shaky roads and trembling exports assessing the trade effects of domestic infrastructure using a natural experiment abstract our knowledge of the trade effects of domestic infrastructure is very limited the reason is twofold first data needed to examine these effects are not readily available second identifying such effects requires properly addressing potential endogeneity problems affecting the relationship between internal infrastructure and trade in this paper we overcome these limitations by combining firm level export data with detailed geo referenced information on chile and by exploiting the earthquake that took place in this country in 2010 as an exogenous source of variation in available infrastructure and thereby in transport costs we find that diminished transportation infrastructure had a significant negative impact on firms exports

procrastination at the patent office abstract pointing to a limited set of statistics suggesting that examiners turn in much of their work product at the end of quota periods the commerce department has recently raised concerns over examiner procrastination and its consequences for examination quality end loading of review completions alone however is not dispositive evidence of procrastination in this paper we confirm that examiners complete a substantial percentage of reviews at the end of both bi weekly and quarterly quotas and then proceed to test for additional markers that may separate a procrastination explanation for these findings from a range of alternative theories among other tests explored in this regard we predict and find evidence of an immediate spike in end loading upon the onset of examiner telecommuting a change in work environments that likely exacerbates self control problems our findings support a procrastination interpretation for at least some portion of the observed end loading of reviews with our outcomes analysis suggesting that the predominant consequence of this behavior for examination quality is an increase in examination durations

an economic theory of self control the concept of self control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization the individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer the resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create this paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving saving and the timing of income flows and individual discount rates

role of industrial district externalities in export and value added performance evidence from the population of italian firms becchetti l de panizza a and oropallo f 2007 role of industrial district externalities in export and value added performance evidence from the population of italian firms regional studies 41 601 621 the paper tries to shed light on the export and value added performance of industrial districts by integrating information on the population of italian firms from the asia database of the italian statistical institute with balance sheet data for all limited liability companies in selected manufacturing industries the findings show that firms located in industrial districts specialized or not in the leading manufacturing activity of the district export more and have higher added value than firms located elsewhere net of the impact of relevant controls the robustness check undertaken on the agglomeration performance nexus detects as expected a significant relationship between dichotomous district indicators and global and industry specific continuous measures of agglomeration and specializat

the district effect and the competitiveness of manufacturing companies in local productive systems the present study evaluates the existence of differences in competitiveness of spanish industrial firms as a consequence of the district effect a quantitative analysis has been performed in order to assess external competitiveness taking into account whether firms are located in industrial districts in the sense proposed by marshall becattini or remain isolated the methodological approach considers geographical and sectoral variables it attempts to establish the existence of a relationship between sectoral specialisation and business efficiency measured as the capacity to export in local productive systems most of the variables come from a 1991 fiscal data set and the territorial units of analysis are 332 municipalities with a population of over 15 000 inhabitants from the results on the econometric model it can be inferred that the geographical concentration of companies in the same activity positively influences their level of competitiveness

the strategic implications of sunk costs a behavioral perspective abstract this paper examines some of the strategic implications of the sunk cost phenomenon in sequential allocation decisions drawing from psychology and behavioral decision theory we first present a taxonomy of possible causes for the sunk cost effect the tendency of many managers to throw good money after bad we then present the analysis of some implications of this behavior in strategic situations a two period strategic game is developed and analyzed to derive optimal allocations as a function of one player s sunk cost behavior we establish when this behavior can be used as a successful precommitment strategy by the sunk cost player and when it is exploitable by an opponent welfare implications are also explored the sunk cost effect constitutes a form of strategic preference manipulation in which a credible preference change can be induced to provide a strategic advantage to one of the players

read this paper later procrastination with time consistent preferences a model of time consistent procrastination is developed to assess the extent to which the observed behavior is compatible with rational behavior when a finite work requirement must be completed by a deadline the remaining time for leisure is an exhaustible resource with a positive rate of time preference the optimal allocation of this resource results in more hours spent working and fewer in leisure the closer the deadline key qualitative findings of psychological studies of academic procrastination are consistent with the standard natural resource management principles implied by the model when suitably adapted to task aversiveness uncertainty and multiple deadlines however quantitatively the fully rational model appears to require an extremely high rate of time preference or elasticity of intertemporal substitution to generate serious procrastination furthermore it cannot explain undesired procrastination

the hyperbolic consumption model calibration simulation and empirical evaluation ur preferences for the long run tend to conflict with our short run behavior when planning for the long run we intend to meet our deadlines exercise regularly and eat healthfully but in the short run we have little interest in revising manuscripts jogging on the stairmaster and skipping the chocolate souffleala mode delay of gratification is a nice long term goal but instant gratification is disconcertingly tempting this gap between long run intentions and short run actions is apparent across a wide range of behaviors including saving choices a 1997 survey found that 76 percent of respondents believe they should be saving more for retirement looking only at respondents who believed they were at an age where you should be seriously saving already the survey found that 55 percent reported being behind in their savings and only 6 percent reported being ahead farkas and johnson 1997 the report on the survey concluded t he gaps between people s atti tudes intentions and behavior are troubling and threaten increased insecurity and dissatisfaction for people when they retire americans are simply not doing what logic and their own reasoning suggests they should be doing a 1993 luntz webber merrill lynch survey found similar answers when baby boomers were asked what percentage of your annual household income do you think you should save for retirement and what percentage of your annual

coalitional politics economic reform and technological upgrading in malaysia summary many attribute malaysia s admirable economic growth to liberal economic policies however this view ignores the way coalitional politics often drove illiberal government intervention in the economy to correct ethnically based economic inequality create national heavy industries and favor politically well connected entrepreneurs a more nuanced analysis reveals a complex mix of liberal and illiberal economic policies designed to balance competing coalitional interests these policies led to rapid economic growth sufficient to support redistributive politics yet they also retarded technological development leaving malaysia mired in mediocrity neither price competitive with china nor technologically competitive with singapore the east asian nics or the oecd countries

pension plan characteristics and framing effects in employee savings behavior abstract defined contribution pensions in many postsecondary institutions are funded by a combination of an employer premium and a mandatory employee premium individuals can also contribute to a supplemental savings account holding constant total compensation standard reasoning suggests that supplemental savings should depend negatively on the sum of the employer and employee pension contributions contrarily we find that the supplementary savings of professors are significantly more sensitive to employee contributions than to employer contributions this asymmetry is consistent with different marginal propensities to save out of the salary and pension components of compensation nevertheless impacts on lifetime utility are relatively modest

flexible production systems and local machine tool subcontracting electronics components transnationals in malaysia this paper examines the influence of flexible production systems on the development of local sourcing using information gathered on production relationships between firms it shows that the introduction of flexible production systems in electronics components transnationals in malaysia stimulated the growth of local machine tool firms a combination of market forces and cooperation strengthened subcontracting links between electronics components transnationals and local machine tool firms such that the latter experienced considerable technological broadening and deepening thereby transforming them from simple parts to high precision tooling and automation systems manufacturers copyright 1994 by oxford university press

an economic approach to influence activities in organizations members of organizations spend considerable time effort and ingenuity attempting to influence decision makers such influence activities may bring benefits to the organization but they also involve real costs this essay offers an economic rationale for such influence activity as representing rational self interested behavior in the presence of informational asymmetries and an analysis of how the design of the organization s structure and policies should respond to the incentives for attempting influence it is posited that information valuable for the organization s decision making is directly available only to members of the organization who have some personal stake in the decisions these individuals may then have an incentive to try to manipulate the information they develop and provide in order to influence the resulting decisions to their benefits this can be costly both in degrading the quality of decision making and in diverting the attention and effort of the organization s members from more productive activities the organization has three different methods it can employ to discourage excessive influence activities and to encourage more directly productive uses of time and effort it can limit access to decision makers and participation in decision making it can alter its decision making criteria to favor those performing well in productive activities and it can provide direct financial incentives to encourage the desired allocation of effort it is shown that an efficiently designed organization will use such financial incentives only as a last resort instead it will always first alter its decision participation policies and decisionmaking criteria

anomalies in intertemporal choice evidence and an interpretation research on decision making under uncertainly has been strongly influenced by the documentation of numerous expected utility eu anomalies behaviors that violate the expected utility axioms the relative lack of progress on the closely related topic of intertemporal choice is partly due to the absence of an analogous set of discounted utility du anomalies we enumerate a set of du anomalies analogous to the eu anomalies and propose a model that accounts for the anomalies as well as other intertemporal choice phenomena incompatible with du we discuss implications for savings behavior estimation of discount rates and choice framing effects

hyperbolic discounting and the phillips curve using a standard dynamic general equilibrium model we show that the interaction of staggered nominal contracts with hyperbolic discounting leads to inflation having significant long run effects on real variables

smoking cessation a model of planned vs actual behavior for time inconsistent consumers we offer a simple model of intertemporal choice to characterize how planned versus actual behaviors evolve for time inconsistent smokers our results suggest that smokers participation and cessation decisions are governed by the interplay between three effects the cessation effect leads smokers to advance their plans to quit smoking whereas the procrastination effect leads them to consecutively revise their planned quitting age upwards consequently the duration of smoking is effectively governed by which one of these two effects is dominant finally for certain consumer segments a threshold effect causes an all or nothing type of extreme smoking behavior based on certain critical values of present biased preferences our results provide some preliminary evidence that both marketing efforts by tobacco firms and public policy initiatives can have a significant influence on smoking behavior in particular we find that reductions in the age at which individuals start smoking may not only vastly extend their duration of smoking but also convert potential never smokers into lifetime smokers finally we estimate a hazard model using survey data from over 800 smokers to provide evidence in support of our theoretical model

economic conditions and alcohol problems this study investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and two alcohol related outcomes liquor consumption and highway vehicle fatalities fixed effect models are estimated for the 48 contiguous states over the 1975 1988 time period alcohol consumption and traffic deaths vary procyclically with a major portion of the effect of economic downturns attributed to reductions in incomes rather than employment the intake of hard liquor is the most sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy there is no evidence however that fluctuations in economic conditions have a disproportionate impact on the drunk driving of young adults

uncertainty and hyperbolic discounting we propose an evolutionary explanation for the pattern of intertemporal preference reversals often ascribed to hyperbolic discounting we take the view that preferences manifested for example in urges cravings and inclinations are the outcome of evolutionary forces and so will induce animals or humans to make survival maximizing choices in typical decision problems we show that if the typical problem involves payoffs whose realization times are uncertain then optimal preferences give rise to relatively patient behavior when the time horizon is long but induce a switch to impatience when the horizon grows short such reversals do not entail dynamic inconsistency in typical decision problems behavior there is optimal however if a decision maker is confronted with a choice for which the realization time uncertainty falls outside the evolutionary norm her preferences may well prompt her to behave inconsistently we argue that if such a choice problem recurs her evolutionarily endowed aability to learn will lead her to make self commitments against these urges this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

stop go monetary policy we propose and estimate several discrete choice models of monetary policy decision making that feature time varying inertia the models permit us to account for three stylized facts characterizing monetary policymaking in the united states 1 target interest rates are gradually adjusted in small discrete movements 2 there are some long stretches of time in which rates are repeatedly moved and 3 there are other long stretches in which the policy rate does not change our models are used to account for the fed s failure to adopt promptly an easier policy stance during the recession of 2001 they are also used to explain delay in tightening the policy stance during the 2003 2006 period that featured a bubble in house prices and was followed by a financial crisis in 2008

roscas as financial agreements to cope with self control problems abstract we consider a model in which people with limited self control can sign binding financial agreements among themselves thereby forming coalitions we show that these financial agreements may help them to alleviate their self control problems we then demonstrate that there exists a stable structure of coalitions in which people form rotating savings and credit associations roscas we therefore provide a behavioral rationale for one of the most prevalent and puzzling financial institutions in developing countries finally we derive and discuss some empirical predictions

how many paychecks an example of a self imposed constraint i introduction the case of ulysses and the sirens is one of the most interesting puzzles for the model of rational behavior 1 ulysses knew enough about himself to know that he would not be able to control his behavior when under the spell of the sirens so he had himself bound to the mast had wax put into the ears of his crew and instructed them to completely disregard any gestures he might make it is reasonable to ask if ulysses knew enough to know that he would lose control when under the spell of the sirens why didn t he know enough to maintain control more generally if you are rational enough to know you are going to be irrational why can t you stop the irrationality apparently things are not so simple psychiatrist george ainslie 1975 1992 argues based upon a large body of experimental evidence in psychology that individuals have an inherent tendency to be myopic and this leads them to have to develop rules of behavior which limit options given the story of ulysses the process of imposing such constraints on oneself is sometimes called binding the christmas club is the traditional example of a self imposed constraint 2 the local credit union offers an account which has all of the attributes of the normal savings account and the added characteristic that the account holder cannot make any withdrawals until a specified date close to christmas given that the lack of flexibility inherent in the christmas club is combined with no compensating advantage of any sort e g higher interest rates standard analysis suggests the christmas club would have no takers but in fact there are many christmas club members 3 apparently a large number of individuals feel they cannot trust themselves to save money for christmas shopping in a normal savings account the christmas club gives them a way of tying their hands it is a self imposed constraint in this paper i examine behavior which might also be an example of a self imposed constraint at the college of william and mary a full time faculty member has the option of receiving her salary in eighteen equal payments over the nine month academic year or in twenty four equal payments over the entire year starting in september the twenty four month option has the look of a self imposed constraint 4 the faculty member who takes this option is foregoing interest earnings from a simple plan which deposits eighteen payments earns interest and finances the summer perhaps the faculty members who elect the twenty four payment option are like ulysses they know enough to know that they will not follow the plan they know enough to make a preference for the twenty four payment option is not necessarily evidence of a self imposed constraint taking eighteen payments squirreling away some of each payment and financing one s summer expenditures from what had accumulated during the academic year is a costly endeavor therefore a standard economic model based on transactions costs could also explain a preference for the twenty four payment option the purpose of this paper is to present a test of these two models ii theoretical analyses of the choice of the twenty four payment option a standard economic model the task at hand is to explain the demand for the twenty four payment option as compared to the eighteen payment option since the total salary is the same in both cases at any nonzero interest rate the present value of the eighteen payment option dominates the present value of the twenty four payment option this suggests that on a strict basis of economic rationality there would be no takers for the twenty four payment option at william and mary however over 67 percent of the faculty choose the twenty four payment option there is however a clear difficulty with simply comparing present values in this case such a comparison implicitly assumes that trips to the bank are costless a complete model should consider transactions costs

to be consumed with moderation abstract we study the optimal behavior of a hyperbolic discounting agent who has incomplete information about his own preferences and can only learn them through consumption we show that even if moderate current consumption and moderate future consumption always dominates abstinence the agent may optimally decide not to consume as a commitment device against inefficient learning that would lead to future excesses this provides a rationale for why smokers gamblers or compulsive buyers stick to second best personal rules of behavior such as abstinence without invoking standard habit formation arguments we also study how urges modify the strategy of the individual

how do contribution limits affect contributions to tax preferred savings accounts abstract contributions to tax preferred savings accounts are typically constrained by a contribution limit these limits influence contributions not only for taxpayers currently constrained by the limit but also for those contributing less than the limit i develop a simple life cycle model in which taxpayers exhibit use it or lose it contribution behavior this connects current contributions to future contribution limits and implies that an increase in contribution limits can decrease contributions empirical evidence from microdata provides support for the model using variation from canadian limit reforms i find that larger future contribution room is associated with smaller contributions

temptation and taxation we study optimal taxation when consumers have temptation and self control problems embedding the class of preferences developed by gul and pesendorfer into a standard macroeconomic setting we first prove in a two period model that the optimal policy is to subsidize savings when consumers are tempted by excessive impatience the savings subsidy improves welfare because it makes succumbing to temptation less attractive we then study an economy with a long but finite horizon which nests as a special case the phelps pollak laibson multiple selves model thereby providing guidance on how to evaluate welfare in this model we prove that when period utility is logarithmic the optimal savings subsidies increase over time for any finite horizon moreover as the horizon grows large the optimal policy prescribes a constant subsidy in contrast to the well known chamley judd result

reconsidering the moral hazard risk avoidance tradeoff the received model for optimal demand side cost sharing trades off moral hazard and risk avoidance this model appears to lie behind recent increases in initial cost sharing such as those embodied in health savings accounts and health reimbursement accounts at the same time there is evidence that lower cost sharing for certain drugs can reduce future total health care costs and or improve future health and this may be true of other medical services as well to the degree that individuals remain in the same common insurance pool lower cost sharing that induces increases in certain services that reduce total costs including future costs represents a classic case for a subsidy and will minimize an employer s labor costs even if total costs increase the value of a change in health could increase more in that case such a subsidy is consistent with recent work in behavioral economics for those with self control problems

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

procrastination and obedience in this lecture i shall focus on situations involving repeated decisions with time inconsistent behavior although each choice may be close to maximizing and therefore result in only small losses the cumulative effect of a series of repeated errors may be quite large thus in my examples decision makers are quite close to the intelligent well informed individuals usually assumed in economic analysis but cumulatively they make seriously wrong decisions that do not occur in standard textbook economics this lecture discusses and illustrates several pathological modes of individual and group behavior procrastination in decision making undue obedience to authority membership of seemingly normal individuals in deviant cult groups and escalation of commitment to courses of action that are clearly unwise in each case individuals choose a series of current actions without fully appreciating how those actions will affect future perceptions and behavior the standard assumption of rational forwardlooking utility maximizing is violated the nonindependence of errors in decision making in the series of decisions can be explained with the concept from cognitive psychology of undue salience or vividness for example present benefits and costs may have undue salience relative to future costs

the source of optimality in action it is well known that the nature of the information set and the axioms of rational choice are critical in determining the type of ranking on which agents are held to act in economic theory this paper argues that the concept of the optimising agent is also sensitive to the conception of the relation between a ranking of options facing an agent and concrete action what is termed the realisation process three conceptions of the realisation process are examined which are seen to lead to three quite distinct views on the role of agency the enabling conditions under which the concept of the optimising agent may be legitimately applied and the resulting domain of application of optimisation

upgrading the technological capabilities of foreign transnational subsidiaries in developing countries the case of electronics in thailand although substantial research shows the importance of transnational corporations tncs to export led growth in some developing countries it cannot be assumed that tnc subsidiaries will automatically upgrade their capabilities through time or in a uniform fashion this paper explores the pattern and pace of a sample of exporting tnc subsidiaries operating in the electronics industry in thailand showing how the different architectures of global value chains centralised versus decentralised shaped the technological progress of subsidiaries in this country the case evidence suggests a wide variety in upgrading through time with some subsidiaries failing to develop capabilities and remaining as assembly only plants other more dynamic plants developed process engineering and product design skills investing heavily in capability building one common determinant in capability building appears to be the overall technology strategy of the global value chain leader or parent company in those subsidiaries which did not upgrade beyond assembly technology decisions and processes were tightly controlled within the parent headquarter locations in relatively centralised international value networks by contrast the more dynamic plants exercised more discretion over local capability building the latter operated in relatively decentralised networks more open to domestic policies to encourage upgrading the study suggests that governments should tailor upgrading policies not only according to the approximate level of capabilities attained by local subsidiaries but also according to how receptive subsidiaries are to upgrading arguing that capability building and policy receptiveness go hand in hand other countries hoping to upgrade the quality of foreign direct investment might also wish to focus policies on the more technologically capable ambitious and receptive categories of foreign subsidiary

life cycle consumption of a harmful and addictive good david goldbaum this article demonstrates that the endogenous desire to quit smoking can result from a rational consumption path chosen at the time the consumer begins smoking this result is obtained without relying on hidden costs or unknown preferences a finite lived agent chooses a path of consumption of a harmful and addictive good to maximize present discounted utility the consumer chooses his consumption rate to account for the future health consequence of smoking and the withdrawal costs of quitting a consumer may choose to smoke even if it means a lowered utility level for the majority of the time spent smoking jel d91 c61 i12 i introduction some of what we consume for pleasure can be harmful economists assume that consumers take measure of the potential harm and balance it against the pleasure derived from consumption when both the pleasure and the harm occur at the time of consumption the decision is straightforward some goods though impose a cost borne at some future date requiring intertemporal planning these present a greater challenge to the consumer and to the economist trying to explain the consumer s behavior at times observed behavior implores us to question whether the consumer is properly weighing the costs and benefits in a manner that maximizes his or her utility theoretically for each item under consideration the rational consumer properly balances the lifetime benefits derived from the consumption against the lifetime costs some observed behavior seems to contradict this rational approach to consumption in particular it is common for people to begin smoking cigarettes during their youth only to endogenously make a decision to quit at a future date to integrate this behavior with rationality modelers have proposed hidden costs multiple selves changing preferences or other strategies that limit the decision making ability of the youth in all of these cases for some consumers the decision to smoke is a mistake made during youth that has to be reversed at some cost as a middle aged adult this article aims to demonstrate that a lifetime path of consumption in which a person consumes a harmful and addictive good while young and quits at some later date is a path that is perfectly consistent with rational behavior it is not necessary to assume that mid life quitters are displaying irrational or time inconsistent behavior if all information regarding a good s harmful properties is revealed some consumers will still choose a path that requires quitting mid life this paper primarily examines the consumption of cigarettes but also includes analysis of a nonaddictive unhealthy good both of these harmful goods provide the consumer with immediate pleasure but at the cost of decreasing life expectancy background becker and murphy 1988 bm introduced the concept of rational addiction the idea that addicts are forward looking rational consumers present consumption choices reflect not only current utility considerations and budget constraints but also incorporate the anticipated impact of present consumption on future utility and budget constraints bm examine the behavior response of addicts to exogenous shocks changes from a steady state including the desire to quit originate only from exogenous shocks such as a change in the relative price of the good or a revelation about the detrimental health consequences of the addictive good that alters the consumer s utility derived from consumption the model offers no mechanism by which smokers may choose to alter behavior endogenously in contrast to bm s smokers many of today s smokers appear to quit in absence of an external shock anyone who began smoking after 1966 has been subjected to the legislated health warnings appearing on cigarette packages since that time 1 antismoking messages in radio and television advertisements during the 1950s and 1960s also helped to make the health consequences of smoking common knowledge

testing hyperbolic discounting in consumer decisions evidence for argentina abstract the paper focuses on deep parameter estimates following the gmm approach applied to a modified euler equation which nests the case of a quasi hyperbolic discount function parameter estimates for argentina match with a discount function in which procrastination is a key feature

a model of focusing in economic choice we present a generally applicable theory of focusing based on the hypothesis that a person focuses more on and hence overweights attributes in which her options dier more our model predicts that the decisionmaker is too prone to choose options with concentrated advantages relative to alternatives but maximizes utility when the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives are equally concentrated in intertemporal choice because the relative concentrations of an option s costs and benets can be dierent from the perspective of a single period and the perspective of the entire choice problem the decisionmaker often exhibits a form of time inconsistency she is present biased when the costs of current misbehavior are distributed over many future dates such as in harmful consumption but future biased when the benet of many

how to promote clusters policy experiences from latin america abstract in this paper we propose to differentiate between three types of clusters when it comes to formulating cluster oriented policies in latin america survival clusters of micro and small scale enterprises owe their existence more to unfavorable macroeconomic conditions and less to entrepreneurial competence and dynamism their competitive potential is limited support measures should mainly aim at improving the conditions for survival since these clusters are important in creating employment opportunities the impetus should be to break through the low skills low investment vicious circle more advanced and differentiated mass producers have been flourishing in the import substitution era but are coming under enormous pressure with the transition to open economies in these clusters the main challenge is to create an environment that stimulates and supports learning innovation and constant upgrading clusters of transnational corporations are typically dominated by foreign firms not only at the final assembly stage but also in parts production these clusters often are showcases of best practice manufacturing this can be used to stimulate the upgrading of domestic firms notably by involving them in the supply chain of transnationals

choice and procrastination author s o donoghue ted rabin matthew abstract recent models of procrastination due to self control problems assume that a procrastinator considers just one option and is unaware of her self control problems we develop a model where a person chooses from a menu of options and is partially aware of her self control problems this menu model replicates earlier results and generates new ones a person might forego completing an attractive option because she plans to complete a more attractive but never to be completed option hence providing a non procrastinator additional options can induce procrastination and a person may procrastinate worse pursuing important goals than unimportant ones

decision making approaches and the propensity to default evidence and implications abstract this paper examines heterogeneity in the responsiveness to default options in a large state retirement plan focusing on individuals decision making approaches as well as their economic and demographic characteristics analyses of a survey of plan participants show that procrastination and the need for cognitive closure are important determinants of the likelihood of default this paper also explores an important implication of defaulting individuals who default are significantly more likely to subsequently express a desire to enroll in a different plan the desire to change plans is also correlated with numerous economic and decision making characteristics including procrastination

interindustry r d spillovers rates of return and production in high tech industries this paper presents estimates of the productivity and factor bias effects of interindustry r d spillovers for five high tech industries each industry is distinguished as a separate spillover source the industries are each affected by r d spillovers and are themselves spillover sources thus a spillover network between the industries is estimated private and social rates of return to r d capital are calculated the private rates of return are generally greater than the returns to physical capital in addition the social rates of return are greater than the private rates the results show that there are significant differences between industries as to their importance as sources of r d spillovers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

what accounts for the variation in retirement wealth among u s households even among households with similar socioeconomic characteristics saving and wealth vary considerably life cycle models attribute this variation to differences in time preference rates risk tolerance exposure to uncertainty relative tastes for work and leisure at advanced ages and income replacement rates these factors have testable implications concerning the relation between accumulated wealth and the shape of the consumption profile using the panel study of income dynamics and the consumer expenditure survey we find little support for these implications the data are instead consistent with rule of thumb mental accounting or hyperbolic discounting theories of wealth accumulation jel di d91 e21

the intertemporal dynamics of consumer lock in this article examines how dynamic changes in information cost structure and time preferences affect consumers search and switching behavior over time and lead to lock in the information cost structure is conceptualized as a trade off of initial setup costs and ongoing usage costs lock in is defined as consumers decreased propensity to search and switch after an initial investment which is determined both by a preference to minimize immediate costs and by an inability to anticipate the impact of future switching costs the results of three experiments support the proposed mechanism experiment 1 shows that a small initial investment is sufficient to produce lock in experiment 2 shows that the results of a prior investment on lock in are not due to psychological commitment but to a shift in relative costs of incumbent and new options experiment 3 shows that respondents fail to anticipate how their prior investment will lock them in

innovation and industrial districts a first approach to the measurement and determinants of the i district effect boix r and galletto v innovation and industrial districts a first approach to the measurement and determinants of the i district effect regional studies the paper analyses an exhaustive database of patents granted in spain between 2001 and 2006 aggregated in a panel of 806 local labour markets classified by seven typologies of local production systems the analysis shows that marshallian industrial districts generate 30 of spanish patents and an innovative output per capita that is 47 above the national average and 31 larger than the manufacturing production systems of large firms the econometric estimates of a fixed effects model confirm the existence of an innovation district i district effect and its size the i district effect is mainly related to the presence of marshallian localization economies boix r et galletto v innovation et districts industriels une premiere approche de la mesure et des determinants des effets des districts d innovation regional studies nous analysons une base

symposium on organizations and economics m t r ost production in modern economies occurs within organizations and this production is regulated only to a limited extent by prices the size of some of the largest organizations like general motors or ibm or att if managers didn t they would be replaced and firms that didn t maximize value wouldn t survive accordingly what went on inside the black box was mere detail the behavior of the firm could be described completely without knowledge of those details