The role of role uncertainty in modified dictator games

We compare behavior in modified dictator games with and without role uncertainty. Subjects choose between a selfish action, a costly surplus creating action (altruistic behavior) and a costly surplus destroying action (spiteful behavior). While costly surplus creating actions are the most frequent under role uncertainty (64%), selfish actions become the most frequent without role uncertainty (69%). Also, the frequency of surplus destroying choices is negligible with role uncertainty (1%) but not so without it (11%). A classification of subjects into four different types of interdependent preferences (Selfish, Social Welfare maximizing, Inequity Averse and Competitive) shows that the use of role uncertainty overestimates the prevalence of Social Welfare maximizing preferences in the subject population (from 74% with role uncertainty to 21% without it) and underestimates Selfish and Inequity Averse preferences. An additional treatment, in which subjects undertake an understanding test before participating in the experiment with role uncertainty, shows that the vast majority of subjects (93%) correctly understand the payoff mechanism with role uncertainty, but yet surplus creating actions were most frequent. Our results warn against the use of role uncertainty in experiments that aim to measure the prevalence of interdependent preferences.     

Innovations,patent races and endogenous growth

This paper presents a model of innovations and endogenous economic growth with two main assumptions: first, the cost of searching for innovations differs across innovations, and second, innovations take time to find. The paper shows that given these two assumptions together, competition leads to patent races and to duplication of innovative activity. The paper then shows that duplication significantly reduces the effect of scale on growth. It also shows that competitive R&D creates too much research on easy innovations, and too little research on the difficult ones. Finally, the paper shows that risk sharing might increase duplication and reduce growth.     

Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature

I survey the literature post Ledyard (Handbook of Experimental Economics, ed. by J. Kagel, A. Roth, Chap. 2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995) on three related issues in linear public goods experiments: (1) conditional cooperation; (2) the role of costly monetary punishments in sustaining cooperation and (3) the sustenance of cooperation via means other than such punishments. Many participants in laboratory public goods experiments are “conditional cooperators” whose contributions to the public good are positively correlated with their beliefs about the average group contribution. Conditional cooperators are often able to sustain high contributions to the public good through costly monetary punishment of free-riders but also by other mechanisms such as expressions of disapproval, advice giving and assortative matching.     

Consumer specialization and the Romantic transformation of the British Grand Tour of Europe

This paper posits that significant changes in 19th century British recreational travel patterns resulted from a change in the manner in which tourists used entertaining stimuli in order to attain pleasure. Consumers no longer merely viewed arousing stimuli, but attempted to use them to produce emotional states of being which they could partially modify to intensify pleasurable feelings (Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain, William Heinemann, 2003). The impetus for this modification stemmed from an increasing awareness that emotional responses could be to some degree self-cultivated, as embodied in the Romantic ethos that become popular at the time via the emergence of the paperback novel and magazine industry (Campbell, The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism, Blackwell, 1987). By learning how to manipulate and modify mental images in a way that may not necessarily correspond with objective reality, Romantic tourists learned to elicit pleasure through engaging of their imagination. Such a change in the mode of pleasure seeking had important long run economic consequences for tourist regions throughout the European continent.     

提高《马克思主义基本原理概论》教学质量探析

《马克思主义基本原理概论》教学是对大学生进行马克思主义理论教育的主渠道和主阵地,肩负着培养大学生科学的世界观、人生观和价值观,提升大学生思想政治素养的重任。提高马克思主义理论教学质量必须把握好正面教育和批判教育的关系、教师主导和学生主体的关系、理论教学和实践教学的关系、课堂教学和网络教学的关系。     

加工贸易对安徽省经济增长作用的实证分析

基于对安徽省加工贸易现状的总结、归纳,文章利用安徽省1999-2009年11年的时间序列数据,运用加工贸易增值系数法、加工贸易对GDP拉动度和线性回归三种实证方法,分析了加工贸易对经济增长的作用,并提出了若干政策建议。     

大型矿井动力操控员工安全心理参数探究

随着矿产资源不断向地层深部开采,矿井亦不断延伸,尤其是千米深井日渐增多,矿井动力提升速度和提升功能不断加快、增强,矿井数字化水平提高,对矿井动力操控员工的心理反应能力、注意能力、时空判断能力等一系列心理素质水平的要求不断增强。员工的反应准确性、注意集中和分配能力及情绪稳定性和人格状况是构成影响员工操控行为安全稳定的核心心理品质。探究矿井动力提升系统操控员工的各项安全心理阈限值及其安全心理参数标准,建立员工安全心理选拔准入制,是保障矿井人一机和谐安全运行的重要措施。     

马克思经济危机理论简述

资本主义经济危机是一种与资本主义制度与生俱来的现象,是资本主义无法治愈的痼疾。马克思在他有生之年经历了7次经济危机,并于19世纪40年代,开始研究资本主义周期性的生产过剩危机。通过对经济危机史的研究及密切联系资本主义经济发展实际的情况,马克思对经济危机问题的研究取得了一系列研究成果。《资本论》的问世,标志着马克思经济危机理论的完成。马克思通过对经济危机的可能性、现实性、根源和实质等方面进行了阐述,形成了比较完整的理论体系,成为研究经济危机问题的理论基石。