Viewpoint: on the Generalizability of Lab Behaviour to the Field
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Econ 771.001
ECON 771: Political Economy of Race and Gender Spring 2018 Dr. Elissa Braunstein Department of Economics, Colorado State University [email protected] Office: C327 Clark Office hours: T 1:00 – 2:00 (or by appointment) Overview I define political economy as “the study of the impact of group identity and collective conflict on the organization of economic activity and its consequences.” Political economy traditions tend to focus on class as a source of identity and group conflict. In this course, we will expand that focus to incorporate other sources of group membership, giving you a broad background in economic approaches to inequality and identity based on race/ethnicity and gender. We will focus primarily on the neoclassical, Marxian political economy and feminist literatures. In addition to learning more about the relationship between group membership and economic structures, we will use the prisms of race and gender to better understand and critique various approaches to economic analysis. And while much of the literature focuses on the U.S. context, I will try to broaden the discussion as often as possible, and encourage students to do the same. I welcome students from other social science disciplines. Although we will cover some advanced material that may be difficult for those who have not completed graduate economics courses, the emphasis will be on the main points, rather than the technical detail. The syllabus includes both required readings (*starred) and supplemental readings/sections as I wanted to give you a more complete sense of the literature if you are interested in looking further into a particular topic. -
When Does Behavioural Economics Really Matter?
When does behavioural economics really matter? Ian McAuley, University of Canberra and Centre for Policy Development (www.cpd.org.au) Paper to accompany presentation to Behavioural Economics stream at Australian Economic Forum, August 2010. Summary Behavioural economics integrates the formal study of psychology, including social psychology, into economics. Its empirical base helps policy makers in understanding how economic actors behave in response to incentives in market transactions and in response to policy interventions. This paper commences with a short description of how behavioural economics fits into the general discipline of economics. The next section outlines the development of behavioural economics, including its development from considerations of individual psychology into the fields of neurology, social psychology and anthropology. It covers developments in general terms; there are excellent and by now well-known detailed descriptions of the specific findings of behavioural economics. The final section examines seven contemporary public policy issues with suggestions on how behavioural economics may help develop sound policy. In some cases Australian policy advisers are already using the findings of behavioural economics to advantage. It matters most of the time In public policy there is nothing novel about behavioural economics, but for a long time it has tended to be ignored in formal texts. Like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain who was surprised to find he had been speaking prose all his life, economists have long been guided by implicit knowledge of behavioural economics, particularly in macroeconomics. Keynes, for example, understood perfectly the “money illusion” – people’s tendency to think of money in nominal rather than real terms – in his solution to unemployment. -
Economics 881.25 Human Capital and Economic Development
Economics 881.25 Human Capital and Economic Development Class Meetings Class times Fridays 15:05 - 17:35 Classes begin 9 January 2015 Classes end 20 February 2015 Class location Social Sciences 111 Instructor Instructor Robert Garlick Email [email protected] Office Social Sciences 204 Office hours Wednesdays 13:30 - 15:30 for open office hours http://robertgarlick.youcanbook.me for one-on-one meetings about research 1 Course Overview This is a graduate, seminar-style course studying the intersection between development economics and the economics of human capital. The course is aimed primarily at doctoral students in eco- nomics who are interested in conducting research in development economics. Much of the material will also be relevant for graduate students interested in applied microeconomic research on human capital topics. The course will focus on two dimensions of human capital: education and health. Issues around nutrition and fertility will be discussed briefly but will not be a major focus. We will focus on economic topics relevant to low- and middle-income countries and will primarily read papers using data from these countries. We will also read some papers using data from developed countries, focusing on their theoretical or methodological contributions. We will only briefly discuss some macroeconomic aspects of the relationship between human capital and economic development. We will not study the relationship between human capital and the labor market, as this will be discussed in detail in Economics 881.26. The course has three goals: 1. Prepare students to conduct applied microeconomic research at the intersection between de- velopment economics and the economics of human capital 2. -
Kranton Duke University
The Devil is in the Details – Implications of Samuel Bowles’ The Moral Economy for economics and policy research October 13 2017 Rachel Kranton Duke University The Moral Economy by Samuel Bowles should be required reading by all graduate students in economics. Indeed, all economists should buy a copy and read it. The book is a stunning, critical discussion of the interplay between economic incentives and preferences. It challenges basic premises of economic theory and questions policy recommendations based on these theories. The book proposes the path forward: designing policy that combines incentives and moral appeals. And, therefore, like such as book should, The Moral Economy leaves us with much work to do. The Moral Economy concerns individual choices and economic policy, particularly microeconomic policies with goals to enhance the collective good. The book takes aim at laws, policies, and business practices that are based on the classic Homo economicus model of individual choice. The book first argues in great detail that policies that follow from the Homo economicus paradigm can backfire. While most economists would now recognize that people are not purely selfish and self-interested, The Moral Economy goes one step further. Incentives can amplify the selfishness of individuals. People might act in more self-interested ways in a system based on incentives and rewards than they would in the absence of such inducements. The Moral Economy warns economists to be especially wary of incentives because social norms, like norms of trust and honesty, are critical to economic activity. The danger is not only of incentives backfiring in a single instance; monetary incentives can generally erode ethical and moral codes and social motivations people can have towards each other. -
Gender and Child Health Investments in India Emily Oster NBER Working Paper No
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES DOES INCREASED ACCESS INCREASE EQUALITY? GENDER AND CHILD HEALTH INVESTMENTS IN INDIA Emily Oster Working Paper 12743 http://www.nber.org/papers/w12743 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 December 2006 Gary Becker, Kerwin Charles, Steve Cicala, Amy Finkelstein, Andrew Francis, Jon Guryan, Matthew Gentzkow, Lawrence Katz, Michael Kremer, Steven Levitt, Kevin Murphy, Jesse Shapiro, Andrei Shleifer, Rebecca Thornton, and participants in seminars at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and NBER provided helpful comments. I am grateful for funding from the Belfer Center, Kennedy School of Government. Laura Cervantes provided outstanding research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. © 2006 by Emily Oster. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Does Increased Access Increase Equality? Gender and Child Health Investments in India Emily Oster NBER Working Paper No. 12743 December 2006 JEL No. I18,J13,J16,O12 ABSTRACT Policymakers often argue that increasing access to health care is one crucial avenue for decreasing gender inequality in the developing world. Although this is generally true in the cross section, time series evidence does not always point to the same conclusion. This paper analyzes the relationship between access to child health investments and gender inequality in those health investments in India. A simple theory of gender-biased parental investment suggests that gender inequality may actually be non-monotonically related to access to health investments. -
Allied Social Science Associations Atlanta, GA January 3–5, 2010
Allied Social Science Associations Atlanta, GA January 3–5, 2010 Contract negotiations, management and meeting arrangements for ASSA meetings are conducted by the American Economic Association. i ASSA_Program.indb 1 11/17/09 7:45 AM Thanks to the 2010 American Economic Association Program Committee Members Robert Hall, Chair Pol Antras Ravi Bansal Christian Broda Charles Calomiris David Card Raj Chetty Jonathan Eaton Jonathan Gruber Eric Hanushek Samuel Kortum Marc Melitz Dale Mortensen Aviv Nevo Valerie Ramey Dani Rodrik David Scharfstein Suzanne Scotchmer Fiona Scott-Morton Christopher Udry Kenneth West Cover Art is by Tracey Ashenfelter, daughter of Orley Ashenfelter, Princeton University, former editor of the American Economic Review and President-elect of the AEA for 2010. ii ASSA_Program.indb 2 11/17/09 7:45 AM Contents General Information . .iv Hotels and Meeting Rooms ......................... ix Listing of Advertisers and Exhibitors ................xxiv Allied Social Science Associations ................. xxvi Summary of Sessions by Organization .............. xxix Daily Program of Events ............................ 1 Program of Sessions Saturday, January 2 ......................... 25 Sunday, January 3 .......................... 26 Monday, January 4 . 122 Tuesday, January 5 . 227 Subject Area Index . 293 Index of Participants . 296 iii ASSA_Program.indb 3 11/17/09 7:45 AM General Information PROGRAM SCHEDULES A listing of sessions where papers will be presented and another covering activities such as business meetings and receptions are provided in this program. Admittance is limited to those wearing badges. Each listing is arranged chronologically by date and time of the activity; the hotel and room location for each session and function are indicated. CONVENTION FACILITIES Eighteen hotels are being used for all housing. -
Behavioral Economics As Applied to Firms: a Primer1
Munich Personal RePEc Archive Behavioral economics as applied to firms: a primer Armstrong, Mark and Huck, Steffen University College London (UCL) January 2010 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20356/ MPRA Paper No. 20356, posted 02 Feb 2010 03:16 UTC Behavioral Economics as Applied to Firms: A Primer1 Mark Armstrong and Steffen Huck Department of Economics University College London January 2010 Abstract We discuss the literatures on behavioral economics, bounded rationality and experimental economics as they apply to firm behavior in markets. Topics discussed include the impact of imitative and satisficing behavior by firms, outcomes when managers care about their position relative to peers, the benefits of employing managers whose objective diverges from profit-maximization (including managers who are overconfident or base pricing decisions on sunk costs), the impact of social preferences on the ability to collude, and the incentive for profit-maximizing firms to mimic irrational behavior. 1. Introduction In recent years there has been a good deal of research investigating how poor or non-standard decision making by consumers might affect market outcomes. In much of this work, the assumption is that firms are fully rational and aim to maximize their profits (and sometimes they do this by exploiting the behavioral biases of consumers). Some of this work points to situations where there is a role for policy which protects consumers from their own failings and from exploitative firms.2 In this article we focus instead on non-standard approaches to firm behavior. Consumers are kept in the background, and are present merely to generate in some fashion a demand curve for the firms' products. -
Who Are the Behavioral Economists and What Do They Say?
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Heukelom, Floris Working Paper Who are the Behavioral Economists and what do they say? Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. 07-020/1 Provided in Cooperation with: Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam Suggested Citation: Heukelom, Floris (2007) : Who are the Behavioral Economists and what do they say?, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. 07-020/1, Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/86489 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu TI 2007-020/1 Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper Who are the Behavioral Economists and what do they say? Floris Heukelom University of Amsterdam, and Tinbergen Institute. -
Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World? Author(S): Steven D
American Economic Association What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal about the Real World? Author(s): Steven D. Levitt and John A. List Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring, 2007), pp. 153-174 Published by: American Economic Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033722 . Accessed: 03/07/2012 00:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Economic Perspectives. http://www.jstor.org Journal of EconomicPerspectives-Volume 21, Number2-Spring 2007--Pages 153-174 What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World? Steven D. Levitt and John A. List Economists have increasingly turned to the experimental model of the physical sciences as a method to understand human behavior. Peer- reviewedreviewed articles using the methodology of experimental economics were almost nonexistent until the mid-1960s and surpassed 50 annually for the first time in 1982; and by 1998, the number of experimental papers published per year exceeded 200 (Holt, 2006). Lab experiments allow the investigator to influence the set of prices, budget sets, information sets, and actions available to actors, and thus measure the impact of these factors on behavior within the context of the labora- tory. -
Gender Differences*
PERFORMANCE INCOMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS: GENDER DIFFERENCES* URI GNEEZY MURIEL NIEDERLE ALDO RUSTICHINI Eventhough the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has beena priorityin manycountries, large gender differences prevail in competitive high-rankingpositions. Suggested explanations include discrimination and dif- ferencesin preferencesand human capital. In this paper we present experimental evidencein support of anadditionalfactor: women may be lesseffective than men incompetitive environments, even if they are able to perform similarly in non- competitiveenvironments. In a laboratoryexperiment we observe, as we increase thecompetitiveness of theenvironment, a signicant increasein performancefor men,but not for women. This results in a signicant gendergap inperformance intournaments, while there is no gap whenparticipants are paid according to piecerate. This effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than insingle-sex competitive environments: this suggests that women may be ableto performin competitiveenvironments per se. I. INTRODUCTION Allocationsacross genders of high prole jobs remain largely favorableto men, and area majorfactor in thegender gap in earnings.For example, Bertrand and Hallock[2001] found that only2.5 percentof the vehighestpaid executivesin alargedata setof U.S.rmsare women (for areviewon genderdifferences in wages,see Blau and Kahn [2000]). Thenumerous attempts to explain this fact can beclassi ed intotwo broad categories.The rstexplanation restson gender differences in abilities and pref- erencesand hencein occupationalself-selection [Polachek 1981]. Thesecond class ofexplanations relatesto discrimination in the workplace,which leads todifferential treatmentof men and womenwith equal preferencesand abilities [Black and Strahan 2001; Goldin and Rouse2000; Wennerås and Wold1997]. In this paper wepropose and experimentallytest an addi- tional explanation:women may be less effective than menin competitiveenvironments. -
Blog Addition Gneezy and List
Women and the Competition Gap By Uri Gneezy and John List You think you know why less than 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women? Scholars have theorized for decades about the reasons why women can’t seem to make faster progress in breaking through the glass ceiling. The sad fact is that while women are doing better than men in some areas, such as higher education, men still occupy the highest ranks of society in the United States and around the world. The proportion of women in the U.S. workforce rose from 48 percent in 1970 to 64 percent in 2011,1 but today, only one in five senior management positions are held by women. Some consider these facts as an achievement, since they are the highest in U.S. history. Yet, women are still paid less than men for equivalent jobs. Even in public positions women still have not achieved parity. They still hold fewer than 17 percent of Congressional seats, and about the same percentage of corporate board seats. We’ll try to convince you that an important contributor to this gap in labor market outcomes is the different ways in which men and women react to incentives. In particular, women tend to avoid competitive settings and jobs in which salary is determined by relative rankings. But why do women and men react differently to incentives? And how important is the culture we’re born into in making us more or less competitive? We couldn’t just take for granted, in the absence of data, that women were innately less competitive than men. -
The Role of Cliometrics in History and Economics
Documents de travail « The Role of Cliometrics in History and Economics» Auteurs Claude Diebolt, Michael Haupert Document de Travail n° 2021 – 26 Juin 2021 Bureau d’Économie Théorique et Appliquée BETA www.beta-umr7522.fr @beta_economics Contact : [email protected] The Role of Cliometrics in History and Economics Claude Diebolt, CNRS, University of Strasbourg and Michael Haupert, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Prepared for Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method Draft: June 10, 2021 Summary How did cliometrics in particular, and economic history in general, arrive at this crossroads, where it is at once considered to be a dying discipline and one that is spreading through the economics discipline as a whole? To understand the current status and future prospects of economic history, it is necessary to understand its past. Keywords Cliometrics, economic history, Robert Fogel, Douglass North, economic growth, econometrics, interdisciplinary economic history, new economic history, multidisciplinary, methodology, quantitative. JEL codes A12, N00, N01 Introduction In 2019 Diebolt and Haupert (2019a), in a response to the question of whether economic history had been assimilated by the economics discipline, argued that rather than assimilation, economic history resembled a ninja, and had infiltrated the discipline. That view of the current status of economic history is not universally shared. Abramitzky (2015 p 1242) bemoaned the fact that the typical economist only cares about the past “to the extent that it sheds light on the present.” More recently, Stefano Fenoaltea (2018) mourned what he saw as the loss of respect for the field of cliometrics. Abramitzky and Fenoaltea represent contemporary scholars who identified dark shadows encroaching upon economic historians.