Are athletes more cooperative than nonathletes? A laboratory experiment

Former athletic employees receive a better wage when hired than other employees because recruiters associate positive values to athletic participation. Whereas athletes are considered as more cooperative than others, this assumption lacks empirical support. We implement a laboratory experiment in order to examine whether athletes (i.e., individuals engaged in intense athletic participation) exhibit more cooperative behaviours than nonathletes. We compare the cooperative behaviours of athletes and nonathletes in a single‐shot public good game using a variant of the strategy method. We find that athletes exhibit significantly more conditional cooperative behaviours than nonathletes but no significant differences in unconditional behaviours.     

Migraine burden and costs in France: a nationwide claims database analysis of triptan users

Objectives: To estimate the burden of migraine in the population of French patients identified as specific migraine acute treatment users compared to a control group.

Methods: A cross-sectional retrospective analysis was performed on the Echantillon Généraliste des Bénéficiaires claims database, a 1/97 random sample of the French public insurance database. A representative sample of all adults with at least one delivery of triptans, ergot derivatives or acetylsalicylic acid/metoclopramide (all drugs with a specific label in migraine acute treatment – SMAT) in 2014 was selected with a control group matched on age, gender and geographic region. Among triptan users, a sub-group of over-users was defined according to their level of triptan uptake expressed in defined daily doses (DDD – a standard daily dose of treatment of acute migraine) per month over 3?months and more, was also compared with controls. The cost analysis was performed in a societal perspective for direct costs. Sick leave indirect costs were estimated using the human capital approach.

Results: In total 8639 SMAT users (mean age: 44.6?years; 78.7% women) were selected representing a crude prevalence rate of 1.7%. The annual per capita total healthcare expenditures were higher by €280 in this group compared to controls (€2463 vs. €2183). Triptans contributed 47.8% to this extra cost. They used significantly (p?Conclusions: Due to its high prevalence, migraine costs generate a significant societal burden. The group of over-users concentrates high per capita direct and indirect costs.     

Fueling fiscal interactions: commodity price shocks and local government spending in Colombia

This paper explores fiscal interactions in a developing country. We analyze whether public expenditures in neighboring municipalities influence local spending decisions within a comprehensive set of expenditure categories. Our analysis is based on panel data covering the universe of Colombian municipalities from 2000 to 2010. We offer a quasi-experimental identification strategy exploiting exogenous variation in municipalities’ exposure to changes in the world market price of oil, depending on the municipalities’ endowment with oil resources and controlling for municipality fixed effects. While we find evidence of strong spatial autocorrelation of total local public spending as well as in almost all expenditure categories, the quasi-experimental approach reveals that there are no significant causal fiscal interaction effects between municipalities. This highlights the importance of using additional sources of exogenous variation for the identification of fiscal interactions. In the developing country context, our findings suggest that fiscal decentralization policies do not lead to a race to the bottom in local public expenditures.     

Pathwise superreplication via Vovk’s outer measure

Since Hobson’s seminal paper (Hobson in Finance Stoch. 2:329–347, 1998), the connection between model-independent pricing and the Skorokhod embedding problem has been a driving force in robust finance. We establish a general pricing–hedging duality for financial derivatives which are susceptible to the Skorokhod approach.Using Vovk’s approach to mathematical finance, we derive a model-independent superreplication theorem in continuous time, given information on finitely many marginals. Our result covers a broad range of exotic derivatives, including lookback options, discretely monitored Asian options, and options on realized variance.     

“How are you vulnerable?”: Using participation for vulnerability analysis in emergency planning

Scientists in many fields of research have developed models, theories, and concepts attempting to grasp and manage dangers that are often difficult to imagine. Among the different perspectives, the science and technology studies (STS) vulnerability approach seems very promising. Relying on a constructivist paradigm, it is based on an inductive collection and analysis of a wide range of factors, with a particular focus on cultural factors and actual day-to-day practices. In this paper, we present the roots of this approach and we display findings based on three case studies exploring emergency planning in three different contexts (a city near a SEVESO plant, a school near a nuclear plant, and a city confronted to multiple catastrophic scenarios). The cases studies were realized by conducting three Focus Groups with different types of stakeholders (citizens, teachers, firemen, decision-makers, etc.). After presenting the results of the case studies, we discuss how stakeholders’ participation can inform such type of vulnerability analysis in the context of emergency planning. We argue that participation fosters a deep understanding of actual safety governance practices which allows innovative results to emerge as well as it initiates a learning process among the participants. It contributes to questioning the relations between decision-makers, experts, and citizens. It has the potential of bypassing the positivist and quantitative rationale of safety, and thus, of redefining the vulnerability governance. As a conclusion, we question the role of such STS vulnerability approach within the actual vulnerability governance.     

European Fiscal Governance and Cyclical Stabilisation: Searching for a Lasting Arrangement

Starting from a brief assessment of the present rules-based framework in this respect, this piece stresses that the possible addition of a common stabilisation capacity has to be considered in deep connection with (possibly revised) fiscal rules.     

Informational externalities and emergence of consensus

We study a general model of dynamic games with purely informational externalities. We prove that eventually all motives for experimentation disappear, and provide the exact rate at which experimentation decays. We also provide tight conditions under which players eventually reach a consensus. These results imply extensions of many known results in the literature of social learning and getting to agreement.     

Market microstructure of the Pink Sheets

We study the microstructure of the Pink Sheets and assess the ability of existing theory to capture salient features of this relatively unstructured and unregulated market. Clustering patterns in quotes, quoted spreads, and trade prices indicate that market participants have selected price-dependent tick sizes for different stocks. Clustering intensity varies across stocks as a function of proxies for information availability. Similarly, the bid-ask spread varies as a function of volatility and liquidity. These results suggest (1) microstructure research has established robust predictions of market attributes and (2) unstructured markets are able to develop at least some effective behavioral norms endogenously.