Do Self-Reported Strategies Match Actual Behavior in a Social Preference Experiment?

According to many models, social preferences are influenced by properties of payoff distributions like the payoff to the group member who is worst off, or higher payoffs to other members possibly causing envy. In this paper, we explore if subjects in a social preference experiment consciously take these elements into account. To study this question, we performed an experiment in which subjects stated indifference values of unequal payoff distributions, and explicitly reported on the strategies they used in stating these values. This approach allows us to obtain a cardinal measure of their social preferences, and to study the impact both of subject characteristics and stated strategies on these values. Our results indicate that although experimental factors, like group composition or field of study of subjects, are significantly related to self-reported strategies, they barely have a statistically significant impact on the indifference values given. On the other hand, we find highly significant relationships between self-reported strategies and actual behavior. Furthermore, our results indicate that the salience of different payoff distribution characteristics, and the impact of different motives on actual decisions, is context dependent.     

Mediation with Incomplete Information: Approaches to Suggest Potential Agreements

In bilateral Negotiation Analysis, the literature often considers the case of complete information. In this context, since the negotiators know the value functions of both parties, it is not difficult to calculate the Pareto efficient solutions for the negotiation. Thus rational negotiators can reach agreement on this frontier. However, these approaches are not applied in practice when complete information is not available. The research question of our work is “It is possible to help negotiators achieving an efficient solution in the absence of complete information regarding the different parameters of the model?”. We propose to derive incomplete information about the preferences of negotiators from the statements they make and the offers they exchange during the negotiation process. We present and discuss three approaches that use this information in order to help a mediator proposing a better solution than the compromise the negotiators have reached or are close to reach.     

Seasonality and the valuation of commodity options

Price movements in many commodity markets exhibit significant seasonal patterns. However, given an observed futures price, a deterministic seasonal component at the price level is not relevant for the pricing of commodity options. In contrast, this is not true for the seasonal pattern observed in the volatility of the commodity price. Analyzing an extensive sample of soybean, corn, heating oil and natural gas options, we find that seasonality in volatility is an important aspect to consider when valuing these contracts. The inclusion of an appropriate seasonality adjustment significantly reduces pricing errors in these markets and yields more improvement in valuation accuracy than increasing the number of stochastic factors.     

A computational approach to resource allocation in spatial urban models

This paper synthesizes and generalizes recent literature on the use of ‘fixed point methods’ to compute approximate numerical solutions to general equilibrium models of urban land use. We show how a broad array of spatial urban models, including ones involving endogenously generated externalities, can be studied within the context of a single unifying computational framework.     

Financial participation and recruitment and retention: causes and consequences

Using a sample of over 5000 establishments in Germany, we analyze the antecedents and effects of profit sharing (PS) and employee share ownership (ESO) with respect to the ability of firms to meet their recruitment and retention objectives and to achieve employment growth. We draw on both economic and behavioral perspectives to argue that firms that adopt PS and ESO plans do so in order to attract and retain employees. Using logistic regression and a propensity score matching technique, we find that firms that face higher recruitment problems, and those that have greater employment growth objectives, are more likely to use ESO and PS. Unlike ESO, PS enhances firm-level employment growth. However, neither ESO nor PS help firms to fully resolve recruitment and retention problems.     

Efficient Specialization in Ricardian Production

Abstract. It is well known that the analysis of efficient specialization in Ricardian production with many countries and many commodities cannot be broken down to the simple case of two countries and two commodities. By drawing on some recent results of convex geometry and the theory of cephoids, this paper characterizes efficient specialization in the general case.     

Optimal Management Under Institutional Constraints: Determining a Total Allowable Catch for Different Fleet Segments in the Northeast Arctic Cod Fishery

Many real world fisheries have an individual vessel quota system with restrictions on transferability of quota or entrance of new vessels into the fishery. While the standard economic reasoning is that these institutional constraints lead to welfare losses, the size of those losses and optimal second-best policies are usually unknown. We develop a dynamic bioeconomic model, in which a scientific body provides an optimal TAC given restrictions on (i) transferability between vessel segments and (ii) entrance of new vessels. Further, we also quantify welfare losses arising from not maximizing economic welfare, but physical yield—which is actually the case in many fisheries. We apply the model to the Northeast Arctic cod fishery, and estimate not only the cost and harvesting functions of the various vessel types, but also the parameters of the biological model as well as those of the demand function. This allows us to determine optimal second-best policies and quantify corresponding welfare effects for our case study fishery.