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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Kai A. Konrad; Florian Morath |
| Abstract: | This paper considers evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) in a take-it-or-leave-it offer bargaining game with incomplete information. We find responders reject offers which yield a higher positive material payoff than their outside option. Proposers, in turn, make more attractive offers than in the perfect Bayesian equilibrium. Efficiency-enhancing trade may break down even when the responder has no private information. Overall, the probability of trade and ex post efficiency is lower in the ESS equilibrium than in the corresponding perfect Bayesian equilibrium. The results are observationally equivalent to behavioral explanations such as in-group favoritism and a preference for punishing selfish proposers but are driven by concerns about relative material payoff infinite populations. |
| Keywords: | Evolutionary stability, Finite population, Take-it-or-leave-it offer bargaining, Asymmetric information |
| JEL: | C73 C78 D82 |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2014-16&r=evo |
| By: | Houser, Daniel (George Mason University); List, John A. (University of Chicago); Piovesan, Marco (University of Copenhagen); Samek, Anya (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Winter, Joachim K. (University of Munich) |
| Abstract: | Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economics approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different economic environments. We begin by developing a simple model that highlights the channels through which one can increase or decrease dishonest acts. We lend empirical insights into this model by using an experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects. We find that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts alone and the dishonest act benefits the child rather than the parent. In this spirit, there is also an interesting effect of children on parents' behavior: in the child's presence, parents act more honestly, but there are gender differences. Parents act more dishonestly in front of sons than daughters. This finding has the potential of shedding light on the origins of the widely documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults. |
| Keywords: | cheating, dishonesty, ethical judgment, social utility, field experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D63 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8906&r=evo |
| By: | Sylvia Frühwirth-Schnatter; Christoph Pamminger; Andrea Weber; Rudolf Winter-Ebmer |
| Abstract: | Using Bayesian Markov chain clustering analysis we investigate career paths of Austrian women after their first birth. This data-driven method allows characterizing long-term career paths of mothers over up to 19 years by transitions between parental leave, non-employment and different forms of employment. We, thus, classify women into five cluster-groups with very different long-run career costs of childbearing. We model group membership with a multinomial specification within the finite mixture model. This approach gives insights into the determinants of the long-run family gap. Giving birth late in life may lead very diverse outcomes: on the one hand, it increases the odds to drop out of labor force, and on the other hand, it increases the odds to reach a high-wage career track. |
| Keywords: | fertility, timing of birth, family gap, Transition Data, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Multinomial Logit, Panel Data |
| Date: | 2014–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:econwp:2014_08&r=evo |
| By: | Stefania Marcassa (Université de Cergy-Pontoise); Alessandra Fogli (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how and when social change arises. We use data on the spatial diffusion of the fertility transition across US counties to identify the contribution of coordination and learning in the emergence of a new family model. We provide several measures of local and global spatial correlation to establish the existence of a significant geographic pattern in the data. We propose a mechanism in which cultural assimilation is the engine of the fertility transition. Using Census data starting from 1850, we estimate the speed of fertility assimilation for the different ethnic groups to show that their process of convergence is a crucial channel to explain the aggregate decline of fertility rate over time and across space. |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed014:1388&r=evo |
| By: | Xiao Jiang (Department of Economics, Denison University); Luis Villanueva (Department of Economics, Denison University) |
| Abstract: | In conventional economic theories, population is determined outside of the economic system. However, classical political economists such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus have long argued for the endogenous determination of population, hence establishing a connection between eco- nomics and demography. Foley (2000) used empirically established global per capita output-fertility schedule based on the 1960-1992 Extended Penn World Tables to project the population stabilizing level of world per capita output and population. In this paper we intend to update this line of re- search using more recent empirical evidences. We find that the world production still exhibits strong pattern of Smithian increasing returns to scale, and most countries' population have been stabilizing along a con- vex path in the income-fertility schedule. Our projection suggests that the world population will stabilize at per capita income around $ 13,550 in 2005 PPP, and by the year of 2011, the world per capita output was still about $2,824 short. The world population will stabilize around 10 billion assuming the absence of any exogenous shocks to the empirically established global income-fertility relation. |
| Keywords: | Growth, Demographic Equilibrium, Classical Economics |
| JEL: | B12 J11 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1502&r=evo |