Experts with a conflict of interest: a source of ambiguity?

We present an experimental design where uncertainty is generated from the advice of experts with conflicts of interest. In this experiment clients are faced with a variant of a multi-armed bandit problem with a random end-time. On the known arm (the “task screen”), clients can earn a certain payment per completion of a decoding task. However, clients may also opt for the unknown arm where they earn an uncertain amount if they end the experiment on this “expert screen”. The amount is uncertain to the clients because the value is being communicated through an “expert” with conflicted incentives. A control session provides for direct transmission of the value to the clients. Our results show that ambiguity aversion is alive-and-well in this environment. Also, when we vary the wage rate on the known arm we find that higher opportunity cost clients are less likely to heed the advice of conflicted experts.     

Sustainable exploitation of a natural resource: a satisfying use of Chichilnisky’s criterion

Chichilnisky’s criterion for sustainability has the merit to be, so far, the unique explicit, complete and continuous social welfare criterion that combines successfully the requirement of efficiency with an instrumental notion of intergenerational equity (no dictatorship of the present and no dictatorship of the future). But it has one drawback: when applied in the context of renewable resources, and with a constant discount factor, there exists no exploitation path that maximizes this criterion. The present article suggests a way to cope with this problem. The idea is to restrict attention to the set of convex combinations between the optimal discounted utilitarian program and the stationary program leading to the green golden rule. It is shown that an optimal path in this set exists under rather weak sufficient conditions on the fundamentals of the problem. Some ethical properties of this approach are also discussed. In some cases, it turns out that the restricted solution implies no loss of efficiency and benefits intermediate and infinitely distant generations.     

Value of a Statistical Life—the Case of Poland

This study investigates the relationship between wages and the risk of work-related death for male blue-collar workers. The size of the premium for risk and its statistical significance depend heavily on the inclusion of industry dummy variables into the regression. Irrespective of the type of risk variable used, controlling for industry at a finer breakdown lowers the price of risk and its statistical significance. Estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) proved to be more robust when an aggregated risk measure at three-digit occupational level was used. In this case, the VSL varied from 0.79 million USD (for the model with industry dummy variables at the three-digit level) to 2.41 million USD (for the model without industry dummy variables). To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study estimating VSL using the compensating wage differential approach for countries in Central-Eastern Europe.     

The impact of a conglomerate merger on its vendors and rivals – a case study of Google's acquisition of Motorola

This study explores the valuation effects of the conglomerate merger on an acquiring firm and its stakeholders. We examine Google's acquisition of Motorola and the impact that it had on Google's vendors and rivals. The empirical results suggest that the announcement of this deal led to positive market reaction among Android's vendors, primarily due to Google's ability to use Motorola's extensive patent portfolio to help protect Android's vendors from a potential patent infringement war in the future. Our results also find that when the Open Handset Alliance members obtain help from Motorola's patents or get new technology, an increase in shareholder wealth among Android's vendors and a decrease in shareholder wealth among Android's rivals are likely to occur.     

Estimation of a German money demand system – a long-run analysis

This study presents a multivariate analysis of the stability of long-run relationships between variables that influence the conduct and transmission process of the German monetary policy. The initial VAR comprises the variables real money M3, real GNP, the inflation rate, a long-term and a weighted short-term interest rate. A multivariate approach has been chosen, as this allows for more than one cointegration relationship and to test restrictions on the cointegration space. In contrast to most other studies on German monetary policy, three stable and economically plausible cointegration relationships are obtained simultaneously within the framework of the Johansen procedure: a money demand relationship, a long-run Fisher effect and a long-run relationship between the short- and the long-term interest rate. It is apparent that the structural break of German reunification can be modelled incorporating dummy variables in the model. First version received: October 1996/final version received: July 1997     

The international spillover of china’s monetary policy: a case study of a developing country

This paper aimed to investigate the evidence on the transmission of China’s monetary policy shocks to macroeconomic variables in Iran. Since 1990, China has become one of the main trading partners of Iran; therefore, it is expected that China’s macroeconomic shocks have some consequences on Iran’s Economy. In this study, a structural vector autoregressive model is used to explore such a transmission. The findings of the study reveal that the China’s monetary policy changes significantly affect the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as Iran’s CPI meaningfully increases with the expansion of China’s money supply. Furthermore, it was found that Iran’s other economic variables, including the real GDP, real effective exchange rate, and interest rate, do not significantly reflect the China’s monetary shocks; even though confirm the expected sign and direction.     

On the evolutionary edge of altruism: a game-theoretic proof of Hamilton’s rule for a simple case of siblings

We offer a game-theoretic proof of Hamiltons rule for the spread of altruism. For a simple case of siblings, we show that the rule can be derived as the outcome of a one-shot prisoners dilemma game between siblings.JEL Classification: A13, C70, D64Correspondence to: Oded Stark, ZEF, University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, 53113 Bonn, GermanyWe are indebted to an anonymous referee and to Uwe Cantner for helpful comments and suggestions. Partial financial support from the National Institute on Aging (grant RO1-AG13037) and from the Humboldt Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

Easter Island’s collapse: a tale of a population race

The Easter Island tragedy has become an allegory for ecological catastrophe and a warning for the future. In the economic literature the collapse is usually attributed to irrational or myopic behavior in the context of a fragile ecosystem. In this paper we propose an alternative story involving non-cooperative bargaining between clans to share the crop. Each clan’s bargaining power depends on its threat level when fighting a war. The biggest group has the highest probability of winning. A clan’s fertility is determined ex ante by each group. In the quest for greater bargaining power, each clan’s optimal size depends on that of the other clan, and a population race follows. This race may exhaust the natural resources and lead to the ultimate collapse of the society. In addition to well-known natural factors, the likelihood of a collapse turns out to be greater when the cost of war is low, the probability of succeeding in war is highly responsive to the number of fighters, and the marginal return to labor is high. We analyze whether these factors can account for the difference between Easter and Tikopia Islands. The paper also makes a methodological contribution in that it is the first fertility model to include strategic complementarities between groups’ fertility decisions.      

Identity in a World of Scarcity： The Book of Eli

This paper examines the construction of identity in Hugue＇s brothers movie, The Book of Eli setting in an America post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear war and environmental disasters. Economic relations in this world without time or history and without production of goods and commodities, are based on ancient practices such as barter. The goods are exchanged for goods according to the need and the currency lost its meaning before the supreme usefulness. Essential items to human life like water now have a very high value due to its complete scarcity. Eli （played by Denzel Washington） toured the United States for 30 years westward circling the wasteland leading the only existing copy of the King James version of the Bible. Then he reaches the town, which is under the control of Carnegie, the villain, whose ambition is to have the holy Bible in order to exercise power. In this world full of shortages, power belongs to the old that has the memory of the past. Texts of Giddens, Beck, Lash, Benveniste, and Marx compose the theoretical apparatus that allow understanding how to reconstruct the identity in a world in crisis, and no shortage of complete story without memory card with the movement of goods excluding currency.     

Evaluation of regional tourism competitiveness：a case study of southwest China

Evaluation of regional tourism competitiveness has been a hot issue of tourism geography and regional economics in recent years. This study introduces system theory and Professor Porter＇s National Diamond Model into constructing the evaluation index system of regional tourism competitiveness, which includes four decisive factors, namely production factor, market, industry and support competitiveness. And by comprehensive use of subjective and objective methods like Principal Component Analysis （PCA） and Analysis Hierarchy Process （AHP） the appraised values were calculated. At the same time, the method was applied to dynamic demonstration analysis of the tourism competitiveness of the provinces in Southwest China from 2001 to 2005. The result shows that their tourism comprehensive competitiveness has distinct differences. The comprehensive competitiveness of Sichuan and Yunnan are better, Chongqing and Guangxi are in the middle, and Guizhou and Tibet are weak. According to the competitiveness ranks in 2001-2005, comprehensive, production factor, industry and support competitiveness changed a little and market competitiveness changed a lot. This competitive pattern has been made mostly because natural resource conditions and economic development levels of the provinces are very different and are difficult to be changed in a short period.     

Sheffield:The Challenges of a Changing Economy

During the 1980s there were many fundamental economic changes that affected Sheffield. The city lost 80, 000 jobs -about a quarter of total employment. This created wide social divisions across the City with whole communities being progres-sively excluded from job opportunities. Today, despite significant economic development in the area, Sheffield's GDP is only87% of the EU average - and we are surrounded by a region which has gone through a similar experience and is for themost part significantly poorer.     

Appraisal of the vegetation-based services for cropland ecosystems： a case study of a high-yielding county in North China

1. Introduction Ecosystem services are explicitly defined as “the natural environmental conditions and effects upon which people rely for existence that are formed and maintained by ecosystems and ecological processes” [1] . The valuation of ecosystem goods and services has become an important issue in the field of envi- ronmental protection and sustainable development, which also represents one aspect of the United Na- tions Millennium Assessment. At present, the re- search associated wit…     

Study on the clustering of a typical industry：a case of apple industry in Shaanxi Province, China

The apple industry in Shaanxi Province is a resource-based industry; compared to the best productiveregions at home and abroad, it is advantageous in high quality as well as geographical and natural resources. Currently,big changes have occurred in the apple market supply-demand relations; long-term and comprehensive shortage haspassed; the buyer＇s market has come into being; competitions in the domestic market are fierce. At the same time, theforeign apple will impact on the domestic market, increasing competitive pressure. Foreign anti-dumping measures,green barriers and technologies restrict the exportation of the domestic apple. Based on successful experience of otherindustrial clusters, this paper analyzes the existing problems in the development of Shaanxi apple industrial cluster,combining empirical analysis, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, proposes specific policy recommendationsand get the conclusions. First, the characteristics of the agricultural industrial cluster are analyzed; Shaanxi appleindustry is characterized by cluster. Second, the rapid development of Shaanxi apple industrial cluster exposes someproblems. Third, we need the government to control the disorderly competition of Shaanxi apple industry.     

How much of a threat to economic growth is a mature AIDS epidemic?

The article models the impact on economic growth of HIV/AIDS when the epidemic is in a mature phase, in contrast with previous studies focused on periods of expansion as it is typically the case in African countries. Simulations for Honduras, the epicentre of the epidemic in Central America, show that AIDS is not likely to threaten economic growth neither through labour nor capital accumulation channels. Impacts are estimated between 0.007 and 0.27% points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth annually for the period 2001 to 2010. Increasing spending on prevention, higher public treatment subsidies and increasing treatment access will not jeopardize economic growth prospects. Critical factors that slash economic growth in Africa (such as human capital reductions and shifts in relative skills) are not strong in Honduras.     

It’s a match! Simulating compatibility-based learning in a network of networks

In this article, we develop a new way to capture knowledge diffusion and assimilation in innovation networks by means of an agent-based simulation model. The model incorporates three essential characteristics of knowledge that have not been covered entirely by previous diffusion models: the network character of knowledge, compatibility of new knowledge with already existing knowledge, and the fact that transmission of knowledge requires some form of attention. We employ a network-of- networks approach, where agents are located within an innovation network and each agent itself contains another network composed of knowledge units (KUs). Since social learning is a path-dependent process, in our model, KUs are exchanged among agents and integrated into their respective knowledge networks depending on the received KUs’ compatibility with the currently focused ones. Thereby, we are also able to endogenize attributes such as absorptive capacity that have been treated as an exogenous parameter in some of the previous diffusion models. We use our model to simulate and analyze various scenarios, including cases for different degrees of knowledge diversity and cognitive distance among agents as well as knowledge exploitation vs. exploration strategies. Here, the model is able to distinguish between two levels of knowledge diversity: heterogeneity within and between agents. Additionally, our simulation results give fresh impetus to debates about the interplay of innovation network structure and knowledge diffusion. In summary, our article proposes a novel way of modeling knowledge diffusion, thereby contributing to an advancement of the economics of innovation and knowledge.