artificial adaptive agents in economic theory economic analysis has largely avoided questions about the way in which economic agents make choices when confronted by a perpetually novel and evolving world as a result there are outstanding questions of great interest to economics in areas ranging from technological innovation to strategic learning in games this is so despite the importance of the questions because standard tools and formal models are ill tuned for answering such questions however recent advances in computer based modeling techniques and in the subdiscipline of artificial intelligence called machine learning offer new possibilities artificial adaptive agents aaa can be defined and can be tested in a wide variety of artificial worlds that evolve over extended periods of time the resulting complex adaptive systems can be examined both computationally and analytically offering new ways of experimenting with and theorizing about adaptive economic agents many economic systems can be classified as complex adaptive systems such a system is complex in a special sense i it consists of a network of interacting agents processes elements ii it exhibits a dynamic aggregate behavior that emerges from the individual activities of the agents and iii its aggregate behavior can be described without a detailed knowledge of the behavior of the individual agents an agent in such a system is adaptive if it satisfies an additional pair of criteria the actions of the agent in its environment can be assigned a value performance utility payoff fitness or the like and the agent behaves so as to increase this value over time a complex adaptive system then is a complex system containing adaptive agents networked so that the environment of each adaptive agent includes other agents in the system complex adaptive systems usually operate far from a global optimum or attractor such systems exhibit many levels of aggregation organization and interaction each level having its own time scale and characteristic behavior any given level can usually be described in terms of local niches that can be exploited by particular adaptations the niches are various so it is rare that any given agent can exploit all of them as rare as finding a universal competitor in a tropical forest moreover niches are continually created by new adaptations it is because of this ongoing evolution of the niches and the perpetual novelty that results that the system operates far from any global attractor improvements are always possible and indeed occur regularly the everexpanding range of technologies and products in an economy or the everimproving strategies in a game like chess provide familiar examples adaptive systems may settle down temporarily at a local optimum where performance is good in a comparative sense but they are usually uninteresting if they remain at that optimum for an extended period a theory of complex adaptive systems based on aaa makes possible the development of well defined yet flexible models that exhibit emergent behavior such models can capture a wide range of economic phenomena precisely even though the development of a general mathematical theory of complex adaptive systems is still in its early stages the aaa models complement current theoretical directions they are

willingness to pay for sustainability labelled chocolate an experimental auction approach this study evaluates young consumers attitudes to sustainable food and analyzes the determinants of their willingness to pay wtp for chocolate bars with different sustainability labels data were collected through experimental auctions in italy assessing respondents n 80 aged between 18 and 35 wtp for chocolate bars with three selected labels i e fair trade rainforest alliance and carbon footprint econometric outcomes reveal that several socio demographic factors exert a positive and statistically significant effect on wtp for all the selected chocolate bars namely age cohort older gender female and household income high respondents lifestyles and food consumption habits also had an effect on final bids this study offers valuable insights to policy makers and practitioners for efficiently targeting young consumers in campaigns to increase sustainability labelled food consumption

rice farmers preferences for fairtrade contracting in benin evidence from a discrete choice experiment abstract private standards such as fairtrade have emerged as a response to consumer civil society and corporate concerns about the production conditions of imported food many studies have investigated the welfare implications of smallholder participation in fairtrade schemes and consumers willingness to pay for fairtrade and other labelled products on the other hand no study has yet investigated farmers preferences for fairtrade and other private standards such insights would be valuable to improve the efficiency of certification schemes and ensure that they are tailored to farmers needs using a choice experiment this study investigates the preferences of smallholder rice farmers in benin for fairtrade and organic standards and compares the value of three types of contracts domestic fairtrade and fairtrade organic the results indicate that farmers positively value contracts but prefer domestic over fairtrade contracts because the former involve fewer requirements at current market prices farmers are willing to accept a fairtrade contract that includes fertiliser and child labour restrictions and a social premium but they are not willing to accept a fairtrade organic contract that completely prohibits chemical input use the results imply that adding organic requirements to fairtrade contracts may undermine the adoption and spread of fairtrade certification in the beninese rice sector

in aid we trust hearts and minds and the pakistan earthquake of 2005 in 2005 an earthquake in northern pakistan led to a significant inflow of international relief groups four years later trust in europeans and americans was markedly higher among those exposed to the earthquake and the relief that followed these differences reflect the greater provision of foreign aid and foreigner presence in affected villages rather than preexisting population differences or a general impact of disasters on trust we thus demonstrate large scale durable attitudinal change in a representative muslim population trust in westerners among muslims is malleable and not a deeply rooted function of preferences or global as opposed to local policy and actions

the european commission s sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan abstract the promotion of sustainable consumption and production patterns is enshrined as a key objective in the renewed european union sustainable development strategy eu sds sustainable consumption and production is arguably the most challenging aspect of the eu sds it requires changes to the way products and services are designed produced used and disposed of taking into account producer and consumer behaviours this paper reviews the european commission s communication on the sustainable consumption and production and sustainable industrial policy action plan introduced on july 16 2008 the paper examines the priority areas identified for action the means adopted to improve energy and environmental performance of products as well as uptake by consumers the paper concludes that the absence of mandatory quantifiable targets and deadlines and a reliance on both cross sectoral and multi level relationships are likely to weaken the ability of the action plan s fundamental objective of decoupling economic growth from resource use

deep impact geo simulations as a policy toolkit for natural disasters adverse post natural disaster outcomes in low income regions like elevated internal migration levels and low consumption levels are the result of market failures poor mechanisms for stabilizing income and missing insurance markets which force the affected population to respond and adapt to the shock they face in a spatial environment with multiple locations with independent but inter connected markets these transitions quickly become complex and highly non linear due to the feedback loops between the micro individual level decisions and the meso location wise market decisions to capture these continuously evolving micro meso interactions this paper presents a spatially explicit bottom up agent based model to analyze natural disaster like shocks to low income regions the aim of the model is to temporally and spatially track how population distributions income and consumption levels evolve in order to identify low income workers that are food insecure the model is applied to the 2005 earthquake in northern pakistan which faced catastrophic losses and high levels of displacement in a short time span and with market disruptions resulted in high levels of food insecurity the model is calibrated to pre crisis trends and shocked using distance based output and labor loss functions to replicate the earthquake impact model results show how various factors like existing income and saving levels distance from the fault line and connectivity to other locations can give insights into the spatial and temporal emergence of vulnerabilities the simulation framework presented here leaps beyond existing modeling efforts which usually deals with macro long term loss estimates and allows policy makers to come up with informed short term policies in an environment where data is non existent policy response is time dependent and resources are limited

price information and bidding behavior in repeated second price auctions examining panel data on bidding behavior in over forty second price auction markets with repeated trials we observe that i posted prices influence the behavior of the median naive bidder ii posted prices do not affect the behavior of the median experienced bidder or the bidder for familiar goods and iii anticipated strategic behavior wanes after two trials the results suggest that while affiliation might exist in auctions for new goods the repeated trial design with nonprice information removes the correlation of values and provides the experience that bidders need to understand the market mechanism

money market mutual funds an experiment in ad hoc deregulation a note the astounding growth of money market mutual funds mmmfs in the late 1970s and early 1980s and their interaction with regulated financial institutions has become a classic case study of the prpcess of financial market innovation and consumer economic education mmmfs grew from 2 2 billion in assets at the end of 1974 to 74 4 billion in assets at the end of 1980 by the middle of 1982 they have further tripled in asset size to over 200 billion money market mutual funds arose primarily because of deposit rate ceilings and other liability regulations which prevented the traditional financial intermediaries from offering the public a market rate and a highly liquid deposittype account the growth of mmmfs however was caused not merely by the availability of a more desirable financial instrument but was actually accelerated by the piecemeal nature of the financial deregulation process the introduction of the money market certificate mmc at commercial banks and thrift institutions appears to have greatly accelerated consumer interest rate sensitivity the massive advertising campaign for money market certificates that accompanied the introduction of the mmcs not only led to a large growth in these account types but also led to an explosive spillover growth in money market mutual funds thus the partial deregulation of deposit liabilities meant to alleviate the competition of mmmfs appears to have greatly accelerated their appeal to the consumer in attempting to control the slow hemorrhaging of the regulated financial institutions the regulators or deregulators as the case may be created a new highly pressured environment which has resulted in a massive leakage of funds from financial institutions by deregulating only short term liabilities of regulated financial institutions the regulators in essence allowed most consumers to receive market interest rates only on short term deposits this piecemeal deregulation in conjunction with an inverted yield curve led to a surge in the supply of funds to the short end of the market this shortening of the liability structure of financial institutions has substantially worsened the maturity mismatch of these financial institutions this is especially true of thrift institutions whose ability to acquire assets other than long term fixed rate mortgages was greatly restricted until recently it is in this environment that we examine the growth of the mmmf

developing food labelling strategies multi level labelling abstract labelling is an important cue for consumers as it helps to quickly communicate information about a product or production process however the majority of labels on the market are binary such as labels that indicate whether a product was produced using animal welfare friendly standards or not or whether it was produced organically or not yet there are many intermediate qualities that binary labels do not display in turn this could lead to a market failure a multi level label can show different process standards of products explicitly nonetheless before launching a multi level labelling system it should be tested if a multi level labelling system can shift market shares in favour of the labelled products using a consumer study with 1538 german consumers and the example of animal welfare the shares of product choices are calculated two comparisons of the shares of product choices will be made one between no label and a binary label and the other between no label and a multi level label the results suggest that a multi level labelling system achieves higher market shares therefore boosts sustainability attributes and can result in higher revenues or sales the results deliver important information for policymakers and industry

how do consumers in developed countries value the environment and workers social rights in developing countries this paper uses a lab experiment to investigate developed countries consumer valuations of characteristics linked to the environment and workers social rights in developing countries it focuses on seafood products and distinguishes between regular environmentally friendly and fair trade varieties consumer valuations are elicited with a multiple price list results show that environmental and social labels have similar effects on participant willingness to pay when they are first presented using welfare variation coming from the labels we also show that the absence of negative information linked to the regular variety may lead to an underestimation of the value of information associated with the label

the bunch of sustainability labels do consumers differentiate abstract a huge number of sustainable labels addressing the different pillars of sustainability emerged over the last years some labels promote factors which already imply other sustainability issues e g organic incl animal friendliness to a certain extent hence the question arises how consumers react towards the redundancies of different sustainability labels to add to the literature this study applies a latent class model for discrete choices first to test whether consumers take different sustainable labels into account when making their decision and second to test how consumers deal with different sustainable labels that are partly claiming the same aspect results indicate that three consumer segments with well distinguished preferences and willingness to pay measures for the respective attributes can be identified one group being the price sensitives exclusively deciding on the product with the lowest price regardless of any sustainable attribute of the product another group opts for products with a sustainable label without any clear preference for a specific sustainable attribute but expressing a clear willingness to pay more for all presented sustainable labels i e the label choosers a third group can be named price conscious label discriminators for them some sustainable aspects provide negative utility when labelled exclusively e g organic or free of genetically modified organisms but labelled together e g organic together with free of genetically modified organisms or animal welfare it provides them significantly positive utility even though being redundant by definition based on our findings there is no general statement to be made regarding the question whether different sustainable aspects complement or substitute each other the research rather emphasizes that a differentiated look at different consumer types and different labels symbolizing sustainability is needed the research adds to the existing literature by examining not only the relevance and acceptance of different sustainable labels to different consumer segments but also the interrelationship of different sustainable labels the study clearly shows that with regard to different sustainable labels the more the merrier does not always apply however almost 85 of the market could be satisfied with a universal sustainability label

experimental auction procedure impact on valuation of quality differentiated goods despite increased use of experimental auctions a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results this study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions results indicate the second price auction generates higher valuations than english becker degroot marschak bdm and random nth price auctions especially in latter bidding rounds and that random nth price auction yields lower valuations than english and bdm auctions we find that endowing subjects with a good prior to eliciting bids can have an impact on valuations but the effect varies across auction mechanism

environmental friendly food choice experiment to assess consumer s attitude toward climate neutral milk the role of communication the livestock sector has a high impact in terms of carbon footprint lowering ghg emission from the livestock sector deals with implementing climate neutral production techniques in a cost effectiveness way and with developing market communication to make carbon free diary products competitive with alternative products this study aimed at analyzing how information and communications could impact or affect the consumer s attitude toward climate neutral fresh milk the research focused on a case study carried out in tuscany among a sample of supermarket customers to assess consumer attitude toward fresh climate neutral milk using choice experiments methods the participants were asked to attend a focus group meeting made of four different sessions during the first session participants were asked to fill a background questionnaire and to watch a short documentary video about the climate change risks a second session consisted in a choice experiment in which participants were presented with 12 choices each describing a scenario in which the milk key attributes were planned at different levels price organic labeling and carbon footprint labeling during the third session the focus group discussions was developed following a semi structured debate about environmental labeling climate neutral labeling and the environmental impact of individual s purchasing behavior in the fourth session participants were asked to express their preferences on the choice sets with the same scenarios presented in the second session in order to assess variation in individual willingness to pay wtp toward climate neutral and organic milk results show that communication could play a role in changing consumer attitude toward carbon free products

consumers willingness to pay for eco friendly apples under different labels evidences from a lab experiment abstract an experiment was conducted in france to evaluate the impact of health and environmental information on consumers choices between conventional and organic apples results show that additional and precise messages about both pesticides use and pesticides residues significantly impact consumers choices between both products the experiment also studied the effect of a new label signaling apples that only use few pesticides compared to conventional apples with elicited willingness to pay we show that the introduction of this new label increases the average participants surplus whatever the information context for participants because of a higher quality compared to conventional apples and a lower price compared to organic products in order to complement this label a minimum quality standard imposing the use of few pesticides is socially optimal when initial participants knowledge is limited

sustainability labels on coffee consumer preferences willingness to pay and visual attention to attributes abstract sustainability labels are important tools that help consumers assess the sustainability aspects of food while past studies have focused on visual attention to nutrition information no study has investigated the visual attention paid by consumers to the sustainability information on food our study contributes to the need to better understand consumers attention to sustainability information when making food choices the objective was to explore the importance that consumers attach to sustainability attributes and investigate how this relates to the visual attention paid to these attributes during the choice decision and to willingness to pay wtp visual attention during the decision making process was measured in terms of fixation time and fixation count which were then analyzed in relation to the stated attribute importance our results suggest that consumer segments with differences in stated attribute importance visually attend differently to these attributes higher valued attributes also exhibited higher visual attention our results suggest that consumers who spend more time attending to and fixate more on sustainability attributes value them more

decentralized dispersed exchange without an auctioneer abstract we stimulate exchange among geographically dispersed agents who face real costs of communication along with bounds to rationality and calculation exchange is entirely decentralized it is initiated by individual agents who broadcast costly messages indicating their interest in trade it is accomplished by bilateral bargaining between pairs of agents agents use the information gained from previous attempts at local trade to calculate their search strategies for succeeding rounds this decentralized mechanism can achieve a substantial improvement in the allocation of resources and the average welfare of agents in comparison with a randomized initial endowment but in comparison with walrasian equilibrium agents who begin with endowments of equal value end up with substantially unequal wealth although the initial inequality of utility is reduced

sustainable food consumption among young adults in belgium theory of planned behaviour and the role of confidence and values abstract this study investigates determinants of sustainable food consumer behaviour in belgium to gain a better insight in sustainable consumption a study was conducted in which attitudes and behaviour as well as the role of individual characteristics like confidence and values related to sustainable products are analyzed the focus of the analysis is on exploring the influence of determinants as hypothesised by the theory of planned behaviour tpb attitudes perceived behavioural control social norms on sustainable consumption intention in general and specifically depending on consumer s perceived confidence and personal values the empirical research builds on a survey with a sample of 456 young adults using a questionnaire and showing an advertisement for hypothetical sustainable dairy products stepwise multiple regression models showed that 50 of the variance in intention to consume sustainable dairy was explained by the combination of personal attitudes perceived social influences perceived consumer effectiveness and perceived availability in addition different levels of confidence and value orientation yield different strengths of the determinants the findings yield public policy and marketing recommendations for stimulating sustainable food consumption among young adults

measuring consumers willingness to pay at the point of purchase abstract economists psychologists and marketing researchers rely on measures of consumers willingness to pay wtp in estimating demand for private and public goods and in designing optimal price schedules existing market research techniques for measuring wtp differ in whether they provide an incentive to consumers to reveal their true wtp and in whether they simulate actual point of purchase contexts the authors present an empirical comparison of several procedures for eliciting wtp that are applicable directly at the point of purchase in particular the authors test the applicability of becker degroot and marschak s 1964 well known incentive compatible procedure for assessing the utility of lotteries to measuring consumers wtp in three studies the authors explore the reliability validity and feasibility of the procedure and show that it yields lower wtp estimates than do non incentive compatible methods such as open ended and double bounded contingent valuation they show experimentally t

sustainability labels on food products consumer motivation understanding and use this study investigates the relationship between consumer motivation understanding and use of sustainability labels on food products both environmental and ethical labels which are increasingly appearing on food products data was collected by means of an online survey implemented in the uk france germany spain sweden and poland with a total sample size of 4408 respondents respondents expressed medium high to high levels of concern with sustainability issues at the general level but lower levels of concern in the context of concrete food product choices understanding of the concept of sustainability was limited but understanding of four selected labels fair trade rainforest alliance carbon footprint and animal welfare was better as some of them seem to be self explanatory the results indicated a low level of use no matter whether use was measured as self reported use of different types of information available on food labels or as use inferred from the results of a choice based conjoint analysis hierarchical regression indicated that use is related to both motivation and understanding and that both motivation understanding and use are affected by demographic characteristics human values as measured by the schwartz value domains and country differences the results imply that sustainability labels currently do not play a major role in consumers food choices and future use of these labels will depend on the extent to which consumers general concern about sustainability can be turned into actual behaviour

consumers willingness to pay for sustainable food products the case of organically and locally grown almonds in spain abstract organically and locally grown products have positive environmental impacts due to the reduction in the greenhouse emissions required for their production this paper contributes to this research stream by investigating consumers preferences and their willingness to pay for almonds that have different sustainable labels distance claims 100 km 800 km and 2000 km and the organic logo established by the european union to achieve the objective consumers participated in a non hypothetical choice experiment latent class modeling was employed to identify distinct patterns of valuation the results suggest that consumers were willing to pay a positive price premium for locally grown traveled the shortest distance and organically produced almonds whereas they were not willing to pay a price premium for almonds that have traveled longer distances moreover the findings show that consumer preferences for these claims were heterogeneous with three consumer segments identified as conventional consumers short distance consumers and sustainable consumers overall results confirm the results of previous studies because spanish consumers were willing to pay a premium price for those almonds that are organically and locally produced and therefore generate fewer greenhouse gases emissions the findings of this study added scientific value to scholars of sustainable consumer behavior because of the use of real choice experiment since no hypothetical evaluation method simulates real markets with real products and a transaction of money real choice experiment provides better approximations of true willingness to pay for organic and local almonds therefore real choice modeling eliminates hypothetical and social bias the results of this study contribute to insights in the promotion of sustainable consumption among citizens by policy makers in this regard promotional and educational campaigns could drive different segments of consumers to increase their knowledge on the benefits of reduction of the quantity of ghg emissions required for organic and locally grown production

using weather variability to estimate the response of savings to transitory income in thailand this paper measures the extent to which farmers are able to use savings and dissavings to smooth consumption in response to unexpected shocks to income time series information on regional rainfall is used to construct estimates of transitory income due to rainfall shocks the relationship between these measures of transitory income and savings indicates that farm households save a significantly higher fraction of transitory income than nontransitory income jel d91 016 the incomes of farm households in developing countries are notorious for being both low and uncertain policies that increase the incomes of farmers may well be different

do fair trade and eco labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience abstract in this study a face to face survey was conducted in order to reveal consumer preferences for ethical and environmentally sound labeling programs in coffee valuation questions regarding the fair trade shade grown and organic coffee labels were asked using a payment card format after consumers were previously informed about each of the labeling programs results suggest that consumers are very receptive toward both fair trade and shade grown coffee labels and consequently are willing to pay higher premiums for these labeling programs than for the organic coffee

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

influence of perceived value on purchasing decisions of green products in brazil abstract research on behavioral motivation for green product consumption has greatly advanced in recent years but many unknowns remain particularly regarding consumers willingness to pay premium prices for products with ecological appeal in this context this paper reports an experimental research that investigates the relationship between consumer perceived value for green products and price elasticity the research was performed using an adaptation of the model proposed by zeithaml 1988 and it was applied in the automotive and furniture sectors it was found that perceived value of green products increases willingness to pay in the purchasing decision it was also observed that demographical variables such as gender age and revenue positively impact perceived quality and the consequent purchase intention considering the population sampled results indicate that the effect of ecological appeal is similar to a 10 price reduction it means that according to the declared preference respondents were willing to pay on average a 10 premium for green products in the studied product categories the main theoretical contribution of our paper lies in furthering the understanding of how key dimensions that constitute perceived value relate to each other and to demographic and personal influence variables as well as its impact in willingness to pay premium prices for green products

unveiling ethical product features the importance of an elaborated information presentation abstract despite growing consumer awareness of ethical consumption market sales are not growing accordingly because the presentation of appropriate ethical product information may influence consumers to choose ethical products this paper analyses the requirements necessary for the successful communication of ethical product features based on mcguire s 1976 information processing model and a review of current literature the information s comprehensibility meaningfulness and credibility are investigated in an online survey of us american citizens n 595 for two product categories representing fast moving consumer goods and durable goods a generalized mixed logit model revealed that all three communication factors affect consumers choices the more concerns about or expertise in organic production and fair trade purchase the consumers expressed the less important their price sensibility and the more they preferred a comprehensive addendum and credible sources e g government certificate or traceability the results strongly suggest that advertisers and marketers can customize product communications in order to better engage both the mass market and ethically oriented consumers

consumption smoothing migration and marriage evidence from rural india a significant proportion of migration in low income countries particularly in rural areas is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage we seek to explain these mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among indian households in particular we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant dispersed yet kinship related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks analysis of longitudinal south indian village data lends support to the hypothesis marriage cum migration contributes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food consumption farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in longer distance marriage cum migration the hypothesized and observed marriage cum migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains

determinants of demand for green products an application to eco label demand for fish in europe abstract in this paper we confront the theoretical motivations of the consumption of eco friendly products and the factors influencing the european perceptions regarding the fact that fish caught using an environmentally friendly technique may carry a special label we take advantage of the recent integration of non economic elements in the microeconomic analysis of consumers behavior in order to highlight the factors leading to their demand for green products thanks to an original european survey on seafood product carried out on more than 5000 consumers we test the influence of intrinsic motivation information localization and socio economic factors on the demand for an eco label for fish our results show a significant connection between the desire for eco labeling and seafood features especially the freshness of the fish the geographical origin of the fish and the wild vs farmed origin of the fish moreover we prove the major role played by the fish price we also demonstrate that the ecological issue regarding fisheries is highly connected to consumer information intrinsic motivation and socio economic status the typical green fish consumer is a young woman well educated well informed on the state of marine resources and not very trusting of the regulation of the fisheries consumers who are aware of the importance of marine resource preservation have the same profile