Averting economic collapse and the solipsism bias

We study the behavior of experimental subjects who have to make a sequence of risky investment decisions in the presence of network externalities. Subjects follow a simple heuristic—investing after positive experiences and reducing their propensity to invest after a failure. This result contrasts with the theoretical findings of Jeitschko and Taylor [Jeitschko, T.D., Taylor, C., 2001. Local discouragement and global collapse: A theory of coordination avalanches. Amer. Econ. Rev. 91 (1), 208–224] in which even agents who have only good experiences eventually stop investing because they account for the fact that others with worse experiences will quit. This can trigger sudden economic collapse—a coordination avalanche—even in the most efficient Bayesian equilibrium. In the experiment, subjects follow their own experiences and disregard the possible bad experiences of others—thus exhibiting behavior that we term “solipsism bias.” Solipsism results in sustained investment activity and thus averts complete collapse.     

Patterns of Self-Efficacy Within NAFTA: United States,Canada, and Mexico

Self-efficacy has been shown to be a key attribute of successful business leaders and in today's global economy, must be studied in terms of patterns of crossvergence. The paper examines both individual characteristics (gender, age, work experience, and management experience) and culture as they relate to self-efficacy in North America. Women in our sample had slightly lower self-efficacy, which increased with work and management experience. Age and membership in an individualistic culture were not related to self-efficacy; in fact, our Mexican participants demonstrated slightly higher self-efficacy propensities. These results suggest that organizations might consider devoting special attention to development of mentor and other programs particularly to females initiating their career. However, expected cultural patterns relating to self-efficacy might not hold as strongly, particularly with empowered groups such as executives and MBA students. Individual characteristics, particularly experience levels, have a greater impact on self-efficacy and should receive heightened considerations when organizations are making selection and other personnel decisions.     

Was kann stationäre Pflege bei Morbus Parkinson leisten?

Pflege mit Modellcharakter - Die Parkinson-Erkrankung und das Parkinson-Syndrom z?hlen bundesweit zu den h?ufigsten neurologischen Diagnosen im h?heren Lebensalter. Und durch die zunehmende Lebenserwartung der Menschen werden sie weiter an Relevanz gewinnen. Innovative Pflegekonzepte werden daher gebraucht.     

Feedback spillover and analogy-based expectations: A multi-game experiment

We consider a multi-game interactive learning environment in which subjects sometimes only have access to the aggregate distribution of play of the opponents over the various games and sometimes are told the joint distribution of actions and games in a more or less accessible way. Our main findings are: 1) In the presence of feedback spillover, long run behaviors stabilize to an analogy-based expectation equilibrium (Jehiel, 2005). 2) Faced with the same objective feedback, the long run behaviors are sometimes better described by Nash equilibrium and sometimes they are better described by the analogy-based expectation equilibrium depending on the accessibility of the feedback.     

Nachhaltigkeit und Erschwinglichkeit gemeindegetragener Krankenversicherungen in Afrika — Eine Fallstudie aus Nouna Distrikt,Burkina Faso

Many African countries developed national health insurance schemes after independence. However, merely public servants were eligible to subscribe. The majority of the population resides in rural areas where health care services of hospitals and dispensaries were free of charge. The economic crisis of these countries has changed this situation. Currently, almost all health services charge direct user fees so that a severe disease leads to a threat for the entire family of the diseased. Consequently, first community-based health insurances were introduced ten years ago.This paper analyses the effect of these insurance schemes on the service provision for the rural poor with the example of the proposed community-based health insurance in Nouna, Burkina Faso. The insurance can only be sustained if the premium is so high that about 50% of the population cannot afford it. Therefore, this insurance will neither benefit them nor will their situation improve. We have to ask whether a programme that betters the state of the well-off while leaving the condition of the poor unchanged is fair and just. For this purpose different aspects of equity are discussed. The author concludes that the premium-induced exclusion of 50% of the population from the insurance is only acceptable if the privileged use this benefit for economic growth which will finally benefit the poor.     

Fixed-mobile integration

Fixed-line incumbents often also own the largest mobile network. We consider the effect of this joint ownership on market outcomes. Our model predicts that while fixed-to-mobile call prices to the integrated mobile network are more efficient than under separation, those to rival mobile networks are distorted upwards, amplifying any incumbency advantage. This result is robust to changes in the competitiveness of the fixed market and to the presence of fixed-mobile substitution. As concerns potential remedies, a uniform off-net pricing constraint leads to higher welfare than functional separation, and even allows to maintain some of the efficiency gains.