grading minimum quality standards and the labeling of genetically modified products we relate the labeling of genetically modified gm products to the theory of grading and minimum quality standards the model represents three stages in the supply chain assumes a vertical product differentiation framework allows for the accidental commingling of non gm products and treats regulation as a purity threshold for non gm products we find that a non gm purity level that is too strict leads to the disappearance of the non gm product and that some quality standard benefits farmers indeed the standard that is optimal from the perspective of producers is stricter than what is optimal for consumers and for societal welfare

on mqs regulation innovation and market coverage abstract we revisit maxwell s 1998 analysis to show that his results are incompatible with the assumption of full market coverage as a consequence the effects of mqs regulation on the high quality firm s incentive to adopt a more efficient technology cannot be assessed in this model

a comparison of salient rewards in experiments money and class points abstract we use laboratory decisions with different salient rewards to elicit individual values of a risk mitigation investment in a low probability environment statistically significant gender differences were found with class points however gender differences disappeared when monetary incentives were used

on the importance of the supply side in demand side management we discuss how the structure of market supply affects the evaluation of policies to promote energy efficiency in household appliances if competitive markets offer the levels that consumers demand product standards inefficiently restrict choice if suppliers price discriminate minimum standards can restrict the inefficient use of energy intensity to segment consumers we also compare the effects of average intensity standards energy prices and innovation and consider what the different behavioral predictions imply for empirical studies of energy efficiency good policymaking requires knowing not only how consumers value energy efficiency in their decision making but also how producers respond to those values

football spectator no show behaviour in the german bundesliga despite an extensive literature on stadium attendance demand our understanding of those factors shaping spectator no show behaviour is rudimentary at best here we explore such behaviour by using

the demand for standing and seated viewing accommodation in the english football league using match attendance data collected from a postal survey of football league clubs separate demand equations are estimated for standing and seated viewing accommodation some significant differences between attendance patterns for the two types of accommodation are identified current form the championship significance of the match and a geographical distance variable are found to be important determinants of standing attendance while the club s historical record is of particular importance for seated attendance the paper also discusses the implications of the results in view of the current moves towards the conversion of stadia to all seated accommodation

testing for unit roots in panel data are wages on different bargaining levels cointegrated theoritical considerations suggest that spillover forces equalize wages for similar jobs thus it is expected that firm wages are cointegrated with the corresponding wage rates on an industrial level in this paper we apply various unit root tests to a panel of wage data we show that the familiar techniques can be adopted to this type of data allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and common time effects our results suggest that firm and industry wages both possess a unit root in the autoregressive representation however ther is only weak evidence for a cointegration realtionship

just looking for a good game competitive balance in the korean professional baseball league abstractrottenberg s uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is about preferences that can vary across fans and sports we provide the first evidence of the empirical power of the hypothesis in the korean professional baseball league kpbl in a panel data set team level aggregation over years shows that fans of this league attend in ways consistent with the hypothesis at the level of game uncertainty and consecutive season uncertainty but only the first is statistically significant kpbl fans appear to just be looking for a good game this is consistent with the nearly complete concentration of post season participation among a very few teams outside of the major population centre in seoul and a lack of local team identification among kpbl fans our work adds to the diversity of league structures in the competitive balance literature since talent levels in kpbl are the result of parent company advertising choices rather than geographic identification there are research questions and a policy implication

uncertainty of outcome or strengths of teams an economic analysis of attendance demand for international cricket a significant body of theoretical literature has argued that popular interest in sporting contests between teams is heavily influenced by how difficult it is to predict the result ex ante empirical research has however been unable to reach a consensus on the magnitude of uncertainty of outcome on demand in this article we seek to resolve this impasse by distinguishing between uncertainty of outcome in the short run and uncertainty of outcome in the long run we also show that it is important to control for the independent effect of absolute team strength when testing the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis using data on over 380 test cricket matches played in england australia and new zealand since 1980 we find that short run uncertainty of outcome has a significant impact on attendance demand and that absolute team strength has better explanatory power for attendance demand than does long run uncertainty of outcome our results suggest some policy implications for the management and organization of international cricket

minimum quality standards as a barrier to innovation abstract most models of minimum quality standards do not deal with the dynamic nature of regulation this note shows that presence of minimum quality standards may reduce firm incentives to innovate leading to a lower level of social welfare under regulation

warning labels as cheap talk why regulators ban drugs abstract one explanation for drug bans is that regulators know more than consumers about product quality but why not just communicate the information in their ban perhaps via a would have banned label because product labeling is cheap talk any small market failure tempts regulators to lie about quality inducing consumers who suspect such lies to not believe everything they are told in fact when regulators expect market failures to result in under consumption of a drug and so would not ban it for informed consumers regulators ex ante prefer to commit to not banning this drug for uninformed consumers

the demand for league football a demand equation is estimated for total football league attendances for the period 1948 49 to 1979 80 plausible values are obtained for the elasticities of demand with respect to income and to a price variable which includes the cost of travel to the stadium the values imply that football spectating is an inferior good with a low price elasticity equations are also estimated for the league s separate divisions the implications of the results for the football league clubs are discussed

the demand for english league football a club level analysis a demand equation is estimated for 19 large urban based english football league clubs over the period 1962 3 to 1991 2 in order to analyse the economic determinants of club attendances while controlling for football specific factors attendances are measured with and without correction for admission of season ticket holders using an error correction specification to model attendances it is shown that both adjusted and unadjusted attendances respond to real ticket prices in the long run in 17 and 18 clubs respectively the price elasticity is typically larger for adjusted attendances suggesting that casual spectators are more price sensitive than season ticket holders among football specific factors league position goals scored and promotion and relegation between the divisions are all important determinants of attendance patterns

innocuous minimum quality standards abstract the present note shows that innocuous minimum quality standards namely below the lowest quality level in a market may have effects on equilibrium outcomes such a mqs reduces the incentive to invest in r d by the quality leading firm

league level attendance and outcome uncertainty in u s pro sports leagues we extend the breakpoint literature regarding annual league level attendance and the impact of outcome uncertainty to the national basketball association national football league and national hockey league as our measures are different than past work on baseball we also apply our model to the american and national leagues attendance series for each league under consideration are not stationary overall but are stationary with break points no form of outcome uncertainty game play off or across seasons matters for attendance in hockey or baseball regardless of which game uncertainty variable is used under the measure of game uncertainty that recommends itself for football only play off uncertainty matters for attendance whether outcome uncertainty matters for basketball depends on the measure of game uncertainty situational similarities in the break points across leagues suggest general areas for future research jel l83 c22

pre and within season attendance forecasting in major league baseball a random forest approach this study explores the forecasting of major league baseball game ticket sales and identifies important attendance predictors by means of random forests that are grown from classification and regre

midweek effect on soccer performance evidence from the german bundesliga the home advantage phenomenon is a well established feature in sports competitions in this study we examine data from 2 013 soccer matches played in the german bundesliga during the seasons from 2007 2008 to 2016 2017 using a very rich data set our econometric analysis that is based on matching methods reveals that the usual home advantage disappears when the game is in the middle of the week instead of being on the weekend our results indicate that as the midweek matches are unevenly allocated among teams the actual schedules of the bundesliga favor teams with fewer home games in midweek the study also shows that these soccer specific findings may have some implications for the design of contests in general jel d00 l00 d20 z20

financial decision making are women really more risk averse 40 males 33 females gain gambling gain domain loss gambling loss domain a contextual frames b abstract gambling frames studies the application of experimental methods provided stronger control of the economic environment in which decisions were made we elicited data which call into question the prevalence of stereotypic risk attitudes in financial decision making first we find that the comparative risk propensity of male and female subjects is strongly dependent on the financial decision setting second and more important we observe no gender differences in risk propensity when subjects face contextual decisions since in practice financial decisions are always contextual our results suggest that the above gender stereotype may not reflect true male and female attitudes toward financial risks i gender specific risk behavior an experimental design our experiment was designed to examine gender specific risk propensity in decisions relevant for investors and managers table 1 gives an overview of the experimental design in the main treatment we implemented risky choices in the form of investment and insurance decisions choice behavior in this treatment henceforth called the context treatment directly measures the risk behavior of male and female subjects in contextual financial decisions we also ran a control treatment in which the same risky choices were presented as abstract gambling decisions this control treatment henceforth called the abstract treatment allows us to validate the risk behavior induced by our experimental procedure in the light of the above mentioned gambling evidence in the context treatment subjects were confronted with risky choices in two different decision contexts subjects first had to complete a series of investment decisions they were then presented with a series of identical choices this time however framed as insur1 wealth effects from income differences outside the laboratory may still affect risk behavior in our experiment they are controlled for in our model 2 experimental instructions are available in german from the authors or in english from our web page www wif ethz ch publikationen htm ance decisions each investment and insurance decision incorporated a choice between a risky lottery and a certain payoff with the series of choices implemented in the two frames we elicited our subjects certainty equivalents for the same four risky lotteries l1 l2 l3 l4 in both contexts we implemented two frames in the context treatment in order to measure the risk propensity of subjects toward both perceived gains and perceived losses in both frames all possible payoffs for each decision were positive in the investment frame these payoffs were also presented as gains while in the insurance frame the same payoffs were presented as losses relative to an initial endowment therefore elicited certainty equivalents in the investment frame measure subjects risk propensities in the gain domain while certainty equivalents in the insurance frame measure risk propensity in the loss domain if in contextual financial decisions female subjects are generally more risk averse than men our results should display ceteris paribus lower female certainty equivalents in both the investment and insurance frames 3 the four lotteries l1 l2 l3 and l4 each had two possible outcomes payoffs in swiss francs 1 sfr a 0 60 and their probabilities were 30 sfr 6 10 sfr 6 30 sfr 2 10 sfr 2 30 sfr 6 10 sfr 6 and 50 sfr 2 20 sfr 2 respectively 4 experimental evidence suggests that individual risk propensity will vary systematically between the gain and loss domain daniel kahneman and amos tversky 1979 383 vol 89 no 2 gender and economic transactions 3y16 my68 mp 383 friday dec 10 08 20 am lp aer my68 figure 1 differences in mean certainty equivalents ce between male and female subjects by frame note certainty equivalents and male female differences are measured in swiss francs in the abstract treatment we confronted a different group of subjects with exactly the same risky decisions as those in the main treatment however as mentioned before all choices in this control treatment were framed as abstract gambling decisions again two frames were implemented in the gaingambling and loss gambling frames we measured the risk attitudes of subjects toward gambles in the gain and loss domain respectively subjects in both treatments were told in advance that one of their choices would determine their experimental earnings further all subjects completed a post experimental questionnaire which yielded information on each subject s disposable income this information is necessary to exclude wealth effects due to income differences outside the laboratory as an explanation of gender specific choice behavior

examining risk preferences under high monetary incentives experimental evidence from the people s republic of china several experimental sessions were conducted to elicit certainty equivalents for a sequence of lotteries involving real monetary outcomes the opportunity to conduct sessions in the people s republic of china afforded the ability to offer very large monetary incentives relative to subjects living costs in the highest payoff condition subjects earned three times their normal monthly revenue in the course of a two hour experiment results indicate a statistically significant impact of the level of monetary incentives on revealed risk preferences however even under extreme monetary incentives subjects demanded amounts well in excess of expected value for low probability gain prospects copyright 1992 by american economic association

monetary incentives versus class credit evidence from a large classroom trust experiment this paper reports an experimental investigation of a trust game using either cash or class credit as incentives to participants we recruit from two auditorium classes in one class each token has cash value in the other each token is worth extra credit points added to the students overall average at the end of the semester the results indicate that using extra credit points to motivate participants generates qualitatively similar data on average as participants incentivized with cash we do find a difference in behavior with second movers who expect a low grade but those incentivized with class credit are closer to the game theoretic prediction

competition format championship uncertainty and stadium attendance in european football a small league perspective to increase the number of regular season games small football leagues are often organized as quadruple round robin tournaments with teams playing each other four times theoretically however the more games played the less uncertain is the championship race reducing fan interest in the league this article uses data from austria and switzerland to study the relationship between competition format championship uncertainty and attendance demand empirically results suggest that a team still in contention to win the championship positively affects attendance while it is not the specificity of the competition format that per se contributes to less championship uncertainty

the demand for cricket the case of the john player league multiple regression analysis is used to estimate attendance functions 1976 and 1977 for the john player league one of the one day competitions in english top class cricket likely determinants of attendance are grouped according to whether they are economic locational team performance player attraction seasonal and residual preference factors the results suggest implications for the management of the game in respect of pricing strategy scheduling the structure of competition player qualification rules payment scales and television policy

perceived game uncertainty suspense and the demand for sport this study tries bridging between different behavioral economic explanations for the lack of support of the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis in spectator sports we test a measure of perceived game uncertainty that is comparable to objective measures frequently tested in the literature econometric results suggest that fans do not perceive closeness of a game differently than how economists have tended to measure it however fans perceptions of suspensefulness are distinct from their perceptions of game uncertainty moreover the finding that fans preferences for game uncertainty are dominated by loss aversion also emerges independently of fanship status in our stated preference setting jel l83 d12 z2

competitive balance versus competitive intensity before a match is one of these two concepts more relevant in explaining attendance the case of the french football ligue 1 over the period 2008 2011 the aim of this article is to investigate the determinants of attendance at french football ligue 1 matches over the period 2008 2011 with an emphasis on examining the effects of both competitive balance and intensity before a match competitive balance is measured by the point difference between the two teams concerned by a match in the championship competitive intensity is measured by the point difference for the home team in relation to ranks with sporting stakes results show that competitive balance has an insignificant impact whereas competitive intensity has a significantly positive impact implications are drawn

cash and alternate methods of accounting in an experimental game abstract four methods of communication are compared in the trust game berg j dickhaut j mccabe k 1995 trust reciprocity and social history games and economic behavior 10 122 142 in different treatments subjects exchange currency use play money or write down how much they send and return the final variation is the strategy method in which the responder makes a choice for every possible amount sent the amount sent and propensity to send the entire 10 did not vary among formats but responders returned less of the available funds and were more likely to return zero in the original cash method choices in the strategy method were similar to choices using the game methods

import competition product quality reversal and welfare abstract we investigate product quality in an import competing country using the framework of vertical product differentiation comparison of three polices suggests that the quality based r d subsidy brings quality reversal leading to a win win win equilibrium in consumer surplus domestic profit and social welfare

impacts of minimum quality standards imposed through marketing orders or related producer organizations we analyze the impacts of minimum quality standards mqs imposed by producers acting collectively through a producer organization such as a marketing order mqs imposed in a competitive market can never enhance social welfare because in general an mqs creates two deadweight losses one due to inefficient enhancement of product quality and a second due to wastage of the low quality product any mqs that a competitive industry implements based upon a profit criterion causes all consumers in the market to be harmed however an mqs may be preferred relative to supply control as a second best instrument for transferring income to producers