You are not in my boat: common fate and discrimination against outgroup members

Sharing a common fate with some people but not others may affect how economic agents behave in economic transactions, quite independently of strategic incentives. We present an experimental test of the effect of perceptions of common fate on the inducement of economic discrimination in bilateral settings. In settings where the bargaining power was all with one subject (the dictator game and a ‘unilateral power game’), about half of the subjects engaged in negative discrimination: insiders were not treated better relative to control sessions, but outsiders were treated worse. Discrimination may be induced by a more conflictual perception of the decision problem.     

Extending perfect timing theory: not just one but several windows of opportunity

ABSTRACT

A recent study investigated the optimal time to enter emerging industries, introducing the existence of a window of opportunity for firms. The present study doubted its validity in a situation labeled as ‘long-tail industry life-cycle’. It is proposed that the concept ‘window of opportunity’ could be valid also in long-tail industry life-cycle situations, but that in these cases several windows of opportunity could emerge, at the subsystem or component level, after the establishment of a dominant design at the product level. The crux of the problem, as detailed in the rest of the paper, is represented by product architecture.     

The concept of choice: why and how innovative behaviour is not just stochastic

The goal of this paper is to highlight the importance of the concept of choice. To do so, a synopsis of the most important contributions to this topic—featuring an eclectic set of scholars across disciplines—is provided. As central to the argument, John von Neumann’s contributions, game theory and simulation techniques on von Neumann machines, are identified. Innovation (economic and theoretic) as the driving force behind human evolution seems to head for a new scientific paradigm based on von Neumann’s ideas.

You Are What You Eat: The Social Economy of the Slow Food Movement

Recent work by Schor revives concerns raised by Veblen and Hirsch over the destructive consequences of competitive consumption. In contrast, Twitchell argues that increased access to commodities as symbols of luxury signals a democratization of class and social status. Rather than playing the role of dupes, consumers are active co-conspirators in the creation and maintenance of luxury goods markets. While flawed, each of these perspectives has something important to offer to social economists interested in understanding consumption. A key question for social economists is whether material pleasure and the symbolic expression of identity through consumer goods is compatible with a more politicized, socially conscious consumption ethos. Food consumption offers a fruitful starting point for pursuing this issue. I begin by examining food and its symbolic role in identity formation. I then consider the Slow Food movement and explore the ways in which it maintains a central role for material pleasure while promoting a socially and environmentally conscious stance toward consumption.     

Measuring the incentives to learn in Colombia using new quantile regression approaches

This paper employs newly developed quantile regression techniques to investigate a policy that could differentially affect students' performance. The Colombian vouchers were assigned using lotteries, and were renewable as long as the students maintained satisfactory academic progress. This second aspect of the program may provide incentives for low attainment students to work harder. The evidence supports the hypothesis that incentives could account for the impact of the vouchers, including lower repetition rate. The effect of the vouchers is largest in the lower tail of the educational attainment distribution, a possibility that was conjectured by others, but has not yet been confirmed empirically. The evidence suggests that the incentive effect of the program increases weak students' test scores by at least 0.1 standard deviations, roughly the score gain associated to a half year of school learning.     

What You Don’t Know Might Hurt You: Some Unresolved Issues in the Design and Analysis of Discrete Choice Experiments

The papers and comments in this issue focus on four broad areas related to understanding and modeling choices: (1) The use of laboratory experiments to improve valuation methods; (2) The design of stated preference choice set and choice occasions; (3) Latent class models as means of identifying and accommodating preference heterogeneity; and (4) Accommodating uncertainty about the “true” model, modeling ranking and rating tasks and pooling data sources. In what follows I offer some comments on each area, and briefly discuss several unresolved issues associated with each area, closing with some comments about future research opportunities.     

Starve all the lawyers: four theories of the just price

The only “sense in which we can meaningfully talk about just wages or just prices”, said Friedrich Hayek, is for wages and prices “determined in a free market without deception, fraud or violence”. Conversely, after reviewing three theories of the just price, this paper proposes a classical liberal theory of the just price, called the “catallactic” theory, according to which our understanding of just prices must account for the background institutions of markets. Some transactions could not happen in a market without a certain theory of just prices and such transactions will feed into our understanding of markets, hence making just prices a de facto reality.     

英美风险投资宏观比较及启示

风险投资对于加速科技成果的转移转化和产业化,加快培育战略性新兴产业,促进全社会创新创业等具有重要意义.本文在分析研究英国科学、技术与艺术基金(NESTA)最新一份关于英国与美国风险投资比较报告的基础上,提出中国发展风险投资的思考和建议.包括:风险投资资金来源多样化发展对风险投资市场培育具有积极作用;利用世界对中国风险投资积极评价的“东风”,打造中国风险投资高地;政府应从多层次、多渠道、全方位培养投资经理人;前期投资重在技术团队的建立,后期投资重在退出机制的形成.     

中小企业融资需方市场缘何失灵

中小企业融资难已成为制约其进一步发展的瓶颈。中小企业融资需方市场的有效运作,有赖于其自身素质的不断提高。因此,只有中小企业自身素质提高了,融资环境改善了,融资问题才能得以根本解决。