Why are Small Firms Different? Managers’ Views

Do incentives in small organizations differ from those in large ones? This paper uses a representative survey of compensation managers to shed light on the issues. I find that (i) small establishments rely less on pecuniary incentives, and have a significantly more hostile attitude towards incentive schemes based on competition and relative rewards; (ii) large units are more vulnerable to mechanisms of efficiency wages, effects that remain even as I control for differences in monitoring ability; (iii) large units are more prone to indicate that negative reciprocity is important, and that their employees care about relative pay. I argue that these findings fit with behavioral stories of incentives and motivation, in particular those stressing group interaction effects, inequity aversion and gift exchange.-size effect, motivation, relative pay, field-survey, matched data

Robustness assessment of the ‘cooperation under resource pressure’ (CURP) model: Insights on resource availability and sharing practices among hunter-gatherers

A well-known challenge in archaeological research is the exploration of the social mechanisms that hunter-gatherers may have implemented throughout history to deal with changes in resource availability. The agent-based model (ABM) ‘cooperation under resource pressure’ (CURP) was conceived to explore food stress episodes in societies lacking a food preservation technology. It was particularly aimed at understanding how cooperative behaviours in the form of food sharing practices emerge, increase and may become the prevailing strategy in relation to changes in resource availability and expectancy of reciprocity. CURP’s main outcome is the identification of three regimes of behaviour depending on the stress level. In this work, the model’s robustness to the original selection mechanism (random tournament) is assessed, as different dynamics can lead to different persistent regimes. For that purpose, three other selection mechanisms are implemented and evaluated, to identify the prevailing states of the system. Results show that the three regimes are robust irrespective of the analysed dynamics. We consequently examine in more detail the long-term archaeological implications that these results may have.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (former Ministry of Science and Innovation): SimulPast Project (CSD2010- 00034 CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010), HAR2009-06996 and CULM Project (HAR2016- 77672-P); from the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET): Project PIP-0706; from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research: Project GR7846; from the project H2020 FET OPEN RIA IBSEN/662725 and from the European Social Fund as one of the authors is the recipient of a predoctoral grant from the Department of Education of Junta de Castilla y León (Spain)

Spatial Dynamic Modeling and Urban Land Use Transformation:

Assessing the economic impacts of urban land use transformation has become complex and acrimonious. Although community planners are beginning to comprehend the economic trade-offs inherent in transforming the urban fringe, they find it increasingly difficult to analyze and assess the trade-offs expediently and in ways that can influence local decisionmaking. New and sophisticated spatial modeling techniques are now being applied to urban systems that can quickly assess the probable spatial outcomes of given communal policies. Applying an economic impact assessment to the probable spatial patterns can provide to planners the tools needed to quickly assess scenarios for policy formation that will ultimately help inform decision makers. This paper focuses on the theoretical underpinnings and practical application of an economic impact analysis submodel developed within the Land use Evolution and Impact Assessment Modeling (LEAM) environment. The conceptual framework of LEAM is described, followed by an application of the model to the assessment of the cost of urban sprawl in Kane County, Illinois. The results show the effectiveness of spatially explicit modeling from a theoretical and a practical point of view. The agent-based approach of spatial dynamic modeling with a high spatial resolution allows for discerning the macro-level implications of micro-level behaviors. These phenomena are highlighted in the economic submodel in the discussion of the implications of land use change decisions on individual and communal costs; low-density development patterns favoring individual behaviors at the expense of the broader community.

The Survival of the Conformist: Social Pressure and Renewable Resource Management

This paper examines the role of pro-social behavior as a mechanism for the establishment and maintenance of cooperation in resource use under variable social and environmental conditions. By coupling resource stock dynamics with social dynamics concerning compliance to a social norm prescribing non-excessive resource extraction in a common pool resource (CPR), we show that when reputational considerations matter and a sufficient level of social stigma affects the violators of a norm, sustainable outcomes are achieved. We find large parameter regions where norm-observing and norm-violating types coexist, and analyze to what extent such coexistence depends on the environment.Cooperation, Social Norm, Ostracism, Common Pool Resource, Evolutionary Game Theory, Replicator Equation, Agent-based Simulation, Coupled Socio-resource Dynamics

A Spatial Agent-Based Model of N-Person Prisoner's Dilemma Cooperation in a Socio-Geographic Community

The purpose of this paper is to present a spatial agent-based model of N-person prisoner's dilemma that is designed to simulate the collective communication and cooperation within a socio-geographic community. Based on a tight coupling of REPAST and a vector Geographic Information System, the model simulates the emergence of cooperation from the mobility behaviors and interaction strategies of citizen agents. To approximate human behavior, the agents are set as stochastic learning automata with Pavlovian personalities and attitudes. A review of the theory of the standard prisoner's dilemma, the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and the N-person prisoner's dilemma is given as well as an overview of the generic architecture of the agent-based model. The capabilities of the spatial N-person prisoner's dilemma component are demonstrated with several scenario simulation runs for varied initial cooperation percentages and mobility dynamics. Experimental results revealed that agent mobility and context preservation bring qualitatively different effects to the evolution of cooperative behavior in an analyzed spatial environment.Agent Based Modeling, Cooperation, Prisoners Dilemma, Spatial Interaction Model, Spatially Structured Social Dilemma, Geographic Information Systems

The impact of resource dependence of the mechanisms of life on the spatial population dynamics of an in silico microbial community

Biodiversity has a critical impact on ecosystem functionality and stability, and thus the current biodiversity crisis has motivated many studies of the mechanisms that sustain biodiversity, a notable example being non-transitive or cyclic competition. We therefore extend existing microscopic models of communities with cyclic competition by incorporating resource dependence in demographic processes, characteristics of natural systems often oversimplified or overlooked by modellers. The spatially explicit nature of our individual-based model of three interacting species results in the formation of stable spatial structures, which have significant effects on community functioning, in agreement with experimental observations of pattern formation in microbial communities. Published by AIP Publishing

Small-scale characterization of vine plant root water uptake via 3-D electrical resistivity tomography and mise-à-la-masse method

open7openMary, Benjamin*; Peruzzo, Luca; Boaga, Jacopo; Schmutz, Myriam; Wu, Yuxin; Hubbard, Susan S.; Cassiani, GiorgioMary, Benjamin; Peruzzo, Luca; Boaga, Jacopo; Schmutz, Myriam; Wu, Yuxin; Hubbard, Susan S.; Cassiani, Giorgi

Resilience, collapse and reorganization of a rangeland socio-ecological system in South Africa

Communal rangelands in semi-arid areas are complex socio-ecological systems (SES). Their complexity arises from non-linear feedbacks between the social- and the ecosystem. To understand the social system requires tackling institutional issues associated with common pool resource governance. Moreover, assessing ecosystem dynamics commands to acknowledge high climatic variability in semi-arid areas. This thesis quantifies the dynamics of a communal livestock production SES in a former homeland of South Africa using a SES modelling approach. Here, a social agent based model is combined with a biomass growth model of the rangeland. The coupling of both models is achieved by full integration on software (Java) level. Accordingly, the resulting model does account for ecological complexity. The latter constitutes a contribution to the methodological advancement of bio-economic modelling insofar as bio-economic models strongly simplify ecological processes. The SES model is specified based on primary data from a case study. On a conceptual level, the three main chapters in this thesis investigate aspects of SES resilience, collapse and reorganization. Specifically, chapter two assesses social welfare impacts from reorganizing resource use by the adjustment of stocking rates and alterations of spatio-temporal grazing patterns. Chapter 3 explores the effect of a local norm on SES dynamics with a focus on collapse vs. stability. Finally, chapter 4 quantifies the resilience on multiple scales of the SES towards droughts, a loss of social embededdness and a significant change in subsidization. We found that the adjustment of stocking rates yields higher social benefits compared to the (re)-introduction of rotational grazing in a system assumed to be void of institutional arrangements. In a second step, we identified the existence of a local norm indirectly impacting resource use by endogenous stocking rate adjustments. The existence of the informal institution significantly contributes to the long-term stability of the SES by reducing the chance for collapse. The emergence of norm-following behaviour is fostered by climatic variability. The SES was resilient towards droughts and a change in subsidization. It was however not resilient towards a loss in social embededdness. At another level, only the introduction of a basic income grant was able to stop a process of structural change eroding household resilience. The introduction of a basic income grant enabled poorer households to successfully compete with richer ones without jeopardizing the resilience of the coupled system