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作者：Heller, Yuval
作者单位：University of Oxford; University of Oxford
摘要：Experimental evidence suggests that people tend to be overconfident in the sense that they overestimate the accuracy of their private information. In this paper, we show that risk-averse principals might prefer overconfident agents in various strategic interactions because these agents help diversify the aggregate risk. This may help understanding why successful analysts and entrepreneurs tend to be overconfident. In addition, a different interpretation of the model presents a novel evolutiona...
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作者：Robbett, Andrea
作者单位：Middlebury College
摘要：This paper studies the dynamics by which populations with heterogeneous preferences for public good provision sort themselves into communities. I conduct laboratory experiments to consider which institutions best facilitate efficient self-organization when residents can move freely between locations. I find that institutions requiring all residents of a community to pay equal taxes enable subjects to sort into stable, homogeneous communities. Though sorted, residents often fail to attain the p...
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作者：Bernheim, B. Douglas; Kartik, Navin
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Columbia University
摘要：We study the characteristics of self-selected candidates in corrupt political systems. Individuals differ along two dimensions of unobservable character: public spirit (altruism) and honesty (disutility from selling out to special interests). Both aspects combine to determine an individual's quality as governor. We characterize properties of equilibrium candidate pools for arbitrary costs of running for office, including when costs become vanishingly small. We explore how policy instruments su...
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作者：Che, Yeon-Koo; Sethi, Rajiv
作者单位：Columbia University; Columbia University; The Santa Fe Institute
摘要：We examine the effects of speculation using credit derivatives on the cost of debt and the likelihood of default. The availability of credit default swaps induces investors who are optimistic about borrower revenues to sell protection instead of buying bonds. This benefits borrowers if protection can only be bought with an insurable interest, but can increase the cost of debt and crowd out productive lending if protection can be purchased as a bet on default. We also show that the possibility ...
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作者：Maccheroni, Fabio; Marinacci, Massimo; Rustichini, Aldo
作者单位：Bocconi University; Bocconi University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Boston University
摘要：We study a two-period economy in which agents' preferences take into account their relative economic position. The study builds on a decision theoretic analysis of the social emotions that underlie these relative concerns. These emotions, envy and pride, respond to social losses and gains, respectively. Our main result is that envy leads to conformism in consumption behavior and pride to diversity. We thus establish a link between emotions that are the object of study in psychology and neurosc...
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作者：Dekel, Eddie; Piccione, Michele
作者单位：Northwestern University; Tel Aviv University; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：Under sequential voting, voting late enables conditioning on which candidates are viable, while voting early can influence the field of candidates. But the latter effect can be harmful: shrinking the field increases not only the likelihood that future voters vote for one's favorite candidate, but also that they vote for an opponent. Specifically, if one's favorite candidate is significantly better than all others, then early voting is disadvantageous and all equilibria are equivalent to simult...
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作者：Sampson, Thomas
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：This paper analyzes how intra-industry trade affects the wage distribution when both workers and firms are heterogeneous. Positive assortative matching between worker skill and firm technology generates an employer size-wage premium and an exporter wage premium. Fixed export costs cause the selection of advanced technology, high-skill firms into exporting, and trade shifts the firm technology distribution upwards. Consequently, trade increases skill demand and wage inequality in all countries,...
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作者：Bierbrauer, Felix J.
作者单位：University of Cologne
摘要：We study optimal income taxation and public-goods provision under the assumption that the cross-section distributions of productive abilities or public-goods preferences are not known a priori. A conventional Mirrleesian treatment is shown to provoke manipulations of the policy mechanism by individuals with similar interests. The analysis therefore incorporates a requirement of coalition-proofness. The main result is that increased public-goods provision is associated with a more distortionary...
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作者：Collard-Wexler, Allan
作者单位：Duke University
摘要：Horizontal mergers have a large impact by inducing a long-lasting change in market structure. Only in an industry with substantial entry barriers is a merger not immediately counteracted by post-merger entry. To evaluate the duration of the effects of a merger, I use the model of Abbring and Campbell (2010) to estimate demand thresholds for entry and for exit. These thresholds, along with the process for demand, are estimated using data from the ready-mix concrete industry. Simulations predict...
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作者：Eswaran, Mukesh; Neary, Hugh M.
作者单位：University of British Columbia
摘要：We model the emergence of an innate, biological sense of property rights where resource scarcity and output contestability reign. Preferences evolve such that, in evolutionarily stable equilibrium, an object is valued more by an individual who possesses it, or has produced it, than if he is neither possessor nor producer. In a distributional contest for the object, the possessor/producer will devote more effort to retaining it than an interloper will to expropriating it. Asymmetry in preferenc...
