Other Economics Commons^™

Polarization In Multidisciplinary Perspective, Eugen Dimant, Erik O. Kimbrough

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

This article provides an introduction to and overview of the articles in the PNAS Nexus Special Feature on Polarization and Trust.

Measuring Norm Pluralism And Perceived Polarization In Us Politics, Folca Panizza, Eugen Dimant, Erik O. Kimbrough, Alexander Vostroknutov

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Recent research has shown how norms shape political and economic decision-making. Much of this work assumes that a single norm influences the behavior of all people, but in fact, many situations are characterized by the existence of competing normative viewpoints. We apply a method for measuring belief in the simultaneous existence of multiple norms. Such multiplicity arises naturally when norms are associated with distinctive groups, and thus political polarization can be characterized, in part, as a product of diverging norms between groups. We thus assess the validity of our measurement technique by testing whether it can recover polarization on seven …

Political Ideology, Emotion Response, And Confirmation Bias, David L. Dickinson

ESI Publications

Motivated reasoning can serve to help resolve emotional discomfort, which suggests emotion as a likely moderator of such reasoning. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by examining emotion and confirmation bias in the political domain. Results from two preregistered studies, which involved over 900 unique participants, document a confirmation bias across distinct dimensions of belief and preference formation. Also, ideologically dissonant information significantly worsens self-reported emotion. With some exceptions, the evidence generally supports the hypothesis that negative emotion moderates the strength of the bias, which highlights the importance of emotion response in understanding and potentially counteracting confirmation bias.

A Simple Higher-Order Rational Email-Game Bubble Model And Some Implications For Momentum, Feng Liu

Hunt Institute Working Paper Series

We propose a simple higher-order rational greater-fool bubble model, where the period-1 information structure is motivated by an “information leakage” story, reminiscent of Rubinstein’s (1989) email game. Our nth-order bubble model requires only n + 2 states, and is thus simpler than that in Conlon (2004), which required n^2 + 5n + 5 states. Our model is also related to the two-agent-type case of the Araujo and Doblas-Madrid’s (2022) model, and we argue that our model might therefore not capture “momentum,” though simple extensions of it may be able to.

Re-Evaluating The Preferences Of Recreational Gulf Of Maine Cod And Haddock Anglers, Andrew M. Carr-Harris, Scott Steinback

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Since 2013, fisheries managers have used a bioeconomic model to simulate the effect of proposed regulations on angler participation and subsequent fishing mortality for Gulf of Maine Atlantic cod and haddock using data from a choice experiment survey. In the year following the last choice experiment survey, however, Gulf of Maine cod fishery experienced unprecedented regulatory changes that, to this day, considerably limit recreational harvest. Given the potential influence of these regulatory changes on angler targeting behavior and preferences, we administered a new choice experiment survey in 2019. The new survey instrument and the sampling method were updated relative to …

Axiomatic Characterization Of Generalized Neo-Eu Preferences And The Falsifiability Of Ambiguity Theories, Manuel Nunez, Mark Schneider

ESI Working Papers

We introduce a new weakening of the independence axiom, co-extreme independence, which we show characterizes a class that encompasses popular ambiguity models including Hurwicz preferences, ϵ-contamination preferences, and NEOEU preferences. Importantly, our representation unifies these as forms of simple ambiguity models as we show that the Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension of these models is either unity or increases linearly with the number of states. In contrast, standard ambiguity models characterized in the Anscombe-Aumann framework are complex ambiguity models that have a VC dimension that is either infinite or increases exponentially in the number of states. We show that simple ambiguity preferences …

Adam Smith, Human Betterment, And His Erroneous Indentification With Self-Interested Human Action, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Publications

In this essay I discuss the proposition that Adam Smith has been widely misinterpreted as asserting in his second book, The Wealth of Nations, that emergent modern economies are driven by the strictly selfish motives of their human inhabitants. The propositions articulated in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which offered a theory of society, extended seamlessly into his second book, and continued to be part of his theory of economy. In both works, he distinguished the universal state of being self-interested from actions taken in one's self-interest, and modeled people as creating and following rules of propriety …

A Critical Evaluation Of Loss Aversion As The Determinate Of Effort In Compensation Framing, Timothy W. Shields, James Wilhelm

ESI Working Papers

A robust finding in managerial accounting research is that participants prefer contracts framed as bonuses to economically equivalent contracts framed as penalties. Another finding is that participants put forth more effort when facing penalty contracts than equivalent bonus contracts. Both results are commonly described as due to loss aversion, an integral portion of prospect theory. We test whether loss aversion is correlated with higher effort in an experiment with two parts. In the first part, we elicit individual participants' loss aversion using two measures. In the second part of the experiment, participants choose costly effort to increase the likelihood of …

On Explaining Why The (Human) World Is Rich, Bart J. Wilson

ESI Working Papers

The wealth of the modern world is a natural historical marvel. Explaining it has traditionally been the purview of economic historians, as exemplified by the recent book How the World Became Rich by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin. Economic historians, though, tend to only ask process-oriented “how” questions and “by what means” questions of the Great Enrichment. The eight co-authors of Explaining Technology, who are not economic historians, engage the debate asking a different question. Their goal is to explain the exponential shape of our enrichment with a model of the combinatorial evolution of technology. With an eye toward how …

Konsumerisme Fashion Impor Di Kalangan Generasi Muda Dalam Perspektif Ketahanan Ekonomi Dan Sosial, Shabreena Sugestiani, Puri Retno Nurlingga, Pinartika Nasya Meilanty, Sabrina Zahra, Zahra Nurul Haniyyah Anas

Jurnal Kajian Stratejik Ketahanan Nasional

Generasi saat ini cenderung gemar mengenakan pakaian impor dan telah menjadi tren umum di kalangan generasi muda. Tren ini didorong oleh persepsi bahwa pakaian impor mencerminkan status sosial yang lebih tinggi, sehingga mendorong peningkatan konsumerisme fashion impor. Aktivitas ini memiliki dampak negatif pada ketahanan nasional, khususnya di bidang ekonomi dan sosial. Artikel ini bertujuan menganalisis perilaku konsumtif terhadap produk fashion impor di kalangan mahasiswa Universitas Brawijaya dengan perspektif ketahanan ekonomi dan sosial, menggunakan metode kuantitatif melalui kuesioner yang diberikan kepada mahasiswa Universitas Brawijaya serta analisis isi berbasis studi literatur. Artikel ini menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa Universitas Brawijaya cenderung lebih memilih produk …

Gambling Habits And Probability Judgements In A Bayesian Task Environment, David L. Dickinson, Parker Reid

ESI Publications

Little is known about how gamblers form probability assessments. This paper reports on a preregistered study that administered an incentivized Bayesian choice task to n = 465 self-reported gamblers and non-gamblers. The task elicits subjective probability assessments and allows one to estimate the degree to which distinct information sources are weighted in forming probability assessments. Our data failed to support our main hypotheses that experienced online gamblers would be more accurate than non-gamblers in estimating probabilities, that gamblers experienced in games of skill (e.g., poker) would be more accurate than gamblers experienced only in non-skill games (e.g., slots), that accuracy …

Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices Against State Violence, Andrea Michaels

Feminist Pedagogy

The following book review of Shreerekha Pillai’s Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices against State Violence (2023) is an expansive and timely collection of essays on the carceral state in its implications for feminist educators. This review focuses on the connections and connectivity of two essays in the collection that attempt to address a minor examination of the person as political.

Driving Green Investments To Address Climate Change, Baptiste Gibrat

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The climate crisis is no longer news, and society needs to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions. Otherwise, the consequences of climate change will become increasingly catastrophic.

This thesis develops a framework to drive green investments, which reduce society’s dependance on fossil fuels. Initially, the research provides a comprehensive examination of these investments, followed by an exploration of three strategies to enhance their adoption: leveraging financial instruments and capital markets, implementing regulatory frameworks, and harnessing the power of technologies. To integrate these elements within a comprehensive framework, the study employs market research, reviews relevant literature, and includes interviews with …

Do Participation Rates Vary With Participation Payments In Laboratory Experiments?, Huizhen Zhong, Cary Deck, Daniel J. Henderson

ESI Working Papers

This paper reports a series of experiments designed to evaluate how the advertised participation payment impacts participation rates in laboratory experiments. Our initial goal was to generate variation in the participation rate as a means to control for selection bias when evaluating treatment effects in common laboratory experiments. Initially, we varied the advertised participation payment to 1734 people from $5 to $15 using standard email recruitment procedures, but found no statistical evidence this impacted the participation rate. A second study increased the advertised payment up to $100. Here, we find marginally significant statistical evidence that the advertised participation payment affects …

The Effect Of Crime On Tourism In Indonesia, Muhammad Farhan, Hera Susanti

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Tourism sector is widely known as one of economic sectors that can be the engine of economic growth in an effort to reduce poverty in a country. However, growth in the tourism sector can be influenced by safety factors. Tourists tend to avoid tourism destination areas with high crime rates in order to avoid becoming victims of crime. This study aims to analyze the effect of crime on the number of tourist arrivals in Indonesia by using four proxies of crime, which are total crime rate, property crime rate, violent crime rate, and fraud crime rate. This study utilizes a …

Consumption Of Over-The-Top (Ott) Media Streaming Services In Rural Tamil Nadu, Rajarathi K

Theses and Dissertations

Over-the-top (OTT) Media Streaming Services are modern online entertainment services based on new media technologies. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the OTT consumer base experienced exponential growth, especially in India. Currently, the Indian OTT industry is in its second growth phase, owing to increased consumption in rural India. The interests of rural consumers align with different types of OTT content, providing potential market for OTT media streaming services. Tamil Nadu is a front runner in the consumption of YouTube and other popular OTT media streaming services in the country. The Government of Tamil Nadu is making penetration efforts to establish OTT …

Cross-Cultural Interactions And Equilibrium Selection In Stag Hunt Games, Gabriele Camera, James Gilmore, Marilyn Giselle Hazlett, Jason Shachat, Bochen Zhu

ESI Working Papers

We study within-and cross-culture interaction in a Stag Hunt game, using a controlled online experiment with participants from a Chinese and a U.S. university. We investigate if cross-culture interactions support less coordination on the riskier but Pareto efficient Nash equilibrium. Our study mimics the experimental design of previous studies testing this hypothesis, but includes participants from two geographically-separated universities instead of subgroups within a single western university thus providing a stronger delineation between two cultures. Counter to previous studies, we find that cross-culture interactions can have a positive impact on efficiency. Participants from the U.S. university, particularly females, more frequently …

Cyclical Interest In Entrepreneurship And The Virginia Economy, Daniel Farhat

Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship

This study uses keyword search data from Google to construct an index representing broad interest in entrepreneurship in Virginia. Dynamic correlations are evaluated to identify how short-term movements in the index relate to employment and earnings, leading economic indicators, home prices and business applications. Results support opportunity-driven mindsets in the labor market but not in the real estate market. The index is shown to have some economic prediction power, and is capable of producing new insights compared to data from actual business activity. This study highlights the role entrepreneurial interest may play in policy and lays the groundwork for further …

Mathematical Methods For Economics And Business Syllabus, Marian Melnyk

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus outlines an online asynchronous course introducing essential mathematical tools and techniques in economics. It spans 24 sessions covering Functions, Differentiation, Limits, Integration, and Multivariable Functions, grounded in college algebra and calculus. The course utilizes Open Educational Resources (OER) for all materials, available in text and video formats on Blackboard. Continuous assessment, including quizzes, homework, two 1-hour tests, and a final exam, ensures consistent progress. Weekly online office hours provide additional support. The primary objective is to equip students with the mathematical skills necessary for economic analysis and problem-solving.

The Strategies Of The Ziswaf Ctarsa Institution In Fundraising And Allocating Ziswaf, Cahyania Nursyabani, Wiwit Musaada, Nurul Huda

Journal of Middle East and Islamic Studies

Zakat, infaq, alms, and waqf (ZISWAF) are Islamic social finance instruments that contribute to improving community welfare. On this basis, the CT ARSA Foundation established the ZISWAF CTARSA Institution. This study aims to determine the strategies of the ZISWAF CTARSA Institution in managing ZISWAF funds. The research method used is descriptive-qualitative with a field study approach. The data used came from interviews and literature studies. The results showed that the ZISWAF CTARSA Institution, as a relatively new institution, has successfully managed ZISWAF funds. ZISWAF's fundraising activities have proven to be very effective, both online and offline. The distribution model of …