Contagion of Self‐Interested Behavior: Evidence from Group Dictator Game Experiments

We examine how group decision‐making affects other‐regarding behavior in experimental dictator games. In particular, we assess whether the effects of iterated games differ for group and individual decision‐making and whether the difference in decision‐making style (individual or group) changes the perception of social identity. We make two findings on group decision‐making. First, group decisions become more selfish when repeating the game after changing group members. Second, a dictator group donates more to a recipient group at the same university than to a recipient group at a different university. These findings are not true for individual decision‐making.     

Herd Behaviour in Adoption of Network Technologies

In technology adoption, herd behaviour can lead to a suboptimal outcome as shown, among others, by Choi (1997). However, empirics find little support for the idea that a less efficient technology can conquer the market and lock out a more efficient one. Accordingly, we improve and generalize Choi's results, by introducing an additional source of uncertainty: the economic environment. We investigate how the economic environment can affect herding and consequently the efficiency of the technology choice. The result is a smaller adoption bias. In the limit, firms may optimally experiment with the new technology that turns out to be social welfare improving.     

Modelling the Stochastic Component of Behaviour in Experiments: Some Issues for the Interpretation of Data

This paper considers some of the questions raised by the fact that people's behaviour—including their behaviour in experimental environments—has a stochastic component. The nature of this component may be crucial to the interpretation of the patterns of data we observe and the choice of statistical criteria for favouring one hypothesis at the expense of others. However, it is arguable that insufficient consideration has been given to the way(s) in which the stochastic element is modelled. The paper aims to explore some of the issues involved. JEL Classification: C12, C73, C91     

Correspondence to what? Coherence to what? What is good scenario-based decision making?

This paper provides a framework for the evaluation of scenario planning and other strategic decision making methods or techniques. If scenario planning is useful, we should be teaching it in schools and we as individuals should be using it to cope with the uncertainty inherent in modern life. A prerequisite to this is the need to identify why, where and how (in what way) scenario planning and other methods or techniques are useful. Here, I review evaluations of scenario planning. Taking a Brunswikian perspective, I highlight the issues that have failed to be addressed in this evaluation. I demonstrate that there are many ways in which scenario planning could be useful other than those that have appeared in previous discussions. These multiple routes are dependent upon the interaction between the individual organisation, the environment in which they are operating and the method being followed.     

Using Field Experiments to Change the Template of How We Teach Economics

In this article, the author explains why field experiments can improve what we teach and how we teach economics. Economists no longer operate as passive observers of economic phenomena. Instead, they participate actively in the research process by collecting data from field experiments to investigate the economics of everyday life. This change can be shown to students by presenting them with evidence from field experiments. Field experiments related to factor markets, behavioral economics, and discrimination are presented to explain how this approach works across different economic content. The three questions that are highlighted are the following: (1) Why do women get paid less than men in labor markets? (2) How can we use behavioral economics to motivate teachers? (3) What seven words can end third-degree price discrimination?     

Using Choice Experiments to Value the Environment

This paper we outline the “choice experiment” approach to environmental valuation. This approach has its roots in Lancaster's characteristics theory of value, in random utility theory and in experimental design. We show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets, such as forests and rivers, can be estimated from pair-wise choices, as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole. These choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function, and to minimise required sample size. Choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods, such as contingent valuation and travel cost-type models, although many design issues remain unresolved. Applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited. We illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent UK study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes. This study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay.     

投资项目评审的粗集和灰色理论决策模型

一项项目投资能否成功,作为整个投资过程起点的投资决策起着至关重要的作用,因此需要在项目决策阶段对该项目进行严格的评审.为了解决投资项目评审中的不确定性、信息不对称等问题,提出一种基于粗集和灰理论的投资项目评审决策模型,将决策者先验知识给定的权重同粗集确定的属性重要度结合起来确定指标最终权重,再使用模糊评判和灰色系统理论,以灰色关联度为基础,对数据进行分析,为定量评价投资项目的风险提供了有效的方法.借助计算机编程,使用一个实例验证了该模型的实用性和可行性.     

GOS tree (Goal-Objective-Strategy tree) approach to strategic planning using a fuzzy-Delphi process: An application to the Indian Shrimp Industry

Setting long-term goals, specifying short-term objectives, and formulating strategies to achieve the objectives are the key elements in a strategic planning process. In this paper, we have used hierarchical relationships among these key elements to propose a Goal-Objective-Strategy (GOS) tree. We have proposed an algorithm to validate the structural relationship between two hierarchically adjacent elements of the GOS tree by getting their feasibility score rated in a five-point linguistic scale with the help of a Delphi questionnaire survey. The linguistic scores were then converted into fuzzy scores and consensus of Delphi experts' opinions on feasibility of various statements were derived mathematically using fuzzy aggregation algorithm. We have applied the GOS-tree-based approach as a tool for strategic planning for the Indian Shrimp Industry that has displayed a cyclic performance in the past and has shown signs of rejuvenation in recent times.     

The Role of Culture and Meaning in Rational Choice

The Wason card selection and the Tversky &; Kahneman frame anomaly are examined in the context of a probabilistic, constructivist biological model of decision-making. Rational choice requires that decision-makers understand the meaning of the choices they confront. In fact, the determination of meaning and the process of rational choice represent two sides the same coin. Further, perception, cognition and action are ill-posed problems. To solve these problems ‘missing data’ must be supplied by the brain. This data is acquired by both ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes. These evolutionary processes facilitate the determination of meaning and as a product of that process also facilitate the construction of rationality. Two interrelated brain systems involved in this construction process are examined: an emotional system that rapidly and non-consciously assigns reward expectancy values to objects in the environment and a sensory-motor system that participates in the discovery of more general information that facilitates environment/body interactions. Jointly, these systems help a naïve agent to find ‘meaning in an unlabeled world’ and to predict the outcomes of future interactions with that world by supplying ‘background’ information, i.e., by supplying the missing data necessary for rational choice. This ‘background’ represents the imprint of the statistical structure of the world on the brain and, as such, embodies the individual’s Bayesian priors. Lack of sufficient background capacities can result in systematic judgment errors and seemingly irrational decisions. Complex culture is a key aspect of the environment that facilitates the construction of rationality, in part, by becoming internalized as background. Culture facilitates the creation of complex social constructs that contribute to cultural evolution, reduce uncertainty, and increase rationality; however, cultural evolution can get ahead of itself—potentially leading to background failure and errors in judgment and choice. Finally, it is not simply complexity or lack of hands-on experience that lead to error: an additional component that might be called semantic opacity is necessary.     

差异伯川德模型下战略性贸易政策的实验研究

采用经济学实验的方法,本科生作为被试,货币作为激励手段,研究Eaton和Grossman（1986）提出的差异伯川德竞争方式下一国政府的最佳贸易政策理论。实验设计时考虑实验参与者间交互作用的特性以及被试对＂政策＂与＂征税＂的各种可能的反应,设计了四个设置的实验,对实验数据从被试的决策动机、被试决策时的考虑因素进行分析,运用数学及统计软件进行分析。实验结果显示政府不愿干预国际贸易,不会对本国产品征收出口税;同时分析了本实验研究的现实意义。     

A Guide to Extracting Information from Environmental Pressure Groups

This paper examines the relationship between environmental pressure groupsand environmental policy makers. Environmental pressure groups are assumedto possess valuable private information on environmental issues.Environmental pressure groups are also assumed to pursue their ownpreferences, which are only partially correlated with policy makers'preferences. A new aspect is that binding contracts with side payments arenot allowed, which accurately describes the interaction betweenenvironmental pressure groups and governments. It is shown that by choosingprobabilities of acting on environmental pressure groups' signals, adecision maker can force environmental pressure groups to reveal superiorinformation even in the absence of binding contracts.     

A Cost-effective Approach to Attracting Low-income Countries to International Emissions Trading: Theory and Experiments

The cost-effectiveness of the KyotoProtocol and any similar non-global treatywould be enhanced by attracting additionalcountries to international emissions tradingand achieving this as soon as possible. Incontrast to what is heard in most of thedebate, such an enlargement is here taken to beattained with the new participants, atleast to begin with, being fullycompensated. This paper focuses on twoforms of compensation that can be used toattract poor countries to participate inemissions trading. The theoretical aswell as experimental evidence suggests that, ifpoor countries are more risk averse than richcountries, partial compensation in terms offinancial transfers is more cost-effective thanrelying solely on compensation in kind –emission quotas – as has been the case so far.Using money for partial compensation would alsoreduce the risk for ``hot air' allocations andthe ensuing political obstacles tocost-effectiveness that such allocations tendto create.     

Too poor to be green consumers? A field experiment on revealed preferences for firewood in rural Guatemala

The paper reports on a field experiment that investigates whether households in Guatemala are willing to surrender a small material gain in order to buy legal rather than illegal firewood. Given the ineffectiveness of command-and-control policies to curb the problem of illegal logging in Guatemala, the experiment assesses the potential viability of market-oriented solutions. Local consumers in developing countries are generally believed to be too poor to pay a premium for green/ethical products. Therefore, little information has been gathered on willingness-to-pay (WTP) for such products and its determinants in non-affluent consumer markets. While our experiment on firewood consumption in central Guatemala only implies a weak and indirect test of WTP for green products, the results indicate that it is premature, if not unwarranted, to assume that the poor are not ready to make pro-ethical choices in the marketplace. Moreover, we find that information on the legal procedures for firewood extraction significantly affects consumer choice between legal and illegal firewood.     

On the Design of Peer Punishment Experiments

Some peer punishment technologies may bias experimental results in unwanted ways. A critical parameter to consider in the design is the “fine-to-fee” ratio, which measures the income reduction for the targeted subject relative to the cost for the subject who requested the punishment. We show that a punishment technology commonly used in experiments embeds a variable fine-to-fee ratio and show that it could confound the empirical findings about why, whom, and how much subjects punish.JEL Classification: C91, C92     

A taxonomic review of methods and tools applied in technology assessment

Technology Assessment (TA) has been a growing field of management study for the past four decades. An increasing number of studies have been carried out over the years contributing to the development of TA literature. Some of these studies summarized the history and growth of the field during its evolution. However, there has been no effort made to present an overview of the methods and tools that have been cited in TA literature. This paper attempts to fill that void. A thorough review of the TA articles published in leading journals in the management of technology field is conducted to identify the research methods or tools in those studies. The paper provides an introductory review of the use of technology assessment terminology during its development, which helps the readers avoid the confusion of the TA concept since its origination in public decision making forty years ago and where it is now — widely adopted in other sectors. A thorough presentation of the approaches, methods and tools that have been introduced or employed in both mainstream TA and “inverted TA” studies is then provided. The main content of the paper is related to the works published in leading international journals that involve certain research methods or techniques.     

A Simple Test of a Screening Procedure for Economics Faculty: A Note

This article discusses a graphical framework for classroom presentation of interactions between balance-of-payments flows and foreign exchange market equilibrium.     

Strategic sophistication of individuals and teams. Experimental evidence

Many important decisions require strategic sophistication. We examine experimentally whether teams act more strategically than individuals. We let individuals and teams make choices in simple games, and also elicit first- and second-order beliefs. We find that teams play the Nash equilibrium strategy significantly more often, and their choices are more often a best response to stated first order beliefs. Distributional preferences make equilibrium play less likely. Using a mixture model, the estimated probability to play strategically is 62% for teams, but only 40% for individuals. A model of noisy introspection reveals that teams differ from individuals in higher order beliefs.     

Thinking inside the box: A participatory, computer-assisted approach to scenario discovery

Scenarios provide a commonly used and intuitively appealing means to communicate and characterize uncertainty in many decision support applications, but can fall short of their potential especially when used in broad public debates among participants with diverse interests and values. This paper describes a new approach to participatory, computer-assisted scenario development that we call scenario discovery, which aims to address these challenges. The approach defines scenarios as a set of plausible future states of the world that represent vulnerabilities of proposed policies, that is, cases where a policy fails to meet its performance goals. Scenario discovery characterizes such sets by helping users to apply statistical or data-mining algorithms to databases of simulation-model-generated results in order to identify easy-to-interpret combinations of uncertain model input parameters that are highly predictive of these policy-relevant cases. The approach has already proved successful in several high impact policy studies. This paper systematically describes the scenario discovery concept and its implementation, presents statistical tests to evaluate the resulting scenarios, and demonstrates the approach on an example policy problem involving the efficacy of a proposed U.S. renewable energy standard. The paper also describes how scenario discovery appears to address several outstanding challenges faced when applying traditional scenario approaches in contentious public debates.     

基于区间数的科研设备招标的多属性决策模型

针对军口863项目大型科研设备招标的特点,结合目前多属性决策问题的研究方法,建立了一种多属性决策招标模型。首先借助区间数理论和熵理论确定了各属性的区间数权重,接着给出决策方案的综合评价值,然后给出了带有可能度的方案排序,最后在此基础上进行了实例分析。     

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Re-examining Nepotism and Discrimination in a Segmented Society

Abstract

We report the results from a series of trust games designed to distinguish racial discrimination from racial nepotism, played with a sample of high school students in Cape Town, South Africa. In contrast to the original work in this regard by Fershtman et al. (2005 Fershtman, C., Gneezy, U. and Verboven, F. 2005. “Discrimination and Nepotism: the efficiency of the anonymity rule,”. Journal of Legal Studies, 34: 371–396. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we find considerably greater heterogeneity in the way that proposers respond to the revealed racial identity of their partner, with nepotism being a dominant behavior. However, while some proposers exhibit a nepotistic bias in their offers that favors in-group members on average, others exhibit a nepotistic strategy that favors out-group members. A consequence of this nepotism is that both efficiency and equity are reduced on average.