can be modeled …

Moving Ahead By Thinking Backwards, Conner Lewis, Amanda Wiener

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2014

Although some research exists regarding collegiate GPAs, little is known about which individual student characteristics predict college graduation. We study 100 students from the University of Minnesota Morris. Information collected includes demographics, standard personality traits (known in Psychology as the “Big Five”), two economic preferences (risk aversion and patience), and three cognitive skills (numeracy, non-verbal IQ, “Hit15”).“Hit 15” is a game played against the computer in which each player must add 1, 2, or 3 on each turn. Winning is exactly hitting fifteen first; players take turns going first and the starting point total varies (game theory calls solving this …

Credit Card System In Ghana: An Investigation Of Why Credit Cardsare Not Widely Used In Ghana And How Widespread Use May Be Implemented, Emmanuel Andoh

Masters Theses

Credit card systems offer economic advantages to many families and individuals across the globe. In economically developed countries and most emerging ones, the credit card system helps individuals, businesses, and even government agencies, speed up business transactions and access to short term loans. However in developing countries such as Ghana this is not the case. The result is that many people find it very difficult to buy goods and services without having cash at hand. Moreover a vast majority of people have to carry bags of money to travel across cities, towns and villages in the country to trade and …

Valuation Bias And Profit Opportunities In Financial Markets, Jayendra Gokhale, Elizabeth Schroeder, Victor J. Tremblay

Accounting, Economics, Finance, and Information Sciences - Daytona Beach

Recent work by Gokhale et al. (2013) proposes a method for detecting misvalued stocks. This paper applies the method to look for profitable investment opportunities by identifying undervalued stocks. Using data on companies in the S&P 100 over a period of 22 years, we test several specifications of our investment strategy for robustness. We find that investing in undervalued stocks significantly outperforms benchmark indices over time, and that this strategy can lead to risk-adjusted excess returns that are positive and statistically significant.

Evaluating Conformity And Reciprocity In University Alumni Donation, Guanyi Yang

Undergraduate Economic Review

Alumni donation has a significant impact on the function of liberal arts institutions across the U.S. Specific factors relating to alumni donation behavior have been identified in previous research; however few studies systematically utilize existing theories of motivation for voluntary contributions to evaluate the effectiveness of alumni donation factors. This research classifies specific factors into reciprocity and conformity and surveys Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) alumni about donation attitudes. The logistic regression model and the linear regression model complement each other and provide support for the hypothesis that the more one subjects to conformity, the more likely one tends to donate …

Consumer Credit: Too Much Or Too Little (Or Just Right)?, Jonathan Zinman

Dartmouth Scholarship

The intersection of research and policy on consumer credit often has a Goldilocks feel. Some researchers and policy makers posit that consumer credit markets produce too much credit. Other researchers and policy makers posit that markets produce too little credit. I review theories and evidence on inefficient consumer credit supply. For each of eight classes of theories I sketch some of the leading models and summarize any convincing empirical tests of those models. I also discuss more circumstantial evidence that does not map tightly onto a particular model but has the potential to shed light on, or obscure, answers to …

Reinterpreting King Solomon's Problem: Malice And Mechanism Design, Brishti Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

I argue for an alternative interpretation of King Solomon's problem in terms of one of the two claimants being “malicious”. A “malicious” claimant places no intrinsic value on the object but derives utility from depriving the rival claimant. This new interpretation permits a simpler solution than those considered in the literature; I derive a mechanism that induces truthful revelation where the equilibrium involves a single round of elimination of weakly dominated strategies, and no monetary transfers. I consider extensions which allow for the malicious claimant to also place some low but positive intrinsic valuation on the object; I also discuss …

The Effect Of Crossing The $100 Million Jackpot Threshold On Ticket Sales, Stanton Hudja

Undergraduate Economic Review

There has been little research done on how consumers react to jackpots that first cross the $100 million threshold. Using two sets of time series data, I measure the effect on demand of being the first jackpot in a series of jackpots to cross the $100 million threshold. In both datasets, there is an additional increase in the growth of lottery ticket sales based solely on being the first jackpot to equal or surpass $100 million. These findings are not consistent with the principle of diminishing marginal utility and suggest a psychological significance of the number 100.

Stewardship In The Interests Of Systemic Stakeholders: Re-Conceptualizing The Means And Ends Of Anglo-American Corporate Governance In The Wake Of The Global Financial Crisis, Zhong Xing Tan

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Visitor Spending At The Bikes, Blues & Bbq Rally, Katherine A. Deck, Mervin Jebaraj

Publications and Presentations

• 59.9 percent of the 2013 Bikes, Blues & BBQ rally attendees came from outside the Northwest Arkansas region. 57.6 percent of all attendees were from outside Northwest Arkansas and primarily visiting to attend the motorcycle rally.
• The average spending of each motorcycle rally visitor from outside Northwest Arkansas was $401.86.
• Visitor spending generated at least $36.17 in state and local sales taxes per person.
• The average out-of-town visitor stayed in the Northwest Arkansas region for 3.8 days and occupied 0.7 room nights.
• Each visitor ate an average of 9.6 meals in Northwest Arkansas. On average, 8.9 meals were consumed in …

Are Individuals Fickle-Minded?, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

Game theory has been used to model large-scale social events — such as constitutional law, democratic stability, standard setting, gender roles, social movements, communication, markets, the selection of officials by means of elections, coalition formation, resource allocation, distribution of goods, and war — as the aggregate result of individual choices in interdependent decision-making. Game theory in this way assumes methodological individualism. The widespread observation that game theory predictions do not in general match observation has led to many attempts to repair game theory by creating behavioral game theory, which adds corrective terms to the game theoretic predictions in the hope …

“Robbing Peter To Pay Paul”: Economic And Cultural Explanations For How Lower-Income Families Manage Debt, Laura M. Tach, Sara Sternberg Greene

Faculty Scholarship

This article builds upon classic economic perspectives of financial behavior by applying the narrative identity perspective of cultural sociology to explain how lower-income families respond to indebtedness. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 194 lower-income household heads, we show that debt management strategies are influenced by a desire to promote a financially responsible, self-sufficient social identity. Families are reluctant to ask for assistance when faced with economic hardship because it undermines this identity. Because the need to pay on debts is less acute than the need to pay for regular monthly expenses like rent or groceries, debts receive a lower …

Brief Of Financial Economists As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Extended Preferences And Interpersonal Comparisons: A New Account, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pay-As-You-Go Electricity: The Impact Of Prepay Programs On Electricity Consumption, William M. Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Prepay or pay-as-you-go programs are an increasingly popular type of rate plan offered by electric utilities. Under these plans, ratepayers must keep a positive balance at all times to avoid being automatically disconnected, they are charged daily for their usage, and they are provided with a means to monitor their consumption. One of the suggested benefits of these plans is that they allow electricity consumers to better manage their usage. Using household level monthly usage data from customers enrolled in prepay programs at two Kentucky rural electric cooperatives, we investigate whether there is a change in consumption after these customers …

Uniqueness Of Equilibrium In Directed Search Models, Jaehong Kim, Gabriele Camera

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study a decentralized trading model as in [7], where a finite number of heterogeneous capacity-constrained sellers compete for a finite number of homogeneous buyers, by posting prices. This "directed search" model is known to admit symmetric equilibria; yet, uniqueness has proved elusive. This study makes two contributions: a substantive contribution is to establish uniqueness of symmetric equilibrium; a methodological contribution is to develop a tool based on directional derivatives to characterize equilibrium.

Differential Responding By Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca Mulatta) And Humans (Homo Sapiens) To Variable Outcomes In The Assurance Game, Audrey E. Parrish, Sarah F. Brosnan, Bart J. Wilson, Michael J. Beran

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Behavioral flexibility in how one responds to variable partner play can be examined using economic coordination games in which subjects play against a variety of partners and therefore may need to alter their behavior to produce the highest payoff. But how do we study this behavioral flexibility once players have settled on a response? Here, we investigated how responding by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and humans (Homo sapiens) playing a computerized single-player version of a coordination game, the Assurance game, changed as a function of the variable responses (Stag/Hare) generated by multiple simulations (SIMs). We were interested in whether individuals …