New Economics Papers
on Neuroeconomics
Issue of 2011‒01‒16
two papers chosen by



  1. Patience, cognitive skill and coordination in the repeated stag hunt By Al-Ubaydli, Omar; Jones, Garett; Weel, Jaap
  2. Quantitative MRI in the diagnosis and monitoring of human prion diseases. By Hyare, H.

  1. By: Al-Ubaydli, Omar; Jones, Garett; Weel, Jaap
    Abstract: Coordination games have become a critical tool of analysis in fields such as development and institutional economics. Understanding behavior in coordination games is an important step towards understanding the differing success of teams, firms and nations. This paper investigates the relationship between personal attributes (cognitive ability, risk-aversion, patience) and behavior and outcomes in coordination games, an issue that, to the best of our knowledge, has never been studied before. For the repeated coordination game that we consider, we find that: (1) cognitive ability has no bearing on any aspect of behavior or outcomes; (2) pairs of players who are more patient are more likely to coordinate well and earn higher payoffs; and (3) risk-aversion has no bearing on any aspect of behavior or outcomes. These results are robust to controlling for personality traits and demographic characteristics.
    Keywords: Coordination; IQ; personality; discount rate; patience; risk-aversion
    JEL: D23 D02 O12
    Date: 2010–12–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:27723&r=neu
  2. By: Hyare, H.
    Abstract: This thesis examines the application of cerebral diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and short echo time (TE) proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) for the evaluation of patients with different forms of human prion disease. Human prion diseases are progressive, uniformly fatal neurodegenerative diseases and as treatments are developed, early diagnosis is essential. Particularly important is the diagnosis of presymptomatic cases and prediction of disease onset in these individuals. In this thesis I demonstrate that MRI measures of Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) at low and high b-value and short TE 1H-MRS are potential neuroimaging biomarkers of prion disease activity. I show that ex-vivo MRI at high field provides important insights into the microstructural changes underlying the sensitivity of some of these quantitative MRI methods to prion disease pathology. The findings presented here exemplify the potential of quantitative MRI in both increasing our understanding of the pathophysiology of prion diseases and in providing neuroimaging biomarkers which will be of great importance for the future evaluation of treatment efficacy.
    Date: 2010–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/133560/&r=neu

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