the value added of laboratory experiments for the study of institutions and common pool resources abstract this article provides an overview of the effects of communication on experimental studies of behavior and outcomes in common pool resource cpr dilemmas aggregate outcomes in cpr dilemmas without communication approximate predictions of non cooperative game theory but allowing cheap talk results in higher outcomes when exogenous rules are monitored at realistic levels subjects cheat even though following the rule would generate optimal outcomes if given the opportunity experimental subjects will devise their own rule systems and impose sanctions on each other these findings complement field research on more complex resources and communities by confirming the critical importance of communication and endogenous rule formation

financial factors in economic development financial factors have been assigned strategic importance in economic development but very different factors have been isolated in the respective experiences in asia unrepressed financial markets in mobilizing saving and allocating investment have been given prominence in latin america the central question is the role of inflationary finance the scope for deficits to enhance growth and increasingly the feedback from high and unstable inflation to poor economic performance this paper reviews and contrasts the two approaches and concludes that the strong claims for the benefits of financial liberalization are not supported by evidence financial factors are important but probably only when financial instability becomes a dominant force the scope for inflationary finance is small and the risks are larger than commonly accepted when hyperinflation takes over and foreign exchange crises disrupt the price system and shorten the economic horizon to a week or a month normal economic development is suspended moreover difficult to reverse capital flight puts savings outside the home economy attention should focus on these extreme cases and explore deeper the thresholds at which financial factors become dominant and the channels through which this occurs superior growth performance in this perspective may be more a reflection of adaptability than financial deepening this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

anomalies risk aversion economists ubiquitously employ a simple and elegant explanation for risk aversion it derives from the concavity of the utility of wealth function within the expected utility framework we show that this explanation is not plausible in most applications since anything more than economically negligible risk aversion over moderate stakes requires a utility of wealth function that is so concave that it predicts absurdly severe risk aversion over very large stakes we present examples of how the expected utility framework has misled economists and why we believe a better explanation for risk aversion must incorporate loss aversion and mental accounting

the perception of man and the conception of society two approaches to understanding society the social sciences offer two distinct approaches to understanding society one originated with the scottish moral philosophers and shaped the discipline of economics the other emerged from the french enlightenment and influenced the study of sociology the two approaches are based on radically different perceptions of man and man s relation to society this paper explores these alternative hypotheses and examines some major implications it concludes that the hypothesis reaching back to the scottish philosophers provides the basis for a unified approach in the social sciences

anomalies in intertemporal choice evidence and an interpretation research on decision making under uncertainly has been strongly influenced by the documentation of numerous expected utility eu anomalies behaviors that violate the expected utility axioms the relative lack of progress on the closely related topic of intertemporal choice is partly due to the absence of an analogous set of discounted utility du anomalies we enumerate a set of du anomalies analogous to the eu anomalies and propose a model that accounts for the anomalies as well as other intertemporal choice phenomena incompatible with du we discuss implications for savings behavior estimation of discount rates and choice framing effects

trust and cooperation social capital and community resource management social capital is one of the main determinants of community resource management success we use the average amount sent in a trust game as a measure of social capital in five rural villages in india combining these experimental data with household surveys we analyze i how the amount sent is correlated with socio cultural community characteristics ii how social capital affects community resource management and iii to what extent experimental play is consistent with real on farm behavior in terms of providing a semi public good the results are interesting from a policy perspective and provide insight into bridging the gap between lab experiments and the field

loss aversion in a consumption savings model abstract we propose a model of consumption and saving based on kahneman and tversky s prospect theory that implies a fundamental asymmetry in consumption behavior inconsistent with other models of consumption when there is sufficient income uncertainty a person resists lowering consumption in response to bad news about future income this resistance is greater than the resistance to increasing consumption in response to good news we present empirical evidence from five countries that confirms this behavior

risk aversion and expected utility theory a calibration theorem within the expected utility framework the only explanation for risk aversion is that the utility function for wealth is concave a person has lower marginal utility for additional wealth when she is wealthy than when she is poor this paper provides a theorem showing that expected utility theory is an utterly implausible explanation for appreciable risk aversion over modest stakes within expected utility theory for any concave utility function even very little risk aversion over modest stakes implies an absurd degree of risk aversion over large stakes illustrative calibrations are provided

stagflationary effects of stabilization programs in reforming socialist countries enterprise side and household side factors dismantling subsidies could give rise to serious macroeconomic difficulties in the short run this article explores a view based on the enterprise sector as a central source and main channel of the stagflation phenomenon using as an example the stagflation that followed the 1990 stabilization program in poland the stagflation phenomenon is linked to features of the financial market that are somewhat peculiar to reforming socialist economies the weak credit links between households and enterprises and the existence of large interenterprise debt the policy implications of the enterprise side view include more explicit consideration of initial conditions in the credit market implementation of privatization schemes and the development of a domestic banking

averting risk in the face of large losses bernoulli vs tversky and kahneman abstract prospect theory asserts that people display risk attraction in high probability losses but our subjects tend to avoid fair risks for large 30 to 90 high probability 80 real losses vindicating bernoulli s view that risk aversion is the dominant attitude

financial structure and reforms in central and eastern europe in the 1980s abstract the paper analyzes the evolution of the financial structure of the countries of central and eastern europe during the 1980s in these countries the financial system is assigned a limited and mostly passive function this needs to be seen in the context of the allocative system of centrally planned economies where the transfer of financial resources between sectors is largely performed directly by the state through the price system taxes and subsidies the analysis focuses specifically on hungary poland and czechoslovakia the development of their financial structure is assessed through a number of quantitative indicators we find that the partial economic and financial reforms introduced in hungary and poland before 1989 did not substantially modify the role and performance of the financial system whose size in relation to the real economy remained modest at the same time however the reforms exacerbated some of the distortions of the planned system and generated larger macroeconomic imbalances the effects of which tend to cloud the interpretation of financial indicators at the end of 1980 the banking systems of hungary and poland although formally decentralized continued to allocate credit mostly according to automatic criteria and had virtually no experience in assessing and monitoring borrowers and investment projects in this respect they differed little from that of czechoslovakia which remained based on the classic model of a single state bank

behind the market stage where real societies exist part i the role of public and private order institutions this two part article is an attempt to clarify the social conditions upon which the viability and efficiency of the market system rest it strives to show that the embeddedness thesis that is an explanation based upon the existence of long run personal ties involving the use of reputation mechanisms among transactors cannot fully elucidate the question as to how the problem of trust is solved in market societies as explained in part i there are difficulties of both theoretical and empirical historical kinds and these explain why the market order needs to be sustained by private and public order institutions in part ii the role of generalised morality in backing or supplementing such institutions is discussed in the light of game theory and particular emphasis is put on the ability of moral norms to sustain honest behaviour by generating the right kind of preferences and establishing trust the vexed problem of the dynamics of norm emergence and erosion is then addressed with a view to showing

choice and procrastination author s o donoghue ted rabin matthew abstract recent models of procrastination due to self control problems assume that a procrastinator considers just one option and is unaware of her self control problems we develop a model where a person chooses from a menu of options and is partially aware of her self control problems this menu model replicates earlier results and generates new ones a person might forego completing an attractive option because she plans to complete a more attractive but never to be completed option hence providing a non procrastinator additional options can induce procrastination and a person may procrastinate worse pursuing important goals than unimportant ones

does market participation promote generalized trust experimental evidence from southern africa does market participation promote generalized morality and trust as postulated by some recent theories we use experimental data from zimbabwe and mozambique to probe into one specific component of this question and find evidence to the contrary the short term effect of market integration appears to be to lower generalized trust however this finding is not robust across all countries

on the role of social norms in a market economy given that the discussion in section 2 focuses on but two potential sources of norms and on only a pair of variables affecting the activities of these sources it may appear premature to attempt to generalize about the supply of netn norms in a market economy however based on the above discussion it is nevertheless quite reasonable to hypothesize that the norms market will not operate in such a way as to ensure the proper supply of netn norms the failures found by economic theory in the economic marketplace and by petp in the political market have their analogue in the norms market that this can be said with some assurance even though the investigation has been so limited is due to the importance of the variables and group activities investigated the specific structural characteristics the high degree of specialization in society and the specific cluster of values those related to individualism examined above and found to be inhibitory to the supply of netn norms are of considerable importance and their negative impact on the norms market cannot readily be altered in the first place these variables are significantly and synergistically related to one another but secondly and more importantly these variables are so closely associated with the market economy itself that short of replacing the market little can be done to diminish the negative effect that these variables have on the supply of netn norms

the endowment effect and intertemporal choice a laboratory investigation we present a laboratory investigation of intertemporal choice i e elicited discount rates allowing for the influence of the endowment effect consistent with the previous literature we hypothesize that the endowment effect in an intertemporal choice setting results in substantially higher discount rates relative to when individuals treat the resources in question as found money our results support this hypothesis and our experimental design provides a new protocol for conducting choice experiments wherein the endowment effect is an important determinant of behaviour l effet de dotation et le choix inter temporel une analyse en laboratoire on presente une analyse en laboratoire de choix inter temporels i e de taux d escompte permettant a l effet de dotation de jouer selon les conventions dans la litterature specialisee on fait l hypothese que l effet de dotation dans un contexte de choix inter temporel resulte en des taux d escompte substantiellement plus eleves que quand les individus traitent les ressources comme de la monnaie trouvee les resultats supportent l hypothese et le design de l experience fournit un protocole pour mener des experiences de choix ou l effet de dotation est un determinant important du comportement

the endowment effect and the reference state evidence and manipulations abstract recent reports suggest that the endowment effect may be due to conditions under which it is observed and explained by incentives long recognized in standard theory evidence from new experiments reported here provides empirical support for the role of the economic environment on people s perceived reference state and consequently on their valuations as suggested by koszegi and rabin koszegi b rabin m 2006 a model of reference dependent preferences quarterly journal of economics 121 1133 1165 and indicates that the disappearance of the valuation disparity is more likely due instead to conditions that weaken the perception of reference states further these conditions appear to be poor approximations of those that prevail in most cases for which valuations are normally made

deregulation ownership and productivity growth in the banking industry evidence from india this paper analyzes the relationship between deregulation and total factor productivity tfp growth in the indian banking industry using a generalized shadow cost function approach tfp growth is decomposed into a technological change a scale and a miscellaneous component a disaggregated panel data analysis using the population of public and private banks over 1985 96 that covers both pre and post deregulation periods indicates that a significant decline in regulatory distortions and the anticipated increase in tfp growth have not yet materialized following deregulation while private sector banks have improved their performance mainly due to the freedom to expand output public sector banks have not responded well to the deregulation measures

estimating individual discount rates in denmark a field experiment we estimate individual discount rates with respect to time streams of money using controlled laboratory experiments these discount rates are elicited by means of field experiments involving real monetary rewards the experiments were carried out across denmark using a representative sample of 268 people between 19 and 75 years of age individual discount rates are estimated for various households differentiated by socio demographic characteristics such as income and age our conclusions are that discount rates are constant over the 12 month to 3 year horizons used in these experiments and that discount rates vary substantially with respect to several socio demographic variables hence we conclude that it would be reasonable to assume constant discount rates for specific household types but not the same rates across all households

intertemporal tradeoffs for gains and losses an experimental measurement of discounted utility this article provides a parameter free measurement of utility in intertemporal choice and presents new and more robust evidence on the discounting of money outcomes intertemporal utility was concave for gains and convex for losses consistent with a hypothesis put forward by loewenstein and prelec 1992 discount rates declined over time but less so than previously observed under the assumption of linear utility for approximately 40 of our subjects constant discounting provided the best fit the remaining 60 were most consistent with harvey s 1986 power discounting our data provide little support for the popular quasi hyperbolic model which is widely used in economics today we observed an asymmetry in the discounting of gains and losses that unlike earlier findings cannot be explained by a framing effect

understanding conditions for co management a framed field experiment amongst the tsimane bolivia we experimentally assess the willingness to self enforce restricted resource use by playing a common pool resource extraction game in four tsimane indigenous communities in the bolivian amazon we analyse the role of trust in participant s willingness to self restrict resource use and collaborate with the authorities contrary to game behaviour in the industrialized world we find that amongst the tsimane extractions decrease across rounds we also find that participants who trust a non tsimane and b the authorities extract less than other participants but findings are not robust across rounds using the economic and anthropological literature we interpret the findings arguing that trust in non tsimane which is strongly correlated with market access may capture generalized trust levels and that people with higher levels of generalized trust interact more easily in non personal transactions like the situation presented in the game as co management also entails non personal interactions with and trust in the authorities our findings seem relevant for community based conservation and co management

banking sector and restructuring in eastern europe abstract the paper seeks to achieve a number of objectives first to analyze the underlying causes of east european commercial banks illiquidity problems second to examine the case for public versus private informal approaches to bankruptcy and bank restructurings as general approaches to these problems third to evaluate the different models of restructuring banks in particular eight alternative models are identified fourth to briefly describe the models that have been chosen by a number of east european countries finally to layout the criteria for policymakers choice of a particular restructuring model

market institutions trust and norms exploring moral economies in nigerian food systems informal market institutions and small scale traders are responsible for feeding nigerian cities this study analyses a range of economic relationships and institutions that have evolved in the context of inadequate formal institutions such as banks and legal contracts through examining both personal relationships and institutional based trust the paper explores the role of moral norms trust is shown to be related to sanctions information on other parties and a range of norms that are drawn on both calculatively and habitually the perceived moralities of different forms of institution such as credit systems trader associations and commission agents are also examined

an innovatory package for financial sector reforms in eastern european countries abstract this essay sees reform of the financial sector as the key to successful transition to a market economy the analysis generates the following practical proposals first the central bank should be endowed with strong independence accumulating the deposit insurance supervisory and lender of last resort functions second the central bank should host the payments system and impose gross settlement without credit lines in excess of required reserve balances it should also impose suitable capital requirements for credit exposure third universal banking should be accepted to improve corporate governance and to make a well functioning capital market less necessary fourth to reduce moral hazard and provide maximum flexibility an innovatory multi tier bank licensing is proposed fifth when government cannot borrow from the central bank borrowing will contribute to the development of securities markets whose other two pillars are privatisation and mortgage financing to alleviate the burden on public finance and maximise liquidity perpetuals assorted with suitable calls and puts are proposed