The effects of group composition in a strategic environment: Evidence from a field experiment

Recent theoretical and empirical studies have explored the effect of group membership and identity on individual decision-making. This line of research highlights that economic models focusing on the individual as the sole entity in the decision-making environment potentially miss critical features. This study takes this literature in a new direction by overlaying a field experiment onto a setting where groups have arisen naturally. Our experimental laboratory is large open air markets, where we are able to examine the effects of group membership on seller׳s collusive behavior as measured by prices and surplus allocations. This permits us to explore strategic implications of group composition. Empirical results illustrate the importance of group composition on pricing decisions, and show that deviations from Nash equilibrium are crucially related to group membership.     

A multicriteria model for the assessment of rural development plans in Greece

In the last decades rural communities face the problems of ageing of population, high share of elder farmers and imbalanced distribution of farmers across age classes. The Rural Development Plans (RDPs) of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in European Union (EU) are the policy instruments that affect agriculture and the people living in rural areas. The RDP measure “Setting up Young Farmers” aims to fight the demographic problems of these areas. This study is an attempt to highlight the role and the impacts of RDPs and especially of the “Setting up Young Farmers” measure in the prefecture of Thessaloniki in Greece. To this end, a multicriteria mathematical programming model was implemented. This methodology was chosen using the Knowledge Brokerage Approach in the context of the LIAISE project, which proposes a set of support modules that are linked to the impact assessment process with a final goal to support future policies and design. The results showed that the “Setting up young farmers” measure achieved its goals to transfer land to young, trained farmers, to offset the set-up costs faced by young people when establishing themselves in farming.     

Willingness to pay for safety improvements in passenger air travel

The risk of being involved in an airplane accident is largely ignored in air passengers’ choice models. The reason presumably is that it is hard to operationalize, because objective safety indicators often involve extremely low probabilities that are hard to grasp and interpret by passengers. In this paper, we propose an operationalization that is based on the perception of safety, which is easy to understand and resonates that perceptions often influence decisions stronger than objective variables. We conceptualize that passengers form a safety perception score of a particular flight based on their perception of airline and route attributes and that this score in turn is traded-off against other flight attributes, such as ticket costs, to arrive at a flight choice. In line with this conceptualization, two stated preference experiments are conducted. In a first experiment, combinations of airline and route attributes are evaluated in terms of safety that is captured on a rating scale. In a second experiment, safety perception is treated as an attribute and traded-off against other flight attributes to arrive at a flight choice. The paper presents the results of a regression and a Panel Mixed Logit model estimated from responses obtained from a convenience sample of 161 air passengers recruited in the Netherlands. The results of both models are then combined to calculate the willingness to pay values for improvements made to a range of airline and route attributes, taking into account socio-demographic variables and psychological traits. As expected, the results indicate that the willingness to pay for improving safety decreases with higher initial safety levels.     

Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions

Identifying the value orientations of subjects participating in market or non-market decisions by having them participate in a ring game may be helpful in understanding the behaviour of these subjects. This experiment presents the results of changes in the centre and the radius of a value orientations ring in an attempt to discover if the measured value orientations exhibit income or displacement effects. Neither significant income effects nor displacement effects are identified. An external validity check with a voluntary contribution game provides evidence that value orientations from rings centred around the origin of the decision-space explain significant portions of voluntary contributions while value orientations from displaced rings do not.     

金融数学专业设计性实验的教学安排

设计性实验对于金融数学专业是非常重要的,但是在设计性实验的教学过程中会遇到一定的困难,例如学生的实验过程不透明;学生会觉得实验太难太复杂而无从下手;学生提交的实验结果的正确性很难检验等。合理安排设计性实验的教学过程,将实验过程划分为授课教师可以掌控的几个部分,每部分指导学生独立完成就能够解决上述的常见问题,从而取得比较好的教学效果。     

浅谈公路工程项目施工网络图的优化

文章针对传统的公路施工网络图优化中存在的问题和不足,运用启发式搜索算法和遗传算法,对公路施工网络优化从时间、费用、资源三方面进行网络计划的优化和调整。     

高等数学背景下的高考数学试题探究

近年来高等数学的基本思想、基本方法和基本问题为高考试题的命制提供了新的背景和新的思路。高考试题考查的是学生的综合能力,尤其是创新学习能力。这就需要有一个比较公平又有梯度的知识背景。然而高等数学的一些内容可以通过初等数学的方法和手段解决,这类试题就很好地考查了学生进一步学习的潜能。因此以高等数学为背景的高考数学命题受到越来越多命题专家的青睐。文章从四个方面对高等数学背景下高考数学命题作出归类总结与分析。     

关于“数学问题提出目的”的研究评述

在数学教育界,数学问题提出的研究目的主要集中在以下几个方面:数学问题解决,提高学生问题意识和自主学习能力,提高学生数学思维,提高学生数学阅读,培养数学问题提出方法,本文通过评述提出,数学教育者和研究者应该把自我监控作为数学问题提出的研究目的。     

在数学建模中培养学生创新性思维及建议

本文论述了数学建模对培养学生创新能力、提高综合素质的重要作用,指出大学生创新性思维能力的培养是数学建模活动的核心目标,对在数学建模活动中如何培养学生的创新性思维能力作了讨论,并根据学校开设数学建模课程及参加数学建模竞赛活动的现状,就如何提高数学建模成绩提出了一些建议.     

浅谈培养和提高学生数学建模能力的对策

数学建模是一种数学思想方法,可以帮助学生灵活地综合地应用所学的知识来处理和解决一些现实生活中的问题.文章首先对数学建模的步骤、数学建模能力作了介绍;接着分析学生在数学建模中存在的问题,并针对问题提出培养和提高学生数学建模能力的对策.