Donating-selling tradeoffs and the influence of leaders in the environmental goods game

Contributions to environmental goods are motivated by both pecuniary incentives and environmental consciousness. Public policy often uses financial incentives to encourage contributions. However, individuals often donate their time or money to the environmental cause without such incentives. The purpose of this paper is: (a) to examine the relationship between “donating” (without monetary incentives) and “selling” behavior (motivated by monetary incentives) of individuals in the context of environmental protection and (b) to analyze the influence of a leader on individual contributions to the environmental good. The major results are: (1) there is a tradeoff/substitution between donating and selling for a given level of incentives; (2) donating is much less sensitive to changes in monetary incentives and, furthermore, there is no evidence that the increase in financial incentives to sell will crowd out donations; (3) the changes in contributions by leaders have a significant impact on followers’ behavior.     

Procrastination, prompts, and preferences: Evidence from daily records of self-directed learning activities

This paper presents evidence showing that a libertarian paternalistic intervention having significant but uneven effects on the student procrastination of a coursework assignment. We observe the degree of procrastination in a language course at a Japanese university with individuals’ electronic records of daily activities. With a quasi-experiment that generates variations in the frequency of interventions and the preference of students towards the course, we examine the effects of in-class verbal prompts by an instructor on the timing of task completion. We find that prompts affect behavior, especially when reinforced, but the responsiveness depends on the class preferences and the timing of interventions.     

Does greater product information actually inform consumer decisions? The relationship between product information quantity and diversity of consumer decisions

For many consumer goods, the advent of online markets dramatically increases the amount of information available about products’ different features and qualities. Although numerous studies have investigated the effects of information quantity on individual-level decisions, it is still unknown how the amount of attribute information affects group-level patterns of behavior, particularly when consumers are also aware of a choice’s popularity. In the present studies, we hypothesized that when attribute information increases, it may exceed the individual’s cognitive capacity to process this information, and as a result conformity - choosing the most popular item - becomes more likely. In this study, we first examined empirical data collected from human subject experiments in a simulated online shopping experience, and then developed an agent-based model (ABM) to explore this behavioral clustering. Both studies confirmed our primary hypotheses, and the ABM shows promise as a tool for exploring extensions of these ideas.     

THE INTERNATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF VOLATILITY SHOCKS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

This paper proposes an empirical model which can be used to estimate the international transmission of volatility shocks. Using this model we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in the volatility of the shock to US real GDP leads to a decline in UK GDP of 1% relative to trend and a 0.7% increase in UK CPI relative to trend at the two‐year horizon. Using a nonlinear open‐economy DSGE model, we find that these empirical estimates are consistent with the response to a perturbation to the volatility of foreign “supply” type shocks, while an increase in the volatility of demand shocks has a negligible impact.     

浅析我国B2C企业发展问题及策略

近年来,随着我国互联网网民数量的增加,我国B2C电子商务发展迅速,网络购物市场交易规模也达到了空前的水平。在欣欣向荣的表象背后,一些潜在的问题陆续出现,很多企业在战略、运营体制、网络技术方面存在着各种缺陷。我国B2C企业要在充分了解这一新型行业的基础上,通过对企业战略的规划、运营体制的创新、支撑系统的巩固、组织体系的提升各方面深人分析,探究出一条长久稳定的经营之道。     

基于C2C下第三方支付行业的反洗钱实践

洗钱犯罪已构成一种侵犯金融秩序、司法秩序的威胁,受到社会各界的高度重视。本文以支付宝等第三方支付机构的实证调查为基础,介绍支付宝等第三方支付机构在防范洗钱风险方面的实践。     

基于多层架构的B2C电子商务系统的建模研究

本文给出了一种适合中小型企业快速建立自己的电子商务系统的解决方案,该解决方案能够满足企业不断扩展和变化的需求。文中以软件工程领域的新思想、新方法和面向对象思想为指导,以开源新技术为基础,以UML作为建模语言,并结合电子商务的体系结构和特点,分析研究了构建B2C电子商务系统的多层架构方案。此方案给出一种5层设计模式,使视图层、控制层、模型层、持久层、数据库层相分离,便于系统的扩展、维护和移植,目标是使系统实现高内聚低耦合。     

A New Look at the Public Wage Premium in Italy: The Role of Schooling Endogeneity

This paper uses a sample of male workers to estimate public and private wage structures and the public wage premium for Italy. Results from a model with endogenous sector and schooling suggest that public employees have on average lower unobserved wage potentials in both sectors than private employees, but work in the sector where they benefit from a comparative wage advantage. Schooling is positively correlated with wages in both sectors, and controlling for that is crucial to get more reliable estimates and predictions. The associated average unconditional public wage premium is 12 per cent. The net premium is 9 per cent, but not statistically significant.     

The Intra‐household Division of Labor: An Empirical Analysis of Spousal Influences on Individual Time Allocation

Using the German Time Use Surveys 1991/92 and 2001/02, this paper analyses the interactions between the time‐use decisions of partners within one household. Thereby, an interdependent model of the partners' times allocated to paid and unpaid work that allows for simultaneity and endogeneity of the time allocation decisions of the spouses is applied. When including both weekdays and weekend days in the analysis, a complementary relationship between the partner's time allocations is found. When restricting the analysis to weekdays, however, men's time dedicated to paid and unpaid work is unaffected by their wives' time‐use decisions.