Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Mechanism design (33)
- Asymptotic size (26)
- Bayes correlated equilibrium (25)
- Incomplete information (25)
- Unit root (25)
-
- Adverse selection (24)
- Information structure (24)
- Test (24)
- Climate change (23)
- Cointegration (22)
- Identification (22)
- Asymptotics (21)
- Default (21)
- Moment inequalities (21)
- Nonstationarity (21)
- Confidence set (20)
- Productivity (20)
- Asymptotic theory (19)
- Robustness (19)
- Autoregression (18)
- Common knowledge (18)
- Game theory (18)
- Moral hazard (18)
- Weak instruments (18)
- Brownian motion (17)
- Correlated equilibrium (17)
- General equilibrium (17)
- Long memory (17)
- Unit roots (17)
- Experimentation (16)
- Publication Year
Articles 241 - 270 of 2768
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Irving Fisher, Ragnar Frisch And The Elusive Quest For Measurable Utility, Robert W. Dimand
Irving Fisher, Ragnar Frisch And The Elusive Quest For Measurable Utility, Robert W. Dimand
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Commitment to the behaviorist approach to utility theory, to the usefulness of mathematics in economic analysis and to equalization of the marginal utility of income as a principle of just taxation brought Irving Fisher and Ragnar Frisch to attempt to measure the marginal utility of income, and led them to collaborate in forming the Econometric Society and sponsoring the establishment of the Cowles Commission, institutions advancing economic theory in connection to mathematics and statistics. To be presented at a symposium at the University of Oslo, December 3, 2019, honoring the 50th anniversary of the award to Ragnar Frisch of the …
'Follow The Data' — What Data Says About Real-World Behavior In Commons Problems, Caleb M. Koch, Heinrich H. Nax
'Follow The Data' — What Data Says About Real-World Behavior In Commons Problems, Caleb M. Koch, Heinrich H. Nax
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We test the game-theoretic foundations of common-pool resources using an individual-level dataset of groundwater usage that accounts for 3% of US irrigated agriculture. Using necessary and sufficient revealed preference tests for dynamic games, we find: (i) a rejection of the standard game-theoretic arguments based on strategic substitutes, and instead (ii) support for models building on reciprocity-like behavior and strategic complements. By estimating strategic interactions directly, we find that reciprocity-like interactions drive behavior more than market and climate trends. Taken together, we take a step toward developing more realistic models to understand groundwater usage, and related issues pertaining to tragedy of …
Bitcoin: An Impossibility Theorem For Proof-Of-Work Based Protocols, Jacob Leshno, Philipp Strack
Bitcoin: An Impossibility Theorem For Proof-Of-Work Based Protocols, Jacob Leshno, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Bitcoin’s main innovation lies in allowing a decentralized system that relies on anonymous, profit driven miners who can freely join the system. We formalize these properties in three axioms: anonymity of miners, no incentives for miners to consolidate, and no incentive to assuming multiple fake identities. This novel axiomatic formalization allows us to characterize which other protocols are feasible: Every protocol with these properties must have the same reward scheme as Bitcoin. This implies an impossibility result for risk-averse miners: no protocol satisfies the aforementioned constraints simultaneously without giving miners a strict incentive to merge. Furthermore, any protocol either gives …
Bitcoin: An Impossibility Theorem For Proof-Of-Work Based Protocols, Jacob Leshno, Philipp Strack
Bitcoin: An Impossibility Theorem For Proof-Of-Work Based Protocols, Jacob Leshno, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A key part of decentralized consensus protocols is a procedure for random selection, which is the source of the majority of miners cost and wasteful energy consumption in Bitcoin. We provide a simple economic model for random selection mechanism and show that any PoW protocol with natural desirable properties is outcome equivalent to the random selection mechanism used in Bitcoin.
Durables And Lemons: Private Information And The Market For Cars, Richard Blundell, Ran Gu, Søren Leth-Petersen, Hamish Low, Costas Meghir
Durables And Lemons: Private Information And The Market For Cars, Richard Blundell, Ran Gu, Søren Leth-Petersen, Hamish Low, Costas Meghir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We specify an equilibrium model of car ownership with private information where individuals sell and purchase new and second-hand cars over their life-cycle. This private information introduces a transaction cost, distorts the market and reduces the value of a car as a savings instrument. We estimate the model using Danish linked registry data on car ownership, income and wealth. The transaction cost, which we term the lemons penalty, is estimated to be 18% of the price in the first year of ownership, declining with the length of ownership. It leads to large reductions in the turnover of cars and in …
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A data intermediary pays consumers for information about their preferences and sells the information so acquired to firms that use it to tailor their products and prices. The social dimension of the individual data - whereby an individual’s data are predictive of the behavior of others - generates a data externality that reduces the intermediary’s cost of acquiring information. We derive the intermediary’s optimal data policy and show that it preserves the privacy of the consumers’ identities while providing precise information about market demand to the firms. This enables the intermediary to capture the entire value of information as the …
Social Exclusion, Ambiguity And (Ir)Rationality, Annette Krauss, Donald J. Brown
Social Exclusion, Ambiguity And (Ir)Rationality, Annette Krauss, Donald J. Brown
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
This working paper extends the methodology of non-smooth affective portfolio theory (APT) for eliciting (IR)rational preferences of investors endowed with continuous quasilinear utility functions, where assets are portfolios of risky and ambiguous state-contingent claims. The elicitation is a solution of the affective Afriat inequalities;see technical appendix 1. Solving the smooth affective Afriat inequalities is Np-hard; see technical appendices 2, 3, and 4. The proposed extension is a methodology for the elicitation of (IR)rational preferences of individuals endowed with random continuous quasilinear utility functions defined over finite subsets of discrete social goods as a refutable model of social exclusion in the …
Durables And Lemons: Private Information And The Market For Cars, Richard Blundell, Ran Gu, Soren Leth-Petersen, Hamish Low, Costas Meghir
Durables And Lemons: Private Information And The Market For Cars, Richard Blundell, Ran Gu, Soren Leth-Petersen, Hamish Low, Costas Meghir
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We specify an equilibrium model of car ownership with private information where individuals sell and purchase new and second-hand cars over their life-cycle. Private information induces a transaction cost and distorts the market reducing the value of a car as a savings instrument. We estimate the model using data on car ownership in Denmark, linked to register data. The lemons penalty is estimated to be 18% of the price in the rst year of ownership, declining with the length of ownership. It leads to large reductions in the turnover of cars and in the probability of downgrading at job loss.
A Structural Model Of A Multitasking Salesforce: Multidimensional Incentives And Plan Design, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir, Kosuke Uetake
A Structural Model Of A Multitasking Salesforce: Multidimensional Incentives And Plan Design, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir, Kosuke Uetake
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
The paper broadens the focus of empirical research on salesforce management to include multitasking settings with multidimensional incentives, where salespeople have private information about customers. This allows us to ask novel substantive questions around multidimensional incentive design and job design while managing the costs and benefits of private information. To this end, the paper introduces the first structural model of a multitasking salesforce in response to multidimensional incentives. The model also accommodates (i) dynamic intertemporal tradeoffs in effort choice across the tasks and (ii) salesperson’s private information about customers. We apply our model in a rich empirical setting in microfinance …
On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women’S Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply And Gender Norms, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Charity Troyer Moore
On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women’S Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply And Gender Norms, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Charity Troyer Moore
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into these accounts or into the male household head’s account (the status quo). Women in a random subset of villages were also trained on account use. In the short run, relative to women just offered bank accounts, those who also received direct deposit and training increased their labor supply in the public and private sectors. In the long …
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data -whereby a consumer’s data are predictive of others’ behavior- generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary’s cost of acquiring the information. The intermediary optimally preserves the privacy of consumers’ identities if and only if doing so increases social surplus. This policy enables the intermediary to capture the total value of the information as the number of consumers becomes large.
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We propose a model of data intermediation to analyze the incentives for sharing individual data in the presence of informational externalities. A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market in which firms and consumers can tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data - whereby an individual’s data are predictive of the behavior of others - generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary’s cost of acquiring information. We derive the intermediary’s optimal data policy and establish that it preserves the …
Affective Portfolio Analysis: Risk, Ambiguity And (Ir)Rationality, Donald J. Brown
Affective Portfolio Analysis: Risk, Ambiguity And (Ir)Rationality, Donald J. Brown
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Ambiguous assets are characterized as assets where objective and subjective probabilities of tomorrow’s asset-returns are ill-defined or may not exist, e.g., bitcoin, volatility indices or any IPO. Investors may choose to diversify their portfolios of fiat money, stocks and bonds by investing in ambiguous assets, a fourth asset class, to hedge the uncertainties of future returns that are not risks. (IR)rational probabilities are computable alternative descriptions of the distribution of returns for ambiguous assets. (IR)rational probabilities can be used to define an investor’s (IR)rational expected utility function in the class of non-expected utilities. Investment advisors use revealed preference analysis to …
Information, Market Power And Price Volatility, Dirk Bergemann, Tibor Heumann, Stephen Morris
Information, Market Power And Price Volatility, Dirk Bergemann, Tibor Heumann, Stephen Morris
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We consider demand function competition with a finite number of agents and private information. We show that any degree of market power can arise in the unique equilibrium under an information structure that is arbitrarily close to complete information. In particular, regardless of the number of agents and the correlation of payoff shocks, market power may be arbitrarily close to zero (so we obtain the competitive outcome) or arbitrarily large (so there is no trade in equilibrium). By contrast, price volatility is always less than the variance of the aggregate shock across all information structures.
Jacob Marschak And The Cowles Approaches To The Theory Of Money And Assets, Robert W. Dimand, Harald Hagemann
Jacob Marschak And The Cowles Approaches To The Theory Of Money And Assets, Robert W. Dimand, Harald Hagemann
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Jacob Marschak shaped the emergence of monetary theory and portfolio choice at the Cowles Commission (which he directed from 1943 to 1948, but with which he was involved already from 1937) at the University of Chicago, where he was the doctoral teacher of Leonid Hurwicz, Harry Markowitz and Don Patinkin, and then from 1955 at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, where he was a senior colleague of James Tobin until moving to UCLA in 1960. Marschak’s later attempts to clarify the concept of liquidity and to emphasize the role of new information for economic behavior date back as far …
A Structural Model Of A Multitasking Salesforce: Multidimensional Incentives And Plan Design, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir, Kosuke Uetake
A Structural Model Of A Multitasking Salesforce: Multidimensional Incentives And Plan Design, Minkyung Kim, K. Sudhir, Kosuke Uetake
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We develop the first structural model of a multitasking salesforce to address questions of job design and incentive compensation design. The model incorporates three novel features: (i) multitasking effort choice given a multidimensional incentive plan; (ii) salesperson’s private information about customers and (iii) dynamic intertemporal tradeoffs in effort choice across the tasks. The empirical application uses data from a micro nance bank where loan officers are jointly responsible and incentivized for both loan acquisition repayment but has broad relevance for salesforce management in CRM settings involving customer acquisition and retention. We extend two-step estimation methods used for unidimensional compensation plans …
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
The Economics Of Social Data, Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti, Tan Gan
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A data intermediary pays consumers for information about their preferences, and sells the information so-acquired to firms that use it to tailor their product offers and prices. The social dimension of the individual data - whereby an individual’s data is predictive of the behavior of others - generates a data externality that reduces the intermediary’s cost of acquiring information. We derive the data intermediary’s optimal information policy, and show that it preserves privacy over the identity of the consumers, but provides precise information about market demand to the firms.
Macroeconomic Dynamics At The Cowles Commission From The 1930s To The 1950s, Robert W. Dimand
Macroeconomic Dynamics At The Cowles Commission From The 1930s To The 1950s, Robert W. Dimand
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
This paper explores the development of dynamic modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations at the Cowles Commission from Roos, Dynamic Economics (Cowles Monograph No. 1, 1934) and Davis, Analysis of Economic Time Series (Cowles Monograph No. 6, 1941) to Koopmans, ed., Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models (Cowles Monograph No. 10, 1950) and Klein’s Economic Fluctuations in the United States, 1921-1941 (Cowles Monograph No. 11, 1950), emphasizing the emergence of a distinctive Cowles Commission approach to structural modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations influenced by Cowles Commission work on structural estimation of simulation equations models, as advanced by Haavelmo (“A Probability Approach to Econometrics,” …
Business Cycle During Structural Change: Arthur Lewis' Theory From A Neoclassical Perspective, Kjetil Storesletten, Bo Zhao, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Business Cycle During Structural Change: Arthur Lewis' Theory From A Neoclassical Perspective, Kjetil Storesletten, Bo Zhao, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
We document that the nature of business cycles evolves over the process of development and structural change. In countries with large declining agricultural sectors, aggregate employment is uncorrelated with GDP. During booms, employment in agriculture declines while labor productivity increases in agriculture more than in other sectors. We construct a unified theory of business cycles and structural change consistent with the stylized facts. The focal point of the theory is the simultaneous decline and modernization of agriculture. As capital accumulates, agriculture becomes increasingly capital intensive as modern agriculture crowds out traditional agriculture. Structural change accelerates in booms and slows down …
On The Existence Of Equilibrium In Bayesian Games Without Complementarities, Idione Meneghel, Rabee Tourky
On The Existence Of Equilibrium In Bayesian Games Without Complementarities, Idione Meneghel, Rabee Tourky
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
This paper presents new results on the existence of pure-strategy Bayesian equilibria in specified functional forms. These results broaden the scope of methods developed by Reny (2011) well beyond monotone pure strategies. Applications include natural models of first-price and all-pay auctions not covered by previous existence results. To illustrate the scope of our results, we provide an analysis of three auctions: (i) a first-price auction of objects that are heterogeneous and imperfect substitutes; (ii) a first-price auction in which bidders’ payoffs have a very general interdependence structure; and (iii) an all-pay auction with non-monotone equilibrium.
On The Existence Of Equilibrium In Bayesian Games Without Complementarities, Idione Meneghel, Rabee Tourky
On The Existence Of Equilibrium In Bayesian Games Without Complementarities, Idione Meneghel, Rabee Tourky
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
In a recent paper, Reny (2011) generalized the results of Athey (2001) and McAdams (2003) on the existence of monotone strategy equilibrium in Bayesian games. Though the generalization is subtle, Reny introduces far-reaching new techniques applying the fixed point theorem of Eilenberg and Montgomery (1946, Theorem 5). This is done by showing that with atomless type spaces the set of monotone functions is an absolute retract and when the values of the best response correspondence are non-empty sub-semilattices of monotone functions, they too are absolute retracts. In this paper, we provide an extensive generalization of Reny (2011), McAdams (2003), and …
On The Existence Of Equilibrium In Bayesian Games Without Complementarities, Idione Meneghel, Rabee Tourky
On The Existence Of Equilibrium In Bayesian Games Without Complementarities, Idione Meneghel, Rabee Tourky
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
This paper presents new results on the existence of pure-strategy Bayesian equilibria in specified functional forms. These results broaden the scope of methods developed by Reny (2011) well beyond monotone pure strategies. Applications include natural models of first-price and all-pay auctions not covered by previous existence results. To illustrate the scope of our results, we provide an analysis of three auctions: (i) a first-price auction of objects that are heterogeneous and imperfect substitutes; (ii) a first-price auction in which bidders’ payoffs have a very general interdependence structure; and (iii) an all-pay auction with non-monotone equilibrium.
Estimated Costs Of Injuries In College And High School Female Sports, Ray C. Fair, Christopher Champa
Estimated Costs Of Injuries In College And High School Female Sports, Ray C. Fair, Christopher Champa
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Injury rates in thirteen U.S. women’s college sports and four U.S. girls’ high school sports are examined in this paper. The sports are categorized as high injury (H) or low injury (L) and differences in injury rates between the two are examined. Estimates are presented of the injury savings that would result if the H sports were changed to have injury rates similar to those in the L sports. The estimated college savings are 13,610 fewer injuries per year and 2,020 fewer healthy years lost-to-injury per year. The estimated high school savings are 143,900 fewer injuries per year and 24,300 …
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A single seller faces a sequence of buyers with unit demand. The buyers are forward-looking and long-lived but vanish (and are replaced) at a constant rate. The arrival time and the valuation is private information of each buyer and unobservable to the seller. Any incentive-compatible mechanism has to induce truth-telling about the arrival time and the evolution of the valuation. We derive the optimal stationary mechanism, characterize its qualitative structure and derive a closed-form solution. As the arrival time is private information, the agent can choose the time at which he reports his arrival. The truth-telling constraint regarding the arrival …
U.S. Infrastructure: 1929-2017, Ray C. Fair
U.S. Infrastructure: 1929-2017, Ray C. Fair
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
This paper examines the history of U.S. infrastructure since 1929 and in the process reports an interesting fact about the U.S. economy. Infrastructure as a percent of GDP began a steady decline around 1970, and the government budget deficit became positive and large at roughly the same time. The infrastructure pattern in other countries does not mirror that in the United States, so the United States appears to be a special case. The overall results suggest that the United States became less future oriented beginning around 1970. This change has persisted. This is the interesting fact. Whether it can be …
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A single seller faces a sequence of buyers with unit demand. The buyers are forward-looking and long-lived. The arrival time and the valuation is private information of each buyer. Any incentive compatible mechanism has to induce truth-telling about the arrival time and the evolution of the valuation. We derive the optimal stationary mechanism in closed form and characterize its qualitative structure. As the arrival time is private information, the buyer can choose the time at which he reports his arrival. The truth-telling constraint regarding the arrival time can be represented as an optimal stopping problem. The stopping time determines the …
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A single seller faces a sequence of buyers with unit demand. The buyers are forward-looking and long-lived. Each buyer has private information about his arrival time and valuation where the latter evolves according to a geometric Brownian motion. Any incentive-compatible mechanism has to induce truth-telling about the arrival time and the evolution of the valuation. We establish that the optimal stationary allocation policy can be implemented by a simple posted price. The truth-telling constraint regarding the arrival time can be represented as an optimal stopping problem which determines the first time at which the buyer participates in the mechanism. The …
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A single seller faces a sequence of buyers with unit demand. The buyers are forward-looking and long-lived but vanish (and are replaced) at a constant rate. The arrival time and the valuation is private information of each buyer and unobservable to the seller. Any incentive compatible mechanism has to induce truth-telling about the arrival time and the evolution of the valuation. We derive the optimal stationary mechanism, characterize its qualitative structure, and derive a closed-form solution. As the arrival time is private information, the buyer can choose the time at which he reports his arrival. The truth-telling constraint regarding the …
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Progressive Participation, Dirk Bergemann, Philipp Strack
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
A single seller faces a sequence of buyers with unit demand. The buyers are forwardlooking and long-lived but vanish (and are replaced) at a constant rate. The arrival time and the valuation is private information of each buyer and unobservable to the seller. Any incentive compatible mechanism has to induce truth-telling about the arrival time and the evolution of the valuation. We derive the optimal stationary mechanism in closed form and characterize its qualitative structure. As the arrival time is private information, the buyer can choose the time at which he reports his arrival. The truth-telling constraint regarding the arrival …
Migration And Informal Insurance, Costas Meghir, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts, Melanie Morten
Migration And Informal Insurance, Costas Meghir, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corina Mommaerts, Melanie Morten
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. Our model of endogenous migration and risk sharing shows that risky and temporary migration opportunities can induce an improvement in risk sharing enabling profitable migration. Accounting for improved risk sharing, the migration experiment increased welfare by 12.9%. However, permanent declines in migration costs improve outside options for households and can lead to reductions in risk sharing. The short-run experimental results for …