The gift of advice: communication in a bilateral gift exchange game

We augment a standard bilateral gift exchange game so employees can send messages at the same time as choosing an effort level. Employee effort (controlling for wages) is unaffected by allowing messages, but wages dramatically increase. Messages affect wages because employees give managers advice to set higher wages, usually explaining that this will result in higher effort. This advice prompts managers to try higher wages, helping them learn that raising wages increases their payoffs. In a follow-up experiment, we directly provide managers with additional information about the relationship between wages and effort. This too causes wages to increase, but to a lesser extent than allowing messages. Our results highlight the critical role of learning in generating gains from positive gift exchange.     

The gift of being chosen

We report evidence from an experiment where an employer selects one of two workers to perform a task for a fixed compensation. Workers differ in their ability. The employer’s payoff depends on the worker’s ability and on a non-contractible effort that the worker exerts once employed. We find that selected workers exert an effort higher than the minimum enforceable one. When the employers can send a free-text form message to the selected worker, workers with low ability exert significantly higher effort than the workers with high ability. The difference in effort overcompensates the difference in ability.     

Social norms and gift behavior: Theory and evidence from Romania

In many developing and transitional countries with limited public income redistribution, inter-household transfers in general, and gifts in particular, are sizable and very important. We use unique Romanian survey data that enables us to isolate pure gifts from other private transfers. We explicitly focus on the importance of community-wide social norms, and find that they indeed play a major role for both the occurrence and the values of gifts. More exactly, our results suggest that the overall predominant gift motive among Romanian households is a norm of reciprocity. Moreover, this norm seems to be dominating for gifts to middle- and high-income households. Even though poor households receive to the same extent, norms of both impure altruism and reciprocity tend to be important. Hence, although the poor may not reciprocate gifts to the same extent as the rich, they still receive, since there is a social norm to give, especially to the poor.     

Religion and the sociological critique of political economy: Altruism and gift

Abstract

This article shows that there is a strong connection between the religious component of French sociology and the critique of political economy. In the first section, I consider how selfish behaviour, or egoism, became treated as a major threat endangering the creation of industrial society by those concerned about the diffusion of political economy. I then summarise the methodological critique set forth in the Cours, before connecting this critique to the economic content of the Système and the concept of altruism. In the following section, Spencer's view of altruism is contrasted to that held by Comte, and then I consider the reaction of French political economists, defending the moral value bought about by their science. In the final section, I explain how the Comtean approach was re-enacted by Durkheim and then by Mauss, at the head of the “sociology of religion” section of L'Année sociologique, the Durkheimian journal, to give birth to the theory of gift-giving behaviour that Mauss used to critique political economy in the 1920s.     

Fairness versus efficiency: An experimental study of (mutual) gift giving

Fairness is a strong concern as shown by dictator and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is a potentially competing concern in games, such as the prisoners’ dilemma. In our experiment, the participants can increase efficiency by giving gifts. In the one-sided treatment, this is only possible for one of the two partners. The two-sided treatment allows for mutual gift giving. In both cases, decisions can be conditioned on whether there is or there is not an efficiency gain by gift giving. Our results indicate that efficiency concerns are dominated by fairness concerns that are less stringent in mutual exchanges than in one-sided gift relationships.     

Equalization of true gift and estate tax rates

The paper sets out to show that persons included under the U.S. Federal Estate Tax equalize true gift and estate tax rates, and thereby minimize their transfer taxes. True tax rate formulas are derived which take into account the preferential treatment of unrealized gains in estates under the Federal income tax. A comparison is drawn between shares of unrealized capital gains predicted from true tax rate equalization and shares estimated from stock-price data. The two are found to be quite similar.     

附赠式有奖销售行为新论

市场经济条件下,附赠式有奖销售行为是商家竞争的一种营销手段,已经十分常见。随着经济发展,赠品价值难以统一规范,对交易相对方公开附赠定性的分歧,尤其针对不直接影响交易的第三人的有奖销售和向潜在客户赠送试用品等新型有奖销售的出现,现行立法和理论研究已无法指导执法实践,重新探讨附赠式有奖销售十分必要。     

Bidding fever in eBay auctions of Amazon.com gift certificates

In a set of eBay auctions of Amazon.com gift certificates, 41.1% of winning prices exceed face value, which is an observable upper bound for rational bidding because Amazon.com sells certificates at face value. Alternative interpretations to bidding fever are explored.     

Do estate and gift taxes affect the timing of private transfers?

Proposals to alter the estate tax are contentious and have been considered largely in an empirical vacuum. This paper examines time series and cross-sectional variation to identify the effects of estate and gift taxation on the timing of private transfers. The analysis is based on data from the 1989, 1992, 1995, 1998, and 2001 Surveys of Consumer Finances. Legislative activity during this period reduced the tax disadvantage of bequests relative to gifts. Moreover, the magnitude of this reduction differed systematically across identifiable household categories. We find that households experiencing larger declines in the expected tax disadvantages of bequests reduced inter vivos transfers relative to households experiencing small declines in the tax disadvantages of bequests. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that the timing of transfers is responsive to applicable gift and estate tax rates. The results also provide evidence of a systematic bequest motive for high-wealth households.     

The paradox in the privatization of Hungary's public housinhg: a national gift or a bad bargain?1

The vast majority of Hungary's publicly owned, rental housing, once heavily subsidized, has passed through privatization into owner-occupation. Most tenants hoped to gain a financial advantage by privatization. This study sets out to discover how far such expectations have been met. Bearing in mind the cost of neglected renovation, what does a new owner gain by acquiring ownership of the dwelling and what costs does he or she incur? The study shows that privatization has presented the tenants, who had already benefitted from subsidies, with a sizeable ‘national gift’. The bigger and better the home they rented, the greater their privatization gift. However, there is a paradox to analyse: why has the gift proved a burden to many recipients? The study also looks at how the adaptation occurring in the housing sector might be improved and how the losses of those who find themselves in a predicament after privatization might be reduced.     

Communication,competition and social gift exchange in an auction for public good provision

Reverse auctions are an established policy instrument for allocating conservation contracts. While the auction mechanism has been the subject of a number of studies, less attention has been paid to the post-bidding contract phase. As contracts involving natural resource management are usually incomplete, trust becomes crucial for the effectiveness of the programme. We test the effect of communication between auctioneer and bidders on bidding behaviour and contract fulfilment using experimental economics. We combine a repeated reverse auction with an effort-level game and use a bilateral chatting tool as treatment variable. Without communication, auctioneers tended to select the lowest-priced bidders, who invested substantially less than the socially optimal level of effort when fulfilling their contract to provide the public good. Relational contracting proved important, with effort levels and profits tending to be higher when auctioneers and bidders entered into consecutive contract relationships. In the communication treatment there was no evidence of price competition, as auctioneers were more likely to accept high-priced bids. However, an overall higher price level did not lead to efficiency losses, since contractors realised higher effort levels in return, establishing a ‘social gift exchange’. Our results demonstrate the importance of trust-based relationships between the auctioneering institution and landholders.     

The role of cognitive ability and personality traits for men and women in gift exchange outcomes

We examine the role of cognitive ability and personality traits in a gift exchange experiment. Controlling for cognitive ability and personality characteristics, men offer higher wages than women, and men and women with greater cognitive ability and greater agreeableness on the Big Five personality scale offer higher wages as well. Men provide greater effort than women do, and respond to higher wage rates with greater increases in effort. For both genders, one standard deviation increases in agreeableness and in wages generate similar increases in effort. Serious biases arise from omitting cognitive ability and pooling men and women.     

以要素禀赋结构升级促进产业链延伸：走出“比较优势陷阱”

从要素禀赋结构、产业结构及贸易结构三者之间的关系出发,看出要素禀赋结构升级不但决定着产业结构升级和贸易结构升级,而且能促进产业链延伸,进而对走出＂比较优势陷阱＂起着重大的作用。     

Technical note:: Hybrid corn: Its adoption revisited

The analysis presented is for the adoption of hybrid corn. Among the three functional relationships that are tried the log logistic performs best in terms of explanation (R²) and serial correlation before adjusting for it. After adjusting for the serial correlation using the Cochrane Orcutt procedure the differences between the three functional forms practically vanish. The adoption parameter of the log logistic is best explained by economic variables among which the total area of corn in the state, which stands for both the importance in the economy and economies of scale of extension services, is outstanding.     

Viewpoint: Sustainability: Malthus revisited?

Abstract.  The sustainability debate concerns whether the world will experience stable or improving living standards for the foreseeable future, or whether the current trajectory will overtax the natural environment, leading to a 'crash' in living standards. This paper selectively reviews relevant research, focusing on both ecological concerns and technological progress, and asks whether sustainability would be problematic without rapid population growth. I suggest that continued demographic transition to lower fertility is the primary requirement for achieving sustainable development. This is, effectively, a modern translation of Malthus (1798) . The paper also discusses the role of the Malthusian cycle in human evolution.     

Multi-dimensional screening:: A user's guide

Multi-dimensional screening models have many potential applications but economists have so far been hindered by the considerable technical difficulties involved in their resolution. This paper studies the simplest formulation of the general screening model, and we provide a complete solution to this case. We then show how this model can be applied to multi-product nonlinear pricing and to multi-product monopoly regulation. Finally, we discuss how the model has been applied to other economic situations of interest, including auction design and optimal taxation.