Economic Theory Commons^™

Predictable And Predictive Emotions: Explaining Cheap Signals And Trust Re-Extension, Eric Schniter, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Publications

Despite normative predictions from economics and biology, unrelated strangers will often develop the trust necessary to reap gains from one-shot economic exchange opportunities. This appears to be especially true when declared intentions and emotions can be cheaply communicated. Perhaps even more puzzling to economists and biologists is the observation that anonymous and unrelated individuals, known to have breached trust, often make effective use of cheap signals, such as promises and apologies, to encourage trust re-extension. We used a pair of trust games with one-way communication and an emotion survey to investigate the role of emotions in regulating the propensity to …

Decision Making In A Sequential Game: The Case Of Pitting In Nascar, Alan Deck, Cary Deck, Zhen Zhu

ESI Publications

This article uses data from NASCAR to examine strategic decision making with professional players and high stakes. The authors look at driver decisions to pit, enabling car performance to be improved at the cost of track position. Unlike other sports choices that have been used to test game-theoretic play, pitting decisions occur sequentially. Therefore, optimal decision making should result in the sub-game perfect equilibrium outcome. After estimating the likelihood of successfully passing another driver, the authors find some evidence that drivers make optimal decisions; however, driver behavior is also consistent with a simple heuristic of following the preceding car.

Divided Loyalists Or Conditional Cooperators? Creating Consensus About Cooperation In Multiple Simultaneous Social Dilemmas, Matthew W. Mccarter, Anya Samek, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Publications

The current social dilemma literature lacks theoretical consensus regarding how individuals behave when facing multiple simultaneous social dilemmas. The divided-loyalty hypothesis, from organizational theory, predicts that cooperation will decline as individuals experience multiple social dilemmas with different compared to the same group members. The conditional-cooperation hypothesis, from behavioral economics, predicts that cooperation will increase as individuals experience multiple social dilemmas with different compared to the same group members. We employ a laboratory experiment to create consensus between these literatures and find support for the conditional-cooperation hypothesis. The positive effect of interacting with different group members comes from participants having an …

Fair And Impartial Spectators In Experimental Economic Behavior, Vernon L. Smith, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Our primary purpose in this article is to draw upon the literature of classical liberal economy to show how it informs and is informed by the results from experimental economics. Adam Smith's first great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, serves as our chief source of insights for understanding and interpreting modern laboratory research in terms of the conventions that govern human conduct in personal exchange.~ At the same time, we wish to demonstrate how today's economic experiments elucidate a reading of Adam Smith.

Words Worth Price And Value, Tom Dunne

Articles

TOM DUNNE explains the terms used in relation to the valuation of property, and the need for common understanding among all parties using those terms. -

Horizontal Product Differentiation In Auctions And Multilateral Negotiations, Charles J. Thomas, Bart J. Wilson

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We experimentally compare first-price auctions and multilateral negotiations after introducing horizontal product differentiation into a standard procurement setting. Both institutions yield identical surplus for the buyer, a difference from prior findings with homogeneous products that results from differentiation's influence on sellers' pricing behaviour. The data are consistent with this finding being driven by concessions from low-cost sellers in response to differentiation reducing their likelihood of being the buyer's surplus-maximizing trading partner. Further analysis shows that introducing product differentiation increases the intensity of price competition among sellers, which contrasts with the conventional wisdom that product differentiation softens competition.

The Coordination Value Of Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

What institutions can sustain cooperation in groups of strangers? Here we study the role of monetary systems. In an experiment, subjects sometimes needed help and sometimes could incur a cost to help an anonymous counterpart. In the absence of money, the intertemporal exchange of help, which could be supported by a norm of community punishment of defectors, did not emerge. Introducing intrinsically worthless tokens substantially altered patterns of behavior. Monetary trade emerged, which increased predictability of play and promoted cooperation when strangers could trade help for a token.

Understanding The Distributional Impact Of Long-Run Inflation, Gabriele Camera, Yili Chen

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The impact of fully anticipated inflation is systematically studied in heterogeneous agent economies with an endogenous labor supply and portfolio choices. In stationary equilibrium, inflation nonlinearly alters the endogenous distributions of income, wealth, and consumption. Small departures from zero inflation have the strongest impact. Three features determine how inflation impacts distributions and welfare: financial structure, shock persistence, and labor supply elasticity. When agents can self-insure only with money, inflation reduces wealth inequality but may raise consumption inequality. Otherwise, inflation reduces consumption inequality but may raise wealth inequality. Given persistent shocks and an inelastic labor supply, inflation may raise average welfare. …

Effort And Performance: What Distinguishes Interacting And Noninteracting Groups From Individuals?, Tibor Besedeš, Cary Deck, Sarah Quintanar, Sudipta Sarangi

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study how group membership affects behavior both when group members can and cannot interact with each other. Our goal is to isolate the contrasting forces that spring from group membership: a free-riding incentive leading to reduced effort and a sense of social responsibility that increases effort. In an environment with varying task difficulty and individual decision making as the benchmark, we show that the free-riding effect is stronger. Group members significantly reduce their effort in situations where they share the outcome but are unable to communicate. When group members share outcomes and can interact, they outperform groups without conmmnication …

Working Paper No. 32, Canada And The United States: A Comparison Of Their Philosophical Bases, Lorraine M. Hutton

Working Papers in Economics

Americans and Canadians seem similar in many ways; however, their dissimilar historical experiences have shaped very different attitudes and philosophies that underpin their institutions. Canadians promote equality and collective responsibility under a restrained, parliamentary state, whilst the Americans stress self-reliance, individualism and freedom. Canadians embraced the hierarchical structure of the British and French Empires and Americans revolted against all ties to it. What appear to be minor distinctions between the two countries and cultures are actually fundamental philosophies rooted in the past.

The Role Of Population Growth In An Emerging Multipolar Economic World., Casey C. Horner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

An empirical study presenting the social and economic proof of a global shift from a bipolar economic world to a multipolar economic world. The time period for data and projections is 2010 to 2050. The measurements used are population pyramids, total population, GDP per capita, and total GDP.

A Dynamic Model Of Competitive Entry Response, Matthew Selove

Business Faculty Articles and Research

I develop a dynamic investment game with a “memoryless” research and development process in which an incumbent and an entrant can invest in a new technology, and the entrant can also invest in the old technology. I show that an increase in the probability of successfully implementing a technology can cause the incumbent to reduce its investment. Under certain conditions, if the success probability is high, the incumbent allows the entrant to win the new technology so that firms reach an equilibrium in which they use different technologies, and threats of retaliation prevent attacks; but if the success probability is …

A State Space Model Approach To Integrated Covariance Matrix Estimation With High Frequency Data, Cheng Liu, Cheng Yong Tang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider a state space model approach forhigh frequency financial data analysis. An expectationmaximization(EM) algorithm is developed for estimatingthe integrated covariance matrix of the assets. The statespace model with the EM algorithm can handle noisy financialdata with correlated microstructure noises. Difficultydue to asynchronous and irregularly spaced trading data ofmultiple assets can be naturally overcome by consideringthe problem in a scenario with missing data. Since the statespace model approach requires no data synchronization, norecord in the financial data is deleted so that it efficientlyincorporates information from all observations. Empiricaldata analysis supports the general specification of the statespace model, and simulations confirm …

Short-Term Inflation Forecasting Models For Nigeria, Sani I. Doguwa, Sarah O. Alade

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

Short-term inflation forecasting is an essential component of the monetary policy projections at the Central Bank of Nigeria. This paper proposes four short-term headline inflation forecasting models using the SARIMA and SARIMAX processes and compares their performance using the pseudo-out-of-sample forecasting procedure over July 2011 to September 2013. According to the results the best forecasting performance is demonstrated by the model based on the all items CPI estimated using the SARIMAX model. This model is, therefore, recommended for use in short-term forecasting of headline inflation in Nigeria. The forecasting performance up to eight months ahead, of the models based on …

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor marks the four-year anniversary of Brookings Mountain West's quarterly tracking of the uneven pace of recovery across the major metro areas of the Intermountain West and it finds that, although the region continues to outperform the national economy the rate of recovery slowed moderately in the region’s metro areas.

As a group, Mountain region metro areas advanced on all four indicators of economic recovery tracked by the Monitor—employment, output, unemployment, and house prices—but their progress was more restrained in the third quarter of 2013 than it was in the second.

Beneath the regional headline of moderating …

An Efficient Two Sample Capture-Recapture Model With High Recaptures, Danjuma Jibasen, Yusuf J. Adams

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper proposed an efficient two sample capture-recapture model (Ma) with high recaptures and compared it with the existing models like the model of no factor effect (Mo), behavioral response model (Mb) and the Petersen model (Ms), using simulated data. We found that the Petersen model provides a better estimate of the population size when the observations follow a hypergeometric distribution and the population is overestimated when recapture is high. It was also found that the proposed model provides a better estimator of the population size than the existing ones when the recapture is high. This model is particularly useful …

Causal Relationship Between Stock Market Index And Exchange Rate: Evidence From Nigeria, Abdulrasheed Zubair

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper uses Johansen’s cointegration to test for the possibility of cointegration and Granger-causality to estimate the causal relationship between stock market index and monetary indicators (exchange rate and M2) before and during the global financial crisis for Nigeria, using monthly data for the period 2001–2011. Results suggest absence of long-run relationship before and during the crisis. The Granger-causality tests show a uni-directional causality running from M2 to ASI before the crisis while during the period of the crisis there is absence of causality between the variables. This suggests that ASI show responsiveness to M2. Thus, absence of the direct …

Investigating Chaos In The Nigerian Asset And Resource Management (Arm) Discovery Fund, Ibiyinka A. Fuwape, Samuel T. Ogunjo

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper investigates chaos in a Nigerian mutual fund, Asset and Resource Management Company Limited (ARM) for a period of eleven years. The existence of chaotic signals in the data was identified by the reconstruction of the phase space of the daily closing price of the fund and the delay time was quantified using mutual information function and the embedding dimension by the false nearest neighbours, where the values were identified to be 15 and 20 respectively. The presence of chaotic signals in the ARM data was further confirmed by the correlation dimension method which yielded a dimension of 2.2 …

Modeling The Nigerian Inflation Rates Using Periodogram And Fourier Series Analysis, Chukwuemeka O. Omekara,, Emmanuel J. Ekpenyong, Micheal P. Ekerete

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This work considers the application of Periodogram and Fourier Series Analysis to model all-items monthly inflation rates in Nigeria from 2003 to 2011. The main objectives are to identify inflation cycles, fit a suitable model to the data and make forecasts of future values. To achieve these objectives, monthly all-items inflation rates for the period were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) website. Periodogram and Fourier series methods of analysis are used to analyze the data. Based on the analysis, it was found that inflation cycle within the period was fifty one (51) months, which coincides with the …

Nigerian Stock Index: A Search For Optimal Garch Model Using High Frequency Data, Olaoluwa Simon Yaya

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper attempts to fit the best Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) model for All Share Index (ASI) of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) returns. A search is made on various GARCH variants specified on the assumptions of stationarity and asymmetry. Fractionally integrated types are also considered to capture the possibility of return series having property of long range dependency. The parameter estimations are carried out on the assumptions of normality and non-normality of GARCH innovations, with models and forecasts evaluated using information criteria and loss functions respectively. Under normality assumption, Hyperbolic GARCH (HYGARCH(1,d,1)) model is selected and Integrated GARCH (IGARCH(1,1)) …