Session-effects in the laboratory

In experimental economics, where subjects participate in different sessions, observations across subjects of a given session might exhibit more correlation than observations across subjects in different sessions. The main goal of this paper is to clarify what are session-effects: what can cause them, what forms they can take, and what are the potential problems. It will be shown that standard solutions are at times inadequate, and that their properties are sometimes misunderstood.     

Implications of nanotechnology growth in food and agriculture in OECD countries

This article provides an analysis of the implications of the growth of nanotechnology in the agriculture and food sector in OECD countries. Three main policy challenges are identified related to funding and investment, risk governance, and public acceptance. Each of these interconnected challenges underlines a number of ethical questions that need to be addressed. Several recommendations are laid out to move forward and adapt to these emerging policy issues.     

Learning in a multilateral bargaining experiment

This paper analyzes data from an investigation of a majoritarian bargaining experiment. A learning model is proposed to account for the evolution of play in this experiment. It is also suggested that an adjustment must be made to account for the panel structure of the data. Such adjustments have been used in other fields and are known to be important as unadjusted standard errors may be severely biased downward. These results indicate that this adjustment also has an important effect in this application. Furthermore, an efficient estimator that takes into account heterogeneity across players is proposed. A unique learning model to account for the paths of play under two different amendment rules cannot be rejected with the standard estimator with adjusted standard errors, however it can be rejected using the efficient estimator. The data and the estimated learning model suggest that after proposing “fair” divisions, subjects adapt and their proposals change rapidly in the treatment where uneven proposals are almost always accepted. Their beliefs in the estimated learning model are influenced by more than just the most recent outcomes.     

THE U.S. WESTWARD EXPANSION*

The U.S. economic development in the 19th century was characterized by the westward movement of population and the accumulation of productive land in the West. This article presents a model of migration and land improvement to identify the quantitatively important forces driving these phenomena. The conclusion is that the decrease in transportation costs induced the westward migration, whereas population growth was responsible for the investment in productive land.     

Cooperation rather than competition in industrial organisations: Albion W. Small’s underestimated view

This article aims to present Albion W. Small’s underestimated view on labour relations in industrial organisations. A century ago, this sociologist, who also had a grounding in political economy, analysed the transformation of capitalism through a focus on the relationship between workers and capitalists. He offered some interesting proposals, stressing the need for the two factors of production to cooperate instead of competing. His approach may still be insightful today in rethinking the forthcoming challenges facing industrial organisations as well as capitalism, especially regarding the ontological nature of a firm associated with its governance issue.     

Liquidity and asset-market dynamics

This study analyzes economies with an essential role for liquid assets in the exchange process. The model can generate multiple stationary equilibria, across which asset prices, market participation, capitalization, output and welfare are positively related. It can also generate a variety of nonstationary equilibria, even when fundamentals are deterministic and time invariant, including periodic, chaotic and stochastic (sunspot) equilibria with recurrent market crashes. Some equilibria have asset-price trajectories that resemble bubbles growing and bursting. Endogenous private and public liquidity is also introduced. Sometimes it is efficient to provide enough liquid assets to satiate demand; other times it is not.     

The cost of inflation: A mechanism design approach

I apply mechanism design to quantify the cost of inflation that can be attributed to monetary frictions alone. In an environment with pairwise meetings, the money demand that is consistent with an optimal, incentive feasible allocation takes the form of a continuous correspondence that can fit the data over the period 1900–2006. For such parameterizations, the cost of moderate inflation is zero. This result is robust to the introduction of match-specific heterogeneity and endogenous participation decisions.     

Re-imagining the marketplace: addressing race in academic marketing research

Race is a marketplace icon. How so? By holding true to an icon’s defining characteristics: high visibility, divisiveness, and uncritical devotion. In this brief musing, we describe how despite its centrality to market activities, race is uncritically addressed in academic marketing research. We next introduce the Race in the Marketplace (RIM) Research Network, a newly-formed interdisciplinary collective of scholars and scholar-activists that seek to break race of its iconic standing and bring greater equity to markets by disseminating critical, collaborative, and transdisciplinary race-based market research that supports liberatory public policies and community actions. We close with a call to join our effort to reimagine the marketplace through the critical examination of what has been a perpetually overlooked icon in marketing academia.     

Causality in the Social Sciences: a structural modelling framework

Quality & Quantity - There is no unified theory of causality in the sciences and in philosophy. In this paper, we focus on a particular framework, called structural causal modelling (SCM), as...