Risk aversion and equilibrium selection in a vertical contracting setting: an experiment

Theory and Decision - The theoretical literature on vertical relationships usually assumes that beliefs about secret contracts take specific forms. In a recent paper, Eguia et al. (Games Econ Behav...     

WHY ARE THE 2000s SO DIFFERENT FROM THE 1970s? A STRUCTURAL INTERPRETATION OF CHANGES IN THE MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF OIL PRICES

In the 1970s, large increases in the price of oil were associated with sharp decreases in output and large increases in inflation. In the 2000s, even larger increases in the price of oil were associated with much milder movements in output and inflation. Using a structural VAR approach, Blanchard and Gali (in J. Gali and M. Gertler (eds.) 2009, International Dimensions of Monetary Policy, University of Chicago Press, pp. 373–428) argued that this reflected a change in the causal relation from the price of oil to output and inflation. They then argued that this change could be due to a combination of three factors: a smaller share of oil in production and consumption, lower real wage rigidity, and better monetary policy. Their argument, based on simulations of a simple new‐Keynesian model, was informal. Our purpose in this paper is to take the next step, and to estimate the explanatory power and contribution of each of these factors. To do so, we use a minimum distance estimator that minimizes, over the set of structural parameters and for each of two samples (pre‐ and post‐1984), the distance between the empirical SVAR‐based impulse response functions and those implied by a new‐Keynesian model. Our empirical results point to an important role for all three factors.     

Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates

We estimate the effects of temperature shocks on birth rates in the United States between 1931 and 2010. We find that days with a mean temperature above 80°F cause a large decline in birth rates 8 to 10 months later. Unlike prior studies, we demonstrate that the initial decline is followed by a partial rebound in births over the next few months, implying that populations mitigate some of the fertility cost by shifting conception month. This shift helps explain the observed peak in late-summer births in the United States. We also present new evidence that hot weather most likely harms fertility via reproductive health as opposed to sexual activity. Historical evidence suggests that air conditioning could be used to substantially offset the fertility costs of high temperatures.     

Cyberbullying and health: A preliminary investigation of the experiences of Canadian gay and bisexual adult men

The majority of cyberbullying studies are within the school environment. This quantitative study investigates cyberbullying among Canadian gay and bisexual men outside of the educational setting through a cross-sectional survey. Of the 7,430 respondents, 4.6% reported cyberbullying in the past year, with younger, Aboriginal, lower-educated, lower-income respondents reporting higher odds of experiencing cyberbullying. Victimization from cyberbullying was significantly associated with experiences of antigay discrimination as well as worry about antigay prejudice. A variety of negative health outcomes were also associated with cyberbullying, including intimate partner violence and suicidality. Implications for social service providers and future research are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Narcissistic Exploitativeness,Dispositional Empathy,and Emotion Recognition Abilities

The present research explores the link between the personality trait exploitativeness, a component of narcissism, and emotion recognition abilities. Prior research on this topic has produced inconsistent findings. We attempt to resolve these inconsistencies by testing the hypothesis that narcissistic exploitativeness, in particular, should be associated with emotion-reading abilities because it specifically taps into the motivation to manipulate others. Across two studies we find that narcissistic exploitativeness is indeed associated with increased emotion recognition, but in some cases the confounding effects of mood need to be considered (Study 1). Importantly, effect sizes of narcissistic exploitativeness were similar in magnitude to two different measures of dispositional empathy, which is an established correlate of emotion recognition. These studies suggest that emotional recognition abilities are associated with desirable and undesirable traits.     

Exponential inequalities for unbounded functions of geometrically ergodic Markov chains: applications to quantitative error bounds for regenerative Metropolis algorithms

ABSTRACT

The aim of this note is to investigate the concentration properties of unbounded functions of geometrically ergodic Markov chains. We derive concentration properties of centred functions with respect to the square of Lyapunov's function in the drift condition satisfied by the Markov chain. We apply the new exponential inequalities to derive confidence intervals for Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Quantitative error bounds are provided for the regenerative Metropolis algorithm of [Brockwell and Kadane Identification of regeneration times in MCMC simulation, with application to adaptive schemes. J Comput Graphical Stat. 2005;14(2)].     

Assessing the fit of finite mixture distributions

Mixture distributions have become a very flexible and common class of distributions, used in many different applications, but hardly any literature can be found on tests for assessing their goodness of fit. We propose two types of smooth tests of goodness of fit for mixture distributions. The first test is a genuine smooth test, and the second test makes explicit use of the mixture structure. In a simulation study the tests are compared to some traditional goodness of fit tests that, however, are not customised for mixture distributions. The first smooth test has overall good power and generally outperforms the other tests. The second smooth test is particularly suitable for assessing the fit of each component distribution separately. The tests are applicable to both continuous and discrete distributions and they are illustrated on three medical data sets.     

Dynamique de l’éducation bilingue interculturelle dans l'Amazonie brésilienne

In Brazil – and more largely in Latin America – the fight of the indigenous movements for the demarcation of their territory and the installation of an intercultural school education contributed to the constitutional changes of the years 1980–1990 which led these States to regard themselves from then on as pluricultural and multiethnic nations and to recognize collective rights specific to native people and tribes living on their territory. The author analyzes the advent and the development of this intercultural bilingual education in two border regions of the State of Amazonas (Alto Solimões and Alto Rio Negro) near the populations Ticuna, Baniwa and Tukano during the years 1990 and 2000. He shows in particular how the indigenous school, an assimilationist instrument for the Occidental and Christian culture until the 1980s, has been transformed by supporting the reappropriation of the traditional knowledge; meanwhile this school has opened itself to ‘Western’ knowledge in order to make it possible for the younger generation to acquire the ability to go towards evolution.     

Analysing the effects of tax-benefit reforms on income distribution: a decomposition approach

To assess the impact of tax-benefit policy changes on income distribution over time, we suggest a methodology based on counterfactual tax-benefit simulations. Changes in inequality/poverty indices are decomposed into three contributions: changes in the tax-benefit structure, changes in nominal levels of market incomes and tax-benefit money parameters, and all other changes, including shifts in market income inequality and demographic composition. The policy effect can be evaluated conditionally on base-period data or end-period data; it is also possible to average the two measures, which corresponds to an application of the Shapley value method as reinterpreted by Shorrocks (Decomposition Procedures for Distributional Analysis: A Unified Framework Based on the Shapley Value, University of Essex and Institute for Fiscal Studies, Wivenhoe Park, 1999). The decomposition is used to quantify the relative role of policy changes on inequality/poverty trends in France and Ireland in the 1990s. When end-period data are not available, e.g., for forward looking analysis of possible reforms, the base weighted decomposition helps to extract an absolute measure of the impact of tax-benefit changes on income distribution as evaluated against a distributionally neutral benchmark; in our application, it is not significantly different from the policy effect stemming from the Shorrocks-Shapley decomposition. Estimates of this type are derived to assess recent policy changes in twelve European countries.