modeling local growth control decisions in a multi city case do spatial interactions and lobbying efforts matter our article analyzes the determinants of local growth control decisions which are modeled as the result of a political struggle between different groups of voters and organized lobbies we show that under specific hypotheses a higher homeownership rate can induce lower levels of controls considering residential choices as endogenous to growth control policies the local decisions to control growth become strategically interdependent assuming imperfect mobility we show that a spatial econometric specification can be directly derived from our theoretical model our empirical analysis concerning the determinants of the taxelocale d equipement a french local development tax is thus naturally based on spatial econometrics its results confirm the major predictions of our model

life cycle value analysis for sustainability evaluation of bioenergy products abstract bioenergy products appear to be practical effective and environmentally sustainable renewable energy resources which simultaneously reduce fuel associated environmental impacts and increase economic value of the products the use of bioproducts may not always have a net positive environmental or economic attributes therefore an adequate sustainability evaluation tool for the products which incorporates life cycle approach is generally desired this paper presents an informative value analysis which couples concepts of life cycle energy efficiency and production cost ratios for a feasible assessment of function value for bioenergy products bioenergy products that are selected for the value assessment in this study include biodiesel bioethanol and biocharcoal this study is divided into two parts value factor development along with discussions on the results of value analysis for bioenergy products and a sensitivity analysis in determining influential factors for value factor estimations the results showed that microalgae biodiesel and biochar had the lowest and the highest function values respectively among assessed bioenergy systems this was mainly due to the significant difference in energy input in manufacturing design and production cost future improvements in bioenergy production can be anticipated for developing bioenergy products with high value factors which demonstrate high economic viability environmental performance and social acceptability this analysis can be of interest to bioenergy production planners for sustainable product development

bargaining search and outside options abstract this paper studies a two sided incomplete information bargaining model between a seller and a buyer the buyer has an outside option which is modeled as a sequential search process during which he can choose to return to bargaining at any time two cases are considered in regime i both agents have symmetric information about the search parameters we find that in contrast to bargaining with complete information the option to return to bargaining is not redundant in equilibrium however the no delay result still holds in regime ii where agents have asymmetric information about the outside option delay is possible the solution characterizes the parameters for renegotiation and those for search with no return to the bargaining table

causes consequences and cures of myopic loss aversion an experimental investigation we examine in an experiment the causes consequences and possible cures of myopic loss aversion mla for investment behaviour under risk we find that both investment horizons and feedback frequency contribute almost equally to the effects of mla longer investment horizons and less frequent feedback lead to higher investments however when given the choice subjects prefer on average shorter investment horizons and more frequent feedback exploiting the status quo bias by setting a long investment horizon or low feedback frequency as a default turns out to be a successful behavioural intervention that increases investment levels

the implications of competition among jurisdictions does tiebout need politics the paper investigates whether compensation among local jurisdiction is by itself sufficient to ensure efficient provision of local public goods jurisdictions have fixed boundaries and each has an entrenched government with the power to tax and supply the public good residents can move costlessly among jurisdictions it is shown that competition among numerous jurisdictions is not sificient to guarantee public sector efficiency though residents can vote with their feet land is immobile hence governments can unsurp some land rents for their own ends increasing the number of jurisdictions limits but cannot completely eliminate the ability to exercise discretionary governmental power

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

equilibrium play in matches binary markov games abstract we study two person extensive form games or matches in which the only possible outcomes if the game terminates are that one player or the other is declared the winner the winner of the match is determined by the winning of points in point games we call these matches binary markov games we show that if a simple monotonicity condition is satisfied then a it is a nash equilibrium of the match for the players at each point to play a nash equilibrium of the point game b it is a minimax behavior strategy in the match for a player to play minimax in each point game and c when the point games all have unique nash equilibria the only nash equilibrium of the binary markov game consists of minimax play at each point an application to tennis is provided

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

biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys this paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems the legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production in the 1970 80s promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed where the territorial and scalar vision was breached it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher value biofuel to the north rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today however controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions and to their local impacts becoming more widely known south south and north north trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities as assumptions of a food versus fuel conflict have come to be challenged legitimacy questions over global agri business and trade are spotlighted even further in this context visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising these include large scale biomass for fuel models in europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global south to compete and small scale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the south

bargaining in the shadow of the ballot box causes and consequences of local voter initiatives this paper provides one of the first empirical analyses of the local voter initiative using a unique and comprehensive dataset from california it analyzes determinants of local initiatives and effects of these measures on municipal finances results indicate that initiatives occur more frequently in large and diverse jurisdictions with more recent movers voters unaffiliated with a major political party and public employees effects of city size are partly offset by district or ward level elections contrary to previous research on statewide initiatives this study detects a positive and weakly significant relationship between local initiative use and own source revenues per capita and no association between initiatives and the proportion of funds raised from fees these divergent findings may reflect distinctive features of the local context including greater latitude for political bargaining and the centrality of land use as well as potential constraining effects of statewide initiatives in california

the impact of pressure on performance evidence from the pga tour abstract do large rewards lead to psychological pressure causing underperformance previous studies have tested this choking phenomenon using the world of sports but such studies often lack an explicit link between performance and reward this study utilizes a large pga tour dataset to more directly analyze the effect of pressure on individual performance by calculating the potential change in earnings from making or missing a putt on the final hole of a tournament we find that as the amount of money riding on a shot increases the likelihood that shot is made is significantly reduced

psychological pressure in competitive environments new evidence from randomized natural experiments dynamic competitive settings may create psychological pressure when feedback about the performance of competitors is provided before the end of the competition such psychological pressure could produce a first mover advantage despite a priori equal winning probabilities using data from a randomized natural experiment penalty shootouts in soccer we reexamine evidence by apesteguia and palacios huerta apesteguia j palacios huerta i 2010 psychological pressure in competitive environments evidence from a randomized natural experiment amer econom rev 100 5 2548 2564 they report a 21 percentage point advantage for first movers over second movers in terms of winning probabilities extending their sample of 129 shootouts to 540 we fail to detect any significant first mover advantage our results are fully consistent with recent evidence from other sports contests this paper was accepted by teck ho behavioral economics

direct democracy and land use policy exchanging public goods for development rights to counter the power of pro development interests growth opponents in american communities have increasingly turned to the institutions of direct democracy this study analyses the effects of one type of direct democracy voter requirements for new development on municipal growth analysing data from a sample of california communities we consider the impact of voter requirements on the land use process and outcomes we find that in general voter requirements fail to stop new development property owners and developers can and do adapt to the constraints created by these direct democracy institutions we also find however that voter requirements change the land use process in important ways specifically they change the way developers interact with interest groups in the community and force developers to compensate current residents for enduring some of the negative aspects of growth

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

experts vs discounters consumer free riding and experts withholding advice in markets for credence goods this paper studies the incentives for credence goods experts to invest effort in diagnosis if effort is both costly and unobservable and if they face competition by discounters who are not able to perform a diagnosis the unobservability of diagnosis effort and the credence characteristic of the good induce experts to choose incentive compatible tariff structures this makes them vulnerable to competition by discounters we explore the conditions under which honestly diagnosing experts survive competition by discounters we identify situations in which experts misdiagnose consumers in order to prevent them from free riding on experts advice and we discuss policy options to solve the free riding consumers cheating experts problem

the choice of municipal government structure and public expenditures numerous empirical studies have attempted to measure the effect of varying government structures on public expenditures i argue that these prior may have produced biased estimates as they are predicated on the assumption that government structures are exogenous

fiscal effects of the voter initiative in the first half of the twentieth century abstract this paper compares the fiscal policy of initiative and noninitiative states in the first half of the twentieth century states with initiatives had higher combined state and local expenditure after controlling for income and other demographics but a lower ratio of state to local expenditure this together with existing evidence from later in the century suggests that the voter initiative does not have a consistent effect on the overall size of state and local government however it does systematically lead to more decentralized expenditure

employment risk and job seeker performance using detailed labor recruitment data in combination with randomized variation in individuals outside job opportunities i show that providing job certainty during recruitment leads to substantial job seeker performance gains job seeker performance is highest and effort lowest among those assigned to receive a guaranteed outside job offer where employment risk is eliminated while performance is lowest and effort highest among those receiving no chance of an outside job offer performance among those assigned uncertain outside job offers consistently lies between the two extremes i conjecture that the pattern of results is most consistent with stress induced performance reductions attributable to job uncertainty i rule out several other competing theories

the tiebout model bring back the entrepreneurs several recent papers in the literature have reformulltlated the nature of equilibrium in ifiebout mo lels by alssliuim ing an exogenous number of communities inflexible commullity l ou alaries anti in pirticular inactive lantlowners and developers ihis paper argues that these assumptions are unwarranted and resul1t iin in eterminate solutions and incorrect analyses determinate lon1g run1 solutions require equilibrium in intercommui land markets which in turn require giving lantlowners and or entrepreneurial leveloelers an active role in the models the role of politics in these models and its juxtaposition with entrepreneurial activities are also analyzed

developing a sustainability framework for the assessment of bioenergy systems the potential for biomass to contribute to energy supply in a low carbon economy is well recognised however for the sector to contribute fully to sustainable development in the uk specific exploitation routes must meet the three sets of criteria usually recognised as representing the tests for sustainability economic viability in the market and fiscal framework within which the supply chain operates environmental performance including but not limited to low carbon dioxide emissions over the complete fuel cycle and social acceptability with the benefits of using biomass recognised as outweighing any negative social impacts this paper describes an approach to developing a methodology to establish a sustainability framework for the assessment of bioenergy systems to provide practical advice for policy makers planners and the bioenergy industry and thus to support policy development and bioenergy deployment at different scales the approach uses multi criteria decision analysis mcda and decision conferencing to explore how such a process is able to integrate and reconcile the interests and concerns of diverse stakeholder groups

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

issues of social acceptance on biofuel development alongside with biofuel development social acceptance issues have been underestimated while social acceptance can emerge as powerful barrier for biofuel development this article provides discussion on social acceptance in biofuel context an acceptance framework based on life cycle biofuel production had been referred for a better understanding on social acceptance issues malaysia has been referred for the discussion as the country has faced with acceptance issue in their biofuel program the discussion point out different societal groups will demand specific consideration for either support or oppose biofuel this paper concludes that biofuel development will be constraint if social acceptance issues remain neglect

expectations as reference points field evidence from professional soccer we show that professional soccer players and their coaches exhibit reference dependent behavior during matches controlling for the state of the match and for unobserved heterogeneity we show on a minute by minute basis that players breach the rules of the game measured by the referee s assignment of cards significantly more often if their teams are behind the expected match outcome measured by preplay betting odds of large professional bookmakers we further show that coaches implement significantly more offensive substitutions if their teams are behind expectations both types of behaviors impair the expected ultimate match outcome of the team which shows that our findings do not simply reflect fully rational responses to reference dependent incentive schemes of favorite teams to falling behind we derive these results in a data set that contains more than 8 200 matches from 12 seasons of the german bundesliga and 12 seasons of the english premier league this paper was accepted by uri gneezy behavioral economics

electoral competition with informed and uninformed voters i present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies informed voters however vote based on those policies so candidates face a trade off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies particularistic and collective in the case of particularistic policies the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion the model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages for the case of collective policies the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters and contributions are zero