A video game to supplement a hybrid principles of microeconomics course

In this article, the author describes the structure and content of a video game that she developed for a hybrid principles of microeconomics course that consists of two 50-minute lectures and a 50-minute online portion per week. The game comprises seven modules, each of which was assigned to be played during the course of the semester for the online portion of the class. The concepts covered in the game include the circular flow model, demand and supply, externalities, comparative advantage, types of market structure, sunk costs, and game theory, and the article explains in detail how the gameplay was related to these concepts. The game can be downloaded for either Windows or Mac computers, or played online at https://sites.google.com/site/gamesforecon/.     

A market game approach to differential information economies

In this paper we recast a differential information economy as a strategic game in which players propose net trades and prices. Pure strategy Nash equilibria are strong and determine both consumption plans and commodity prices that coincide with the Walrasian Expectations equilibria of the underlying economy. The authors acknowledge support by research grants BEC2003-09067-C04-01 (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and FEDER), PGIDT04XIC30001PN (Xunta de Galicia) and SA070A05 (Junta de Castilla y León). JP Torres-Martínez is also grateful to CNPq-Brazil and University of Vigo for financial support. We are indebted to N.C. Yannelis for helpful comments and insights.     

Evolutionary economics goes mainstream: A review of the theory of learning in games

The Theory of Learning in Games by Fudenberg and Levine surveys a key branch of evolutionary economics from a mainstream perspective. Its publication provides an opportunity to reassess the prospects and goals for evolutionary economics.     

The economics of online dating: A course in economic modeling

The author discusses the development of a unique course, The Economics of Online Dating. The course is an upper-level undergraduate course that combines intensive discussion, peer review, and economic theory to teach modeling skills to undergraduates. The course uses the framework of “online dating,” interpreted broadly, as a point of entry, via Paul Oyer's popular economics book Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Economics I Learned from Online Dating. The author then explores an approach to teaching students how to not just solve models, but to create economic models from abstract ideas. This approach to teaching modeling is supported by Albert Bandura's work on self-efficacy as a bedrock pedagogical principle.     

Enhancing the teaching of introductory economics with a team-based,multi-section competition

The authors describe a unique approach to enhancing student learning at the introductory economics level that utilizes a multi-section, team-based competition. The competition is structured to supplement learning throughout the entire introductory course. Student teams are presented with current economic issues, trends, or events, and use economic tools and theories to comprehensively examine the topics. Students present their analyses in their own sections with one team from each section moving on to compete in an inter-section round. Students are judged on technicality, creativity, and applicability of economic concepts. The competition has the potential to advance students' creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical and analytical thinking skills, while enhancing their ability to apply foundational economic concepts to real-world settings.     

The role of conference externalities and other factors in determining the annual recruiting rankings of football bowl subdivision (FBS) teams

In this article, we analyse the impact of school, head coach and conference characteristics on a college football team’s annual recruiting ranking. Utilizing panel data collected from various sources covering 2002–2014, we find that measures of recent school success such as having winning seasons and finishing seasons ranked in the Associated Press (AP) top 25 poll have a positive impact on a team’s recruiting ranking. Similarly, schools with more successful head coaches tend to earn better recruiting classes, while schools facing bowl bans, scholarship restrictions and probation tend to earn worse recruiting classes. Various measures of conference achievement indicate that conference externalities in recruiting may indeed be positive as is often suggested; however, there is much potential for a negative externality as well.     

A strategic market game with seigniorage costs of Fiat money

Summary. A model that includes the cost of producing money is presented and the nature of the inefficient equilibria in the model are examined. It is suggested that if one acknowledges that transactions are a form of production, which requires the consumption of resources, then the concept of Pareto optimality is inappropriate for assessing efficiency. Instead it becomes necessary to provide an appropriate comparative analysis of alternative transactions mechanisms in the appropriate context. Received: September 5, 2000; revised version: May 3, 2001     

On choosing which game to play when ignorant of the rules

This paper suggests a theory of choice among strategic situations when the rules of play are not properly specified. We take the view that a “strategic situation” is adequately described by a TU game since it specifies what is feasible for each coalition but is silent on the procedures that are used to allocate the surplus. We model the choice problem facing a decision maker (DM) as having to choose from finitely many “actions”. The known “consequence” of the ith action is a coalition from game f _i over a fixed set of players \(N_i\cup\{d\}\) (where d stands for the DM). Axioms are imposed on her choice as the list of consequences (f ₁,..., f _m ) from the m actions varies. We characterize choice rules that are based on marginal contributions of the DM in general and on the Shapley Value in particular.     

Space for virtue in the economics of Kenneth J. Arrow,Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom

Virtue ethics interprets human action as pursuing good ends through practices that develop qualities internal to those final goals. The philosophical approach has been identified as critical of economics, leading in turn to the innovative response that by viewing the market as mutually beneficial exchange, economic practice is in fact defendable on virtue ethics grounds. This defends economics using arguments drawn from virtue ethics, but there is a need also to explore space for virtue ethics within economic theory. Examining key contributions of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom, the article notes that virtue ethics’ appreciation of persons’ communicability of ends is increasingly being relied upon within economics, though sometimes under different names. Its strength to interdisciplinary work between economics and philosophy lies in presenting a methodology able to capture how human beings are capable of, though not fixated on, cooperation.     

Airing Your Dirty Laundry: A Quick Marketable Pollution Permits Game for the Classroom

In this article, the authors describe a simple classroom game that demonstrates the advantage of tradable emissions permits in regulating environmental pollution. Students take on the role of polluters who must consider the costs of complying with a uniform reduction and a tradable permits program. The class is divided into high-cost polluters and low-cost polluters so students can observe the gains from trade as high-cost students purchase pollution rights from the low-cost students in the tradable permits scenario. A major advantage of the game is that it can be conducted within as little as 20 minutes and does not require that students have prior knowledge of economics or regulatory policies. This makes the game appropriate for economics and noneconomics courses alike.     

A geometric approach to the price of anarchy in nonatomic congestion games

We present a short, geometric proof for the price-of-anarchy results that have recently been established in a series of papers on selfish routing in multicommodity flow networks and on nonatomic congestion games. This novel proof also facilitates two new types of theoretical results: On the one hand, we give pseudo-approximation results that depend on the class of allowable cost functions. On the other hand, we derive stronger bounds on the inefficiency of equilibria for situations in which the equilibrium costs are within reasonable limits of the fixed costs. These tighter bounds help to explain empirical observations in vehicular traffic networks. Our analysis holds in the more general context of nonatomic congestion games, which provide the framework in which we describe this work.     

Characterization of the extreme core allocations of the assignment game

A characterization of the extreme core allocations of the assignment game is given in terms of the reduced marginal worth vectors. For each ordering in the player set, a payoff vector is defined where each player receives his or her marginal contribution to a certain reduced game played by his or her predecessors. This set of reduced marginal worth vectors, which for convex games coincide with the usual marginal worth vectors, is proved to be the set of extreme points of the core of the assignment game. Therefore, although assignment games are hardly ever convex, the same characterization of extreme core allocations is valid for convex games.     

A glove-market partitioned matrix related to the assignment game

To any assignment market we associate the unique exact assignment game defined on the same set of agents and with a core that is a translation of the core of the initial market. As it happens with the core, the kernel and the nucleolus of an assignment game are proved to be the translation of the kernel and the nucleolus of its related exact assignment game by the vector of minimum core payoffs. Agents on each side of the market are classified by means of an equivalence relation and, when agents on the same class are ordered to be consecutive, the related exact assignment market is defined by a partitioned matrix, each block of the partition being a glove market.     

Introduction to field experiments in economics with applications to the economics of charity

This special issue highlights an empirical approach that has increasingly grown in prominence in the last decade—field experiments. While field experiments can be used quite generally in economics—to test theories’ predictions, to measure key parameters, and to provide insights into the generalizability of empirical results—this special issue focuses on using field experiments to explore questions within the economics of charity. The issue contains six distinct field experimental studies that investigate various aspects associated with the economics of charitable giving. The issue also includes a fitting tribute to one of the earliest experimenters to depart from traditional lab methods, Peter Bohm, who curiously has not received deep credit or broad acclaim. Hopefully this issue will begin to rectify this oversight.      

Endogenous transfers in the Prisoner's Dilemma game: An experimental test of cooperation and coordination

We test a two-stage compensation mechanism for promoting cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma games. Players first simultaneously choose binding non-negative amounts to pay their counterparts for cooperating, and then play the induced game knowing these amounts. In our games, all payment pairs consistent with mutual cooperation in subgame-perfect equilibrium transform these games into coordination games, with both mutual cooperation and mutual defection as Nash equilibria in the second stage. When endogenous transfer payments are not permitted, cooperation is much less likely. Mutual cooperation is most likely when the (sufficient) payments are identical, and it is also substantially more likely with payment pairs that bring the mutual-cooperation payoffs closer together. Both the Fehr–Schmidt and Charness–Rabin models predict that transfers that make final payoffs closer are preferred; however, they do not explain why equal transfers are particularly effective. Transfers are also effective in sustaining cooperation even when they are imposed and not chosen.     

A critique of the new comparative economics

We examine the “new comparative economics” as proposed by Djankov et al. (2003) and their use of the concept of an institutional possibilities frontier. While we agree with their general argument that one must consider a variety of institutions and their respective social costs, including legal systems and cultural characteristics, when comparing the performance of different economic systems, we find various complications and difficulties with the framework they propose. We propose that a broader study of clusters of institutions and such newly emerging forms as the new traditional economy may be better suited as ways to approach the study of comparative economics in the era after the breakdown of the old comparison of market capitalism and command socialism that came to an end with the breakup of the Soviet Union.

A generalization of Condorcet’s Jury Theorem to weighted voting games with many small voters

We extend Condorcet’s Jury Theorem (Essai sur l’application de l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix. De l’imprimerie royale, 1785) to weighted voting games with voters of two kinds: a fixed (possibly empty) set of ‘major’ voters with fixed weights, and an ever-increasing number of ‘minor’ voters, whose total weight is also fixed, but where each individual’s weight becomes negligible. As our main result, we obtain the limiting probability that the jury will arrive at the correct decision as a function of the competence of the few major players. As in Condorcet’s result the quota q = 1/2 is found to play a prominent role. I wish to thank Maurice Koster, Moshé Machover, Guillermo Owen and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

A reformulation of the foundations of welfare economics

Neoclassical welfare economics takes an outcome-oriented approach that uses Pareto optimality as its benchmark for welfare maximization. When one looks at the remarkable improvements in economic welfare that have characterized market economies, most of those improvements in welfare have been due to economic progress that has introduced new and improved goods and services into the economy, and innovations in production methods that have brought costs down, leading to higher real incomes. Pareto optimality is only peripherally related to actual economic welfare, and no economist would argue that people are materially better off today than a century ago because the economy is closer to Pareto optimality. After analyzing the actual factors that lead to improvements in welfare, this paper suggests a reformulation of the foundations of welfare economics to replace the almost irrelevant outcome-oriented concept of Pareto optimality as the benchmark for evaluating welfare with a process-oriented benchmark based on factors that generate economic progress. The paper then explores some implications of this reformulation.

A game theory model of regulatory response to insider trading

We develop a model which can help in explaining the evolving regulatory regime around insider trading. We form a simple sequential game-theoretical model of insider trading transactions and, utilizing Monte Carlo simulation to determine equilibrium, we show that costly investigations and low penalties incentivize traders to engage in illegal transactions. While the model helps to explain stiffer action by regulatory bodies, the question remains as to whether the elevated penalty levels are sufficient to prevent further insider trading.     

财经类大学生思想行为特点及对策研究

文章认为高校财经类专业学生在思想观念、专业学习、文化素质、情感等方面具有与其它专业不同的特点,并根据财经类专业学生的思想特点和行为方式,探讨了教育管理内容,提高思想政治教育工作的针对性和实效性。