Other Economics Commons^™

Causal Versus Consequential Motives In Mental Models Of Agent Social And Economic Action: Experiments, And The Neoclassical Diversion In Economics, Vernon L. Smith

ESI Working Papers

"In this paper I want to begin with the neoclassical supply and demand model of markets (SDM), whose static equilibrium consequences predicted outcomes far more accurately than were anticipated in laboratory experimental tests of the theory actuated by Jevons (1862, 1871; Smith, 1962). The observed predictive accuracy of SDM was not anticipated because complete information on supply and demand was widely believed, thought and taught to be a necessary condition for finding equilibrium. 1 Jevons’ model required him to have complete information in any particular market, as he only articulated a model of market optimal outcomes, and no model of …

Centrality And Cooperation In Networks, Boris Van Leeuwen, Abhijit Ramalingam, David Rojo Arjona, Arthur Schram

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate the effects of centrality on cooperation in groups. Players with centrality keep a group together by having a pivotal position in a network. In some of our experimental treatments, players can vote to exclude others and prevent them from further participation in the group. We find that, in the presence of exclusion, central players contribute significantly less than others, and that this is tolerated by those others. Because of this tolerance, teams with centrality manage to maintain high levels of cooperation.

Comparison Of Country/Economies At Stage Of Development With Movement In Rankings Of Countries On Global Competitiveness, Pradip K. Shukla, M. P. Shukla, Y. P. Shukla, A. P. Shukla

Business Faculty Articles and Research

With close to 200 countries in the world today, these countries are at various stages of development from less developed to more develop; these stages are often labeled in a rising numerical sequence such as Stage 1 to 3. Countries in the world compete in a global economy to benefit their domestic firms and citizens. As countries move to a higher stage of economic development they offer more global competitiveness for global businesses seeking new markets for sales, offshore outsourcing, and investments.

“The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business …

Big Data In Economics, Matthew Harding, Jonathan Hersh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Big Data refers to data sets of much larger size, higher frequency, and often more personalized information. Examples include data collected by smart sensors in homes or aggregation of tweets on Twitter. In small data sets, traditional econometric methods tend to outperform more complex techniques. In large data sets, however, machine learning methods shine. New analytic approaches are needed to make the most of Big Data in economics. Researchers and policymakers should thus pay close attention to recent developments in machine learning techniques if they want to fully take advantage of these new sources of Big Data.

Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power, Tom Campbell, Nathaniel T. Wilcox

ESI Working Papers

From 1960 to 2015, Federal District Court opinions involving challenges to Executive Branch authority show that U.S. Federal District Court judges (trial judges) support such authority less as they age, with a sharp decline beginning near age 57. We argue that District judges know that elevation to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals becomes increasingly improbable, and hence have less reason to ‘cooperate’ with the Executive, with advancing age. Political variables (and other variables) introduced as extra regressors do not reverse our main results. When there are contemporaneous vacancies on their Circuit courts, District judges in the eleven State Circuits …

Traveling With Joel, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Kovel’s contributions to a critique of psychiatry, of political theory and of the ruination of the biosphere have been pathfinding, highly revered, and reviewed and debated in highly prestigious journals and publications such as The New York Times. His work with revolutionaries around the globe (including sojourns in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution as just one of many examples), and his achievements alongside some of the leading political activists worldwide have secured for Kovel a premier place in the history of the left. But notoriety is not what drives Kovel’s work. What drives Kovel’s work is a relentless struggle for …

Partners Or Strangers? Cooperation, Monetary Trade, And The Choice Of Scale Of Interaction, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

We show that monetary exchange facilitates the transition from small to large-scale economic interactions. In an experiment, subjects chose to play an “intertemporal cooperation game” either in partnerships or in groups of strangers where payoffs could be higher. Theoretically, a norm of mutual support is sufficient to maximize efficiency through large-scale cooperation. Empirically, absent a monetary system, participants were reluctant to interact on a large scale; and when they did, efficiency plummeted compared to partnerships because cooperation collapsed. This failure was reversed only when a stable monetary system endogenously emerged: the institution of money mitigated strategic uncertainty problems.

'To Sell Or Not To Sell': Licensing Versus Selling By An Outside Innovator, Swapnendu Banerjee, Sougata Poddar

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study various modes of technology transfer of an outside innovator in a spatial framework when the potential licensees are asymmetric. In addition to different licensing options, we also look into the option of selling the property rights of innovation and find the optimal mode of technology transfer. For licensing we find the optimal policy is to offer pure royalty contracts to both licensee firms when cost differentials between the firms are relatively small compared to the transportation cost, otherwise offer a fixed fee licensing contract to the efficient firm only. Interestingly, we show the innovator is always better-off selling …

The Connection Between Race And Performance Of Nba Draft Picks, Jeremiah Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between race and performance in terms of one of the highest forms of efficiency in basketball, field goal percentage, based on college statistics, with regard to draft position, career earnings and NBA win shares.

Marital Violence And Fertility In A Relatively Egalitarian High-Fertility Population, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Ultimate and proximate explanations of men’s physical intimate partner violence (IPV) against women have been proposed. An ultimate explanation posits that IPV is used to achieve a selfish fitness-relevant outcome, and predicts that IPV is associated with greater marital fertility. Proximate IPV explanations contain either complementary strategic components (for example, men’s desire for partner control), non-strategic components (for example, men’s self-regulatory failure), or both strategic and non-strategic components involving social learning. Consistent with an expectation from an ultimate IPV explanation, we find that IPV predicts greater marital fertility among Tsimané forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia (n = 133 marriages, 105 women). This …

Toxic Effects Of Lead Disposal In Water: An Analysis Of Tri Facility Releases, Patrick Koval

Economics Department Working Papers

Using county-level TRI data from 2003 to 2016, I find evidence that lead emissions in water adversely affect birth weights within the emitting county, especially with respect to the percentage of births considered low birth weight within that county (less than 2,500 grams). I find that a one percent increase in lead emissions per square mile increases the proportion of low birth weights by 0.27 percentage points. For a county with an average number of births in a particular year, this one percent increase in lead per square mile translates to an additional $475,000 in hospitalization costs from complications with …

Correction To: 'Greater Wealth Inequality, Less Polygyny: Rethinking The Polygyny Threshold Model', Cody T. Ross, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Seung-Yun Oh, Samuel Bowles, Bret Beheim, John Bunce, Mark Caudell, Gregory Clark, Heidi Colleran, Carmen Cortez, Patricia Draper, Russell D. Greaves, Michael Gurven, Thomas Headland, Janet Headland, Kim Hill, Barry Hewlett, Hillard Kaplan, Jeremy Koster, Karen Kramer, Frank Marlowe, Richard Mcelereath, David Nolin, Marsha Quinlan, Robert Quinlan, Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Brooke Scelza, Ryan Schacht, Mary Shenk, Ray Uehara, Eckart Voland, Kai Willführ, Bruce Winterhalder, John Ziker, Christopher Von Rueden

ESI Publications

No abstract provided.

Greater Wealth Inequality, Less Polygyny: Rethinking The Polygyny Threshold Model, Cody T. Ross, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Seung-Yun Oh, Samuel Bowles, Bret Beheim, John Bunce, Mark Caudell, Gregory Clark, Heidi Colleran, Carmen Cortez, Patricia Draper, Russell D. Greaves, Michael Gurven, Thomas Headland, Janet Headland, Kim Hill, Barry Hewlett, Hillard Kaplan, Jeremy Koster, Karen Kramer, Frank Marlowe, Richard Mcelreath, David Nolin, Marsha Quinlan, Robert Quinlan, Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Brooke Scelza, Ryan Schacht, Mary Shenk, Ray Uehara, Eckart Voland, Kai Willführ, Bruce Winterhalder, John Ziker, Christopher Von Rueden

ESI Publications

Monogamy appears to have become the predominant human mating system with the emergence of highly unequal agricultural populations that replaced relatively egalitarian horticultural populations, challenging the conventional idea—based on the polygyny threshold model—that polygyny should be positively associated with wealth inequality. To address this polygyny paradox, we generalize the standard polygyny threshold model to a mutual mate choice model predicting the fraction of women married polygynously. We then demonstrate two conditions that are jointly sufficient to make monogamy the predominant marriage form, even in highly unequal societies. We assess if these conditions are satisfied using individual-level data from 29 human …

Sleep Variability And Nighttime Activity Among Tsimane Forager‐Horticulturalists, Gandhi Yetish, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Objectives

A common presumption in sleep research is that “normal” human sleep should show high night‐to‐night consistency. Yet, intra‐individual sleep variation in small‐scale subsistence societies has never been studied to test this idea. In this study, we assessed the degree of nightly variation in sleep patterns among Tsimane forager‐horticulturalists in Bolivia, and explored possible drivers of the intra‐individual variability.

Methods

We actigraphically recorded sleep among 120 Tsimane adults (67 female), aged 18–91, for an average of 4.9 nights per person using the Actigraph GT3X and Philips Respironics Actiwatch 2. We assessed intra‐individual variation using intra‐class correlations and average deviation from …

The Economic Impact Of Apple Growing And Processing On The West Virginia Economy, Christiadi, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

The Economic Impact Of Coal In West Virginia, Christiadi, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

Coal Production In West Virginia, Brian Lego, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

No abstract provided.

Unconventional Natural Gas Industry Value Chain And Representative Companies, Ednilson Bernardes

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

This report defines a framework for the unconventional natural gas value chain and identifies representative companies in each stage, as per definition of the value chain adopted for the study. The main focus of the report is on major companies in the up and midstream stages of the value chain. However, the report presents major companies in stages further downstream covered by the study. The reason for the focus on up and midstream stages is two‐fold. First, given the current level of development of the unconventional natural gas value chain in the state, those are the stages where most opportunities …

Applied Economics (Clayton), Sheryne Southard, Christie Burton, Bryan Labrecque, Xueyu Cheng, Elnora Farmer

Computer Science and Information Technology Grants Collections

This Grants Collection for Applied Economics was created under a Round Ten ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process.

Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials:

• Linked Syllabus
• Initial Proposal
• Final Report

The Impact Of Remittances On Education Attainment: Evidence From Dominican Republic, Tahiya Begum

Honors College Theses

This paper will examine the relationship between remittances and education attainment focusing on Dominican Republic in 2002. This study will focus on households in Dominican Republic using surveys from IPUMS international and the data is cross-sectional. Sending remittances increases the income for households, which in return, influences the spending on education. The study of remittances is analyzed in a more cultural and social value rather than entirely economic. The dynamic and structure of a family is crucial when studying the effects of remittances in a developing country. Key findings from this analysis is that the relationship between education attainment and …