Planning To Fail: The Eurozone, Its Sovereign Debt Crisis, And The Future Of The Union,
2018
University of Missouri, St. Louis
Planning To Fail: The Eurozone, Its Sovereign Debt Crisis, And The Future Of The Union, Kyle Whitworth
Theses
The European Union has been one of the greatest accomplishments of modern history. Through economic and political integration has ended centuries of warfare on the continent while producing the worlds largest trading bloc. Despite the initial success of the monetary union and its single currency, the Union has been bogged down economic troubles in the form of a debt crisis among several of the member states. The recovery period of the crisis has produced growth that is slow and uneven. Countries such as Germany has assumed the role of the economic powerhouse of Europe and therefore a political leader in …
Cooler Heads Prevail: An Experimental Study On The “Cooling” Effect Of The Strategy Method On Agent Resentment,
2018
Chapman University
Cooler Heads Prevail: An Experimental Study On The “Cooling” Effect Of The Strategy Method On Agent Resentment, Jing L. Davis
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This study investigates whether agents’ resentment of controls in a gift-exchange game can be effectively mitigated using the strategy method where agents’ effort choices are elicited contingent on all possible contract choices by principals. The results suggest that allowing agents to contemplate contract choices prospectively results in less resentment and that agents exert higher effort than without this “cooling” process.
Engaging America: Unearthing The Middle Way In The Conflict Between Liberals And Conservatives,
2018
SIT Graduate Institute
Engaging America: Unearthing The Middle Way In The Conflict Between Liberals And Conservatives, Noah Cadet
Capstone Collection
Liberals and conservatives have waged conflict over development strategies since the founding of the United States of America. Observers of the 2016 Presidential Election may have noticed an escalation of a preexisting trend of destructive engagement between Democrats and Republicans. The researcher pursued primary and secondary research in an attempt to understand how conflict within and between development paradigms in the United States can be transcended. The central research question was regarding how this conflict affects efforts towards peacebuilding at the grassroots from the perspective of a liberal. The literature review provides a brief histories of US American Political Economy …
La Influencia Del Neoliberalismo Sobre Las Ideas De Lo “Natural”: Un Análisis De Las Ideas De La Naturaleza En Urbanizaciones Cerradas Y Grupos Subalternos En Tigre / The Influence Of Neoliberalism On Ideas Of What Is “Natural”: An Analysis Of Ideas Of Nature In Closed-Gated And Marginalized Communities In Tigre, Catherine Fraser
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Since the 1970s, there has been a global increase in neoliberal policy and ideology, marked by privatization, deregulation, and the withdrawal of the state from social programs (Harvey 2005: 2-3). Neoliberalism has manifested itself in Argentina in various forms, notably in the rise of closed-gated neighborhoods. In Tigre, a northern suburb of Buenos Aires, real estate developers fill in wetlands and re-route river tributaries to construct closed-gated neighborhoods around artificial water bodies to create an idealized neighborhood that offers residents a life in contact with “nature”. Seeking to accumulate capital, real estate developers commodify and construct a specific form of …
Preference Conformism: An Experiment,
2018
University of East Anglia
Preference Conformism: An Experiment, Enrique Fatas, Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap, David Rojo Arjona
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This paper reports on an experiment designed to test whether people’s preferences change to become more alike. Such preference conformism would be worrying for an economics that takes individual preferences as given (‘de gustibus es non disputandum’). So the test is important. But it is also difficult. People can behave alike for many reasons and the key to the design of our test, therefore, is the control of the other possible reasons for observing apparent peer effects. We find evidence of preference conformism in the aggregate and at the individual level (where there is heterogeneity). It appears also to be …
Goal Setting In The Principal-Agent Model: Weak Incentives For Strong Performance,
2018
Chapman University
Goal Setting In The Principal-Agent Model: Weak Incentives For Strong Performance, Brice Corgnet, Joaquín Gómez-Miñambres, Roberto Hernán-González
ESI Publications
We study a principal–agent framework in which principals can assign wage-irrelevant goals to agents. We find evidence that, when given the possibility to set wage-irrelevant goals, principals select incentive contracts for which pay is less responsive to agents' performance. Agents' performance is higher in the presence of goal setting despite weaker incentives. We develop a principal–agent model with reference-dependent utility that illustrates how labor contracts combining weak monetary incentives and wage-irrelevant goals can be optimal. The pervasive use of non-monetary incentives in the workplace may help account for previous empirical findings suggesting that firms rely on unexpectedly weak monetary incentives.
Air Force Installation Contracting Agency Strategic Sourcing And Category Management Through Expenditure Profiling,
2018
Air Force Institute of Technology
Air Force Installation Contracting Agency Strategic Sourcing And Category Management Through Expenditure Profiling, James T. Okamoto
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines an approach to characterizing various expenditure profiles for the Air Force Installation Contracting Agency’s Operations and Maintenance Appropriated Funds. Using naive, seasonal naive, trailing moving average, exponential smoothing, linear regression, and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) forecasting methods, the paper evaluates multiple error measures over one fiscal year to find the most precise model for each level of analysis. Levels of analysis included the Air Force enterprise and level 1 category levels, as well as an illustrative approach to Information and Technology spend at the level 2 subcategory, major command, and base levels. Optimal model characteristics were …
Convergence In Income Inequality: Further Evidence From The Club Clustering Methodology Across States In The U.S.,
2018
University of Piraeus
Convergence In Income Inequality: Further Evidence From The Club Clustering Methodology Across States In The U.S., Nicholas Apergis, Christina Christou, Rangan Gupta, Stephen M. Miller
Molasky Family Department of Economics and Real Estate Faculty Research
This paper contributes to the sparse literature on inequality convergence by empirically testing convergence across states in the U.S. This sample period encompasses a series of different periods that the existing literature discusses -- the Great Depression (1929–1944), the Great Compression (1945–1979), the Great Divergence (1980-present), the Great Moderation (1982–2007), and the Great Recession (2007–2009). This paper implements the relatively new method of panel convergence testing, recommended by Phillips and Sul (2007). This method examines the club convergence hypothesis, which argues that certain countries, states, sectors, or regions belong to a club that moves from disequilibrium positions to their club-specific …
Clarity Trumps Content: An Experiment On Information Acquisition In Beauty Contests,
2018
University of Alberta
Clarity Trumps Content: An Experiment On Information Acquisition In Beauty Contests, Sanjay Banerjee, Hong Qu, Ran Zhao
Accounting Faculty Articles and Research
We provide experimental evidence that under strong beauty contest incentives, players ignore signals from an information source with high content if the source has low clarity. Instead, they acquire equally costly signals from a source with higher clarity despite its lower content. Content measures how precisely an information source identifies an economic situation, whereas clarity measures how precisely the source content is commonly interpreted. Low clarity impairs players' ability to coordinate. When signals are provided exogenously, our experimental results are less severe than theoretical predictions, but consistent with level-2 reasoning in a cognitive behavioral model. When players acquire signals endogenously, …
Working Paper No. 08, A Non-Equilibrium Approach To Economics: Towards An Intellectual Biography Of Gunnar Myrdal,
2018
Portland State University
Working Paper No. 08, A Non-Equilibrium Approach To Economics: Towards An Intellectual Biography Of Gunnar Myrdal, Leo Kendall
Working Papers in Economics
This inquiry seeks to establish that Gunnar Myrdal provided a foundation for and also practiced a non-equilibrium approach to economics. Throughout his career, Gunnar Myrdal was tasked with researching and providing policy for some of the most pressing economic issues of the 20th century. This inquiry considers and examines what I have selected as the most important areas of research over the span of Myrdal’s career, while showing how and why a nonequilibrium was required. First, I start with racial inequality and how Myrdal’s research broke ground on the subject. Next, I consider his key contribution towards understanding regional inequality …
A Theory Of Focal Points In 2x2 Games,
2018
National Science Foundation
A Theory Of Focal Points In 2x2 Games, Jonathan W. Leland, Mark Schneider
ESI Publications
Since the classic work of Schelling, the notion of a focal point has been widely applied to explain coordinated behavior. However, focal points remain largely outside the formal apparatus of game theory. This paper develops a model of play in 2 × 2 games where payoff differences determine what strategy players will perceive as “salient” and choose to play. The model uniquely predicts which outcome will emerge for virtually the entire class of 2 × 2 normal form games. For the subset of such games involving coordination and asymmetric payoffs, payoff differences identify focal outcomes and strategies in the same …
Sex Differences In Political Leadership In An Egalitarian Society,
2018
University of Richmond
Sex Differences In Political Leadership In An Egalitarian Society, Christopher Von Rueden, Sarah Alami, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven
ESI Publications
We test the contribution of sex differences in physical formidability, education, and cooperation to the acquisition of political leadership in a small-scale society. Among forager-farmers from the Bolivian Amazon, we find that men are more likely to exercise different forms of political leadership, including verbal influence during community meetings, coordination of community projects, and dispute resolution. We show that these differences in leadership are not due to gender per se but are associated with men’s greater number of cooperation partners, greater access to schooling, and greater body size and physical strength. Men’s advantage in cooperation partner number is tied to …
Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: March 9, 2018,
2018
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: March 9, 2018, Eric Thompson
Leading Economic Indicator Reports
Nebraska consumer and business confidence fell during February 2018, dropping from the near-peak levels seen in January. The Consumer Confidence Index – Nebraska (CCI-N) fell to 101.6 in February from a value of 115.2 in January. The February value remains above the neutral level of 100.0. The Business Confidence Index – Nebraska (BCI-N) fell to 107.4 In February from 112.2 in January. Both monthly readings were well above the neutral value of 100.0 suggesting that business confidence remains strong. When asked about the most important issue facing their business, customer demand was mentioned by 38 percent of respondents. But, there …
Your Money Or Your Time? Experimental Evidence On Overbidding In All-Pay Auctions,
2018
Chapman University
Your Money Or Your Time? Experimental Evidence On Overbidding In All-Pay Auctions, Adriana Breaban, Charles N. Noussair, Andreea Victoria Popescu
ESI Working Papers
Competition for a prize frequently takes the form of dedicating time toward winning a contest. Those who spend the most time become more likely to obtain the prize. We model this competition as an all-pay auction under incomplete information, and report an experiment in which expenditures and rewards are in terms of time. In the experiment, subjects must stay in the laboratory doing nothing for an initially prespecified length of time. However, they can bid, in terms of time, to leave early. The auction has an allpay structure so that if an individual does not submit the highest bid within …
Experimental Evidence On The Cyclicality Of Investment,
2018
Ohio University
Experimental Evidence On The Cyclicality Of Investment, Cortney S. Rodet, Andrew Smyth
ESI Working Papers
We report laboratory experiments investigating the cyclicality of investment. In our setting, optimal investment is counter-cyclical because investment costs fall following market downturns. However, we do not observe counter-cyclical investment. Instead, heuristic investment models where firms invest a fixed percentage of their liquidity, or a fixed percentage of anticipated market demand, better fit our data on average than does optimal investment. We also report a control treatment without cost changes and a treatment with asymmetric investment liquidity. Both of these extensions support our main result.
Indefinitely Repeated Contests: An Experimental Study,
2018
Harvard University
Indefinitely Repeated Contests: An Experimental Study, Philip Brookins, Dmitry Ryvkin, Andrew Smyth
ESI Working Papers
We experimentally explore indefinitely repeated contests. Theory predicts more cooperation, in the form of lower expenditures, in indefinitely repeated contests with a longer expected time horizon, yet our data do not support this prediction. Theory also predicts more cooperation in indefinitely repeated contests compared to finitely repeated contests of the same expected length, but we find no significant difference empirically. When controlling for risk and gender, we actually find significantly higher long-run expenditure in some indefinite contests relative to finite contests. Finally, theory predicts no difference in cooperation across indefinitely repeated winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests. We find significantly less cooperation …
Contracts And Hierarchies: A Moral Examination Of Economic Theories Of The Firm,
2018
Pepperdine University
Contracts And Hierarchies: A Moral Examination Of Economic Theories Of The Firm, Jooho Lee
All Faculty Open Access Publications
An influential set of economic theories argue that the firm is a nexus of contracts that institute a hierarchy to overcome the problems of incomplete contracting in the market. However, the economic theory of the firm as a hierarchy violates the moral requirement to respect the autonomy of those who contract into the firm. The internal logic of the theory depends on a morally unacceptable abdication of a part of the employee’s capacity to set her own ends in the future. So a different theory is needed to understand the nature and purpose of the firm. The development of such …
Measuring Health Outcomes Of Uncovered Employment: A Study Of Income, Social Mobility, Equality, And Health Indicators In An Under-Looked Segment Of The Labor Force,
2018
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Measuring Health Outcomes Of Uncovered Employment: A Study Of Income, Social Mobility, Equality, And Health Indicators In An Under-Looked Segment Of The Labor Force, Zakariya Kmir
Undergraduate Economic Review
Economists have strongly supported the idea that unemployment causes many undesirable health outcomes. However, how does belonging to a different sector of employment tied closely to changes in minimum wage and inflation relate to overall health? To properly understand the numerical significance of health disparities in the uncovered sector of employment, this research is targeted at quantifying the relationship between the insured and non-insured within the uncovered sector. By substantiating the existence of severe health disparities as a function of the labor force dynamic, this research subsequently estimates the amount of inefficiency and negative health outcomes in the US economy …
Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: February 2, 2018,
2018
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: February 2, 2018, Eric Thompson
Leading Economic Indicator Reports
Consumer and business confidence rebounded in Nebraska during January 2018. The Consumer Confidence Index – Nebraska (CCI-N) rose to 115.2, well above the neutral level of 100.0 and a value of 93.3 in December 2017. This is the highest level recorded for the CCI-N since it was first released in February of 2016. The Business Confidence Index – Nebraska (BCI-N) rose to 112.2 in January from 107.5 in December. Both monthly readings were well above the neutral value of 100.0. When asked about the most important issue facing their business, customer demand was mentioned by 40 percent of respondents. The …
A Large Class Of Strategy-Proof Exchange Rules With Single-Peaked Preferences,
2018
Singapore Management University
A Large Class Of Strategy-Proof Exchange Rules With Single-Peaked Preferences, Peng Liu
Research Collection School Of Economics
We study the classical house exchange problem (Shapley and Scarf (1974)) and identified a large class of rules, each of which is strategy-proof, efficient, and individually rational with single-peaked preferences. These rules are generalisations of Gale’s top trading cycles rule: In each step a subset of houses are allowed to be traded along top trading cycles and in particular, the next step subset of trading houses may depend on the exchanges happened already. We believe that the flexibility introduced by this class of rules is desirable when the designer faces some context-specific requirements.
