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Local Dominance, Emiliano CATONINI, Jingyi XUE 2023 New York University

Local Dominance, Emiliano Catonini, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

We define notions of dominance between two actions in a dynamic game. Local dominance considers players who have a blurred view of the future and compare the two actions by first focusing on the outcomes that may realize at the current stage. When considering the possibility that the game may continue, they can only check that the local comparison is not overturned under the assumption of "continuing in the same way" after the two actions (in a newly defined sense). Despite the lack of forward planning, local dominance solves dynamic mechanisms that were found easy to play and implements social …


Estimation And Inference With Near Unit Roots, Peter C. B. PHILLIPS 2023 Singapore Management University

Estimation And Inference With Near Unit Roots, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

New methods are developed for identifying, estimating, and performing inference with nonstationary time series that have autoregressive roots near unity. The approach subsumes unit-root (UR), local unit-root (LUR), mildly integrated (MI), and mildly explosive (ME) specifications in the new model formulation. It is shown how a new parameterization involving a localizing rate sequence that characterizes departures from unity can be consistently estimated in all cases. Simple pivotal limit distributions that enable valid inference about the form and degree of nonstationarity apply for MI and ME specifications and new limit theory holds in UR and LUR cases. Normalizing and variance stabilizing …


Deciding For Others: Local Public Good Contributions With Intermediaries, Andrej Angelovski, Praveen Kujal, Christos Mavridis 2023 Middlesex University

Deciding For Others: Local Public Good Contributions With Intermediaries, Andrej Angelovski, Praveen Kujal, Christos Mavridis

ESI Working Papers

Given the prevalence of local public goods, whose broader use is often limited by distance and borders, we propose a potential solution to the free-riding problem by having each participant/beneficiary delegate the public good contribution decision to a non-local intermediary who neither puts in own endowment into the public good nor benefits from it. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where the incentives for the intermediary are either non-aligned (fixed) or aligned (variable) with those of the beneficiary. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of whether their compensation is aligned or not with that of the beneficiary, …


Macroeconomic Determinants Of Stock Market Development In Sample African Economies, Ehab Ayoub 2023 American University in Cairo

Macroeconomic Determinants Of Stock Market Development In Sample African Economies, Ehab Ayoub

Theses and Dissertations

This research paper studies the relationship between macroeconomic determinants as independent variables and different measures of stock market development as dependent variables across selected emerging economies in Africa for the period of 2002 to 2021, with a quarterly frequency using time series analysis. The independent variables used are Core Inflation, Deposit Rate, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), FX Rate against USD, Domestic Credit, Gross Domestic Product (Real GDP), Exports, Imports, External Debt, and Foreign Reserves. We use these variables as our main determinants of measuring economic growth. With regards to stock market development, we use four proxy measures as our benchmark, …


Atherosclerosis In Indigenous Tsimane: A Contemporary Perspective, Randall C. Thompson, Gregory S. Thomas, Angela D. Neuneubel, Ashna Mahadev, Benjamin Trumble, Edmond Seabright, Daniel K. Cummings, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan 2023 Horus and Tsimane Health and Life History Project Teams

Atherosclerosis In Indigenous Tsimane: A Contemporary Perspective, Randall C. Thompson, Gregory S. Thomas, Angela D. Neuneubel, Ashna Mahadev, Benjamin Trumble, Edmond Seabright, Daniel K. Cummings, Jonathan Stieglitz, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

The Horus and other research teams have found that atherosclerosis is not uncommon in ancient people through the study of their mummified remains (Murphy et al., 2003; Allam et al., 2009, 2011; Thompson et al., 2013, 2014). However, some have postulated that traditional hunter-gatherers are in some ways healthier than modern people and that they had very little atherosclerotic disease (O’Keefe et al., 2010). The aim of this study was to evaluate the burden of atherosclerosis in a population alive today but living a traditional lifestyle similar to that experienced by past populations. This led to the Tsimane Health and …


Brain Volume, Energy Balance, And Cardiovascular Health In Two Nonindustrial South American Populations, Hillard Kaplan, Paul L. Hooper, Margaret Gatz, Wendy J. Mack, E. Meng Law, Helena C. Chui, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Christopher J. Rowan, L. Samuel Wann, Adel H. Allam, Randall C. Thompson, David E. Michalik, Guido Lombardi, Michael I. Miyamoto, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Juan Copajira Adrian, Raul Quispe Gutierrez, Bret A. Beheim, Daniel K. Cummings, Edmond Seabright, Sarah Alami, Angela R. Garcia, Kenneth Buetow, Gregory S. Thomas, Caleb E. Finch, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael D. Gurven, Andrei Irimia 2023 Chapman University

Brain Volume, Energy Balance, And Cardiovascular Health In Two Nonindustrial South American Populations, Hillard Kaplan, Paul L. Hooper, Margaret Gatz, Wendy J. Mack, E. Meng Law, Helena C. Chui, M. Linda Sutherland, James D. Sutherland, Christopher J. Rowan, L. Samuel Wann, Adel H. Allam, Randall C. Thompson, David E. Michalik, Guido Lombardi, Michael I. Miyamoto, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Juan Copajira Adrian, Raul Quispe Gutierrez, Bret A. Beheim, Daniel K. Cummings, Edmond Seabright, Sarah Alami, Angela R. Garcia, Kenneth Buetow, Gregory S. Thomas, Caleb E. Finch, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael D. Gurven, Andrei Irimia

ESI Publications

Little is known about brain aging or dementia in nonindustrialized environments that are similar to how humans lived throughout evolutionary history. This paper examines brain volume (BV) in middle and old age among two indigenous South American populations, the Tsimane and Moseten, whose lifestyles and environments diverge from those in high-income nations. With a sample of 1,165 individuals aged 40 to 94, we analyze population differences in cross-sectional rates of decline in BV with age. We also assess the relationships of BV with energy biomarkers and arterial disease and compare them against findings in industrialized contexts. The analyses test three …


Choice Flexibility And Long-Run Cooperation, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim, David Rojo Arjona 2023 Chapman University

Choice Flexibility And Long-Run Cooperation, Gabriele Camera, Jaehong Kim, David Rojo Arjona

ESI Working Papers

Cooperation does not empirically scale when strangers confront indefinitely repeated social dilemmas—despite its incentive-compatibility. Here, we investigate if an intervention can mitigate this problem: expanding the action set with partial cooperation choices. Although standard theory predicts no effect, adding interior choices to a rigid binary-choice game often boosted cooperation and efficiency in the laboratory. Under some conditions, groups of strangers achieved outcomes close to those observed in pairs of partners—where adding interior choices, instead, was inconsequential. This suggests that choice rigidities can hinder long-run cooperation.


Connecting Higher Education To Workplace Activities And Earnings, Hung Chau, Sarah H. Bana, Baptiste Bouvier, Morgan R. Frank 2023 University of Pittsburgh

Connecting Higher Education To Workplace Activities And Earnings, Hung Chau, Sarah H. Bana, Baptiste Bouvier, Morgan R. Frank

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Higher education is a source of skill acquisition for many middle- and high-skilled jobs. But what specific skills do universities impart on students to prepare them for desirable careers? In this study, we analyze a large novel corpora of over one million syllabi from over eight hundred bachelors’ granting US educational institutions to connect material taught in higher education to the detailed work activities in the US economy as reported by the US Department of Labor. First, we show how differences in taught skills both within and between college majors correspond to earnings differences of recent graduates. Further, we use …


Failed Secular Revolutions: Religious Belief, Competition, And Extremism, Jean-Paul Carvalho, Jared Rubin, Michael Sacks 2023 University of Oxford

Failed Secular Revolutions: Religious Belief, Competition, And Extremism, Jean-Paul Carvalho, Jared Rubin, Michael Sacks

ESI Working Papers

All advanced economies have undergone secular revolutions in which religious belief and institutions have been subordinated to secular forms of authority. There are, however, numerous examples of failed secular transitions. To understand these failures, we present a religious club model with endogenous entry and cultural transmission of religious beliefs. A spike in the demand for religious belief, due for example to a negative economic shock, induces a new and more extreme organization to enter the religious market and exploit the dissatisfaction of highly religious types with the religious incumbent. The eect is larger where institutional secularization is more advanced, for …


On The Welfare Role Of Redundant Assets With Heterogenous Forecasts, Shurojit CHATTERJI, Atsushi KAJII 2023 Singapore Management University

On The Welfare Role Of Redundant Assets With Heterogenous Forecasts, Shurojit Chatterji, Atsushi Kajii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study a multiperiod model with a nominal bond that matures in one period and identify the set of e¢ cient allocations that can be sustained as Walrasian equilibria with heterogeneous forecasts. We next add a long maturity bond, which under perfect foresight would be a redundant asset, and show that it fundamentally expands the set of e¢ cient allocations that can be sustained as Walrasian equilibria. Indeed all wealth transfers compatible with e¢ ciency can arise endogenously. The key feature driving this conclusion are forecasting errors, which lead to ex post arbitrage opportunities that induce these income transfers.


Dr. Paul Sutton, Ayanna Schubert 2023 University of Denver

Dr. Paul Sutton, Ayanna Schubert

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

This interview with Dr. Paul Sutton was conducted by the DUURJ Editor At Large.


Introducing New Forms Of Digital Money: Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera 2023 Chapman University

Introducing New Forms Of Digital Money: Evidence From The Laboratory, Gabriele Camera

ESI Publications

Central banks may soon issue currencies that are entirely digital (CBDCs) and possibly interest bearing. A strategic analytical framework is used to investigate this innovation in the laboratory, contrasting a traditional “plain” tokens baseline to treatments with “sophisticated” interest-bearing tokens. In the experiment, this theoretically beneficial innovation precluded the emergence of a stable monetary system, reducing trade and welfare. Similar problems emerged when sophisticated tokens complemented or replaced plain tokens. This evidence underscores the advantages of combining theoretical with experimental investigation to provide insights for payments systems innovation and policy design.


Getting Dynamic Implementation To Work, Yi-Chun CHEN, Richard HOLDEN, Takashi KUNIMOTO, Yifei SUN, Tom WILKENING 2023 Singapore Management University

Getting Dynamic Implementation To Work, Yi-Chun Chen, Richard Holden, Takashi Kunimoto, Yifei Sun, Tom Wilkening

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a new class of two-stage mechanisms, which fully implement any social choice function under initial rationalizability in complete information environments. We show theoretically that our Simultaneous Report (SR) mechanisms are robust to small amounts of incomplete information about the state of nature. We also highlight the robustness of the mechanisms to a wide variety of reasoning processes and behavioral assumptions. We show experimentally that a SR mechanism performs well in inducing truth-telling in both complete and incomplete information environments and that it can induce efficient investment in a two-sided hold-up problem with ex-ante investment. The SR mechanism also …


Competing Social Influence In Contested Diffusion: Luther, Erasmus And The Spread Of The Protestant Reformation, Sascha O. Becker, Steven Pfaff, Yuan Hsiao, Jared Rubin 2023 Monash University

Competing Social Influence In Contested Diffusion: Luther, Erasmus And The Spread Of The Protestant Reformation, Sascha O. Becker, Steven Pfaff, Yuan Hsiao, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

The spread of radical institutional change does not often result from one-sided pro-innovation influence; countervailing influence networks in support of the status quo can suppress adoption. We develop a model of multiple and competing network diffusion. To apply the contested-diffusion model to real data, we look at the contest between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the two most influential intellectuals of early 16th-century Central Europe. Whereas Luther championed a radical reform of the Western Church that broke with Rome, Erasmus opposed him, stressing the unity of the Church. In the early phase of the Reformation, these two figures utilized influence …


Asymmetric Effects In Geopolitical Risk And Foreign Reserves Accumulation Among Brics Countries, Kwame O. Asomaning 2023 Sacred Heart University

Asymmetric Effects In Geopolitical Risk And Foreign Reserves Accumulation Among Brics Countries, Kwame O. Asomaning

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

Over the past decade, the rise of Geopolitical Risk (GPR) has had a significant effect on macro financial variables, prompting central banks to accumulate reserves as a "war chest" to protect their economies from the detrimental effects of such shocks. This study examines the asymmetries in the long run, short run, and locational asymmetric effects on foreign reserves in the BRICS countries, using both the Nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) and Quantile ARDL (QARDL) models over the period 2000Q1–2021Q4. The results of the NARDL model suggest that GPR has long-run asymmetric effects for BRICS, while in the short run, all countries display …


An Experimental Test Of Algorithmic Dismissals, Brice Corgnet 2023 Chapman University

An Experimental Test Of Algorithmic Dismissals, Brice Corgnet

ESI Working Papers

We design a laboratory experiment in which a human or an algorithm decides which of two workers to dismiss. The algorithm automatically dismisses the least productive worker whereas human bosses have full discretion over their decisions. Using performance metrics and questionnaires, we find that fired workers react more negatively to human than to algorithmic decisions in a broad range of tasks. We show that spitefulness exacerbated this negative reaction. Our findings suggest algorithms could help tame negative reactions to dismissals.


God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone 2023 San Jose State University

God Games: An Experimental Study Of Uncertainty, Superstition, And Cooperation, Aidin Hajikhameneh, Laurence R. Iannaccone

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This paper uses a novel lab experiment to test claims about the origins and functions of religion. We modify the standard public goods game, adding a computer-based agent that adjusts earnings in ways that might depend on players' contributions. Our treatments employ three different descriptions of the adjustment process that loosely correspond to monotheistic, atheistic, and agnostic interpretations of the computer's role. The adjustments neither mask players' contributions nor magnify their impact. Yet players in all three adjustment treatments contribute much more than those who play the standard public goods game. Players' contributions and survey responses show that adjustments induce …


The Gettysburg Economic Review, Volume 12, Spring 2023, 2023 Gettysburg College

The Gettysburg Economic Review, Volume 12, Spring 2023

Gettysburg Economic Review

No abstract provided.


The Effect Of Remote Work On Firm Level Productivity, Katherine Fullowan 2023 Gettysburg College

The Effect Of Remote Work On Firm Level Productivity, Katherine Fullowan

Gettysburg Economic Review

This paper investigates the impact of remote work on firm-level productivity. To observe this trend, we develop a theoretical model to understand how an economy performs. We consider the economy as a collection of firms in an attempt to maximize profit. By observing a firms profit function, we are able to derive their productivity by maximizing a representative firm’s profit function. For simplicity purposes, this study treats labor as the only factor of production to focus solely on how changes in the number of remote workers impact productivity. We ultimately find that productivity increases when the number of remote workers …


Intrinsic Unrealism: The Ineffectiveness Of Neoclassical Economic Models, Robert N. Meyer 2023 Gettysburg College

Intrinsic Unrealism: The Ineffectiveness Of Neoclassical Economic Models, Robert N. Meyer

Gettysburg Economic Review

The idea of equilibrium and the usefulness of the neoclassical models that employ it are questionable due to the unrealistic built-in assumptions that they utilize, which have androcentric biases and fail to consider the open-endedness of human choice. This essay will replace the idea that neoclassical economic models are effective and that realism does not matter in the field of economics. It will rely on historical and contemporary sources in the areas of Philosophy, Sociology, Politics, and of course, Economics to explain why these unrealistic and androcentric assumptions nullify the usefulness of the neoclassical models that employ them. The essay …


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