Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Finger Lickin’ Good: An Analytical Investigation Into The Urban Diet, Jennifer T.R. Tomlinson

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

In this analysis, the origins, customs and implications of fast-food culture will be explored with important focus on the customs of fast-food urban eating. Research indicates that lower-income urban areas are more likely to consume fast-food. The high consumption of fast-food subsequently results in the development of social and economical implications, which include health implications, economic dilemmas, a disconnection between consumers and their consumption and issues of social classification. This analysis also explores the customs of fast-food culture of Pine Hills, Florida with added emphasis on Pine Hills’ cultural uniqueness.

Preventing Pandemics: Contributing Factors To Susceptibility During The H1n1 Pandemic, Melanie A. Zilora

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper uses Poisson and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression techniques on panel data from the United Nations World Health Organization’s FluNet to evaluate factors contributing to a country’s H1N1 influenza (swine flu) pandemic outcomes. Countries with higher development (as measured by gross domestic product and the United Nations Human Development Program’s development index) and higher mean annual temperature (as measured in the capital city) tended to have an earlier first reporting of cases. Though subject to reporting biases, the results also suggest that mass vaccinations have a negative effect on weekly reported cases. Countries that would vaccinate in the …

Pirates And Traders: Some Economics Of Pirate-Infested Seas, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

Even where all agents are risk-neutral, merchants can insure themselves against piracy. Such self-insurance is surprisingly invulnerable to moral hazard. Further, there exist a patrolling intensity and/or penalties for captured pirates which, along with mercantile self-insurance, could eliminate piracy.

The Practical Pev: Removing Barriers To Plug-In Electric Vehicle Charging And Ownership, Stephen Parry

Pomona Senior Theses

The paradigm of personal transportation is changing. Electric vehicles are here. The arrival of the Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, and Chevy Volt has changed the way in which we have to think about the energy that fuels our transportation needs. As PEVs find their way into garages this year and especially in the coming years, the neighborhood, city, state, and regional electric infrastructure will take on a new importance for many people as their interactions with it become significantly more complex and intimate as a result of regular electric vehicle charging.

Dynamic Decision Making And Race Games, Shipra De

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Frequent criticism in dynamic decision making research pertains to the overly complex nature of the decision tasks used in experimentation. To address such concerns we study dynamic decision making with respect to the simple race game Hog, which has a computable optimal decision strategy. In the two-player game of Hog, individuals compete to be the first to reach a designated threshold of points. Players alternate rolling a desired quantity of dice. If the number one appears on any of the dice, the player receives no points for his turn; otherwise, the sum of the numbers appearing on the dice is …

The Effects Of Natural Disasters On Donations To Non-Profits, Megan Mckenzie

Honors Projects in Finance

This study analyzes the relationship between natural disasters and donations to non-profit organizations in disaster-affected regions. Using regression analysis, this study seeks to determine the relationship based on various factors including the number of deaths, total number of people affected, the economic damage costs, and media coverage of a given disaster. The purpose of this study is to examine whether disaster-affected regions truly receive increased donations following a natural disaster, the sources of these donations (government grants versus private donations), the question of whether donations are diverted away from other non-profits in industries not related to relief efforts, the longevity …

Are Risk Preferences Stable Across Contexts? Evidence From Insurance Data, Levon Barseghyan, Jeffrey Prince, Joshua C. Teitelbaum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Using a unique data set, the authors test whether households' deductible choices in auto and home insurance reflect stable risk preferences. Their test relies on a structural model that assumes households are objective expected utility maximizers and claims are generated by household-coverage specific Poisson processes. They find that the hypothesis of stable risk preferences is rejected by the data. Their analysis suggests that many households exhibit greater risk aversion in their home deductible choices than their auto deductible choices. They find that their results are robust to several alternative modeling assumptions.

Where Locals Play: Neighborhood Casino Landscapes In Las Vegas, Rex J. Rowley Ph.D.

Occasional Papers

Neighborhood casinos—gaming properties that target a primarily local market—are an influential feature on the Las Vegas cultural landscape. Such institutions reveal a number of geographical patterns that have important implications in gaming and place studies. The distinguishing characteristics of neighborhood casinos underscore the importance of proximity to a market, a focus that is evident in their advertising strategies. Additionally, the prominence of such casino-resorts within their respective neighborhoods makes them important symbols and indicators of the character of the surrounding community. These unique institutions teach lessons that can potentially be extrapolated to other gaming markets around the country.

Socio-Economic Condition Of Child Worker Of Bangladesh In Their Adulthood: An Econometric Analysis, Syed Imran Ali Meerza, Biswajit Bacher

Faculty Publications - Agriculture

This study mainly focuses on the current socio-economic condition of those people who were child labor in their childhood. In this study, economic indicators are income and employment status. On the other hand, level of education, health status and role in case of decision making in the society are studied as social indicators. According to this study, socio-economic condition of child workers in their adulthood is not very satisfactory. This research work have used Linear Probability Model (LPM) and Weighted Least Square (WLS) regression analysis to make comparison of current socio-economic status between people who were child labor in their …

Being Surveyed Can Change Later Behavior And Related Parameter Estimates, Alix Peterson Zwane, Jonathan Zinman, Eric Van Dusen, William Pariente

Dartmouth Scholarship

Does completing a household survey change the later behavior of those surveyed? In three field studies of health and two of microlending, we randomly assigned subjects to be surveyed about health and/or household finances and then measured subsequent use of a related product with data that does not rely on subjects' self-reports. In the three health experiments, we find that being surveyed increases use of water treatment products and take-up of medical insurance. Frequent surveys on reported diarrhea also led to biased estimates of the impact of improved source water quality. In two microlending studies, we do not find an …

Do Major League Baseball Hitters Come Up Big In Their Contract Year?, Heather M. O'Neill, Matthew J. Hummel

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

In sports, especially baseball, there is a lot of talk about contract year performance. Beginning in spring training and continuing throughout the season, sports journalists and fans converse about how players in the last year of their contract will perform. Experts in the media, often ex-baseball players themselves, speculate contract year players will have break-out seasons in order to secure a better contract in upcoming contract negotiations. This leads to the question: do baseball players increase their effort and performance during their contract year to increase the value of their next contract?

Family Labor Participation And Child Care Decisions: The Role Of Grannies, Gema Zamarro

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

One of the most significant long term trends in the labor market in most OECD countries has been the increase in the proportion of working mothers. However, not all countries show the same pattern. Countries in Southern Europe (Italy, Greece and Spain) show an average participation rate of about 45% whereas the participation rates in Northern countries (Denmark, Sweden) are around 75%. The characteristics of child care systems also differ significantly across OECD countries. This along with the characteristics of the labor market may have led families to get the necessary social services in an alternative way, i.e. through grandmothers. …

Harsanyi 2.0, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

How should we make interpersonal comparisons of well-being levels and differences? One branch of welfare economics eschews such comparisons, which are seen as impossible or unknowable; normative evaluation is based upon criteria such as Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks efficiency that require no interpersonal comparability. A different branch of welfare economics, for example optimal tax theory, uses “social welfare functions” (SWFs) to compare social states and governmental policies. Interpersonally comparable utility numbers provide the input for SWFs. But this scholarly tradition has never adequately explained the basis for these numbers.

John Harsanyi, in his work on so-called “extended preferences,” advanced a fruitful …

Cross-Cultural Risk Behavior In Financial Decisions And The Cushion Hypothesis, Jin Tan

CMC Senior Theses

92 students from a Southern California liberal arts college and two Beijing universities participated in an online questionnaire. Their cultural tendencies (i.e. level of collectivism and perception of family support) and responses to hypothetical investment scenarios were observed. Participants were asked to provide the amount they would invest in each scenario as well as a risk safety rating. The Chinese respondents reported higher cushion and collectivism scores than the Americans. Furthermore, the Chinese sample offered more money for the three riskiest scenarios; they also rated three scenarios safer than the Americans did. The cushion and collectivism scores were not found …

A New Experiment On Rational Behavior, Myles R. Macdonald

CMC Senior Theses

Behavioral economics is widely recognized as a rising field in economics, one whose discoveries and implications are not yet completed or understood. At the same time, economic theory plays an enormous role in our governmental and legal system. In particular, the Coase Theorem and its implications have affected nearly every area in the field of law and economics. This paper proposes a experimental test of Coasean bargaining in situations using two competitive players whose payoffs depend on minimizing their costs of mitigating the externality. A rational player’s action can be predicted ahead of time, and the rationality of the game’s …

International Migration And Remittances: A Review Of Economic Impacts, Issues And Challenges From The Sending Country’S Perspective, Tereso S. Tullao Jr, Christopher James R. Cabuay

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

The paper reviews the motivations of people to migrate and remit as well as the impacts of migration and the effects of remittances. Reasons for migration are quite varied ranging from economic asymmetries (also known as push-pull factors), demographic asymmetries, investment in human capital, maximization of household income, the culture of migration, and the movement in natural persons. On the other hand, remittances are sent to the home country for altruistic, exchange, strategic and insurance motives as well as an arbitrage in interspatial differences in purchasing power. The impacts of migration and remittances are felt on both the household and …

The Stability Of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships: The Role Of Relation Specificity And Client Control, Stephan Manning, Arie Y. Lewin, Marc Schuerch

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

Offshore outsourcing of administrative and technical services has become a mainstream business practice. Increasing commoditization of business services and growing client experience with outsourcing have created a range of competitive service delivery options for client firms. Yet, data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN) suggests that, despite increasing market options and growing client quality and cost efficiency expectations, clients typically renew provider contracts and develop longer-term relationships with providers. Based on ORN data, this paper explores drivers of this phenomenon. The findings suggest that providers promote contract renewal by making client specific investments in software, IT infrastructure and training, and …

Safe And Smart Savings Products For Vulnerable Adolescent Girls In Kenya And Uganda: Results From The Uganda Pilot Evaluation, Karen Austrian

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This presentation was given at the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference in Washington DC, USA in 2011. It looks at results from a Uganda Pilot Program to provide financial education among girls and increase asset building in the form of Girls Savings Programs. Results from this study saw that savings programs build social, health, and economic assets for girls.

An Analysis Of Remittance Tendencies Of Philippine Migrant Workers, Maryan S. Samson

CMC Senior Theses

In developing countries, remittances play a key role as a source of external finance. Remittances are a form of aid that migrant workers send back to their families, located in their home countries, in order to support the needs of the household. In about 25% of developing countries, remittances are larger than public and private capital flows combined (International Monetary Fund, 2009). In 2008, the Philippines economy was the 47^th largest economy in the world with a GDP of $322 billion dollars (Asian Development Bank, Fact Sheet). Remittances accounted for over 10% of the Philippine economy, making the Philippines …

A Theory Of Mental Credit, Jason Soll

CMC Senior Theses

Many philosophical subjects attempt to analyze the basis of human welfare. Theories of desert, distribution of property, and happiness tend to dominate philosophical discourse. Mental credit, which is the mental acquisition of credit for one’s accomplishments and the satisfaction one derives from this credit, is absent from this discourse despite its underlying role in the way people think about their lives. Mental credit is an eternal cognitive good that deserves thoughtful attention and pious decisions for implementation. The following theory of mental credit seeks to serve as a unifying theory for the mental calculations that guide life’s most imperative decisions, …