Other Economics Commons^™

Women In The Early Years Of The American Economic Association: A Membership Beyond The Professoriate Per Se, Ann Mari May, Robert W. Dimand

Department of Economics: Faculty Publications

The records in the archives of the American Economic Association (AEA) located in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, offer us a unique window into the role of gender in the struggle of economists to gain status and authority and allow us to better understand the role of gender in the professionalization of economics. While not replete with information about female economists in the early years of the AEA, the records offer important clues as to the challenges facing women academics, shed light on the formation of the profession, and reveal the influence of the …

Money Is More Than Memory, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

Impersonal exchange is the hallmark of an advanced society and money is one key institution that supports it. Economic theory regards money as a crude arrangement for monitoring counterparts’ past conduct. If so, then a public record of past actions—or memory—should supersede the function performed by money. This intriguing theoretical postulate remains untested. In an experiment, we show that the suggested functional equivalence between money and memory does not translate into an empirical equivalence: money removed the incentives to free ride, while memory did not. Monetary systems performed a richer set of functions than just revealing past behaviors.

Modeling Interactions Between Risk, Time, And Social Preferences, Mark Schneider

ESI Working Papers

Recent studies have observed systematic interactions between risk, time, and social preferences that constitute violations of `dimensional independence' and are not explained by the leading models of decision making. This note provides a simple approach to modeling such interaction effects while predicting new ones. In particular, we present a model of rational-behavioral preferences that takes the convex combination of `behavioral' System 1 preferences and `rational' System 2 preferences. The model provides a unifying approach to analyzing risk, time, and social preferences, and predicts how these preferences are correlated with reliance on System 1 or System 2 thinking.

A Dual System Model Of Risk And Time Preferences, Mark Schneider

ESI Working Papers

Discounted Expected Utility theory has been a workhorse in economic analysis for over half a century. However, it cannot explain empirical violations of 'dimensional independence' demonstrating that risk interacts with time preference and time interacts with risk preference, nor does it explain present bias or magnitude-dependence in risk and time preferences, or correlations between risk preference, time preference, and cognitive reflection. We demonstrate that these and other anomalies are explained by a dual system model of risk and time preferences that unless models of a rational economic agent, models based on prospect theory, and dual process models of decision making.

Ten Years Of Economic Analyses For The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive: Overview Of Experiences And Lessons Learned, Rob Van Der Veeren, Ann Kathrin Buchs, Günter Hörmandinger, Soile Oinonen, Conceição Santos, Max Vretborn

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive, which came into force in 2008, requires from Member States inter alia to perform various (types of) economic analyses. In order to help Member States to implement this directive, the European working group on Economic and Social Analysis was initiated in 2009. This working group has developed various guidance documents which have been very useful in helping each other to understand the Directive and its requirements, to develop one language, to understand the pros and cons of various approaches, and to share experiences. However, up until now, outside of this working group this information …

Allisions, Collisions And Groundings: Estimating The Impact Of The Physical Oceanographic Real Time System (Ports(R)) On Accident Reduction, Eric Wolfe, Kenneth N. Mitchell

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Reductions in the rates of domestic allisions, collisions and groundings (ACGs) are the result of technological advances as well as implementation of best practices in the maritime industry. This study estimates long-term gross benefits derived from expanded implementation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS®) with respect to reductions in ACG rates in the United States. Following PORTS® installations that provided expanded coverage of U.S. ports and adjoining areas, concomitant decreases in accident rates occurred. While previous estimates suggested that between twenty and sixty percent of grounding accident reductions were due to PORTS®, current research …

Using Response Times To Measure Ability On A Cognitive Task, Aleksandr Alekseev

ESI Working Papers

I show how using response times as a proxy for effort coupled with an explicit process-based model can address a long-standing issue of how to separate the effect of cognitive ability on performance from the effect of motivation. My method is based on a dynamic stochastic model of optimal effort choice in which ability and motivation are the structural parameters. I show how to estimate these parameters from the data on outcomes and response times in a cognitive task. In a laboratory experiment, I find that performance on a Digit-Symbol test is a noisy and biased measure of cognitive ability. …

Why Trust Out-Groups? The Role Of Punishment Under Uncertainty, Xiaofei Pan, Daniel Houser

Economics Faculty Journal Articles

We conducted a hidden-effort trust game, in which we assigned subjects to one of two groups. The groups, which were formed through two different group formation processes, included a “social” group that required sharing and exchange among its members, and a “non-social” group that did not. Once assigned, subjects participated in the game with members from both groups, either with or without the opportunity to punish a trustee who may have defected on them. We found that for investors in the non-social group, the opportunity to punish a trustee worked to promote trust, but only when the trustee was a …

Free Trade And Corporate Social Responsibility: Ethical Dilemmas In Global Economic Development, Sarah Papion

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Through the lens of the free-trade-optimist, it is black and white: corporations bring jobs, and jobs equal a happy and healthy economy. A major oversight in this neoliberal Utopian ideology is that corporations are not in the business of building communities, nor do they have an interest in keeping their operations stationary enough to allow economic growth to occur over a span of years. Corporations abandon communities as quickly as they arrive to find their next cheap labor hub. Quite contradictory to the original purpose of free trade, economic growth in Free Trade Zones is not long term or secure. …

Slow-Fast Analysis Of A Multi-Group Asset Flow Model With Implications For The Dynamics Of Wealth, Mark Desantis, David Swigon

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The multi-group asset flow model is a nonlinear dynamical system originally developed as a tool for understanding the behavioral foundations of market phenomena such as flash crashes and price bubbles. In this paper we use a modification of this model to analyze the dynamics of a single-asset market in situations when the trading rates of investors (i.e., their desire to exchange stock for cash) are prescribed ahead of time and independent of the state of the market. Under the assumption of fast trading compared to the time-rate of change in the prescribed trading rates we decompose the dynamics of the …

On Booms That Never Bust: Ambiguity In Experimental Asset Markets With Bubbles, Brice Corgnet, Roberto Hernán-González, Praveen Kujal

ESI Working Papers

We study the effect of ambiguity on the formation of bubbles and on the occurrence of crashes in experimental asset markets à la Smith, Suchanek, and Williams (1988). We extend their framework to an environment where the fundamental value of the asset is ambiguous. We show that, when the fundamental value is ambiguous, asset prices tend to be lower than when it is risky although bubbles form in both the ambiguous and the risky environments. Additionally, bubbles do not crash in the ambiguous case whereas they do so in the risky one. These findings regarding depressed prices and the absence …

Toward Improving Export Diversification And Economic Growth In Small Island Developing States, Marlo B. Murphy-Braynen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to address the following research question: How does export diversification impact economic growth in Small Island Developing States? More specifically, this dissertation sheds light on the strength and nature of the relationship between export diversification and economic growth with a focus on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Informed by prior literature and the empirical analysis in this dissertation, I propose a conceptual industry development model that aims to stimulate and promote export development, diversification, and growth within the context of Small Island Developing States in general and with a specific focus on The Bahamas. In accordance with …

Low Income Households Investment In Energy Efficient Appliances, Jieun Chang

Faculty Articles & Research

Introduction

•Does adopting energy efficient appliances reduce electricity consumption among low income households?

•Low income households: households below 150% of the federal poverty level

•Energy efficient appliances:

energy star refrigerators and energy star room air conditioners

Spending Too Little In Hard Times, Alessandro Del Ponte, Peter Descioli

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

People’s decisions to consume and save resources are critical to their wellbeing. Previous experiments find that people typically spend too much because of how they discount the future. We propose that people’s motive to preserve their savings can instead cause them to spend too little in hard times. We design an economic game in which participants can store resources for the future to survive in a harsh environment. A player’s income is uncertain and consumption yields diminishing returns within each day, creating tradeoffs between spending and saving. We compare participants’ decisions to a heuristic that performed best in simulations. We …

Conditional Independence In A Binary Choice Experiment, Nathaniel Wilcox

ESI Working Papers

Experimental and behavioral economists, as well as psychologists, commonly assume conditional independence of choices when constructing likelihood functions for structural estimation. I test this assumption using data from a new experiment designed for this purpose. Within the limits of the experiment’s identifying restriction and designed power to detect deviations from conditional independence, conditional independence is not rejected. In naturally occurring data, concerns about violations of conditional independence are certainly proper and well-taken (for well-known reasons). However, when an experimenter employs contemporary state-of-the-art experimental mechanisms and designs, the current evidence suggests that conditional independence is an acceptable assumption for analyzing data …

Selection In The Lab: A Network Approach, Aleksandr Alekseev, Mikhail Freer

ESI Working Papers

We study the selection problem in economic experiments by focusing on its dynamic and network aspects. We develop a dynamic network model of student participation in a subject pool, which assumes that students' participation is driven by the two channels: the direct channel of recruitment and the indirect channel of student interaction. Using rich recruitment data from a large public university, we find that the patterns of participation and biases are consistent with the model. We also find evidence of both short- and long-run selection biases between males and females, as well as between cohorts of students. Males tend to …

Agglomeration And The Extent Of The Market: An Experimental Investigation Into Spatially Coordinated Exchange, Jordan Adamson

ESI Working Papers

How and why do agglomerations emerge? While economic historians emphasize trade and economic geographers emphasize variety, we still don’t understand the role of coordination. I fill this gap by extending the model of Fudenberg and Ellison (2003) to formalize Smith’s (1776) theory of agglomeration. I then test the model in a laboratory experiment and find individuals tend to coalesce purely to coordinate exchange, with more agglomeration when there is a larger variety of goods in the economy. I also find that tying individuals to the land reduces agglomeration, but magnifies the effect of variety.

Coordination And Evolutionary Dynamics: When Are Evolutionary Models Reliable?, Daniel Graydon Stephenson

ESI Publications

This study reports a continuous-time experimental test of evolutionary models in coordinated attacker–defender games. It implements three experimental treatment conditions: one with strong coordination incentives, one with weak coordination incentives, and one with zero coordination incentives. Each treatment exhibits identical equilibrium predictions but distinct evolutionary predictions. Observed behavior was tightly clustered around equilibrium under both the zero coordination treatment and the weak coordination treatment but widely dispersed from equilibrium under the strong coordination treatment. This result was anticipated by explicitly dynamic models but not by conventional stability criteria. In contrast to the widely maintained assumption of sign-preservation, subjects frequently switched …

Variation Among Populations In The Immune Protein Composition Of Mother's Milk Reflects Subsistence Pattern, Laura D. Klein, Jincui Huang, Elizabeth A. Quinn, Melanie A. Martin, Alicia A. Breakey, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Claudia Valeggia, Grazyna Jasienska, Brooke Scelza, Carlito B. Lebrilla, Katie Hinde

ESI Publications

Lay Summary: Adaptive immune proteins in mothers’ milk are more variable than innate immune proteins across populations and subsistence strategies. These results suggest that the immune defenses in milk are shaped by a mother’s environment throughout her life.

Background and objectives: Mother’s milk contains immune proteins that play critical roles in protecting the infant from infection and priming the infant’s developing immune system during early life. The composition of these molecules in milk, particularly the acquired immune proteins, is thought to reflect a mother’s immunological exposures throughout her life. In this study, we examine the composition of innate …

Do Negative Random Shocks Affect Trust And Trustworthiness?, Hernán Bejarano, Joris Gillet, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara

ESI Publications

We report data from a variation of the trust game aimed at determining whether (and how) inequality and random shocks that affect wealth influence the levels of trust and trustworthiness. To tease apart the effect of the shock and the inequality, we compare behavior in a trust game where the inequality is initially given and one where it is the result of a random shock that reduces the second mover's endowment. We find that first‐movers send less to second‐movers but only when the inequality results from a random shock. As for the amount returned, second‐movers return less when they are …