Mandating vaccination with unknown indirect effects

Social interactions make communicable disease a core concern of public health policy. A prevalent problem is scarcity of empirical evidence informative about how interventions affect illness. Randomized trials, which have been important to evaluation of treatments for noninfectious diseases, are less informative about treatment of communicable diseases because they do not fully reveal the indirect preventive (herd immunity) effect of vaccination on persons who are not vaccinated or are unsuccessfully vaccinated. This paper studies the decision problem faced by a health planner who observes the illness rate that occurs when persons make decentralized vaccination choices and who contemplates whether to mandate vaccination. The planner's objective is to minimize the social cost of illness and vaccination. Uncertainty about the magnitude of the indirect effect of vaccination implies uncertainty about the illness rate that a mandate would yield. I first study a simple representative‐agent setting and derive conditions under which the planner can determine whether mandating vaccination is optimal. When optimal policy is indeterminate, I juxtapose several criteria for decision making—expected utility, minimax, and minimax‐regret—and compare the policies they generate. I then extend the analysis to a more general setting in which members of the population may have heterogenous attributes. I have benefitted from the opportunity to present this work in seminars at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, the Department of Economics, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California. I have also benefitted from the comments of an anonymous reviewer and associate editor.     

Sad or Happy? The Effects of Emotions on Stated Preferences for Environmental Goods

A substantial literature in behavioural science and psychology shows that emotions affect human choices and values. This paper investigates whether such emotional impacts are also present in stated choice experiments for environmental goods. If this were so, it would introduce an additional element of context dependence to the welfare measures derived from such methods, and would be at odds with the rational choice model underlying welfare economics. A laboratory experiment using three different emotion treatments was combined with a stated preference choice experiment concerned with changes in coastal water quality and fish populations in New Zealand. No statistically significant effects of changes in emotional state on estimated preference parameters, willingness to pay or the randomness of choices were found. The paper concludes by questioning, why such a contrast exists with empirical findings in behavioural science.     

A Household Production Analysis Of Religious

A bstract Two conventional wisdoms are prevalent among churchgoers with regards to monetary contributions. One is that contributions of their time and money to their church are complementary. The other is that churches are in competition with other charitable organizations for church members'contributions. This study employs the household production model to test these conventional wisdoms. The first is supported (church members who contribute more money also contribute more time) while the second is rejected (churchgoers who contribute more to their church are also more generous to other charitable organizations). Policy implications include advising churches that wish to increase members'financial contributions to focus on increasing member involvement, and to jointly sponsor activities with nonreligious charitable organizations.     

Macroeconomic factors, consumer behavior, and bankcard default rates

Over the period from 1981 through 1999, we investigate the relationship between bankcard delinquencies and key macroeconomic variables. Changes in the proportion of accounts in default are statistically related to the consumer debt ratio. When the delinquency rate is calculated based on the number of dollars outstanding, it is related to the total amount of revolving debt. We also find evidence consistent with a pattern of selective default behavior, in which consumers will default on bankcard debt before defaulting on other types of installment loans.     

CONVERGENT DYNAMICS IN THE PRODUCTION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CONFIGURATIONS*

Organization theory lacks an adequate accounting for the processes that produce distinct structural configurations. This article interprets organization structure as an instantaneous correspondence between three analytical levels that simultaneously constrain and stimulate behaviour: infrastructure, sociostructure, and superstructure. Structuring results from a process of convergence across levels that produces distinct configurations and provides observers with a living record of the organization's historical development. This article explores the dynamics of convergence through a comparative case study of two organizations in the publishing industry. Both firms developed into stable structural configurations that were uniquely produced from historically specific accommodations.     

Peer pressure,incentives, and gender: An experimental analysis of motivation in the workplace

We present results from a real-effort experiment, simulating actual workplace conditions, comparing the productivity of workers under fixed wages and piece rates. Workers, who were paid to enter data, were exposed to different degrees of peer pressure under both payment systems. The peer pressure was generated in the form of private information about the productivity of their peers. We have two main results. First, we find no level of peer pressure for which the productivity of either male or female workers is significantly higher than the productivity without peer pressure. Second, we find that very low and very high levels of peer pressure can significantly decrease productivity (particularly for men paid fixed wages). These results are consistent with models of conformism and self-motivation.     

Assessing the temporal variation of macroeconomic forecasts by a panel of changing composition

This paper calls attention to the problem of changing panel composition in surveys of forecasters and documents the problem in the Survey of Professional Forecasters. To study the temporal variation of forecasts, we recommend analysis of the time series of predictions made by individual forecasters. This makes transparent the heterogeneity of the panel and avoids improper inferences due to changing panel composition. In the absence of knowledge of the process determining panel composition, we warn against the traditional practice of aggregate time series analysis, which conflates changes in the expectations of individual forecasters with changes in the composition of the panel. Should analysis of aggregated predictions be thought desirable as a simplifying device, we recommend analyses of sub‐panels of fixed composition. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Capacity constraints and the winner's curse in multi-unit common value auctions

We explore the role of capacity constraints in establishing efficient pricing in multi-unit common value auctions in a setting relevant to auction-based equity IPOs. The method of inquiry is experimental economics. We find that sufficiently large capacity constraints mitigate the overbidding that plagues single-unit auctions and is one of the most robust laboratory findings. We also uncover a puzzling propensity for most bidders to place a portion of their bids at prices above their signals. This disequilibrium behavior persists with experience and in cases with substantial losses in previous auctions. Our results suggest caution is warranted in promoting auction based IPOs that allow unrestricted access by the non-professional investing public.     

Estimating intercoder reliability: a structural equation modeling approach

Intercoder reliability is usually estimated with a summary index, and yet the limitations concerning the indexing approach have been well noted. This study critically reviewed all the existing major modeling approaches to estimating intercoder reliability, and empirically tested and further compared these approaches. It was found that latent variable modeling, also called the second-generation SEM, generally perform better than log-linear modeling, and is able to explain the paradox haunting some indices, and to spot the sources of disagreement among coders. Implications were discussed at last.