Information, civil liberties, and the political economy of witch-hunts

Drawing from an extensive literature on the European witch-hunt,McCarthyism, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this articlestudies how differences in the level of civil liberties protectionand the extent to which the leader has better information aboutthe level of the alleged menace than the populace, togetherwith other variables, jointly determine the incidence of witch-hunts.I develop a model showing that at any level of civil libertiesprotection, the incidence of illegitimate witch-hunts is higherwhen the leader enjoys an informational advantage than whenhe does not. This difference, however, is decreasing in thelevel of civil liberties protection. However, no amount of civilliberties protection is sufficient to prevent the occurrenceof illegitimate witch-hunts, so long as the citizen has a concernfor the menace, and the leader enjoys an informational advantageand finds the benefit from conducting a witch-hunt to be largerthan his reputational loss.     

Multidimensional Competition and Corporate Disclosure

In this paper, we argue that the influence product market competition exerts on disclosure is defined by the combined effect of the incentives and disincentives to disclose raised by the multiple competition dimensions. We distinguish between firm‐ and industry‐level competition measures, and we hypothesize that the former raises agency and proprietary costs, whereas the latter creates incentives to disclose either to fulfil the owners’ need for information to monitor managers or to deter the entrance of new competitors in the industry. Our research design allows for non‐monotonic relationships between competition and disclosure as well as for interactions between competition dimensions. Using a sample of US manufacturing companies, we gather evidence that is consistent with our hypotheses. First, we find an inverted U‐shape relationship between corporate disclosure and a firm's abnormal profitability, which is suggestive of firms being reluctant to disclose when they are underperforming (outperforming) their rivals because of the fear of unveiling agency conflicts (raising proprietary costs). Second, we observe a U‐shape relationship between corporate disclosure and industry profitability, although this U design evolves to approximate a rising function as the protection provided by entry barriers increases.     

Communication and coordination in the laboratory collective resistance game

This paper presents a laboratory collective resistance (CR) game to study how different forms of non-binding communication among responders can help coordinate their collective resistance against a leader who transgresses against them. Contrary to the predictions of analysis based on purely self-regarding preferences, we find that non-binding communication about intended resistance increases the incidence of no transgression even in the one-shot laboratory CR game. In particular, we find that the incidence of no transgression increases from 7 percent with no communication up to 25–37 percent depending on whether communication occurs before or after the leader’s transgression decision. Responders’ messages are different when the leaders can observe them, and the leaders use the observed messages to target specific responders for transgression.

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Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.      

数据创新改变商业未来

<正>技术已经越来越成为商业创新的强大驱动力,世界上许多具有创新力的企业都在借助技术进行数据挖掘,快速创新,甚至形成新的商业模式,以增强自身优势,特别是在那些最需要快速创新的行业里,已经有了一些成功的实践和案例。     

Learning, teaching, and turn taking in the repeated assignment game

History-dependent strategies are often used to support cooperation in repeated game models. Using the indefinitely repeated common-pool resource assignment game and a perfect stranger experimental design, this paper reports novel evidence that players who have successfully used an efficiency-enhancing turn taking strategy will teach other players in subsequent supergames to adopt this strategy. We find that subjects engage in turn taking frequently in both the Low Conflict and the High Conflict treatments. Prior experience with turn taking significantly increases turn taking in both treatments. Moreover, successful turn taking often involves fast learning, and individuals with turn taking experience are more likely to be teachers than inexperienced individuals. The comparative statics results show that teaching in such an environment also responds to incentives, since teaching is empirically more frequent in the Low Conflict treatment with higher benefits and lower costs.     

Primary school students' interests in STEM careers: how conceptions of STEM professionals and gender moderation influence

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - This study assessed elementary school students’ conceptions of STEM professions and its potential influence on STEM career interest,...