do soccer players play the mixed strategy nash equilibrium mixed strategy nash equilibrium msne is a commonly used solution concept in game theoretic models in various fields in economics management and other disciplines but the experimental results whether the msne predicts well actual play in games is mixed consequently the evidence for naturally occurring games in which the msne predicts the outcome well is of great importance as it can justify the vast use of msne in models the game between the kicker and the goalkeeper in soccer penalty kicks is a real world game that can be used to examine the application of the msne concept or its accuracy because payoffs are a common knowledge the players have huge incentives to play correctly the game is simple enough to analyse its nash equilibrium is in mixed strategies and players actions can be observed we collected and analysed the data on the direction of kicks and jumps in penalty kicks in various top leagues and tournaments our analysis suggests that the msne predictions are the closest to the act

political motivations and electoral competition equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence we study both theoretically and experimentally the complete set of nash equilibria of a classical one dimensional majority rule election game with two candidates who might be interested in power as well as in ideology but not necessarily in the same way apart from obtaining the well known median voter result and the two sided policy differentiation outcome the paper uncovers the existence of two new equilibrium configurations called one sided and probabilistic policy differentiation respectively our analysis shows how these equilibrium configurations depend on the relative interests in power resp ideology and the uncertainty about voters preferences the theoretical predictions are supported by the data collected from a series of laboratory experiments as we observe convergence to the nash equilibrium values at the aggregate as well as the individual levels in all treatments and the comparative statics effects across treatments are as predicted by the theory

expressive vs strategic voters an empirical assessment abstract leading theories of how voters choose between candidates are rooted in two very different paradigms with starkly different behavioral implications exploiting the incentive structure of germany s electoral system i develop a novel set of empirical tests that pit the canonical pivotal voter model against alternative accounts according to which individuals derive expressive utility from supporting their most preferred candidate the results show that neither paradigm can explain the most salient features of the data in addition the evidence suggests that voters cannot be neatly categorized into sincere and strategic types

why the microbrewery movement organizational dynamics of resource partitioning in the u s brewing industry1 the number of small specialty brewers in the u s beer brewing industry has increased dramatically in recent decades even as the market for beer became increasingly dominated by mass production brewing companies using the resource partitioning model of organizational ecology this article shows that these two apparently contradictory trends are fundamentally interrelated hypotheses developed here refine the way scale competition among generalist organizations is modeled and improve the theoretical development of the sociological bases for the appeal of specialist organizations products especially those related to organizational identity evidence drawn from qualitative and quantitative research provides strong support for the theory the article offers a brief discussion of the theoretical and substantive issues involved in application of the model to other industries and to other cultures

breast cancer survival work and earnings relying on data from the health and retirement study hrs linked to longitudinal social security earnings data we examine differences between breast cancer survivors and a non cancer control group in employment hours worked wages and earnings overall breast cancer has a negative impact on employment however among survivors who work hours of work wages and earnings are higher compared to women in the control group we explore possible biases underlying these estimates focusing on selection but cannot rule out a causal interpretation our research points to heterogeneous labor market responses to breast cancer and shows that breast cancer does not appear to be debilitating for women who remain in the work force

trust trustworthiness and business success lab and field findings from entrepreneurs this article contributes to the literature on trust and small businesses in developing countries by linking the level of trust in others that entrepreneurs display in a lab setting to sales data outside of the lab the results show a robust positive correlation between trust and business success with sales used as a measure of success the successful entrepreneurs invested in trust more than the less successful ones did in the lab trusting in others is highly profitable with successful entrepreneurs doing so to the degree required to maximize revenue however i found no association between trustworthiness and business success jel o17 l26 c91

testing mixed strategy equilibria when players are heterogeneous the case of penalty kicks in soccer the concept of mixed strategy is a fundamental component of game theory and its normative importance is undisputed however its empirical relevance has sometimes been viewed with skepticism the main concern over the practical usefulness of mixed strategies relates to the indifference property of a mixedstrategy equilibrium in order to be willing to play a mixed strategy an agent must be indifferent between each of the pure strategies that are played with positive probability in the mixed strategy as well as any combination of those strategies given that the agent is indifferent across these many strategies there is no bene t to selecting precisely the strategy that induces the opponent to be indifferent as required for equilibrium why an agent would in the absence of communication between players choose exactly one particular randomization is not clear of course whether agents in real life actually play nash equilibrium mixed strategies is ultimately an empirical question the evidence to date on this issue is based almost exclusively on laboratory experiments e g barry o neill 1987 amnon rapoport and richard b boebel 1992 dilip mookherjee and barry sopher 1994 jack ochs 1995 kevin a mccabe et al 2000 the results of these experiments are mixed o neill 1987 concludes that his experimental evidence is consistent with nash mixed strategies but that conclusion was contested by james n brown and robert w rosenthal 1990 with the exception of mccabe et al 2000 which looks at a three person game the other papers generally reject the nash mixedstrategy equilibrium while much has been learned in the laboratory there are inherent limitations to such studies it is sometimes argued that behavior in the simpli ed arti cial setting of games played in such experiments need not mimic real life behavior in addition even if individuals behave in ways that are inconsistent with optimizing behavior in the lab market forces may discipline such behavior in the real world finally interpretation of experiments rely on the assumption that the subjects are maximizing the monetary outcome of the game whereas there may be other preferences at work among subjects e g attempting to avoid looking foolish that distort the results tests of mixed strategies in nonexperimental data are quite scarce in real life the games played are typically quite complex with large strategy spaces that are not fully speci ed ex ante in addition preferences of the actors may not be perfectly known we are aware of only one paper in a similar spirit to our own research using data from classic tennis matches mark walker and john wooders 2001 test whether the probability the player who serves the ball wins the point is equal for serves to the right and chiappori department of economics university of chicago 1126 east 59th street chicago il 60637 levitt department of economics university of chicago groseclose graduate school of business stanford university 518 memorial way stanford ca 94305 the paper was presented at games 2000 in bilbao and at seminars in paris and chicago we thank d braun j m conterno r guesnerie d heller d mengual p reny b salanie and especially j l ettori for comments and suggestions and m mazzocco and f bos for excellent research assistance any errors are ours 1 the theoretical arguments given in defense of the concept of mixed strategy equilibria relate either to puri cation john c harsanyi 1973 or to the minimax property of the equilibrium strategy in zero sum games for recent elaborations on these ideas see authur j robson 1994 and phil reny and robson 2001 2 the ultimatum game is one instance in which experimental play of subjects diverges substantially from the predicted nash equilibrium robert slonim and alvin e roth 1998 demonstrate that raising the monetary payoffs to experiment participants induces behavior closer to that predicted by theory although some disparity persists

exploitable actions of believers in the law of small numbers in repeated constant sum games abstract in repeated fixed pair constant sum games with unique equilibria in mixed strategies such as matching pennies the subgame perfect equilibrium is repeating the stage game mixed strategy equilibrium action in such games rational players avoid strategies that are exploitable in that current actions either deviate systematically from the equilibrium action probabilities or fail to be serially independent of past actions i revisit classic experiments and find that subjects actions are sometimes exploitable because they are serially dependent subjects have difficulty in producing serially independent actions and in recognizing serially dependent sequences due to a bias called local representativeness

the conditional nature of embeddedness a study of borrowing by large u s firms 1973 1994 economic and organizational sociologists have increasingly demonstrated that the actions of individuals and firms are affected by the social networks within which they are embedded in recent years scholars have begun to recognize that the effects of these social networks may vary across populations or types of relations this article examines the extent to which the effects of interfirm networks on the behavior of firms are historically contingent focusing on the level of debt financing among approximately 140 large u s corporations over a 22 year period the authors show that the extent to which the firms use of debt was influenced by those with which they were tied through director interlocks declined over time the authors argue that this decline in the network effect reflected a shift in the institutional environment within which the firms operated and that it was driven by three processes the professionalization of the finance function within the firm the internalization of financial decision

social movements and organizational form cooperative alternatives to corporations in the american insurance dairy and grain industries how do social movements promote diversity and alternative organizational forms we address this question by analyzing how cooperative enterprise was affected by the grange a leading anticorporate movement in the united states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries state level analyses across three industries yield three findings first the grange had positive effects on cooperatives and mutuals during the nineteenth century populist struggles over corporate capitalism second these effects were stronger where corporations counter mobilized to block challengers political efforts grangers pursued economic organization as an alternative to politics and in response to blocked political access third the grange continued to foster cooperatives even as populist revolts waned it did so however by buffering cooperatives from problems of group heterogeneity and population change rendering them less dependent on supportive communities and specific economic conditions these findings advance research at the movements organizations interface by documenting movement effects and by isolating different causal pathways through which mobilization counter mobilization and political opportunity shape economic organization the results also provide economic sociology with new evidence on how social structure moderates economic forces and help revise institutional analyses of american capitalism by showing how cooperatives emerged as significant rather than aberrant elements of the u s economy

rationality in extensive form games let us adopt the classical point of view that a theory of games is a description of rational behavior consequently equipped with a book entitled theory of games any individual in any strategic situation need only consult the book to make a rational decision one of the questions to address in this context is indeed whether or not strategies other than those provided by backward induction can ever appear in such a book in offering an answer we shall also explore the logical limits within which any theory of games must operate

public health insurance expansions and labour supply of married women the state children s health insurance programme while the relationships between health insurance and the labour supply of women have been explored in the literature little is known about the effects of offering public health insurance on the labour supply decisions of married women this article examines the labour supply decisions of married women using the state children s health insurance programme our empirical analysis implies that certain groups of married women may be leaving the labour force in order to provide public health insurance for their children we conclude that the programme causes unexpected efficiency losses through distorted labour supply decisions

the stages of the policy process and the equal rights amendment 1972 1982 studies of how social movements impact policy outcomes typically treat policy change as a dichotomous phenomenon a governmental unit either adopts or does not adopt a particular policy in a particular time frame this simplistic view of the policy process runs the risk of masking how movements and other factors matter at various stages of the policy process each stage is characterized by different rules and different consequences thus movements and other factors ought to matter differently at each stage the authors examine three stages of policy development with regard to state ratification of the equal rights amendment results show that movements mattered more to legislative decisions in the earlier stages of the policy process but that their effects were eclipsed in later stages by public opinion

do professionals choke under pressure high rewards or the threat of severe punishment provide strong motivation but also create psychological pressure which might induce performance decrements by analyzing the performance of professional football players in penalty kick situations the paper provides empirical evidence for the existence of detrimental incentive effects two pressure variables are considered in particular 1 the importance of success and 2 the presence of spectators there are plenty of situations in which pressure arises in the workplace knowing how individuals perform under pressure conditions is crucial because it has implications for the design of the workplace and the design of incentive schemes

incentives and outcomes in a strategic setting the 3 points for a win system in soccer i introduction the behavior of agents in a strategic contest is a central concern of economic models and the notion of nash equilibrium and various extensions and refinements thereof is the guiding principle of analysis results in this setting are often sensitive to the structure of the interaction and taking models predictions to an empirical test is a notoriously difficult task contests are the quintessential characteristic of sport and thus sport situations share a number of features with economic problems that arise in many other contexts because sport competitions have clear cut rules competitors are strongly motivated and relevant data are often observable sport settings are proving to be a fruitful area of empirical inquiry to test important tenets of economic models for example the notion of nash equilibrium has been put to a direct test by using data on serve choices in tennis matches in walker and wooders 2001 and hsu huang and tang 2007 soccer penalty kicks data in chiappori levitt and grose close 2002 and palacios huerta 2003 and near post far post soccer goals in moschini 2004 the results of these studies are both interesting and encouraging and broadly support the notion that players choices are in accord with equilibrium predictions in this article i propose to use soccer association football data in a new direction to investigate the impact of a major structural change in the organization of soccer competitions that took place in the mid 1990s most national soccer competitions are typically organized as double round robin tournaments in which every team plays all others in its league twice at home and away points earned in every match are added together and rewards are assigned according to the totals earned in the entire competition 1 unlike some other sports drawn matches are common in soccer and the point system determines their importance relative to victories the traditional way to handle that was the 2 l 0 system whereby a tie was worth half as much as a victory and a loss was worth nothing england first replaced that with a 3 1 0 system 3 points for a win and 1 point for a tie starting in the 1981 1982 season in an effort to promote a more attacking brand of soccer a few other countries followed suit in the years that followed but the new system became widespread after it was embraced by federation internationale de football association fifa the game s world governing body to structure the initial round robin phase of the 1994 world cup in the years that followed virtually every country adopted the new 3 point system the widespread and systematic introduction of the 3 point system in soccer provides an interesting natural experiment to investigate the effects of changing rewards and incentives on outcomes in a tournament setting did the increased weight given to victories translate into more attacking play and goals as per the hopeful expectation and is that really what one should expect from such a structural change anyway a few studies that have investigated such questions have stressed some negative results brocas and carrillo 2004 develop a conceptual model of a soccer match as a two stage game and cast doubts on the expectation that the rule change in question necessarily induces more attack their main point is that the new system while encouraging more attack toward the end of the game may also induce teams to play more defensively at the beginning of the game correira guedes and machado 2002 similarly note possible unintended effects of the point system change due to asymmetric abilities underdogs facing rivals of superior abilities may actually reduce their level of offense garicano and palacios huerta 2005 emphasize the added incentive for sabotage tactics that the new point system may induce in this article i reconsider the question of whether the introduction of the 3 1 0 point system in soccer actually has had significant effects

professionals play minimax the implications of the minimax theorem are tested using natural data the tests use a unique data set from penalty kicks in professional soccer games in this natural setting experts play a one shot two person zero sum game the results of the tests are remarkably consistent with equilibrium play in every respect i winning probabilities are statistically identical across strategies for players ii players choices are serially independent the tests have substantial power to distinguish equilibrium play from disequilibrium alternatives these results represent the first time that both implications of von neumann s minimax theorem are supported under natural conditions during the last few decades game theory has contributed to a reshaping of important aspects of the methodology of economics and other social sciences in a large part this is because the language concepts and techniques of non cooperative game theory have become central to many areas of the discipline undoubtedly studying the interaction of ideally rational players greatly aids our understanding of the behaviour of real individuals firms and other agents moreover as kreps 1991 remarks studying the former should aim at understanding the latter the point of game theory is to help economists understand and predict what will happen in economic social and political contexts theoretical contributions should thus feed back to empirical analysis however testing the implications of the theory has proven extremely difficult in the literature the primary reason is that many predictions often hinge on properties of the utility functions and the values of the rewards used even when predictions are invariant over classes of preferences data on rewards are seldom available in natural settings moreover there is often great difficulty in determining strategy sets and in measuring individuals choices effort levels and the incentive structures they face as a result even the most fundamental predictions of game theoretical models have not yet been supported empirically in real situations in view of the substantial problems associated with testing theoretical predictions using natural data many authors have been compelled to test them in experimental settings interestingly enough despite the controlled structure of experiments the results of many experiments during the last few decades typically reject the assumption that subjects are playing according to the theoretical implications of equilibrium play for instance a number of experiments have evaluated the empirical validity of von neumann s minimax theory for two person zero sum games a theory that occupies a central position in our understanding of strategic situations the results have been mixed and are often rather negative see for instance brown and rosenthal 1990 rapoport and boebel 1992 camerer 2003 and the references therein

does player specialization predict player actions evidence from penalty kicks at fifa world cup and uefa euro cup penalty kicks are analysed in the literature as real life experiments for assessing the use of rational mixed strategies by professional players however each penalty kick cannot be considered a repetition of the same event because of the varying background conditions in particular the heterogeneous ability of different players consequently aggregate statistics over data sets composed of a large number of penalty kicks mediate the behaviour of the players in different games and the properties of optimal mixed strategies cannot be tested directly because of aggregation bias in this article we model the heterogeneous ability of players we then test the hypothesis that differently talented players randomize over different actions to achieve this aim we study a data set that collects penalties kicked during shoot out series in the last editions of fifa world cup and uefa euro cup 1994 2012 where kickers are categorized as specialists and non specialists the results support our theoretical predi

regulating american industries markets politics and the institutional determinants of fire insurance regulation1 this article assesses three approaches to state regulation capture theory interest group analyses and neoinstitutional research state level event history analyses of fire insurance rate regulation from 1906 to 1930 are used contrary to capture theory regulation was not driven simply by firms interests in market control instead consistent with interest group analyses regulation was more likely when anticompany forces farmers and small businesses could challenge big business politically further as neoinstitutional research suggests regulation was more likely when industry governance evoked legitimacy crises when courts and professions endorsed regulation and its underlying models and when states developed system wide administrative capacities institutional conditions also mediated the effects of markets and politics on regulation using these findings we develop a theory of how political and institutional conditions shape industries governance options

ripples of fear the diffusion of a bank panic community reactions against organizations can be driven by negative information spread through a diffusion process that is distinct from the diffusion of organizational practices bank panics offer

acquisitions as exaptation the legacy of founding institutions in the u s commercial banking industry this study focuses on how founding institutions impact intraorganizational capabilities and how such imprints may have different external manifestations in subsequent historical eras we introduce the concept of exaptation to organizational theory identifying an important process whereby the historical origin of a capability differs from its current usefulness three founding conditions branching policy modernization and political culture influenced banks development of capabilities for managing dispersed branches and these capabilities subsequently led to variation in banks propensity to engage in acquisitions

competing for loyalty the dynamics of rallying support abstract we consider a class of dynamic collective action problems in which either a single principal or two competing principals vie for the support of members of a group we focus on the dynamic problem that emerges when agents negotiate and commit their support to principals sequentially we show that competition reduces agents welfare with public goods or if and only if there are positive externalities on uncommitted agents and increases agents welfare with public bads we apply the model to the study of corporate takeovers vote buying and exclusive deals jel d42 d62 d72 d82 g34 h41

equilibrium play and adaptive learning in a three person centipede game the two person centipede game is one of the most celebrated paradoxes of backward induction in complete information extensive form games an experimental investigation of a three person centipede game shows that the paradoxical results are strongly affected by the size of the stakes when the number of players in the game is increased from two to three and the game is played for unusually high stakes with group composition being randomly changed from trial to trial the paradox is considerably weakened as players approach equilibrium play with multiple iterations of the stage game when the game is played with low stakes there is no evidence for equilibrium play or learning across iterations of the stage game an adaptive learning model that assumes updating of the individual probabilities of choice outperforms alternative static and dynamic models in accounting for the major results observed in the high stake experiment

competitive lobbying and supermajorities in a majority rule institution this paper presents a complete information model of competitive lobbying in a majority rule institution where lobbying consists of providing politically valuable resources to legislators legislators have three roles first they act as allies or opponents in deciding whether to consider a lobbyist s offer second they act as agenda setters in deciding whether to bring a policy alternative to a vote third they vote on the agenda the stationary equilibria include minimal majorities and supermajorities and involve unilateral counteractive and preemptive lobbying supermajorities are recruited either to influence agenda formation or to preempt the opposing lobbyist

structuring a theory of moral sentiments institutional and organizational coevolution in the early thrift industry the authors investigate the coevolution of organizations and institu tions they study how institutional definitions rules and expectations unfold in tandem with the organizational structures and processes that embody those institutions the research site is the early thrift industry changes in thrifts technical environment the rise of a transient and heterogeneous population and institutional environment the rise of progressivism propelled this coevolutionary process the coevolution of thrift organizations and institutions proceeded primarily through selection adaptation was constrained by both institutional factors it was difficult to adopt a novel institutional logic and technical factors early thrifts were generally small so entry and exit were easy

some behavioral perspectives on the dominance of hierarchical over democratic forms of enterprise abstract this paper explores possible reasons why participatory modes of organization whole potentially viable and preferable to hierarchical modes for a large majority of workers may be dominated by the latter in capitalist market economies after exploring the developmental preconditions for the evolution of a mature participatory mode using a behavioral approach to organizations it is suggested that since the interest of those possessing scarce managerial skills may lie with hierarchical firms a participatory sector may be uncompetitive unless rights to enter labor contracts are redefined thus the analysis offers a partial explanation of the political nature of the demand for workplace democracy

the contingent nature of public policy and the growth of u s commercial banking runner up academy of management s best published paper in organization and management theory in 2009

card games and economic behavior we wonder whether different game experiences are associated with significant differences in experimental behavior and more specifically whether expert bridge players due to their habit of playing with partners and seldom for money are more likely to adopt cooperative behavior than expert poker players evidence from trust games shows that bridge players make more polarized choices and choose the maximum trustor contribution significantly more often our findings are similar across incentivized and non incentivized experiments and thereby support the hypothesis that behavior in simulated experiments resembles that in experiments with monetary payoffs

vote buying general elections we examine the consequences of vote buying assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma two parties compete in a binary election and may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up front binding payments and or campaign promises platforms that are contingent on the outcome of the election we analyze the role of the parties and voters preferences in determining the winner and the payments to voters

neoclassical theory versus prospect theory evidence from the marketplace several experimental studies have provided evidence that suggest indifference curves have a kink around the current endowment level these results which clearly contradict closely held economic doctrines have led some influential commentators to call for an entirely new economic paradigm to displace conventional neoclassical theory e g prospect theory which invokes psychological effects this paper pits neoclassical theory against prospect theory by investigating data drawn from more than 375 subjects actively participating in a well functioning marketplace the pattern of results suggests that prospect theory adequately organizes behavior among inexperienced consumers but consumers with intense market experience behave largely in accordance with neoclassical predictions moreover the data are consistent with the notion that consumers learn to overcome the endowment effect in situations beyond specific problems they have previously encountered this transference of behavior across domains has important implications in both a positive and normative sense

backward induction in the wild evidence from sequential voting in the us senate in the us senate roll calls are held in alphabetical order we document that senators early in the order are less likely to vote with the majority of their own party than those whose last name places them at the end of the alphabet to speak to the mechanism behind this result we develop a simple model of sequential voting in which forward looking senators rely on backward induction in order to free ride on their colleagues estimating our model structurally we find that this form of strategic behavior is an important part of equilibrium play we also consider but ultimately dismiss alternative explanations related to learning about common values and vote buying

store wars the enactment and repeal of anti chain store legislation in america1 competition between organizational forms manifests itself in political contention over the law the authors analyze the political strength and organization of the groups that supported and opposed state anti chain store laws the enactment of these laws depended on intrastate political activity and the interstate diffusion of anti chain store legislation the repeal process relied on suprastate activity as nationally organized pro chain store forces shifted the arena of contention to the supreme court and forged national alliances with labor unions and agricultural cooperatives in both enactment and repeal the political resources and strategies of organziational forms interacted with existing institutions to determine the trajectory of institutional change

health insurance and labor market outcomes joint decision making within households abstract most americans obtain access to health insurance through an employer in this paper we ask how the link between health insurance and employment affects labor market choices such as whether to work full time to understand the effect of the incentives embedded in the employer based insurance system we study the joint decision making of husbands and wives that determines the household s access to health insurance we estimate the effect on a wife s husband s labor market outcomes of husband s wife s health insurance allowing the health insurance of both spouses to be endogenous obtaining unbiased estimates of such effects is complicated by the likelihood that positive assortative mating creates correlations between a couple s characteristics and the possibility that there are important unobservable household income effects our innovation is to measure these biases by examining a second fringe benefit paid sick leave in addition to health insurance we find that as predicted spouse s insurance has statistically significant negative effects on being offered own employer insurance as well as on the probability of working full time with health insurance

smoothed binary regression quantiles this paper extends results regarding smoothed median binary regression to general smoothed binary quantile regression discusses the interpretation of the resulting estimators under alternative assumptions and shows how they may be used to obtain semiparametric estimates of counterfactual probabilities the estimators are applied to a model of labour force participation of married women in the usa we find that the elasticity with respect to non labour income is significantly negative only for women that belong to the middle of the conditional willingness to participate wtp distribution in comparing the quantile models with parametric logit and semiparametric single index specifications we find that the models agree closely for women around the centre of the wtp distribution but there are considerable disagreements as we move towards the tails of the distribution copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

mixed strategy in oligopoly pricing evidence from gasoline price cycles before and under a timing regulation this paper studies oligopoly firms dynamic pricing strategies in a gasoline market before and after the introduction of a unique law that constrains firms to set price simultaneously and only once per day the observed gasoline pricing behavior both before and under the law is well captured by the edgeworth price cycle equilibrium in the maskin and tirole dynamic oligopoly model my results highlight the importance of price commitment in tacit collusion i also find evidence that the price leadership outcome under the law is better predicted by mixed strategies play than by alternative hypotheses

discouragement effect and intermediate prizes in multi stage contests evidence from davis cup abstract the discouragement effect of being the lagging player in multi stage contests is a well documented phenomenon in this study we utilize data from 2447 davis cup matches in team tennis tournaments to test the effect of being behind or ahead on individuals performance with and without intermediate prizes using several different strategies to disentangle the effect of being ahead in the interim score from the effect of selection we find the usual discouragement effect however the discouragement effect disappears after the introduction of intermediate prizes in the form of ranking points the lagging favorite had close to a 20 percentage point greater probability of winning compared to matches without such a prize we show that this result is not driven by the selection of better players into tournaments with intermediate prizes as predicted by previous theoretical studies our empirical findings suggest that intermediate prizes may mitigate or even eliminate the ahead behind effects that arise in multi stage contests

bandwagons and momentum in sequential voting in this paper i show that an equilibrium exists to the sequential voting game in which a bandwagon begins with probability 1 these bandwagons are driven by a combination of beliefs and the desire of voters to vote for the winning candidate significantly in this equilibrium the pivot probability for each voter is non zero even in an infinite population consequently the bandwagons do not always start after one or at most two favourable decisions as do economic cascades and varying levels of informative voting are observed consistent with observations from sequential voting in u s presidential primaries further voters are exposed to counterintuitive incentives referred to as buyers remorse that have been attributed to real primary voters i also derive equilibrium behaviour in this environment when voting is simultaneous and compare the quality of information aggregation within each mechanism i relate the conclusions to u s presidential primaries and find they are consistent with a common conclusion about the front loading of the primary process that in tight elections with no front runner simultaneous voting is preferred whereas in lopsided elections sequential voting is preferred the superior performance of sequential voting in lopsided races is precisely because bandwagons occur copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

a comparison of parametric and semiparametric estimates of the effect of spousal health insurance coverage on weekly hours worked by wives summary health insurance in the usa for most of the non aged population is provided as a fringe benefit that is received by an adult family member as part of his or her compensation package in husband and wife households health insurance is more likely to be part of the husband s compensation package than the wife s compensation package however when a husband does not have employer provided health insurance his wife may seek health insurance through an employer because health insurance through one s employer typically requires that a worker is a full time employee spousal health insurance coverage for wives is predicted to influence their labour supply decisions parametric and semiparametric statistical models using march 1993 cps data show wives without spousal health benefits are more likely to work full time than those who do have spousal health benefits 1998 john wiley sons ltd employer provided health insurance is the dominant mechanism by which individuals in the usa under the age of 65 gain access to health care and insure their families and themselves against the financial burden caused by the costs of treating chronic and acute health conditions the most recent published data from the current population survey show that in 1995 84 6 of the us population was covered by public or private health insurance and employer provided health insurance was the dominant form of coverage in that year 70 3 of the population was covered by private health insurance and 87 of those individuals 61 1 of the total population gained health insurance benefits through a family member that received these benefits from a current or former employer us bureau of the census 1996 relatively few part time jobs provide health insurance benefits in 1992 23 of employees working 34 hours per week or less received health insurance through their employer whereas 70 of full time more than 34 hours week employees had employer provided health insurance i hypothesize that wives who do not have health insurance coverage through their husband s employer are more likely to work full time in order to obtain health insurance for themselves and for other family members than are wives who have health insurance through their husband s employer support for this proposition is found using both parametric and semiparametric estimation methods using cps data from march 1993 i find women without spousal coverage were less likely to be out of the labour force than women with spousal coverage among working

partially identifying treatment effects with an application to covering the uninsured we extend the nonparametric literature on partially identified probability distributions and use our analytical results to provide sharp bounds on the impact of universal health insurance on provider visits and medical expenditures our approach accounts for uncertainty about the reliability of self reported insurance status as well as uncertainty created by unknown counterfactuals we construct health insurance validation data using detailed information from the medical expenditure panel survey imposing relatively weak nonparametric assumptions we estimate that under universal coverage monthly per capita provider visits and expenditures would rise by less than 8 percent and 16 percent respectively across the nonelderly population

running for the exit community cohesion and bank panics bank panics attract scholarly interest because they reflect distrust of each bank that experiences a run as a result of diffusion of information rumors about such bank runs trigger additional runs elsewhere however the contagion of bank runs is highly selective for reasons that are unrelated to the financial strength of the individual banks this presents a puzzle that extant theories on institutions and reputations cannot fully explain to solve this puzzle we turn to the characteristics of the community in which the banks operate we develop theory on how communities with diverse affiliation structures and economic inequality have weaker community cohesion and communication making such communities less likely to experience widespread distrust and hence bank runs we test hypotheses on the effects of community ethnic diversity national origin diversity religious diversity and wealth inequality using data from the great bank panic of 1893 and we find strong community effects on bank runs these f

what s to know about laboratory experimentation in economics abstract experimental economics has grown as a discipline from near non existence 50 years ago to a full fledged field within economics in the present much of experimental economics research involves experimental methods as a tool applied to problems in other fields of economics however some of this research is inward looking focusing on questions of the methodology of experimental economics in this note i briefly discuss two methodological issues in experimental economics that might benefit from meta analysis the pool from which experimental participants are drawn university undergraduate students versus other populations and the scale of monetary incentives faced by participants large small or hypothetical

nash equilibrium in strictly competitive games live play in soccer abstract i model a scoring situation that arises frequently during soccer matches the nash equilibrium solution is shown to be broadly consistent with the conventional wisdom of experts data on goals scored over an entire season in italy s soccer league provide statistical support for a prediction of the model s nash equilibrium

psychological pressure in competitive environments evidence from a randomized natural experiment much like cognitive abilities emotional skills can have major eects on performance and economic outcomes this paper studies the behavior of professional subjects involved in a dynamic competition in their own natural environment the setting is a penalty shoot out in soccer where two teams compete in a tournament framework taking turns in a sequence of ve penalty kicks each as the kicking order is determined by the random outcome of a coin ip the treatment and control

when collective ignorance is bliss theory and experiment on voting for learning abstract when do groups and societies choose to be uninformed we study a committee that needs to vote on a reform which will give every member a private state dependent payoff the committee can vote to learn the state at no cost we show that the committee votes not to learn the state whenever independent voters are more divided than partisans this implies that groups with conflicting preferences tend to seek less information a laboratory experiment shows that committees are substantially more likely to vote against acquiring information when the theory predicts them to do so we also observe deviations from theory that are largely explained by cognitive limitations at the same time subjects with more experience or with greater strategic competence are more likely to vote in line with the theory providing evidence for external validity of the model

minimax after money max why major league baseball players do not follow optimal strategies using real life sports data of major league baseball this paper investigates whether professional players follow the minimax theorem in their strategies our empirical results using the 2010 regul

sequential sales learning and cascades when ipo shares are sold sequentially later potential investors can learn from the purchasing decisions of earlier investors this can lead rapidly to cascades in which subsequent investors optimally ignore their private information and imitate earlier investors although rationing in this situation gives rise to a winner s curse it is irrelevant the model predicts that 1 offerings succeed or fail rapidly 2 demand can be so elastic that even risk neutral issuers underprice to completely avoid failure 3 issuers with good inside information can price their shares so high that they sometimes fail 4 an underwriter may want to reduce the communication among investors by spreading the selling effort over a more segmented market consider a scenario in which an issuer is selling a new security of uncertain value for example an ipo initial public offering of stock or high yield debt through an underwriter the s e c has banned variable price sales while the value of this new security is highly uncertain to individual market participants investors hold perfectly accurate information when aggregated moreover there are many potential investors and a small number of these investors can jointly determine the value of the firm or its project with high precision it would seem that in this scenario underpriced offerings would succeed and overpriced offerings would fail nevertheless this paper shows that if the distribution channels of invest ment banks are limited underpriced offerings can fail and overpriced offer ings can succeed with limited distribution channels it takes the under writer time to approach interested investors therefore later investors can observe how well an offering has sold to date or at least how successful it has sold relative to offerings previously undertaken by this underwriter

pass or run an empirical test of the matching pennies game using data from the national football league this article examines play calling in the national football league nfl it finds that a mixed strategy equilibrium game explains nfl play calling better than standard optimization techniques when a quarterback is injured and replaced with a less capable backup standard optimization theory suggests that the offense will run more often passing less our game theoretic model predicts that the offense will not change its play calling because the defense will play against the run more often using every first half play from the 11 teams that had a starting quarterback miss action because of injury in the 2006 season we find that the injury did not alter the likelihood that the offense would pass we also find that coaches randomly mix passing and running plays as the mixed strategy games predict

first in first win evidence on schedule effects in round robin tournaments in mega events the order of actions in contests may have a significant effect on performance in this study we examine the role of the schedule in round robin tournaments with sequential games between three and four contestants our empirical analysis based on soccer fifa world cups and uefa european championships and on two olympic wrestling events reveals that there is a substantial advantage to the contestant who competes in the first and third matches our findings are in line with the hypothesis that winning probabilities in multi stage contests with sequential games are endogenously depending on the schedule of contests as predicted by game theoretical models we also discuss possible ways to reduce the effect of the schedule

the cycle of violence an empirical analysis of fatalities in the palestinian israeli conflict thomas c schelling s the strategy of conflict 1960 laid the groundwork for thinking about conflicts as non zero sum games in which each side may choose to exercise or threaten violence in order to deter or incapacitate the opponent or simply to exact revenge it has been difficult however to test many of the predictions formulated by schelling and others because of the lack of data on the strategic choices of the two sides engaged in a conflict observed at a high enough frequency for statistical tests to have any power this paper uses daily frequency data to analyze the dynamics of violence during four years of the second intifada the most recent outburst of the palestinian israeli conflict