Working under pressure: Evidence from the impacts of soccer fans on players’ performance

In this paper we study how pressure affects individual’s behavior. For this purpose we use sports data, where the attendance is a proxy for pressure, to investigate if the number of fans in the stadium affects the performance of the players. We overcome the reverse causality problem by proposing an instrument variable: a promotion in Brazil during which low cost tickets were assigned to random soccer matches. In contrast to previous literature, our results suggest that pressure does not significantly affect players’ behavior.     

A note on free entry under uncertainty: The role of asymmetric information

In a model of competing managerial firms I show that the equilibrium number of firms decreases with uncertainty if entry is relatively more costly than monitoring. The result adds to the earlier contributions and is consistent with the available evidence.     

An experimental analysis of the bandit problem

Summary.  We investigate, in an experimental setting, the behavior of single decision makers who at discrete time intervals over an “infinite” horizon may choose one action from a set of possible actions where this set is constant over time, i.e. a bandit problem. Two bandit environments are examined, one in which the predicted behavior should always be myopic (the two-armed bandit) and the other in which the predicted behavior should never be myopic (the one-armed bandit). We also investigate the comparative static predictions as the underlying parameters of the bandit environments are changed. The aggregate results show that the behavior in the two bandit environments are quantitatively different and in the direction of the theoretical predictions. Received: October, 27, 1994; revised version February 27, 1996     

突发事件下个体抢购物品现象的经济学分析

利用前景理论建立突发事件下信息对个体心理预期影响的理论模型,可对危机中的“抢购”行为进行理论分析。结果表明:危机事件下的“抢购”行为直接与人们的心理预期有关;私人信息会影响个体心理预期并产生过度反应;尽早公开信息有利于遏制私人信息影响;信息对个体风险感知的影响取决于个体接受信息的状态。     

Bounded governance within extended order: The Confucian advantage of synergy under generalized constitutional rules

A constitutional explanation of the economic dynamism of the East Asian Confucian economies is proposed. The main hypothesis is that the synergy between the extended order of generalized rules, first introduced by Western civilization, and the bounded governance of Confucian societies has produced a comparative cultural and institutional advantage for the five tigers in East Asia. As a pure form, the extended order, represented in Western society by a system of private property rights, a system of impersonal and generalized markets and a formal-rational system of law and administration, is far more efficient than the bounded governance of Confucian societies in the East Asia, which is characterized by the particularistic human relations and familistic, clannish, and other forms of personal ties and connections. Nevertheless, once a linkage to the extended order is established—overcoming the limits of personal exchange—Confucian ethics can support the bounded governance structures of clans, networks, communities, and familistic corporations that are effective in governing those complex tasks in which property rights are difficult to divide and allocate, individual performance is difficult to measure, and complete contract is either difficult to make or hard to enforce.     

Flooding risk and housing values: An economic assessment of environmental hazard

Climate change, the ‘boom and bust’ cycles of rivers, and altered water resource management practice have caused significant changes in the spatial distribution of the risk of flooding. Hedonic pricing studies, predominantly for the US, have assessed the spatial incidence of risk and the associated implicit price of flood risk. Using these implicit price estimates and their associated standard errors, we perform a meta-analysis and find that an increase in the probability of flood risk of 0.01 in a year is associated to a difference in transaction price of an otherwise similar house of - 0.6%. The actual occurrence of a flooding event or increased stringency in disclosure rules causes ex-ante prices to differ from ex-post prices, but these effects are small. The marginal willingness to pay for reduced risk exposure has increased over time, and it is slightly lower for areas with a higher per capita income. We show that obfuscating amenity effects and risk exposure associated with proximity to water causes systematic bias in the implicit price of flood risk.     

Learning dynamics for mechanism design: An experimental comparison of public goods mechanisms

In a repeated-interaction public goods economy, incomplete information and dynamic behavior may affect the realized outcomes of mechanisms known to be efficient in a complete information one-shot game. An experimental test of five public goods mechanisms indicates that subjects with private information appear to best respond to recent observations. This provides predictions about which mechanisms will generate convergence to their efficient equilibrium allocations. These predictions match the experimental result that globally stable efficient mechanisms realize the highest efficiency in practice. The simplicity of the suggested best response model makes it useful in predicting stability of mechanisms not yet tested.     

Testing the TASP: An experimental investigation of learning in games with unstable equilibria

We report experiments studying mixed strategy Nash equilibria that are theoretically stable or unstable under learning. The Time Average Shapley Polygon (TASP) predicts behavior in the unstable case. We study two versions of Rock-Paper-Scissors that include a fourth strategy, Dumb. The unique Nash equilibrium is identical in the two games, but the predicted frequency of Dumb is much higher in the game where the NE is stable. Consistent with TASP, the observed frequency of Dumb is lower and play is further from Nash in the high payoff unstable treatment. However, Dumb is played too frequently in all treatments.     

Mixed Motives: An Empirical Analysis of ILO Roll-Call Voting

In this empirical paper, we look at individual voting behaviour of government delegates to the International Labour Organization (ILO). We distinguish between the instrumental motive for voting, which consists in the chance that one's vote may turn the balance in favour of one's preferred outcome, and non-instrumental motives, such as a desire for good reputation. Empirically, the two can be identified because two alternatives, abstaining and not participating in the vote, do not differ in their instrumental value, but are likely to differ with respect to reputation aspects. The model is estimated by a multinomial logit with country-specific unobserved heterogeneity, using roll-call votes on the final passage of ILO conventions from 1977 to 1995. The hypothesis that voting is only instrumental is clearly rejected by the data.     

Inequality foundations of concentration measures: An application to the Hannah-Kay indices

The aim of this paper is to provide a connection between concentration and inequality. In particular, we show that the general entropy inequality indices are, among inequality measures, those consistent with the whole set of Hannah-Kay concentration indices. We isolate the inequality component underlying concentration measures, obtaining an explicit additive decomposition of the change in concentration into the change in its two components, i.e., inequality and the number of firms. This relationship proves to be valid for the whole set of Hannah-Kay concentration indices, and embodies as particular cases some others previously found in the literature. We are particularly grateful to Emilio Cerdá for helpful comments on the mathematical formulation of the paper. The second author also acknowledges support through the European Commission Project #ERBCHRXCT980248.     

Patterns and Determinants of Price Changes: Analysing Individual Consumer Prices in Austria

Abstract. We provide empirical evidence on the degree and characteristics of price stickiness in Austria by estimating the average frequency of price changes and the duration of price spells from a large dataset of individual price records collected for the computation of the Austrian consumer price index. The mean (median) duration of price spells in Austria amounts to 14 (11) months, but there is considerable heterogeneity across sectors and products. We find that price increases occur only slightly more often than price decreases. For both directions, the average magnitude of price changes is quite large (11% and 14%, respectively). The introduction of the euro cash in January 2002 led to more frequent but, on average, smaller price adjustments than usual. Estimating the probability of a price change in a panel probit model, we find a small but positive effect of the price spell duration on the incidence of price changes. Furthermore, product‐specific inflation, the size and the sign of the last price change and the period of the euro introduction significantly affect the probability of a price change.     

信誉、财富与农村信贷配给——欠发达地区不同农村金融机构的供给行为研究

文章使用2006年云南、宁夏近800个农户家庭的调查数据,实证分析了欠发达地区不同农村金融机构的信贷供给行为.在区分农户的名义需求和有效需求的基础上,研究发现信用社和银行在发放贷款时偏向富有农户,民间借贷者没有这种偏向,因而其服务的覆盖面远远超过正式机构.两者都重视农户的信誉状况,但信用记录没有实现共享.这些行为的差异主要来源于各类金融机构之间信息成本和交易成本的差别.     

我国农产品供求均衡分析:1982-2006——一个数理分析框架及实证检验

文章针对我国目前主要农产品出现的供需“缺口”特殊现象,选取1982—2006年的样本数据进行实证检验,探求农产品需求、供给的影响因素及其之间的数量关系,并从需求与供给视角分析价格变化方向和影响程度,在此基础上建立农产品价格动态波动的理论模型。实证表明：我国主要农产品,如粮食、猪肉与棉花等的供给存在“二元”特征,导致农产品供给反应具有粘滞性;需求与价格关系因产品种类而异;农产品供给与需求对价格的影响符合经济规律。通过实证与理论研究,最后提出维持农产品供求均衡的政策建议。     

Coexistence of Strategies and Culturally-Specific Common Knowledge: An Evolutionary Analysis

We analyze social dynamics in a continuous population where randomly matched individuals have to choose between two pure strategies only ('cooperate' (C) and 'not cooperate' (NC)). Individual payoffs associated with the possible outcomes of each interaction may differ across groups, depending on the specific social and cultural context to which each agent belongs. In particular, it is assumed that three sub-populations are initially present, 'framing' the game according to the prisoner's dilemma (PD), assurance game (AG) and other regarding (OR) payoff configurations, respectively. In other words, we assume that common knowledge about the payoffs of the game is 'culturally-specific'. In this context, we examine both the adoption process of strategies C and NC within each sub-population and the diffusion process of 'types' (PD, AG and OR) within the overall community. On the basis of an evolutionary game-theoretic approach, the paper focuses on the problem of coexistence of PD, AG and OR groups as well as of 'nice' (C) and 'mean' (NC) strategies. We show that coexistence between C and NC is possible in the heterogeneous community under examination, even if it is ruled out in homogeneous communities where only one of the three types is present. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

人民币升值利弊分析——基于企业成本收益变动机制研究

文章分别从企业财务报表、出口商品成本构成和出口产品价格弹性等方面分析了人民币升值在当期和后期对企业的影响。研究发现,升值对企业的影响并非想象中严重,它只对当期企业财务状况有负面影响,而且这种负面影响会因企业差异而不同,而后期对企业和整个国民经济都有利。同时维持汇率不变也增加了非贸易部门企业的融资成本。文章得出结论,相对较大幅度的一次升值对我国的企业冲击并不大,并将为我国的政策操作提供较大的空间和更灵活的安排。     

经济金融化行为的政治经济学分析--一个演化博弈框架

自2008年美国金融危机发生以来,经济金融化成为国内外学界关注的焦点。文章从政治经济学的角度指出了金融化的本质在于资本积累演变为资本脱离剩余价值的生产与交换而通过金融系统实现增殖的过程,进而通过构建一个包含异质性主体的非对称演化博弈模型,揭示了非金融主体与金融主体之间从普通经济关系到金融关系的动态演变过程及其作用机制。研究表明：(1)经济主体之间的动态关系演变表现为非金融企业主要通过金融活动获取利润,金融企业则关注中间业务和表外业务并将普通家庭纳入其体系使之成为新的利润源泉,而普通家庭则被迫接受强势经济主体的二次分利,这些关系的变化将导致一国经济的金融化乃至金融危机。(2)经济发展状态取决于金融主体与非金融主体之间的相互关系,其中,非金融主体行为起主导性作用。在既定假设下,当非金融主体仅通过其资源保护行为影响金融主体的分利技术时,既可以促使一国经济走向新的稳定状态也可促使其走向崩溃;当非金融主体通过其资源保护行为和分利技术影响金融主体的分利技术时,经济可以实现演化稳定状态。(3)经济主体的金融化行为有三个层面的影响：一是经济主体的金融化行为促进经济主体自身在短期内实现高额资本积累;二是金融主体的分利行为与非金融主体的生产行为经常呈现对立的经济关系并容易被激化;三是没有政府介入的自由市场必然导致矛盾激化而陷入危机。因此,深入理解经济金融化问题的本质及其对经济的影响机制,对当前中国的经济转型和金融改革都具有重要意义。     

Acquisition of Information and Share Prices: An Empirical Investigation of Cognitive Dissonance

Abstract. This paper deals with the determinants of agents' acquisition of information. Our econometric evidence shows that the general index of Italian share‐prices and the series of Italy's financial newspaper sales are cointegrated, and the former series Granger‐causes the latter, thereby giving support to the cognitive dissonance hypothesis: (non‐professional) agents tend to buy the newspaper when share prices are high and not to buy it when share prices are low. Instead, we do not find support for the hypothesis that the agents acquire information in order to trade in the stock market: we find no relationship between quantities exchanged in the market and newspaper sales, nor between stock market volatility and newspaper sales.     

中国出口贸易增长波动的实证分析——基于经济周期理论视角

随着中国出口的高速增长,出口增长波动日趋明显。基于经济周期理论,借助HP滤波法从总体和结构两个角度分析中国的出口增长波动,结果表明:中国出口波动整体呈现向上扩张趋势且波动日趋明显。其中,原料密集型产品出口增长速度最慢,劳动密集型产品出口增长持续性最强;资本密集型产品部门出口增长扩张收缩能力最强,增长最不稳定;易模仿的研发密集型产品出口增长最快,难模仿的研发密集型产品出口增长速度较快;总出口增长和结构增长的误差修正模型分析表明,总出口增长波动和五类产品出口增长波动之间存在长期均衡关系,但短期可能出现失衡。