GOVERNING A GROUNDWATER COMMONS: A STRATEGIC AND LABORATORY ANALYSIS OF WESTERN WATER LAW

We examine strategic behavior in groundwater depletion within the setting of state governance of groundwater resources in the American West. Solving a dynamic common-pool resource model for its optimal solution and its subgame perfect equilibrium provides benchmarks for behavior observed in laboratory experiments. Three forms of legal rules—common-pool depletion with a "rule-of-capture" to establish ownership (absolute ownership doctrine), entry restrictions (prior appropriation doctrine), and stock quotas (correlative rights doctrine—are examined in terms of their impact on individual strategic behavior in laboratory experiments.     

EXPERIMENTAL COMPARISONS OF AUCTIONS UNDER SINGLE-AND MULTI-UNIT DEMAND

An English clock auction and a sealed-bid auction with lowest accepted-bid pricing are studied in a controlled laboratory setting. Buyers bid for either a single unit or two units of the good. The sealed-bid auction generates more revenue than the English clock auction in both cases. The revenue from the English clock auction is lower in the two-unit demand environment than in the single-unit demand environment, due to strategic demand reduction on the part of bidders. (JEL C92, D44)     

THE RELATIVE STICKINESS OF WAGES AND PRICES

While many modern business cycle theories posit the existence of nominal wage and/or output price stickiness, their relative importance remains an unsettled issue. Using a structural VAR model, this paper exploits evidence on the behavior of real wages to assess the relative importance of these two sources of stickiness. The empirical results suggest that a positive shock to aggregate demand causes a significant temporary fall in real wages. This is taken as evidence that sticky wages have played a more important role than sticky prices in transmitting aggregate demand shocks to real economic activity in the post-war U.S. (JEL E32)     

REAL VERSUS NOMINAL SPECIFICATION OF THE DEMAND FOR MONEY FUNCTION

This paper re-examines the issue of real versus nominal specification of the money demand function and presents evidence in favor of the nominal specification. A series of experiments with U.S. quarterly data show that the money demand function specified in nominal terms is more stable and generates more accurate forecasts than that specified in real terms. "The case of the missing money" also is discussed.     

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF CONSUMER DEMAND BEHAVIOR USING LABORATORY ANIMALS*

Using laboratory animals as subjects, two series of experimental studies of consumer demand behavior are reported. The experiments show that laboratory animals will change consumption patterns in response to changes in the budget set, consuming more of the lower priced commodities and less of the higher priced commodities. Large rotations in the budget line for essential commodities resulted in severe disruption of consumer behavior. The experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using non-human subjects in laboratory studies of economic behavior.     

ON THE EXTERNAL VALIDITY OF LABORATORY TAX COMPLIANCE EXPERIMENTS

An essential issue for laboratory experiments to inform policy debates is the “external validity” of the experimental results; that is, does behavior in the laboratory apply to behavior that occurs in the naturally occurring world? We examine this issue of external validity in the specific context of laboratory experiments on tax compliance, using two different types of evidence. We find that the behavioral patterns of subjects in the laboratory conform to those of individuals making a similar decision in naturally occurring settings. We also find that the behavioral responses of students are largely the same as those of nonstudents in identical experiments (JEL C9, H0, H3)     

FACTOR DEMAND UNDER CONDITIONS OF PRODUCT DEMAND and SUPPLY UNCERTAINTY

The paper develops a theory of factor demand under uncertainty, that encompasses neo-classical factor demand and Keynesian effective factor demand as special cases. The model allows factor demand and output to move positively with product demand, even with a constant product price. This, in turn, permits real wages to move pro-cyclically in response to product demand shocks. In addition the model provides a new perspective on the "adding-up" problem (which posits that total factor payments exceed output if increasing returns to scale exist), and generates positive uncertainty profits that are similar in spirit to those of Frank Knight.     

Mood,arousal and cognitions in persistent gambling: Preliminary investigation of a theoretical model

A theoretical model of persistent gambling is described together with the results of two preliminary investigations focusing on poker machine play under ecologically valid conditions. The subjects (N=80), the majority of whom already had experience of playing, gambled with their own money (either with or without a small priming fee), 1) in a laboratory setting on a commercially available machine (Golden Goose) with a genuine opportunity to win and lose (heart rate and subjective measures of arousal were recorded) and 2) in a second study, played under direct observation in a real club setting (subjective arousal, illusion of control and persistence were recorded). The results provided some support for the components of the model, particularly the hypothesized relationship between arousal and persistence.     

TEACHING TOOLS: ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD IMMUNIZATION

Recent outbreaks of measles and other childhood diseases have put immunization policy on the national agenda. This teaching note on childhood immunization, intended for principles courses, discusses the rationale for government involvement, the situation in the U.S., and the policies of Northern Ireland and Austria. It emphasizes (a) the use of financial incentives to motivate behavior, (b) the distinction between shifting and moving along the demand curve, and (c) the notion of negative prices (i.e., paying the customer to "buy" the item). Students especially like the idea of the demand curve extending below the x-axis.     

Putting social preferences to work: Can revealed preferences predict real effort provision?

This paper presents a model of real effort provision in conjunction with rational social preference theory to predict how individuals exert effort to replace an exogenously determined “state of the world” with a preferred social outcome. Binary dictator games and real effort tasks are used to examine whether individuals exert effort in a manner that is consistent with their revealed preferences. The analysis of controlled laboratory experiments suggest that while individuals’ effort provisions are generally consistent with the theory, those who reveal relatively pro-social preferences fail to procure their “preferred” outcomes too frequently when the state of the world is highly inequitable in their favor. Consideration is given to alternative theories, namely ego depletion and cognitive dissonance, as potential explanations of social outcomes. There is evidence to suggest that dictators, on average, experience ego depletion which leads to a reduction in pro-social behavior through time.     

ON INFLATION AND REAL PRICE VARIABILITY

This paper studies the consequences of costly price adjustments for the variability of real prices accompanying inflation. For constant-elasticity demand and cost of production it is shown that a higher demand, a lower cost of production, or a lower cost of price adjustment leads to less intertemporal variability of real prices. If the marginal cost of production does not increase "too" fast, then the average real price is less than the real price that would prevail in the absence of inflation; additionally, a higher demand, a lower cost of production, or a lower cost of price adjustment leads to a higher level of real prices.     

INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT VARIABILITY AND REAL WAGE FLUCTUATIONS: DETERMINANTS AND IMPLICATIONS

The cyclical behavior of the real wage differentiates between the empirical validity of major new Keynesian sticky-wage and sticky-price explanations of business cycles. Across industries of the United States, an increase in price flexibility relative to wage flexibility correlates with a reduction in output fluctuations in the face of demand shocks. Further, industrial real output variability does not vary significantly with nominal wage flexibility. In contrast, an increase in price flexibility moderates industrial real output variability. Consistently, an increase in the real wage response to demand shocks correlates with an increase in industrial output variability. ( JEL E32, E31)     

Familiarity, legitimation, and frequency: the influence of others on the criminal self-view

From an identity theory perspective, reflected appraisals from others are relevant for social behavior, because behavior is motivated by the desire to achieve congruence between reflected appraisals and the self-view for a particular identity. This study extends prior identity theory work from the laboratory setting by examining identity processes with respect to the criminal identity in the unique “natural” setting of a total institution. The findings build on prior work which finds that reflected appraisals do have an influence on identities and behavior by demonstrating that the relationship one has to the source of reflected appraisals is important for the way in which reflected appraisals influence the criminal self-view for an incarcerated population.     

Internet lives: social context and moral domain in adolescent development

The author examines the thinking and behavior of adolescents within the digital world. What does all this instant messaging and blogging outside school hours mean? Why do adolescents do it? How much time do they spend doing it? How does it shape their social, emotional, and moral development? Bradley describes the phenomenon and explores some moral development ramifications of a new context of social experience for adolescents. It proposes that the digital world creates its own social context, with a different set of social conventions from the adult-mediated "real" world that adolescents also inhabit. It is a social context that most adults are aware of but do not understand. Adolescents' experiences in the online world influence their experiences in the face-to-face world and play an important role in the development of their social and moral knowledge. This chapter places the discussion within the context of literature on youth ethics that has been developed based on more traditional settings.     

THE TIMING OF MARKETS AND MONETARY TRANSFERS IN CASH-IN-ADVANCE ECONOMIES

In cash-in-advance models, do the timing of markets and the timing of the monetary transfer affect equilibrium money demand? The timing of markets generates different individual money demands; however, under the common assumption that agents are identical, these differences do not affect the behavior of equilibrium real balances. In contrast, the timing of the monetary transfer has important implications for agent's information sets; these implications can influence the equilibrium characteristics of real balances.     

THE DEMAND FOR EXCESS RESERVES, LIABILITY MANAGEMENT, AND THE MONEY SUPPLY PROCESS

Commercial bank behavior is not adequately dealt with in existing macro models of the financial sector. The central role of a demand for excess reserves (or free reserves) function in models of the money supply process is particularly suspect. In this paper, it is argued that changes in commercial bank behavior induced by alterations in economic and financial conditions and various banking regulations, along with the central bank's approach to policy, have combined to alter the excess reserve function and the relationship between bank reserves and the money supply. Empirical work presented suggests that the "demand" for excess reserves has indeed undergone structural change. Thus, the study indicates that conventional approaches to commercial bank behavior and the demand for excess reserves need to be reworked.     

ISLANDS, INDEXATION AND MONETARY POLICY

This paper develops a synthesized macroeconomic model that incorporates the local-global informational asymmetries of an "islands" economy into a setting characterized by endogenous wage indexation. In such an economy, agents are unable both to filter out the separate influences of demand and supply shocks on observed output prices and to distinguish between the separate price effects of local and aggregate disturbances, so that optimal wage indexation depends upon both the variances of supply and demand disturbances and the information-conditioned forecasts of agents. As a result, optimal monetary policy generally depends upon the variances of local and aggregate supply and demand.     

What Is Ecological Validity? A Dimensional Analysis

Ecological validity has typically been taken to refer to whether or not one can generalize from observed behavior in the laboratory to natural behavior in the world. Although common in current discussions of research, the idea of ecological validity has a long history in psychological thought. A brief historical examination of this idea reveals that concerns with ecological validity are evident in multiple dimensions of experimental work, including the nature of the experimental setting, the stimuli under investigation, and the observer's response employed as the measure. One problem with this multidimensionality, however, is that no explicit criteria have been offered for applying this concept to an evaluation of research. One consequence of this problem is that concerns with ecological validity can be raised in most experimental situations. This article includes a discussion of some demands of ecological validity and the nature of these different dimensions, as well as a critical evaluation of research on the development of mobility with respect to these constraints.     

The long road from Nador to Brussels

The focus of this article is on the migration of the married Berber woman and her children from the city of Nador in Northeast Morocco to Europe. The Berber woman has her own space to move in her own world with specific boundaries. In the countryside, the setting of the boundaries of the married Berber woman is materialized primarily by the boundaries of the house and the surrounding group of women. The Berber woman's real authority in the home, her potential power, corresponds to the role of the man in the external world, which is the 'wild' for the woman. In addition to the sexually determined boundaries, there is also a spatial differentiation in behavior in the women's world. Upon her arrival in Brussels, the Berber woman enters a completely new terrain in terms of both the environment and the space that will become her internal world, the home. The Berber woman, after a period of time that varies from woman to woman, will cross the new boundary to establish contacts in the outside world. The traditional boundary system is continually challenged by the functional aspect of daily life. Many of the immigrant women see their stay in Europe as a temporary phase in their lives and prepare for returning to Morocco. To obtain an insight into the manner in which young immigrants construct their life worlds and the conflicts that can accompany it, it is necessary 1st to know their country of origin, in particular, the world that their parents and ancestors were raised in and which is structured by the boundary system described in this paper.     

坚持稳中求进 确保经济平稳增长——2012上半年上海经济形势分析

2012年以来,世界经济复苏减缓,市场需求明显不足,全球产能过剩压力加剧,经济运行风险进一步加大,未来发展前景难以确定。我国经济下行压力也明显加大,未来经济增长面临产能过剩、财政收入下滑、就业压力增大、国际游资冲击等负面影响。上海结构调整取得新的进展,预计全年经济增幅合理上升,但在经济运行中需要特别关注就业形势、小微企业、房地产市场、消费市场、区县经济增长等方面因素。应继续按照"稳增长"与"调结构"相互促进的要求,制定和出台促进经济稳定增长的地方性政策措施,重点是做好中央和上海已有各项政策的落实工作。