Socio-ecological explanations for crowding-out effects from economic field experiments in southern Africa

Economic and psychological literature mentions three conditions under which the crowding-out effect of pro-social behaviour is likely to occur and to crowd out citizens' moral obligations to behave co-operatively. I use a framed field experiment on joint extraction from a common-pool resource (CPR) where the crowding-out effect has already been reported before in combination with the trust game carried out in farming communities of Namibia and South Africa to replicate these conditions. The research design and the cross-cultural setting enable to explicitly control for these effects. The results of the experiments support that the crowding-out effect depends on:

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The nature of the external intervention (controlling vs. supportive external intervention)

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The degree of participants self-determination (high vs. low self-determination in the group)

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A society's norms of trust and reciprocity (high vs. low trust within the society)

The results imply that outside regulations aiming to conserve natural resources risk worsening the situation when neglecting democratic legitimization as well as local community norms.     

Aggregate demand shocks and economic growth

The traditional view of growth and fluctuations implies that aggregate demand shocks result in only transitory departures from trend or “normal” output, which is determined exclusively by aggregate supply factors. Using a simple dynamic framework for a less-developed economy, a series of models is developed to show that aggregate demand can have a permanent effect on economic growth. It is shown that even if the economy converges to some “normal” path, this path itself may be altered by large demand shocks, due to increasing returns and hysteresis effects in labor markets and balance of payments constraints. It is also shown that the economy may not converge to its “normal” path, in which case fiscal and monetary policy will have long-term effects on output and growth.     

Aggregate demand shortfalls and economic freedom

Political instability is often exacerbated in periods of aggregate demand shortfall. It has been conjectured that inadequate policy responses to recessions may be inimical to free economic institutions. This paper uses the Economic Freedom of the World index as its measure of economic institutions, and finds that the change in economic freedom in the following five, ten, and fifteen years is negatively impacted by an aggregate demand shortfall as measured by negative NGDP growth.     

Advertising effects in complete demand systems

A rationale for including advertising in complete demand systems is presented. An advertising analogue of the Slutsky equation is derived, and properties of the expenditure and indirect utility functions characterized. Empirical estimates of a complete demand system incorporating dynamic advertising effects support neoclassical restrictions; we do not reject homogeneity, or symmetry at the 1% level. This represents surprisingly strong support for neoclassical theory relative to prior parametric studies.     

z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments

z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Ready-made Economic Experiments) is a software for developing and conducting economic experiments. The software is stable and allows programming almost any kind of experiments in a short time. In this article, I present the guiding principles behind the software design, its features, and its limitations. JEL Classification C92     

Multimarket cooperation with scope effects in demand

This paper describes how joint (dis)economies between markets, formalized as international scope effects in demand due to snob or bandwagon phenomena, affect firms' opportunities for tacit cooperation. Cooperative opportunities and welfare implications are described in a simple framework, where firms compete in quantities for an infinite number of periods, in terms of trigger strategies.It is obtained that intrafirm bandwagon effects reduce the stability of the cooperative outcome, while intrafirm snob effects have the reverse effect. Interfirm scope effects are shown to facilitate tacit cooperation.Despite the fact that cooperation enables firms to internalize nonpecuniary externalities, it is found that cooperation in this setting is not welfare enhancing.This paper is based on a chapter of my doctoral dissertation. The fruitful comments and suggestions of Prof. R. De Bondt, P. De Grauwe, and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. Financial support was provided by ICM, Brussels, and the Research Fund of the K. U. Leuven (OT/89/5).     

Wealth effects on money demand in the euro area

We investigate the determinants of money demand (M3) in the euro area, considering that this variable remains an important co-determinant of monetary policy making by the European Central Bank. Regressing the real stock of M3 on real GDP, interest rates and wealth variables (real housing and stock prices) within an error-correction framework provides evidence of positive wealth effects on money demand in the long run. Correcting for this wealth effect, money demand in the euro area has grown almost exactly in line with the official reference value of 4 1/2% per annum. This article builds on research that was conducted in preparation of the annual OECD Economic Survey of the euro area and reported in Boone et al. (2004). The authors thank their colleagues in the Economics Department and the European Central Bank and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. The authors assume full responsibility for any remaining errors and omissions. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the OECD or its member countries     

Incentive effects of paying demand response in wholesale electricity markets

Recently issued U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulations require comparable treatment of demand reduction and generation in the wholesale electric market so that they are compensated at the same market clearing price. The new regulations measure demand reduction as a reduction from a “customer baseline,” a historically based estimate of the expected consumption. In this paper, we study the incentive effects on the efficiency of the demand response regulation using a static equilibrium model and a dynamic extension of the model. Our analysis provides three main results. Firstly, our analysis shows that the demand reduction payment will induce consumers to (1) inflate the customer baseline by increasing consumption above the already excessive level during normal peak periods and (2) exaggerate demand reduction by decreasing consumption beyond the efficient level during a demand response event. This result persists when applied to alternative baseline designs in a dynamic model. Secondly, we study alternative policy remedies to restore the efficiency of demand response regulation and introduce a new approach to define the customer baseline as a fixed proportion of an aggregate baseline. In particular, the aggregate baseline approach can significantly weaken or eliminate the incentive to inflate the baseline. Finally, we illustrate that if the baseline inflation problem is solved and demand and supply functions are linear, the current policy can produce a net social welfare gain. However, the welfare improvement requires that demand reduction be paid only when the wholesale price is at least twice the fixed retail rate. This argues that the policy should include a sufficiently high threshold price below which demand response is not dispatched.     

House money effects in public good experiments: Comment

We reconsider evidence from experiments that claim to show that using “house money” in standard public goods experiments has no effect on behavior. We show that it does have an effect when one examines the data using appropriate statistical methods that consider individual-level responses and account for the error structure of the panel data. JEL Classification D7 · C92 I am grateful for comments from two referees and an editor. All data and statistical code are available for public access at the ExLab Digital Library located at http://exlab.bus.ucf.edu.     

Scale effects in Schumpeterian models of economic growth

Early models of Schumpeterian growth incorporate scale effects predicting that large economies grow faster than small economies, and that population growth causes accelerating per capita income growth. An absence of clear empirical evidence for these scale effects has led some researchers to question the foundations underlying the Schumpeterian approach to growth. This paper reviews empirical evidence on the relationship between scale and growth, and recent attempts to construct Schumpeterian growth models without scale effects.     

Unilateral effects of mergers with general linear demand

We derive the formula for the unilateral price effects of mergers of two products with linear demand in the general asymmetric situation. The formula uses the same information required to calculate upward pricing pressure in the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines.     

Cash flow effects on economic growth

Policy makers have traditionally considered the macroeconomic relations and the variables that can affect the economic objectives that they pursue, such as prices, employment, balance of payments, and economic growth. Recently, microeconomic behavior has also been considered. To complete the analysis, it is necessary to include those variables that define the firm's evolution and activities, and cash flow could be this kind of variable to be included in the analysis. The main objective of this paper is to show the relationship between cash flow and one of the final economic policy targets, economic growth. This paper considers the relationship between cash flow and applied economics, then develops the effects of cash flow on economic growth.     

Automobile demand,model cycle and age effects

This paper is aimed at exploring the existence of typical patterns of automobile model life and the formal test for age effects in a discrete-choice demand framework estimated with data on the models sold in the Spanish market. Estimates show that the evolution of market shares entails and quantifies age effects resulting from consumer demand. These effects are clearly distinguishable from the impacts generated by changes in attributes and firm pricing. They carry an exogenous factor that is full of implications for firm behaviour over the life of a model: the modification of demand price sensitivities. As a result, for example, equilibrium own-price elasticities are observed to decrease until the fourth year of a model life, and then to increase again.      

The role of domestic demand in the economic growth of Malaysia: a cointegration analysis

For the past four decades (1961-2000), the Malaysian economy grew at an impressive average rate of 6.8% per annum. The rapid growth has been attributed, in part, to the tremendous success in the export-oriented industrialization policy. Several empirical studies on export-led growth for Malaysia have, however, led to inconclusive and mixed results. This may be due to the exclusion of domestic demand in the bivariate or multivariate models used in the studies. This study re-examines the role of domestic demand in economic growth in Malaysia. Using a three-variable cointegration analysis, the study shows that there exist short run bilateral causalities among the three variables, which implies that both the export-led growth and domestic demand-generated growth hypotheses are at least valid in the short run. On the other hand, the results are not supportive of the export-led growth hypothesis in the long run. Instead, the highly significant positive impact of domestic expenditure on economic growth implies that use of domestic demand as the catalyst for growth is appropriate.     

Specifying differential cyclical response in economic time series: Capacity utilization and demand for imports

This paper begins with a discussion of several techniques currently employed to specify non-reversible relationships and shows that many of the more popular techniques lead to biased slope and intercept estimates when the data have a natural order and the purpose is to estimate differential response over a series of cycles. Next a general specification of a non-reversible relationships is proposed. This variable partitioning procedure has two advantages over currently employed techniques: (1) It allows unbiased estimation of slope and intercept parameters; (2) It implies a set of joint hypotheses which can be tested to deduce the appropriate adjustment path. The suggested procedure is then applied to an investigation of the effect of capacity utilization on US import demand. Employing a model posited by Gregory [5] but correcting his inappropriate specification of capacity utilization's ratchet effect, we find a significant, non-reversible relationship between capacity utilization and import demand. This result is precisely the opposite of that originally inferred by Gregory. We conclude that inappropriate specification of non-reversible relationships can lead to incorrect forecasts and policy decisions and that these problems can be corrected if our specification procedure is employed.     

Functional forms and habit effects in the US demand for coffee

Coffee remains the leading hot beverage consumed in the United States. The present study specifies for estimation an unrestrictive Box-Cox demand model (1957–87 data) and its nested forms, to provide more recent estimates and assess potential functional misspecification in past studies fitting a priori restrictive models; incorporates the (health trend) effects of sugar and orange juice and tests the compatibility of coffee demand data with the habit

formation hypothesis; and assesses implications of demand elasticity estimates for projected producer revenues and demand for imported coffee. Maximum-likelihood estimates of the Box-Cox model: automatically satisfy theoretical demand properties; support strongly incorporating habits and related beverage and sugar prices in coffee demand model; predict inelastic US coffee consumption to reduce per capita 24% and increase producer revenues 6.3% in 2000.     

The economic effects of improving investor rights in Portugal

The Portuguese economy has performed remarkably well since joining the EU in 1986. Output per worker grew at an annual rate of 2.25%. The relative price of investment has declined. Real investment has increased compared to output, in part fuelled by an increase in capital inflows. At the same time, resource allocation seems to have improved as well: firm-level data shows a significant decline in the dispersion of labor productivity and size across firms. This paper argues that improvements in outside investor rights that have taken place since Portugal joined the EU is a prime candidate to explain this set of facts.

经济实验对社会偏好识别的研究述评

实验经济学在分配方面观察到了大量相对经典理性假设的偏离行为,并总结认为这些"公平行为"受到了若干不同性质的社会性偏好的影响。本文将社会偏好的种类分为关心结果的分配性偏好和关心行为背后意图的互惠偏好两大类,然后从经典实验中行为背后的偏好识别问题出发,总结近年来实验研究的相关发现。这些发现可以为企业和社会治理提供一些新的思路。     

The effects of fiscal policy on economic activity in Finland

This study analyzes whether fiscal policy decisions have real effects on the economy of Finland, and if they do, what are the strength and durations of the effects. We utilise the Vector Stochastic Process with Dummy Variables (VSPD) method in our empirical work. This approach is a suitable tool to study event-based episodes. Fiscal policy shocks do have an effect on the economic activity of Finland when the time period 1990–2007 is investigated. A positive tax shock (or a policy that increases public sector revenues) seems to have a positive effect on Investment and GDP but the response of private consumption is mixed. Results clearly indicate that increase in Government spending crowds out private sector activity, and the effect takes place sooner than with the Revenue variable in question. This is a clear evidence for the crowding out effect.     

Source of income effects for demand decisions and taxable consumption

The relationship between sources of income and demand decisions by the household is examined here with an eye toward the ramifications on consumption tax bases. Income sources may be important when households attach psychic and transaction costs to individual purchases or when sources are assigned via a mental accounting process. In either case, general and specific sales tax bases may be affected by changes in income composition. Empirical results indicate two important findings. First, tax exemptions can introduce significant income source effects for a general consumption tax base. Second, the importance of differential tax rates for gasoline and food-at-home strongly depends on the mix of labour, capital, retirement and non-retirement transfer pay.