No Switchbacks: Rethinking Aspiration-Based Dynamics in the Ultimatum Game

Aspiration-based evolutionary dynamics have recently been used to model the evolution of fair play in the ultimatum game showing that incredible threats to reject low offers persist in equilibrium. We focus on two extensions of this analysis: we experimentally test whether assumptions about agent motivations (aspiration levels) and the structure of the game (binary strategy space) reflect actual play, and we examine the problematic assumption embedded in the standard replicator dynamic that unhappy agents who switch strategies may return to a rejected strategy without exploring other options. We find that the resulting “no switchback” dynamic predicts the evolution of play better than the standard dynamic and that aspirations are a significant motivator for our participants. In the process, we also construct and analyze a variant of the ultimatum game in which players can adopt conditional (on their induced aspirations) strategies.     

The Likelihood Method for Decision under Uncertainty

This paper introduces the likelihood method for decision under uncertainty. The method allows the quantitative determination of subjective beliefs or decision weights without invoking additional separability conditions, and generalizes the Savage–de Finetti betting method. It is applied to a number of popular models for decision under uncertainty. In each case, preference foundations result from the requirement that no inconsistencies are to be revealed by the version of the likelihood method appropriate for the model considered. A unified treatment of subjective decision weights results for most of the decision models popular today. Savage’s derivation of subjective expected utility can now be generalized and simplified. In addition to the intuitive and empirical contributions of the likelihood method, we provide a number of technical contributions: We generalize Savage’s nonatomiticy condition (“P6”) and his assumption of (sigma) algebras of events, while fully maintaining his flexibility regarding the outcome set. Derivations of Choquet expected utility and probabilistic sophistication are generalized and simplified similarly. The likelihood method also reveals a common intuition underlying many other conditions for uncertainty, such as definitions of ambiguity aversion and pessimism.     

Plans And Decisions

Counterexamples are constructed for classical decision theory, turning on the fact that actions must often be chosen in groups rather than individually, i.e., the objects of rational choice are plans. It is argued that there is no way to define optimality for plans that makes the finding of optimal plans the desideratum of rational decision-making. An alternative called locally global planning is proposed as a replacement for classical decision theory. Decision-making becomes a non-terminating process without a precise target rather than a terminating search for an optimal solution.     

Debt,Cohabitation, and Marriage in Young Adulthood

Despite growing evidence that debt influences pivotal life events in early and young adulthood, the role of debt in the familial lives of young adults has received relatively little attention. Using data from the NLSY 1997 cohort (N = 6,749) and a discrete-time competing risks hazard model framework, I test whether the transition to first union is influenced by a young adult’s credit card and education loan debt above and beyond traditional educational and labor market characteristics. I find that credit card debt is positively associated with cohabitation for men and women, and that women with education loan debt are more likely than women without such debt to delay marriage and transition into cohabitation. Single life may be difficult to afford, but marital life is unaffordable as well. Cohabitation presents an alternative to single life, but not necessarily a marital substitute for these young adults.     

Die Rezeption (Thyssen-)preisgekr?nter Artikel in der ?Scientific Community“

We investigate whether journal articles winning a prestigious award of the Thyssen foundation have a higher impact in the scientific literature than a control group of non-awarded articles. In average, awarded articles harvest significantly more citations than articles in the control group. Most remarkably, the average citation rank exactly matches the rank order of awards. The top award earns most citations while the second award, the third award and the non-awarded articles exhibit citation counts in declining order. The correlation of award rank and impact does not vanish if we restrict citation counts to the year of publication and the year thereafter. In this time span the distinction of excellence is very unlikely having a genuine effect on the impact measure. Thus, we do not find support for the social constructivist hypothesis that the correlation of the jury decision and the article impact is explainable by a label of distinctiveness. On the contrary, the empirical data confirm that the jury is successful in the selection of articles which in average have a larger impact in the scientific community than non-awarded publications.     

Zur Rolle einer optimierten Verteilung von Sicherheiten im internen Risikomanagement

The experiences from the recent financial crises show that the estimation and control of credit risks in banks are of significant managerial and economic importance. In this setting, the internal risk management as well as corresponding legal policies put an emphasis primarily on the prognosis of future credit defaults, whereas the role and impact of collaterals only play a minor role. Against this background the paper at hand analyzes the optimized distribution of collaterals within the internal risk management of banks at first. Furthermore, we develop a new flexible allocation algorithm that exceeds the existing approaches concerning the optimization without giving up the rule of a conservative appraisal of credit risk.     

Einfluss von Vorgesetzten, T?tigkeit, Arbeitsbedingungen und variabler Besoldung auf die Motivation von Mitarbeitern im ?ffentlichen Dienst

This paper analyses the effects of four main influence factors on motivation of public personnel. These influence factors are “superior”, “job satisfaction”, “work environment”, and “variable wages”. I analyse the four factors by using a structural equation model with empirical data. My focus lies on the complex interdependencies of influence factors among each other. There is empirical evidence that the influence factor “job satisfaction” plays a decisive role in public service motivation. Moreover, the influence factors “work environment” and “variable wage” have a quite low direct effect on motivation. Surprisingly, the influence factor “superior” has an strong effect on “job satisfaction” and on “variable wages”.     

Globalization debates: bringing in microencounters

Resistance is not only a response to, but also an integral component of neoliberal globalization. Public debates and most scholarly discourse have focused on macroresistance, which signals a new dynamic in globalization, but to the neglect of microresistance. Macroresistance may be best grasped as a political intervention by a coalition of heterogeneous citizens' groups in a globalizing economy, often in the guise of movements, networks and even state policies. Not surprisingly, the least understood type of resistance is the more latent, often undeclared, diffuse and sometimes localized, micro variant. Microresistance is constituted by countless diverse acts and beliefs that send forth streams of doubt and questions concerning the viability and sustainability of neoliberal globalization. Studying microresistance suggests that a large part of the resistance to neoliberal globalization is scattered and differentiated, private and intimate, personal as well as public, as evidenced in Japan after the bubble burst. In so far as this resistance is local yet parallel to responses in different countries and regions, the emergent pattern is potentially freighted with macrosignificance. The analytical challenge is to come to grips with the interplay of micro- and macroresistances. Fundamentally, a priority in research is to uncover the whole series of mediations among resistances, which are central to the historical transformation known as globalization.     

The Relative Contribution of Health Status and Quality of Life Domains in Subjective Health in Old Age

To analyze the influence of different health status dimensions and quality of life (QoL) domains on older adults’ subjective health, and to assess the role that residential satisfaction plays in these relationships. A QoL survey was conducted on a representative sample of the community-dwelling older adult population in Madrid province (Spain). Logistic regression models were applied to studying: the health status dimensions associated with satisfaction with health; the relationship between satisfaction with health and other QoL domains; and, the influence of these domains on satisfaction with life. Sociodemographic and residential characteristics were included in all the models. The determinants of satisfaction with health in the first model were: mobility, usual activities, morbidity, and satisfaction with neighborhood. QoL domains associated with health were: leisure activities, neighborhood, and finances. Satisfaction with life was explained by these three domains, along with age, family and health. In sum, leisure, neighborhood, and finances showed a positive effect on satisfaction with health and with life.