Other Economics Commons^™

New School In Exile Student Statement, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

his collection includes:

• Statement to New School students. New School in Exile. New York, New York. Date not stated. Unpublished student statement.
• Statement from student occupation, New School in Exile. New School in Exile. New York, New York. Date not stated. Unpublished student statement.

Some Professionals Play Minimax: A Reexamination Of The Minimax Theory In Major League Baseball, Jeffrey Park

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the behavior of Major League Baseball pitchers. We analyze the pitching data from 2007-2010 in order to determine whether their actions follow minimax play. We also examine what the OPS statistic tells us about a pitcher's value.

An Economic Impact Study Of The "Boom" Period Of Baseball Stadium Redevelopment, Emily Mcnab

CMC Senior Theses

The intention of this study is to analyze the economic impact of redeveloped Major League Baseball stadiums opened between 1991 and 2004. Using two empirical models, including an event study, this impact analysis captures the economic conditions of the cities during the opening year of the stadium, as well as the prior conditions leading up to the opening of the stadium, along with any lingering effects or gradual changes in conditions. The impact was measured in relation to the Metropolitan Statistical Areas corresponding to the 18 ballparks included, specifically looking at the impact on employment rates and per capita personal …

Intellectual Property And Antitrust Limits On Contract: Comment, Matthew J. Holian, Neil Nguyen

Faculty Publications

In their chapter in Dynamic Competition and Public Policy (2001, Cambridge University Press), Burtis and Kobayashi never defined their model's discount rate, making replicating their simulation results difficult. Through our own simulations, we were able to verify their results when using a discount rate of 0.10. We also identified two new types of equilibria that the authors overlooked, doubling the number of distinct equilibria in the model.

The Persistence Of Accounting Versus Economic Profit, Matthew J. Holian, Ali M. Reza

Faculty Publications

Drawing on Schumpeterian theory, this article presents estimates of a first-order autoregressive model of profit persistence for large US firms, using Economic Value Added (EVA), the popular measure of profits produced by Stern Stewart and Company, and simple (unadjusted) accounting measures from the Compustat database. We hypothesize about the differences we should expect to find between these two sets of estimates, and also provide a fresh normative assessment of the dynamic competitiveness of the US economy.

Visibility Of Contributions And Cost Of Information: An Experiment On Public Goods, Anya Savikhin, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

We experimentally investigate the impact of visibility of information about contributors on contributions in the public goods game. We systematically consider several treatments that are similar to a wide range of situations in practice. First, we vary the cost of viewing identifiable information about contributors. Second, we vary recognizing all, top or bottom contributors. We find that recognizing all contributors significantly increases contributions relative to the baseline. Recognizing only the top contributors is not significantly different from not recognizing contributors, but recognizing only the bottom contributors is as effective as recognizing all contributors. When viewing information about contributors is costly, …

Fight Or Flight? Defending Against Sequential Attacks In The Game Of Siege, Cary Deck, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

This paper examines theory and behavior in a two-player game of siege, sequential attack and defense. The attacker’s objective is to successfully win at least one battle while the defender’s objective is to win every battle. Theoretically, the defender either folds immediately or, if his valuation is sufficiently high and the number of battles is sufficiently small, then he has a constant incentive to fight in each battle. Attackers respond to defense with diminishing assaults over time. Consistent with theoretical predictions, our experimental results indicate that the probability of successful defense increases in the defenders valuation and it decreases in …

Affecting Policy By Manipulating Prediction Markets: Experimental Evidence, Cary Deck, Shengle Lin, David Porter

ESI Working Papers

Documented results indicate prediction markets effectively aggregate information and form accurate predictions. This has led to a proliferation of markets predicting everything from the results of elections to a company’s sales to movie box office receipts. Recent research suggests prediction markets are robust to manipulation attacks and resulting market outcomes improve forecast accuracy. However, we present evidence from the lab indicating that single‐minded, well‐funded manipulators can in fact destroy a prediction market’s ability to aggregate informative prices and mislead those who are making forecasts based upon market predictions. However, we find that manipulators primarily influence market trades meaning outstanding bids …

Can Markets Save Lives? An Experimental Investigation Of A Market For Organ Donations, Cary Deck, Erik O. Kimbrough

ESI Working Papers

Many people die while waiting for organ transplants even though the number of usable organs is far larger than the number needed for transplant. Governments have devised many policies aimed at increasing available transplant organs with variable success. However, with few exceptions, policy makers are reluctant to establish markets for organs despite the potential for mutually beneficial exchanges. We ask whether organ markets could save lives. Controlled laboratory methods are ideal for this inquiry because human lives would be involved when implementing field trials. Our results suggest that markets can increase the supply of organs available for transplant, but that …

Personality And The Consistency Of Risk Taking Behavior: Experimental Evidence, Cary Deck, Jungmin Lee, Javier Reyes

ESI Working Papers

Researchers have found that an individual’s risk attitude is not stable across elicitation methods. Results reported by Deck et al. (2009) suggest that personality may help explain the apparent inconsistency, offering support to Borghans et al.’s (2008) argument that economists should consider a multi‐domain approach to measuring risk attitudes. This paper uses laboratory methods to compare risk attitudes as measured by the Holt and Laury (2002) procedure under two different frames. We find that, as in Deck et al. (2009), one’s willingness to take financial risks (as measured by Weber et al. 2002) significantly affects behavior; however the effect is …

Perfect And Imperfect Real-Time Monitoring In A Minimum-Effort Game, Cary Deck, Nikos Nikiforakis

ESI Working Papers

This paper presents the results from a minimum-effort game in which individuals can observe the choices of others in real time. We find that under perfect monitoring almost all groups coordinate at the payoff-dominant equilibrium. However, when individuals can only observe the actions of their immediate neighbors in a circle network, monitoring improves neither coordination nor efficiency relative to a baseline treatment without real-time monitoring. We argue that the inefficiency of imperfect monitoring is due to information uncertainty, that is, uncertainty about the interpretation of the information available regarding the actions of others.

Price Increasing Competition? Experimental Evidence, Cary Deck, Jingping Gu

ESI Working Papers

Economic intuition suggests that increased competition generates lower prices. However, recent theoretical work shows that a monopolist may charge a lower price than a firm facing a competitor selling a differentiated product. The direction of the price change when competition is introduced is dependent upon the joint distribution of buyer values for the two products. We explore this relationship using controlled laboratory experiments. Our results indicate that the distribution of buyer values does affect prices in a manner consistent with the theoretical predictions, although price increasing competition is rare due in part to overly intense competition regardless of the distribution …

The Attack And Defense Of Weakest-Link Networks, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker‟s objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender‟s objective is diametrically opposed. We apply two benchmark contest success functions (CSFs): the auction CSF and the lottery CSF. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, under the auction CSF, attackers utilize a stochastic “guerilla warfare” strategy — in which a single random target is attacked — more than 80% of the time. Under the lottery CSF, attackers utilize the stochastic guerilla warfare strategy almost 45% of …

Durability, Re-Trading And Market Performance, John Dickhaut, Shengle Lin, David Porter, Vernon Smith

ESI Working Papers

Key differential structural characteristics of environments studied in previous market experiments have documented large divergences in their observed performance, particularly discrepancies in their convergence to expected equilibrium outcomes. We investigate why this should be so.