Multimarket Equilibrium,Trade, and the Law of One Price

This paper describes the setup of two classroom markets, one with a thin supply side and relatively higher prices. A comparison of the equilibrium price tendencies in the two markets helps students discover how to apply supply and demand analysis in this context. The introduction of speculators, who buy in one market and sell in the other, reduces or eliminates the price disparity. Class discussion can be focused on how “nonproductive” speculation can increase surplus measures of efficiency when price is permitted to convey the correct information about opportunity cost. Use: This experiment can be used in classes in the principles of economics, intermediate economics, or international trade to illustrate supply and demand analysis and the effects of inter-market trade. In upper-level classes, optimal bidding can be addressed as well. Time: Reading instructions and completing five trading rounds takes 30 to 40 minutes. Discussion lasts an additional 15 minutes. Materials: One deck of cards for up to 36 students, one copy of the instructions, and eight small blank slips of paper for each student.     

Coordination

Many economic games have multiple equilibria, some of which are better than others for everyone involved. Such coordination games are of special interest to economists because they raise the possibility that a group of individuals or even a whole economy might become mired in an unfavorable situation. This paper explains how to use playing cards in the classroom to implement an economic game with multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria. Discussion can focus on policies and institutions that promote coordination on better outcomes. Use: This experiment can be used in introductory economics to teach concepts of team production and coordination and in intermediate microeconomics to teach game-theoretic concepts of Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimality. Time required: Five minutes for reading instructions, 20 minutes for decision making, and about 15 minutes for discussion. Materials: You will need one or more decks of playing cards, each deck accommodating 26 people. One copy of the instructions should be made for each person. Payment to a randomly selected individual is optional and will require about a dollar or two.     

Employment and Prices in a Simple Macroeconomy

This exercise sets up interlinked labor and goods markets in a classroom macroeconomy. Students with worker roles are endowed with labor that can be consumed or sold to firms that post wages, purchase labor, and produce goods that can be either consumed or sold to workers. The money from sales is used by firms to purchase labor in the next period. Complicated record keeping is avoided by using ordinary playing cards to represent money and goods. The exercise can stimulate a discussion of potential output, unemployment, and the role of money in determining wages and prices. Use: This experiment can be used in introductory macroeconomics classes to teach concepts of the circular flow, real and money wages, unemployment, and labor market equilibrium and in intermediate classes to consider Keynesian and quantity theories. Time required: Fifteen minutes for reading instructions, 30 to 45 minutes for trading (depending on the number of periods), and 15 minutes for discussion. Materials: You will need one copy of the instructions for each person and one deck of ordinary playing cards for each replicated group of two workers and one firm. No money or other incentives are required.     

A Classroom Exercise: Voting by Ballots and Feet

This classroom experiment illustrates the efficiency-enhancing property of a Tiebout system in which local public goods decisions are determined by a political process. Students are given playing cards that induce diverse preferences for expenditures on alternative public goods and are initially assigned to specific communities. Then those in each community vote on the type and level of public goods provision, which determine the tax cost. After the provision and tax results are announced, students are free to move to a location where the prior results are more consistent with their preferences. This process continues for several rounds, with a new vote taken at each location after moves have been made. The exercise demonstrates that the combination of voting with feet and ballots tends to increase the total net benefit for all communities. The voting on provision levels is structured to facilitate a discussion of the median voter theorem.     

An Experimental Study of Public Information in the Asymmetric Partnership Game

This article analyzes a laboratory experiment on the novel asymmetric partnership game with public information. In this game, two players jointly work on a project each period that only benefits one of them. The public signals are about who is likely to benefit in the future, and the main treatment variable is the informativeness of these signals. Behavior is shown to be best explained by a modification of the basin of attraction (as introduced in Dal Bó and Fréchette 2011 ) to allow for state‐dependent beliefs. The public signals impact choices in the way that this theory predicts, and ultimately there is more effort when signals are more informative. Finally, a new way to investigate strategies in these types of games is considered, and it is shown that different states are used by subjects to use partial effort strategies.     

Extreme divorce: the managerial revolution in UK companies before 19141

We present the first broadly representative study for any early twentieth‐century economy of the extent to which quoted company ownership was already divorced from managerial control. In the 337 largest, independent, UK companies in the Investor's year book (those with £1 million or more quoted share capital in 1911), the generality of public shareholders were a narrower group than today, but directors personally owned only 3.4 per cent of the shares. This indicates a lower level of personal ownership (and board voting control) in the largest securities market of the early twentieth century than in any of the world's major securities markets toward the end of that century. Berle, Means, Gordon, and others subsequently quantified the US's later and (on this dimension) less advanced managerial ‘revolution’. Their evidence was widely misinterpreted: some erroneously concluded that the US pioneered this aspect of ‘modernity’ and that the ‘divorce’ of ownership from control, globally, was a new and continuing trend.     

Some Thoughts on the Voting Process

Since the rational voter model was first introduced, the issue of voting determinants has been the subject of extensive study. Moreover, the significance of the democratic process has long been a subject of extensive study and controversy. This study addresses a related pair of issues and offers some challenges for students of voting, the voting process, and the nature of democracy to ponder. The two issues are: (1) what does democracy mean? and (2) which is the best or least bad of these various choices.     

Bimodal issues,the median voter model,Legislator's ideology,and abortion

The median voter model is widely used in the public choice literature to explain legislator's behavior. According to the model, if voter preferences are unimodal, a vote-maximizing legislator should mirror the position of the median voter. However, the median voter model has not been tested on bimodal issues. This paper fills this critical void by empirically testing the applicability of the median voter model on an issue which clearly meets the criteria for being bimodal: abortion. Using a variety of attitudinal measures from large sample public opinion polls and constituency demographics, this study finds that Senate voting on the 1994 Freedom of Abortion Access bill was highly related to the senator's personal characteristics—especially ideology—and not to constituent opinion or demographics.     

Discussion of “How Does Intrinsic Motivation Improve Auditor Judgment in Complex Audit Tasks?”

Kadous and Zhou (2018) investigate experimentally how intrinsic motivation improves auditor judgment in complex audit tasks. In my discussion, I elaborate on my comments from the 2016 CAR Conference. Specifically, I comment in the first part of my discussion on the motivation and contribution of the paper, the underlying theory, the experiment and the results. The second part of my discussion is focused on the broader picture of the paper for which I offer some thoughts based on cross‐fertilization of insights from the archival auditing research and I conclude with providing some suggestions for further research.     

Expressiveness and voting: Alternative evidence

Using aggregate time series analysis, this empirical study extends the Copeland and Laband [2002] analysis of expressive voting. After allowing for economic considerations in the form of tax rates and inflation, it is found that even the aggregate voter participation rate may reflect emotional voting behavior. The Vietnam War, Watergate, public dissatisfaction with government, and the opportunity to participate in Presidential elections, each of which can be viewed at some level as an issue evoking emotional responses rather than mere cost-benefit computations, all prove to significantly affect voter participation rates.     

A rejoinder to a rejoinder about peasant destinies

Abstract

In his review of my book Peasant Destinies in SEHR 1978:2 Carl-lohan Gadd put forward a number of unfounded statements, which I disputed in a reply in SEHR 1979:2. As Gadd has continued the discussion here with five points, I would like to add a few comments.     

Government Deficit, Public Investment, and Public Capital in the Transition to an Aging Japan

This paper examines the effects of government deficits, public investment, and public capital on welfare in the transition to an aging Japan by applying a simulated general equilibrium growth model. One of the main results of this paper is that targeting only high economic growth would mislead us as to economic policies, and that a policy to reduce future government deficits is most preferable for almost all generations, even though a cut in future deficits must be followed by a decrease in public investment, thus a decrease in public capital in the future. J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 2002, 16(4), pp. 462–491. Faculty of Economics, Shiga University, Japan; and Management School, Imperial College, United Kingdom. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: H55, H54, H62, C68, J10.     

The Informativeness of Relative Performance Information and Its Effect on Effort Allocation in a Multitask Environment

Prior research documents that providing relative performance information (RPI) motivates employees to increase effort; however, a potential downside of RPI is that it also motivates employees to distort their effort allocations between tasks such that it can be detrimental to overall firm performance. This study investigates via an experiment how the informativeness of RPI affects employees' effort allocations and performance in a multitask environment. We investigate the informativeness of two RPI design choices that are observed in practice: detail level and temporal aggregation. Regarding detail level, firms may provide each employee's performance ranking on tasks, which is less informative than providing the actual performance score of each employee. Regarding temporal aggregation, firms may provide RPI that is reset each period, which is less informative than RPI that is based on cumulative performance. We find RPI detail level and temporal aggregation interact to influence effort distortion. Specifically, we find that, compared to reset RPI, cumulative RPI leads to greater distortion of effort away from firm‐preferred allocations and that this effect is magnified when RPI provides actual performance scores rather than performance rankings. Finally, high levels of effort distortion hurt overall performance, thereby demonstrating the potentially detrimental effect of effort distortion on performance. Results of our study enhance our understanding of how firms can use their control over the design of RPI to enhance its usefulness in directing employees' effort in multitask environments by highlighting the role that informativeness of information can have on employee behavior.     

Using Spreadsheets to Conduct Monte Carlo Experiments for Teaching Introductory Econometrics

The Monte Carlo experiment can be a valuable pedagogical tool for introductory econometrics courses. In the past, however, the practicality of having students perform Monte Carlo simulations was limited because of the high opportunity cost involved in learning to program. This paper argues that spreadsheets offer a means for beginning students to conduct meaningful Monte Carlo experiments at a relatively low opportunity cost and provides instructions on how to do so with Microsoft Excel. Suggestions are offered for using spreadsheet-based Monte Carlo experiments effectively in teaching basic econometric concepts.     

太阳能光伏发电实验应用平台的设计

随着社会的发展,太阳能越来越被人们重视,太阳能教学也逐渐的推广,传统的太阳能实验箱体已不能完成满足市场的需求,而太阳能实验平台更具优势,且教学更多是关注太阳能的实际应用。冬研究产品以实验实训为主,突出工业级太阳能光伏发电系统采用模块化设计,各个模块都能独立成为一套教学系统,通过搭积木的方式,浅显易懂,让学生了解太阳能光伏应用整个环节的原理及操作方法。     

Teaching Economics with Classroom Experiments: A Symposium

Classroom experiments are effective because students are placed directly into the economic environments being studied. The papers in this special section span diverse applications, for example, speculation and multiple markets, coordination and voting games, and a simple macroeconomy. All experiments can be run with simple props, such as ordinary playing cards. After participating, students bring firsthand experience to the discussion to enhance the effectiveness of the Socratic method. In small classes, these exercises also enable bright undergraduates to run the experiments on their own classmates and to lead the ensuing discussions, creating a special teaching/learning environment.     

The Influence of Mood on Subordinates’ Ability to Resist Coercive Pressure in Public Accounting

This study reports on an experiment conducted to assess the influence of different affective mood states on auditors’ ability to resist obedience pressure to commit or overlook unethical acts in six audit contexts. Obedience pressure from superiors to comply with unethical directives is of particular concern in public accounting, given the hierarchical structure of audit teams and the power imbalance in superior–subordinate relationships. One hundred and seventy audit seniors from two large international public accounting firms participated in an experiment. Three different moods were induced in participants through work‐related trigger events: one positive active mood state (arousal) and two negative passive mood states (fear and insignificance). These mood states were anticipated to influence auditors’ expressed willingness to comply with their superiors’ unethical directives as set forth in our ethical scenarios. Our results indicate that low levels of arousal and high levels of fear and insignificance influenced compliance intentions. Our results also indicate overall high levels of expressed willingness to comply with superiors’ unethical directives. Implications of our findings for understanding the antecedents of unethical conduct within the accounting profession and for future research are discussed.     

African American Women Voters: Review Article

This article reviews a book written by Lisa Nikol Nealy entitled: African American Women Voters: Racializing Religiosity, Political Consciousness and Progressive Political Action in U.S. Presidential Elections from 1964 Through 2008 (2009). I extracted the following themes from the book: (1) the importance and influence of the Black church or religious organizations and their leaders on the level of political participation of African Americans, especially Black women in the United States; (2) that Black and White gentile European Americans are experiencing two racial religiosities, which is reflected in the voting booth during national elections; (3) that relative to their Black male counterparts and members of other racial groups, Black women have made enormous contributions to U.S. politics especially in voting trends from the 1960s to present; and (4) there continues to be a serious division between Black and White American females, a division which is rooted in religious and racial histories of the two groups.     

The Effect of the Liberalization of Investment Policies on Employment and Investment of Multinational Corporations in Africa

Abstract: There has been a remarkable shift in the attitudes towards globalization. Specifically, the discussion among academics and policymakers has shifted from whether globalization should be encouraged to how countries can position themselves to benefit from globalization. This paper focuses on one aspect of globalization — the liberalization of investment policies — and analyzes its impact on employment and investments by multinational corporations in Africa. We use data for 33 countries over the period 1984–2003 and we employ a dynamic panel estimator for our analysis. There are two major findings. First, liberalization has a significant and positive effect on investment. Second, liberalization does not have a direct impact on multinational employment — the effect is indirect: liberalization stimulates multinational investments which in turn increases multinational employment. By increasing investment and employment from multinational firms, these liberalization programs contribute to poverty alleviation.     

Influence of the Number of Statewide Referenda Involving Emotionally-Charged Issues on Voter Turnout, 2006

The issue of same-sex marriage is an emotionally charged one. So is the issue of abortion. This is true to the point where it has resulted in several cases in the placement of statewide referenda on the ballot for voter approval or disapproval. This study tests the hypothesis that greater numbers of such emotionally charged referenda may increase voter turnout because they may elevate the expected gross benefits of voting by empowering “interested voters” while not significantly increasing the expected gross costs of voting. Using state-level data for all 50 states for the 2006 general election, and after allowing for a variety of economic and demographic factors, this study finds compelling evidence that the numbers of statewide referenda dealing with same-sex marriage and abortion did in fact significantly increase voter turnout.