On the predictive efficiency of the core solution in side-payment games

This paper reports the first cross-study competitive test of thecore solution in side-payment games where the core is nonempty and nonunique (i.e., larger than a single point). The core was tested against five alternative theories including the Shapley value, the disruption nucleolus, the nucleolus, the 2-center, and the equality solution. A generalized Euclidean distance metric which indexes the average distance between an observed payoff vector and the entire set of predicted payoff vectors (Bonacich, 1979) was used as the measure of goodness-of-fit. Analysis of data assembled from six previously reported studies (encompassing a total of 1,464 observations over 56 3-person and 4-person side-payment games) showed the core to predict less accurately than the Shapley value, disruption nucleolus, and nucleolus solutions (p < 0.01). These findings are consistent with previous empirical results that show the core to have a low level of predictive accuracy in side-payment games.This research was supported by grants SOC-7726932 and SES-8015528 from the National Science Foundation. Data analysis was performed at the Madison Academic Computing Center.     

A Better Method for Analyzing the Costs and Benefits of Fundraising at Universities

This article develops a new methodology for a more comprehensive and useful analysis of the costs and benefits of fundraising, as well as the total costs and net benefits associated with development efforts in general. This approach does a better job of linking the timing of return of fundraising efforts and measuring the actual return on investments in fundraising (as opposed to the reported return) than the widely used guidelines from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (CASE/NACUBO) (1990). The implications are a better methodology for practitioners that they can use to enhance internal decision making and a better methodology for boards to use in evaluating performance and accountability. Recently, other large, public universities have begun using several of these concepts in the assessment of their development offices (Rooney, 1998).     

Estimation in an empirical bayes model for longitudinal and cross‐sectionally clustered binary data

Some studies generate data that can be grouped into clusters in more than one way. Consider for instance a smoking prevention study in which responses on smoking status are collected over several years in a cohort of students from a number of different schools. This yields longitudinal data, also cross‐sectionaliy clustered in schools. The authors present a model for analyzing binary data of this type, combining generalized estimating equations and estimation of random effects to address the longitudinal and cross‐sectional dependence, respectively. The estimation procedure for this model is discussed, as are the results of a simulation study used to investigate the properties of its estimates. An illustration using data from a smoking prevention trial is given.     

Jury theorems with multiple alternatives

I consider a game in which imperfectly informed jurors vote to select one of several possible choices when there is a natural ordering of the possibilities. Each juror votes for the largest alternative the juror would like to implement, and the alternative that is selected is the largest alternative supported by a given number of jurors. For non-unanimous voting rules, the probability of a mistaken judgment goes to zero as the number of jurors goes to infinity. I also give necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain asymptotic efficiency under unanimous voting rules, and show that unanimous rules may lead to a bias in which moderate outcomes are never chosen.     

Institutional Diversity and Performance in African Cotton Sectors

This article analyses the performance of cotton sectors across East, Southern, and West Africa, paying particular attention to the wide diversity of institutional arrangements that they now exhibit. It finds strong support for earlier contentions regarding trade‐offs between competition and coordination, and between the roles of public and private sectors. New insights provide concrete and context‐specific guidance to policy‐makers and stakeholders regarding the key challenges they will face and the risks they will need to manage as they work to improve productivity and ensure an equitable division of benefits within cotton sectors.