An experimental study of persuasion bias and social influence in networks

In many areas of social life, individuals receive information about a particular issue of interest from multiple sources. When these sources are connected through a network, then proper aggregation of this information by an individual involves taking into account the structure of this network. The inability to aggregate properly may lead to various types of distortions. In our experiment, four agents all want to find out the value of a particular parameter unknown to all. Agents receive private signals about the parameter and can communicate their estimates of the parameter repeatedly through a network, the structure of which is known by all players. We present results from experiments with three different networks. We find that the information of agents who have more outgoing links in a network gets more weight in the information aggregation of the other agents than under optimal updating. Our results are consistent with the model of “persuasion bias” of DeMarzo et al. (2013. Q. J. Econ., 909) and at odds with an alternative heuristic according to which the most influential agents are those with more incoming links.     

MARKETS FOR INFLATION‐INDEXED BONDS AS MECHANISMS FOR EFFICIENT MONETARY POLICY

We consider a continuous‐time framework featuring a central bank, private agents, and a financial market. The central bank's objective is to maximize a functional, which measures the classical trade‐off between output and inflation over time plus income from the sales of inflation‐indexed bonds minus payments for the liabilities that the inflation‐indexed bonds produce at maturity. Private agents are assumed to have adaptive expectations. The financial market is modeled in continuous‐time Black–Scholes–Merton style and financial agents are averse against inflation risk, attaching an inflation risk premium to nominal bonds. Following this route, we explain demand for inflation‐indexed securities on the financial market from a no‐arbitrage assumption and derive pricing formulas for inflation‐linked bonds and calls, which lead to a supply‐demand equilibrium. Furthermore, we study the consequences that the sales of inflation‐indexed securities have on the observed inflation rate and price level. Similar to the study of Walsh, we find that the inflationary bias is significantly reduced, and hence that markets for inflation‐indexed bonds provide a mechanism to reduce inflationary bias and increase central bank's credibility.     

A META-ANALYSIS OF FDI AND PRODUCTIVITY SPILLOVERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This meta-analysis reviews the intrasector heterogeneity of productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in 31 developing countries through a larger more comprehensive data set. We investigate how the inconsistencies in the reported spillover findings are affected by publication bias, characteristics of the data, estimation techniques, and empirical specification, analyzing 1450 spillover estimates from 69 empirical studies published in 1986–2013. Our findings suggest that reported FDI spillover estimates are affected by publication bias. In combination with model misspecification of the primary studies, the bias overstates the genuine underlying meta-effect, but the meta-effect remains economically and statistically significant. Our results emphasize that spillovers and their sign largely depend systematically on specification characteristics of the primary studies and publication bias. Publication bias is not caused by “best practice” choices. Future research needs to cover more developing countries and to investigate not only whether spillovers occur, but also to explore inside the black box of how spillovers actually emerge.     

The etiology of the frugal consumer

This study examines several psychological factors hypothesized as antecedents of frugality. Although external forces, such as downturns in economic activity, can promote frugal behavior, it is also likely associated with a syndrome of individual differences that are independent of economic conditions. These include values, personality characteristics, and other consumer characteristics. Our study used data from 256 U.S. consumers to test hypothesized relationships between frugality measured as a personality- or lifestyle-type construct characteristic embedded in the social psychology of consumption. We identified four key constructs as likely antecedents of frugality: materialism, status consumption, brand engagement, and consumer independence. The results showed that frugal consumers are less materialistic, less status conscious, and less involved with brands than other consumers, but are more independent from the opinions of others in their consumer decision making.     

Home Bias in Emerging Bond and Stock Markets

In this paper, we empirically examine sizes and sources of home bias in both bond and equity markets for twenty emerging countries and twenty-two developed countries over the 2001-11 sample period. The average size of home bias in both bond and stock markets is found to be much larger in emerging countries than in developed countries. Using the explanatory variables in two categories of economic development and market performance, we employ dynamic panel data regression models to analyze major sources of home bias. The main results are the following: First, market performance factors generally affect home bias more strongly than do economic development factors. Second, market factors including market return, volatility, and liquidity support various hypotheses under informational asymmetries, such as return chasing, risk aversion, and flight to quality. Third, among macroeconomic factors, it is shown that real gross domestic product growth has negative effects and country leverage has positive effects on a specific home bias, backing up the size-bias and the flight-to-quality hypotheses, respectively. Finally, and perhaps most important in this paper, the effect of bond market performance on equity home bias is found to be significantly stronger than the effect of equity market performance on bond home bias from the market interaction model estimation, suggesting that a policy design needs to begin with increasing bond market efficiency to reduce equity market home bias.     

Delegating optimal monetary policy inertia

In a forward-looking business cycle model, central banks can achieve the (timeless)optimal commitment equilibrium even in the absence of a commitment technology, if they are delegated with an objective function that is different from the societal one. The paper develops a general linear-quadratic method to solve for the optimal delegation parameters that generate the optimal amount of inertia in a Markov-perfect equilibrium, and studies the optimal design of some policy regimes that are nested within this framework: the (squared) optimal targeting rule; inflation, output-gap growth and nominal income growth targeting; and inflation and output-gap contracts.     

Market Failure and Japanese Farmland Rents

Since the early 1950s, Japanese farmland rents have been regulated and a consensus emerged that rent control led to market failure. Hypothesising a rent‐formation model where rents are determined by prices, this paper estimates a threshold autoregressive model which integrates three tests of market failure, namely, inefficiency, bias and asymmetry. There are four results. First, a long‐run relationship exists between rents and prices, and the Japanese farmland rental market is efficient. Second, the rent‐price elasticity is unity and the market is unbiased. Third, rents are Granger‐caused by prices which supports the rent‐formation model. Fourth, asymmetry exists where more rapid error‐correction occurs immediately after policy reform when rent growth exceeds price growth by 3.6% or more, and rent control has benefitted tenants.     

Classifying and classified: An interpretive study of the consumption of cruises by the “new” Brazilian middle class

The paper seeks to make a contribution in addressing a theoretical gap related to how emerging middle class consumers utilize consumption as a classificatory practice. We adopted an interpretive approach and used the method of participant observation combined with in-depth interviews. Drawing from Bourdieu and Veblen, two main categories were used to explain the use of cruises as a means of classification: distinction and conspicuous consumption. It was found in addition to consumers classifying themselves in relation to others, they classify the time spent, space, artifacts, and the very experience of the cruise itself. The cruise simulates, for a short period of time, the life of the “leisure class,” with its attendant conspicuous consumption and waste.     

深圳企业标准化发展研究

从推行企业标准化的原因着手,报告了深圳企业标准化的现状,对深圳企业标准化工作存在的问题和今后的努力方向进行了研究。