useful fiction or miracle maker the competing epistemological foundations of rational choice theory rational choice theorists have not clearly articulated their epistemological positions and for this reason their arguments in favor of rational choice theory are inconsistent contradictory and unpersuasive to remedy this problem i describe how two of the main positions in the philosophy of science instrumentalist empiricism and scientific realism act as competing epistemological foundations for rational choice theory i illustrate how these philosophical perspectives help political scientists 1 understand what is at stake in the theoretical debates surrounding the rationality assumption self interest and methodological individualism 2 identify inconsistencies in the epistemological positions adopted by rational choice theorists and 3 assess the feasibility and desirability of a universal theory based on the rationality assumption

rationality and deterrence this essay explores the relationship between deterrence theory and two distinct notions of rationality associated with it the author argues that the concept of procedural irrationality which is the basis of many critiques of contemporary deterrence theory is not necessarily inconsistent with the instrumental definition of rationality implicit in many models of deterrence he also argues that some recent rational choice models of deterrence are nonetheless deficient in their application of the rationality postulate finally he provides an outline of a possible resolution of the paradox of deterrence

persistent demi regs and robust tendencies critical realism and the singer prebisch thesis debate about whether the terms of trade for primary products relative to manufactures have a tendency to deteriorate has been ongoing for half a century the phenomenon itself provides an example of a persistent contrastive demi regularity this is viewed as the result of a robust tendency understood as an enduring and pervasive characteristic effect generated by a powerful and stable underlying causal mechanism on this basis the key problem for primary products lies in the biological limits on consumption to which may be added capitalism specific tendencies affecting processes of production and distribution the paper concludes by arguing that the relevant holistic generic tendency under capitalism involves a long term contraction in the primary product share of world trade copyright 2002 oxford university press

what do college seniors know about economics if college seniors who have taken an economics course were asked questions that test their knowledge of basic economics what would the results show would seniors give correct answers to most questions or would they show significant deficiencies students are exposed to many ideas during their undergraduate education so one would not expect them to retain all of the economic content they were taught but one would hope that they would retain at least a knowledge of basic economics this study investigates whether that is the case two data sources were used for the study the first was from a gallup survey of a national random sample of 300 college seniors walstad and max larsen 1992 the survey includes 15 multiple choice questions testing economic knowledge the responses from that survey can be separated according to whether students took economics the second data set came from the economics scores for 12 854 students who took the major field test in business ii mftb sponsored by higher education assessment of the educational testing service ets 1998 the mftb covers content typically taught in an undergraduate program in business and contains about 20 multiple choice questions on basic economics although there are differences between the two data sets we viewed this as an advantage for our study our hypothesis is that most college seniors would show relatively limited knowledge of basic economics no matter what questions were asked or how the data were collected we expected students responding to the gallup questions to score higher than students taking the mftb because the gallup questions were simpler and designed for telephone in

classroom experiments not just fun and games i introduction historically economics was the classic example of a science in which laboratory methods are impossible consistent with this view economics has traditionally been taught as a theory intensive science rather than as an experimental one however the view that economics is not a laboratory science has been changing in large part due to the increase in research conducted using experimental methods in addition as evidence of the benefits of active learning for students has been gathered leaders in the field of education have been urging faculty to actively engage students in the process of learning introducing experimental methods into the economics classroom is a natural step warranted both by the evolution of the discipline itself and the need to more actively involve students in the learning process this paper presents results from a research project examining the effectiveness of using economics experiments in the classroom the project involved designing course packages for the principles of microeconomics and principles of macroeconomics classes that integrate basic economic experiments into the curricula and then evaluating their success as a teaching tool the evaluation phase focused on assessing the impact of this curriculum on student performance student attitudes towards economics and economic knowledge retention the project was conducted over a three year period during the initial phase of the research project both the course materials and an assessment instrument for evaluating the effectiveness of those materials were developed 1 next a controlled experiment using students at the university of arkansas was conducted students who enrolled in principles of macroeconomics and principles of microeconomics courses were separated into control and treatment classes both groups were taught using a general lecture class discussion format but experiments designed to illustrate specific economic concepts were used in the treatment sections in place of the additional lecture class discussion and examples used in the control classes for those topics relative performance on the assessment instrument serves as the basis for evaluating the impact of the new curricula on student learning while controlling for other factors that might affect student performance an attitude survey was administered to the students at the beginning and at the end of the courses in both the treatment and control groups to gain insight into their attitudes towards the study of economics and whether those attitudes changed over the course of the semester 2 in addition to assessing the impact of classroom experiments on student performance and attitudes towards economics their impact on knowledge retention was also investigated students were tracked into a required advanced business course where their performance on a test of material covered in the introductory economics courses was used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments on their retention of this material although we had no a priori expectations of what the specific outcomes from the evaluative portion would be we hypothesized that students would benefit overall from the use of experiments and that this benefit would be dispersed differentially based on student learning styles we also anticipated that we would find an improved attitude towards the study of economics and an increase in knowledge retention when experiments were implemented as active learning tools ii background in their 1985 edition of principles of economics samuelson and nordhaus argued one possible way of figuring out economic laws is by controlled experiments economists unfortunately cannot perform the controlled experiments of chemists or biologists because they cannot easily control other important factors like astronomers or meteorologists they generally must be content largely to observe

nuclear power and the characteristics of ordinariness the case of uk energy policy abstract this paper first considers why nuclear power has become unattractive to private investors in liberalised electricity markets it then outlines some of the thinking behind current uk energy policy which emphasises the centrality of developing a low carbon economy it sets out the arguments mostly based on the market failures of environmental externalities and inadequate private investment in rd ii there is a case for limited public rd iii nuclear power will only become a serious choice for new private investment if it can become an ordinary technology and the conditions for ordinariness are set out

the effects of attendance on student learning in principles of economics does attendance affect performance in college economics courses david romer 1993 found that attendance did contribute significantly to the academic performance of students in a large intermediate macroeconomics course that he taught in the fall of 1990 see the summer 1994 journal of economic perspectives vol 8 no 3 pp 205 15 for numerous comments on romer this conclusion held even after controlling for student motivation which it may be argued is the true factor determining performance and is only approximated by attendance an earlier study by kang park and peter kerr 1990 found that attendance was a determinant of student performance in a money and banking course but not as important as a student s gpa and the percentile rank on a college entrance exam a study by robert schmidt 1983 reported that time spent attending lectures contributed positively to performance in a macroeconomic principles course on the other side of the ledger is evidence from neil browne et al 1991 showing that students who did not attend a typically structured class with lectures did just as well on the test of understanding college economics tuce as those students who attended a standard microeconomic principles course they also reported however that those students who attended the lectures performed better on essay questions than those who did not a similar study by campbell mcconnell and c lamphear 1969 found no significant difference in the performance of students with no classroom attendance vis a vis those attending class finally stephen buckles and m e mcmahon 1971 found attendance at lectures that simply explained material covered in reading assignments did not enhance students understanding of economics in this paper we present new evidence on the effects of class attendance on student performance our results pertain to the principles of economics course as it is taught in a two semester sequence at a medium size comprehensive state university

inherent rule variability in consumer choice changing rules for change s sake the present research demonstrates that consumers tend to vary their use of decision rules independent of option and set characteristics in five experiments increased choice of a particular option e g lower price brand name or compromise option was associated with relatively decreased choice of that same generic option on occasions that followed results indicate that this inherent rule variability is not an effect of background contrast but instead relates to consumers favorable valuation of decision change itself this research implies that the idea of contingent decision making applies not only to decision outcomes but also to decision processes

on energy policy models many energy models cannot be relied upon in forecasting or policy analysis the quality of the data is often poor and the theoretical underpinnings tend to be inadequate these points are illustrated by example

the effect of economic growth oil prices and the benefits of reactor standardization duration of nuclear power plant construction revisited the profitability of nuclear power plant investment is largely determined by the construction duration which directly impacts discounted cash flows debt and interest payments as well as variable costs such as labor this paper analyzes the key drivers of construction duration using survival models we focus especially on the strategic expectation formation of private and public utilities engaging in such highly risky megaprojects using a balanced dataset of explanatory variables and the iaea pris dataset of reactor construction starts between 1950 and 2013 we find that the expectation of rising oil prices and higher economic growth along with the higher per capita gdp of a country tend to reduce the time needed to grid connection we also identify the reactor models with the fastest construction duration

nuclear renaissance public perception and design criteria an exploratory review abstract there is currently an international drive to build new nuclear power plants bringing about what is being termed a nuclear renaissance however the public perception of nuclear energy has historically been and continues to be a key issue particularly in light of the fukushima nuclear incident this paper discusses the disparity between perceived and calculated risks based on the last four decades of research into risk perception the leading psychological and sociological theories psychometric paradigm and cultural theory respectively are critically reviewed the authors then argue that a new nuclear build policy that promotes a broader approach to design incorporating a wider range of stakeholder inputs including that of the lay public may provide a means for reducing the perceived risk of a nuclear plant further research towards such a new approach to design is proposed based on integrating expert and lay stakeholder inputs and taking into account broader socio cultural factors whilst maintaining the necessary emphasis on safety technological development economics and environmental sustainability

what makes deterrence work cases from 1900 to 1980 the use of military force to achieve foreign policy objectives is an enduring feature of international politics force or the threat of force may be used either to change the status quo or to maintain it threatening the use of force to maintain the status quo often takes the form of deterrence defined by patrick morgan as the threat to use force in response as a way of preventing the first use of force by someone else 1 deterrence sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails failures are attested to by numerous international wars of history in the nuclear age a failure could cost us our lives the conditions of successful deterrence thus require thorough logical and empirical analysis

attributing responsibility for energy justice a case study of the hinkley point nuclear complex since 2006 as part of the transition to low carbon technologies uk energy policy has moved towards incentivising new nuclear power production as a result the uk has developed a now delayed strategy to deliver around 16gw of new nuclear power by 2030 this policy context provides an opportunity to reflect not only on the material infrastructure needed to meet transition targets but also on who is responsible for the energy justice implications of these decisions using data collected from 26 semi structured interviews with ngo and policy representatives this paper presents a case study of energy justice concerns surrounding the hinkley point nuclear complex in somerset focusing particularly on the highly controversial hinkley point c developments the results emphasise the importance of considering not only instances of energy justice or injustice but of attributing responsibility for them a concept that has been largely overlooked in the energy justice literature ngos government and business allocate responsibility differently in nuclear energy decision making we find that perceptions of responsibility are highly dependent upon the level of transparency in decision making this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled exploring the energy justice nexus

applied economics contrast explanation and asymmetric information the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the workings of an explanatory method for applied economics it is a method that is rarely explicitly examined or defended in the discipline but which i believe has a lot of promise for the sorts of contexts that economists must address my strategy is to show that and how the method in question effectively underpins at least one study already widely regarded as explanatorily successful copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

classroom experiments is more more studies have demonstrated that classroom experiments have a positive effect on student achievement in economics courses questions remain regarding the appropriate number of experiments in the current study we attempt to determine whether more intensive use of classroom experiments is associated with greater student achievement our data contains variation in the number of experiments administered in a principles of microeconomics course we find that participation in classroom experiments has a positive but diminishing marginal benefit on students final course scores we also find that classroom experiments can bridge some achievement gaps between older and younger students between whites and minorities

understanding the nuclear controversy an application of cultural theory abstract the need for a secure and sustainable energy future has become firmly entrenched on the global political agenda governments worldwide are seeking solutions that will ensure security of their energy supplies while reducing carbon emissions in the fight against climate change advocates of nuclear power have reframed the technology as the most reliable cost effective and immediate solution to both of these policy problems and predicted the emergence of a nuclear renaissance however there is little evidence to date that suggests a nuclear renaissance has actually taken place public opinion polling demonstrates that many remain unconvinced of the need for nuclear power this paper uses cultural theory as a heuristic to understand why the arguments for a nuclear renaissance have been largely unsuccessful it argues that the failure of nuclear advocates to engage with a wider cross section of world views has prevented the controversy surrounding nuclear power from being resolved and the nuclear renaissance from becoming a reality in doing so this paper builds upon a growing recognition of the contribution that social science research can make to understanding public acceptance of energy policy choices

chalk and talk a national survey on teaching undergraduate economics reports on the desirable goals and characteristics of economics programs and reforms proposed to attain such programs e g w lee hansen 1991 hirschel kasper et al 1991 have ignored the issue of how economics is to be taught that is surprising because several popular trade books have recently appeared condemning teaching practices at american colleges and universities some of these books were written by economists e g martin anderson s 1992 impostors in the temple and used economics courses as notable examples of these problems long before these reports and books appeared the national council on economic education ncee together with the american economic association s aea committee on economic education began sponsoring programs to improve the teaching of economics and to promote innovative teaching methods in becker and watts 1995 we describe many of these improvements and explain how economists could use alternative teaching methods in different undergraduate courses until now however we could not provide data on how widely those approaches were used we do that here based on responses to a national survey

rational deterrence theory and comparative case studies several recent books have argued that comparative case studies of crises demonstrate the failure of rational deterrence theory they have offered certain empirical generalizations as substitutes this paper shows that such contentions are unwarranted first the empirical generalizations are impressive as historical insights but they do not meet the standards for theory set out by the most sophisticated case study analysts themselves second the tests of rational deterrence used in the case studies violate standard principles of inference and the ensuing procedures are so biased as to be useless rational deterrence then is a more successful theory than portrayed in this literature and it remains the only intellectually powerful alternative available case studies are essential to theory building more efficiently than any other methods they find suitable variables suggest middle range generalizations for theory to explain and provide the prior knowledge that statistical tests require their loose constraints on admissible propositions and suitable evidence are appropriate and even necessary for these tasks these same characteristics however inevitably undermine all attempts to construe case study generalizations as bodies of theory or tests of hypotheses

nuclear energy policy in the united states 1990 2010 a federal or state responsibility this paper examines from a policy perspective nuclear energy policy in the united states us from 1990 to 2010 and questions whether it is or has become a federal or state responsibility the present study as befits policy research engages with many disciplines for example in particular law and politics and hence the contributions move beyond that of nuclear energy policy literature and in particular to that on nuclear new build and other assessments of large infrastructure projects several examples at the federal level are identified that demonstrate that the nuclear industry has evolved to a stage where it requires a focus on the power of actions at a more localised state level in order to re ignite the industry the research concludes that there remains a misunderstanding of the issue of project management for complex construction projects and it is highly arguable whether many of its issues have been resolved further the research asserts that the economics of nuclear energy are not the most influential reason for no nuclear new build in the us

the long run determinants of north south terms of trade and some recent empirical evidence abstract this paper reviews some recent evidence of the long run decline in the terms of trade of primary commodities versus manufactures in the context of north south trade this evidence is evaluated in the light of competing explanations of the sources of the observed long run trends in the context of a model of north south trade which includes a general resource labor and capital in the north and specific factors in a dual economy model of the south changes in factor supply sectoral and factoral bias in technical change biased demand conditions changes in the pattern of protection and institutional elements all play a role in determining the evolution of commodity and factor prices the lewis hypothesis of sectoral bias in the pattern of technical change towards temperate agriculture in the north and against tropical agriculture in the south is then reexamined in the light of the recent empirical evidence on terms of trade movements and some sketchy evidence presented on the patterns of bias in technical change in the north and the south the evidence is not consistent with an absolute technical change bias towards temperate agriculture in the north rather the rate of technical change in temperate agriculture is now comparable to that experienced in manufactures so that engel curve effects now assert the major downward pressure on the long run terms of trade between temperate agriculture commodities and manufactures overriding the effects of diminishing returns to natural resources as northern population expands the empirical evidence onbiased technical change in the south is much more sketchy and the evidence on various components of north south terms of trade is more varied

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

the terms of trade experience of britain since the nineteenth century the terms of trade of britain exhibited a declining trend in the first half of the nineteenth century but after two decades of transitional confusion they started to move upwards the explanation lies in the fact that the reversal of the trend corresponded to a change in the structure of british export trade from the dominance of traditional textile products towards other manufactures unlike the traditional textile products these other manufactures had little indigenous counterpart in the agrarian countries with which britain had expanding trade relations so while cost reduction through technical progress led to a rapid fall in the prices of cotton textiles under stiff competition at home and abroad producers in the newer sectors did not have to respond much to this type of cost reducing technical progress that spread to these sectors in the latter period thus as prebisch and singer argued the classical scheme of distribution of the gains from technical progress through trade that was supposed to

the imf the world bank and commodity prices a case of shifting sands abstract this paper examines some recent developments in the thinking of both the international monetary fund and the world bank regarding the macroeconomic determinants of commodity prices and the relative importance of secular and cyclical factors in explaining their recent behavior

resolving society s energy trilemma through the energy justice metric carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase to the detriment of society in many forms one of the difficulties faced is the imbalance between the competing aims of economics politics and the environment which form the trilemma of energy policy this article advances that this energy trilemma can be resolved through energy justice energy justice develops the debate on energy policy to one that highlights cosmopolitanism progresses thinking beyond economics and incorporates a new futuristic perspective to capture these dynamics of energy justice this research developed an energy justice metric ejm that involves the calculation of several metrics 1 a country national ejm 2 an ejm for different energy infrastructure and 3 an ejm which is incorporated into economic models that derive costs for energy infrastructure projects an ejm is modeled for china the european union and the united states and for different energy infrastructure in the united kingdom the ejm is plotted on a ternary phase diagram which is used in the sciences for analyzing the relationship trilemma of three forms of matter the development of an ejm can provide a tool for decision making on energy policy and one that solves the energy trilemma with a just and equitable approach

rising power on the mind a prominent explanation of war claims that international conflict can result when shifts in bargaining power induce the declining power to behave aggressively today because the rising power cannot credibly commit to not behave aggressively tomorrow this paper asks whether individuals respond to shifting power in ways assumed by these models rather than use abstract laboratory based bargaining games as in other work i use vignettes describing the united states in an international bargaining situation to explore the microfoundations of power transitions models empirically the vignettes vary whether the individual is a member of a declining or a rising power and whether there are previous public commitments to the status quo division of territory subjects propose a response the united states should make and then explain their decision in their own words i apply new methods for analyzing these open ended responses consistent with predictions from the behavioral literature i find important asymmetries in behavior across these conditions as well as substantial heterogeneities in individuals motivations for their decisions the results of the experiments suggest potential ways that power transition models should be refined to have a firmer behavioral basis

homo diplomaticus mixed method evidence of variation in strategic rationality psychology is traditionally used in political science to explain deviations from rationality lost in the debate between rationalists and their critics however is a sense of whether the kinds of strategic self interested behavior predicted by these models has psychological microfoundations what would homo economicus look like in the real world we argue that strategic rationality varies across individuals and is characterized by a pro self social value orientation and a high level of epistemic motivation testing our argument in the context of international relations we employ a laboratory bargaining game and integrate it with archival research on german foreign policy making in the 1920s we find in both contexts that even among those interested in maximizing only their own egoistic gains those with greater epistemic motivation are better able to adapt to the strategic situation particularly the distribution of power our results build a bridge between two approaches often considered to be antithetical to one another

a dispositional theory of reputation costs politicians frequently turn to reputational arguments to bolster support for their proposed foreign policies yet despite the prevailing belief that domestic audiences care about reputation there is very little direct evidence that publics care about reputation costs and very little understanding of how we propose a dispositional theory of reputation costs in which citizens facing ill defined strategic situations turn to their core predispositions about foreign affairs in order to weigh competing reputational dimensions employing a diverse array of methodological tools from vignette based survey experiments to automated text analysis we show that the mass public has a taste for reputation but understands it in fundamentally different ways with hawks concerned about the negative reputational consequences of inconsistency and doves equally concerned with the negative reputational consequences of belligerence and interventionism in illustrating how reputation costs are in our heads our findings offer both good and bad news for theories of reputation in ir

the application of contrast explanation to energy policy research uk nuclear energy policy 2002 2012 abstract this paper advances the application of the methodology contrast explanation to energy policy research research in energy policy is complex and often involves inter disciplinary work which traditional economic methodologies fail to capture consequently the more encompassing methodology of contrast explanation is assessed and its use in other social science disciplines explored in brief it is then applied to an energy policy research topic in this case nuclear energy policy research in the uk contrast explanation facilitates research into policy and decision making processes in energy studies and offers an alternative to the traditional economic methods used in energy research further contrast explanation is extended by the addition of contested and uncontested hypotheses analyses this research focuses on the methods employed to deliver the new nuclear programme of the uk government in order to achieve a sustainable nuclear energy policy three issues are of major importance 1 law policy and development 2 public administration and 3 project management further the research identifies that policy in the area remains to be resolved in particular at an institutional and legal level however contrary to the literature in some areas the research identifies a change of course as the uk concentrates on delivering a long term policy for the nuclear energy sector and the overall energy sector

contrasting rational and psychological analyses of political choice we contrast the rational theory of choice in the form of expected utility theory with descriptive psychological analysis in the form of prospect theory using problems involving the choice between political candidates and public referendum issues the results showed that the assumptions underlying the classical theory of risky choice are systematically violated in the manner predicted by prospect theory in particular our respondents exhibited risk aversion in the domain of gains risk seeking in the domain of losses and a greater sensitivity to losses than to gains this is consistent with the advantage of the incumbent under normal conditions and the potential advantage of the challenger in bad times the results further show how a shift in the reference point could lead to reversals of preferences in the evaluation of political and economic options contrary to the assumption of invariance finally we contrast the normative and descriptive analyses of uncertainty in choice and address the rationality of voting

managing resource dependency the united states and japan in the markets for copper iron ore and bauxite abstract this study analyses the different arrangements through which the us and japan have procured their imports of non fuel minerals and attempts to shed light on the likely implications of these arrangements for the relations between these two countries it focuses on three critical minerals copper iron ore and bauxite which after oil constitute the core of every industrial society because both the us and japan exhibit high levels of dependence on foreign supplies of these three minerals it is clear that ensuring adequate supplies at reasonable costs will be a major guiding force in their respective future policies this paper examines factors affecting the international markets for these minerals the structure of investment production and trade and the relations with the source countries from the discussion of these issues two paradoxical themes emerge 1 that japan has been able to procure much of her raw materials during the 1960s and 1970s at more favourable terms than has the us even though the latter country had tighter links to its supply sources 2 that the changing conditions in the minerals industries under study have resulted in recent years in a convergence in the procurement mechanisms of the us and japan and this convergence is likely to increase strains on us japanese relations

the impact of classroom experiments on the learning of economics an empirical investigation i introduction in economics experimental research is still less common than in the natural sciences therefore it is not surprising that economists also make much less use of experiments for teaching purposes yet intuitively it is by no means clear that confronting a group of students with rules and incentives and observing what happens has a lower marginal impact on learning than demonstrating what happens when you put some chemicals together in a test tube however fels 1993 365 and deyoung 1993 348 49 recently called on those who actually use classroom experiments to provide evidence of the impact on students learning of economics this paper provides some limited evidence section ii describes the method used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments section iii describes the experiment and offers some hints for those who want to try it section iv provides the results ii method a first indication that experiments might be useful as a teaching tool comes from isaac and walker s 1991 experiment they found that those with experience in the experiment behave differently from those without presumably due to some reflection on the problem the approach of this study is more straightforward and not confined to those who actually take part in the experiment our hypothesis is that merely following the experiment and its outcome also has an impact on learning seven instructors teaching courses in environmental economics or public finance were asked to give their usual lecture on the tragedy of the commons afterwards the control group about half of the students filled out a multiple choice test on that topic as an incentive to put some thought into that task in each course one of those students with no mistakes won a book on environmental economics namely beckenbach 1991 worth 26 80 german marks 1 the questions are reported in section iv the same questions were answered by the other students following the classroom experiment iii the experiment the experiment itself which takes only five to ten minutes was a simple take some game of which a more general account is given by mitter 1986 it involves five students who volunteer before the rules are explained in order to give the participants a chance to clarify remaining open points the experimenter should not forget to mention that tabular data for table i omitted on average the volunteers will not be worse off or might even carry off a small profit but that nevertheless they need to have some change in their pockets because there might be losers each receives two cards with the stylized picture of one cow on one card and five on the other the rules are explained roughly as follows imagine you are peasants using a common field every one of you has to decide how many cattle to keep on the commons one cow or five cows if you give me the card which shows one cow you receive one german mark if you give me the card which shows five cows you receive five marks however for every five cow card i receive every one of you gets one mark less for example if two of you put five cows on the common those two will each receive three marks i e five minus two for the others the payoff is one mark minus two marks which means they have to pay one mark now you can calculate for yourself what the payoffs for other constellations will be please make your decision secretly the participants were placed at some distance from each other and it was ensured that they could not communicate immediately after the experiment the payments were made and the experiment was repeated once with a different group of students five cows is the dominant strategy but the collective payoff would be greater if no one played it this method of demonstrating the commons dilemma is less complicated than the procedures reported in powers 1987 and tsai 1993

the statistical debate on the net barter terms of trade between primary commodities and manufactures a comment and some additional evidence i950 p s hypothesis according to this hypothesis the net barter terms of trade nbtt between primary products and manufactures have over the longrun exhibited a downward trend spraos presented a detailed and thorough analysis of both the adequacy of the various statistical series available to proxy the nbtt s behaviour over the long run and the wide range of conceptual including quality problems involved in such an exercise on the basis of his analysis spraos concluded that the balance of the evidence for the seventy year period ending with the outbreak of world war ii supported the p s hypothesis of a secular deterioration in the nbtt it should however be noted that the evidence also suggested that the particular series cho sen for analysis by prebisch i950 himself did appear to exaggerate possibly to a large extent the rate of deterioration however when the analysis was extended to include the post world war ii period spraos found that while the deteriorating tendency cannot be decisively refuted it is open to doubt when the record up to the i970s is taken into account i980 p i26 as we shall see in this paper closer scrutiny reveals a statistical problem with spraos s analysis and the purpose of this paper is to show that once appropriate action is taken to overcome this problem some quite strong evidence in support of the p s hypothesis emerges the paper is organised as follows section i briefly discusses spraos s methodology and section ii discusses an econometric issue arising from this analysis section iii presents our empirical evidence while section iv summarises the main findings of the paper