OPTIMISTIC BEHAVIOR WHEN A DECISION BIAS IS COSTLY: AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST

The existence of optimism when biased decisions are costly is investigated experimentally. Subjects make an informed guess about an exogenously determined event: the outside temperature a couple of days later. Payments in the control group depend only on how close the guess was to the realized temperature, while payments in the treatment group also depend positively on realized temperature. The data show the treatment group subjects to guess higher temperatures, that is, higher payments, compared with the control group. Results thus indicate that there is optimism also when a decision bias is costly. (JEL C91, D81, D84)     

THE SEX WHICH IS NOT ONE

Do so-called anti-globalization movements ignore gender issues? It would be erroneous to conclude – in accordance with mainstream feminist theory that considers all social movements alone with reference to ‘male hegemony’ – that alter-globalization movements are so inscribed into the patriarchal system as to silence feminist voices. In fact, the gender problematic is not absent from the debates of the Social Forums and all principal organizations take up gender onto their agenda. The opening of the alter-globalization discourse to the gender perspective occurs out of necessity and is not the result of a process of paying lip-service to a relevant topic. We will therefore reconstruct the normative mechanism whereby gender is set on the agenda and study concretely how the relevant actors experience and effect this appropriation. In doing this they encounter other activists with a long mobilization record, both feminists and post-feminists. This encounter may give rise to processes of alliance or processes of conflict. Gender thus constitutes a challenge for alter-globalization politics and indeed often a highly contested issue.     

INVESTMENT CHOICE ARCHITECTURE IN TRUST GAMES: WHEN “ALL‐IN” IS NOT ENOUGH

While many economic interactions feature “All‐or‐Nothing” options nudging investors towards going “all‐in,” such designs may unintentionally affect reciprocity. We manipulate the investor's action space in two versions of the “trust game.” In one version investors can invest either “all” their endowment or “nothing.” In the other version, they can invest any amount of the endowment. Consistent with our intentions‐based model, we show that “all‐or‐nothing” designs coax more investment but limit investors' demonstrability of intended trust. As a result, “all‐in” investors are less generously reciprocated than when they can invest any amount, where full investments are a clearer signal of trustworthiness. (JEL C72, C90, C91, D63, D64, L51)     

MORE INFORMATION IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER: THE CASE OF VOLUNTARY PROVISION OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

We use a new U.S. survey on pro‐environmental behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge and find that individuals engage in activities that they believe are more effective in reducing carbon emissions, regardless of whether or not these beliefs are accurate. We find that low provision of the public good is greater among people who believe they cannot do much for the environment and do not consider themselves environmentalists. A policy implication of our results is that the effect of more accurate information on the provision of the public good is ambiguous. (JEL Q50, Q54, C10)     

THE OPTIMAL TAXATION OF ASSET INCOME WHEN GOVERNMENT CONSUMPTION IS ENDOGENOUS: THEORY,ESTIMATION AND WELFARE

This paper derives the Ramsey optimal fiscal policy for taxing asset income in a model where government expenditure is a function of net output or the inputs that produce it. Extending work by Kenneth L. Judd, I demonstrate that the canonical result that the optimal tax on capital income is zero in the medium to long term is a special case of a more general model. Employing a vector error correction model to estimate the relationship between government consumption and net output or the factor inputs that generate it for the United States between 1948Q1 and 2015Q4, I demonstrate that this special case is empirically implausible, and show how a cointegrating vector can be used to determine the optimal tax schedule. I simulate a version of the model using the empirical estimates to measure the welfare implications of changing the tax rate on asset income, and contrast these results with those generated in a version of the model where government consumption is purely exogenous. The shifting pattern of welfare measurements confirms the theoretical results. I calculate that the prevailing effective tax rate on net asset income in the United States between 1970 and 2014 averaged 0.449. Hence abolishing the tax completely does generate welfare improvements, though only by the equivalent of between 1.103% and 1.616% permanent increase in consumption—well under half the implied welfare benefit when the endogeneity of the government consumption is ignored. The maximum welfare improvement from shifting part of the burden of tax from capital to labor is the equivalent of a permanent increase in consumption of between only 1.491% and 1.858%, and is attained when the tax rate on asset income is lowered to between 0.148 and 0.186. Allowing the tax rate to vary over time raises the maximum welfare benefit to 1.865%. All the results are very robust to a wide range of elasticities of labor supply. (JEL E62, H21, H50)     

如果没有展览艺术史也许不是现在这样

今天,艺术展览不再让人陌生。据不完全统计,在一个月的时间里,全球正在举办的展览就有大约4万个,国内正在举办的展览数百个。从某种意义上说,现当代艺术史是通过一个又一个展览来推进和改变的,现当代艺术史俨然成为展览史,并且这种推动和改变还将通过展览继续下去。     

WHEN THE DOCTOR IS A “LADY”: POWER,STATUS AND GENDER IN PHYSICIAN-PATIENT ENCOUNTERS*

An extensive body of research indicates that men interrupt women much more often than the reverse, across a variety of situations. Some conclude that men's interruptions of women in cross-sex conversations constitute an exercise of power and dominance over their conversational partners. To be sure, power is an important facet of many other social relationships, such as those between whites and Blacks, bosses and employees, and—of immediate interest—doctors and patients. Moreover, much of our existing knowledge of sex differences in behavior confounds gender with status. This paper reports results of an exploratory study of interruptions between physicians and patients during actual “visits to the doctor.” Findings based on detailed analyses of videotaped encounters offer empirical support for an asymmetrical view of the physician-patient relationship: physicians interrupt patients disproportionately—except when the doctor is a “lady.” Then, patients interrupt as much or more than physicians, and their interruptions seem to subvert physicians' authority. Discussion focuses on the respective roles of power, status and gender in face-to-face interaction.     

IT'S NOT JUST A JOKE

Sexism is a recurrent part of women's everyday lives. One understudied area within gender scholarship is the content and implications of sexist humor as a form of sexism. In this article, we explore the sexist content of 153 Internet jokes. Our analysis demonstrates that sexist jokes offer portrayals of misogyny that serve many functions, some of which include the sexual objectification of women, devaluation of their personal and professional abilities, and support of violence against women. Implications of such humor are discussed as well as future research possibilities in this area.     

LEARNING TO NOT LABOR:

This article examines the micro-analytical strategies of identity formation among individuals attempting to transform their ascribed social-class position into an achieved social-class position. The interpersonal strategies discussed include associational embracement, associational distancing, and presentations of self. Data come from forty in-depth, semi-structured interviews with college seniors (twenty men and twenty women) from a large northeastern public university. The students were sampled systematically using a randomized list provided by the Office of Institutional Research. Results suggest that social transformation is difficult, in part, because of the interpersonal strategies in which individuals must engage. Self-avowals are not enough to achieve a desired social identity; rather, individuals must engage in the requisite identity-work activities in order to be successful in social transformation. These results suggest a convergence between social identity theory and identity theory to the extent that individuals must be successful in their role enactments if they hope to gain membership in a particular social group.     

DOING IT WHEN OTHERS DO: A STRATEGIC MODEL OF PROCRASTINATION

This paper develops a strategic model of procrastination in which present‐biased agents prefer to perform an onerous task with someone else. This turns their decision of when to perform the task into a procrastination game—a dynamic coordination game between present‐biased players. The model characterizes the conditions under which interaction mitigates or exacerbates procrastination. A procrastinator matched with a worse procrastinator may perform her task earlier than she otherwise would: she wants to avoid the increased temptation that her peer's company would generate. Procrastinators can thus use bad company as a commitment device to mitigate their self‐control problem. (JEL C72, C73, D03, D91)     

AT WAR

Technological supremacy means that the West can avoid getting up close and personal to kill. Our legacies of imperial power ensure that our wars are fought ‘over there’, and men in post-industrial societies are disassociated from the death embracing culture of the warrior. However, in the aftermath of September 11, we have entered a new era of global militarization – the shadowed world of the War on Terror. It confronts us with the historical changes in men's relationship to war, and how masculinity has been shaped by the processes of formalization and informalization. It opens up a new kind of front, with an enemy who is claimed to be everywhere, and a military-market complex that is denationalizing war in its promotion of a neo-liberal imperialism.     

WAR OF ATTRITION: EVIDENCE FROM A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT ON MARKET EXIT

We report an experiment designed to study whether inefficient firms are systematically driven from overcrowded markets. Our data set includes a series of 3,800 wars of attrition of a type modeled by Fudenberg and Tirole in 1986. We find that exit tends to be efficient and exit times conform surprisingly well to point predictions of the model. Moreover, subjects respond similarly to implementations framed in terms of losses as they do to those framed in terms of gains. (JEL D21, L11, C92)     

"KICK 'EM WHEN THEY'RE DOWN":

The latest version of the frustration-aggression hypothesis (here, FA) posits that any form of negative affect or distress is likely to increase the likelihood of aggression. Stressful life events could thus produce aggression and violence because they create negative affect. In contrast, the social interactionist (SI) approach interprets many acts of aggression as expressions of grievances and informal social control. Stressful life events cause people to behave in ways that lead others to attack them. This study examines these approaches using (1) an adult sample of ex-criminal offenders, exmental patients, and the general population, and (2) longitudinal data obtained from a national sample of high school boys. The results suggest that being a target mediates the negative life-events/aggression relationship, thus favoring SI over FA. Also, anger affects other forms of delinquency as strongly as it affects aggressive behavior, implying that some forms of delinquency, not usually associated with aggression, have aggressive goals.     

刘威葳:成功的境界并非刻意追求

西方媒体评价她的演技"像钻石一样熠熠生辉";外国电影人士认为,她是"继张曼玉之后,又一身上具有东方典雅气质的中国女演员."好莱坞最大的经纪管理公司CAA,己与她签约,本年度她将担纲主演一部文艺片和一部商业片.     

CLASSROOM EXPERIMENTS: NOT JUST FUN AND GAMES

The impact of classroom experiments on student performance, attitudes towards economics, and retention is examined. Experiments increase cognitive gains overall but may be more helpful in teaching some topics than others. The size of the impact varies with preferred learning style. Multimodal and kinesthetic learners are significantly affected, while read–write learners fare just as well with the traditional lecture/discussion format. Attitudes towards economics and retention of economic knowledge are also improved by classroom experiments. The results indicate that the costs of implementing experiments in the classroom may very well be offset by the benefits to students. ( JEL A22, C90)