Matching and Challenge Gifts to Charity: Evidence from Laboratory and Natural Field Experiments

This study designs a natural field experiment linked to a controlled laboratory experiment to examine the effectiveness of matching gifts and challenge gifts, two popular strategies used to secure a portion of the $200 billion annually given to charities. We find evidence that challenge gifts positively influence contributions in the field, but matching gifts do not. Methodologically, we find important similarities and dissimilarities between behavior in the lab and the field. Overall, our results have clear implications for fundraisers and provide avenues for future empirical and theoretical work on charitable giving.fundraising, threshold public goods, charitable giving, field experiments

The evolution of manufacturing planning and control systems: From reorder point to enterprise resource planning.

Manufacturing planning and control (MPC) systems have existed since the earliest days of the industrial revolution. To gain a historical perspective, it is useful to look at the evolution of these systems. Five major stages were involved: reorder point (ROP) systems, materials requirement planning (MRP) systems, manufacturing resource planning (MRP-II) systems, MRP-II with manufacturing execution systems (MES), and enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) with MES. When examined in detail, each stage represents the next logical step in manufacturing philosophy and technological innovation over the preceding stage

Matching and Challenge Gifts to Charity:Evidence from Laboratory and Natural Field Experiments

This study designs a natural field experiment linked to a controlled laboratory experiment to examine the effectiveness of matching gifts and challenge gifts, two popular strategies used to secure a portion of the $200 billion annually given to charities. We find evidence that challenge gifts positively influence contributions in the field, but matching gifts do not. Methodologically, we find important similarities and dissimilarities between behavior in the lab and the field. Overall, our results have clear implications for fundraisers and provide avenues for future empirical and theoretical work on charitable giving.

Social Preferences and Voting: An Exploration Using a Novel Preference Revealing Mechanism

Public referenda are frequently used to determine the provision of public goods. As public programs have distributional consequences, a compelling question is what role if any social preferences have on voting behavior. This paper explores this issue using laboratory experiments wherein voting outcomes lead to a known distribution of net benefits across participants. Preferences are elicited using a novel Random Price Voting Mechanism (RPVM), which is a more parsimonious mechanism than dichotomous choice referenda, but gives consistent results. Results suggest that social preferences, in particular a social efficiency motive, lead to economically meaningful deviations from self-interested voting choices and increase the likelihood that welfare-enhancing programs are implemented.Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C91, C92, D64, D72, H41,

ANOMALIES IN VOTING: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS USING A NEW, DEMAND REVEALING (RANDOM PRICE VOTING) MECHANISM

This study investigates the influence of social preferences on voting decisions using a new Random Price Voting Mechanism (RPVM), which is best thought of as a public goods voting extension of the Becker-DeGroot-Marshack mechanism for private goods. In particular, this mechanism is used to investigate experimentally whether voting decisions are affected by the distribution of net benefits associated with a proposed public program. Recent papers have shown that, in additional to selfishness, factors such as inequality aversion, maximin preferences, and efficiency may influence individual decisions. However, the effect of social preferences on voting, the predominant funding mechanism for public goods by legislatures and public referenda, has not been thoroughly examined. We first establish the presence of anomalous behavior in dichotomous voting, and introduce the RPVM as a more efficient mechanism to examine such anomalies. We show that it is demand revealing in the presence of social preferences and empirically consistent with dichotomous choice voting. Laboratory experiments involving 440 subjects show that when net benefits are homogeneously distributed, the new RPVM is demand-revealing in both willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) settings, for both gains and losses. When the voting outcome potentially results in a heterogeneous distribution of (net) benefits, a systematic wedge appears between individuals' controlled induced values and their revealed WTP or WTA. With induced gains, the best-off subjects under-report their WTP and WTA in comparison to their induced value. Worst-off subjects express WTP and WTA that exceed their induced value. With induced losses a mirror image is evident. Best-off subjects over-report their induced value while the worst-off subjects under-report. Theoretical and econometric results presented in the paper suggest that these differences are caused by a concern for social efficiency.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Vegetation monitoring at Pueblo Chemical Depot: 1999-2015

Prepared for: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Colorado Fish & Wildlife Conservation Office, Pueblo Chemical Depot.May 2016.Includes bibliographical references (pages 92-98).In 1998 the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) contracted the Colorado Natural Heritage Program to set up a long‐term vegetation monitoring program on U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot (PCD) in Pueblo County, Colorado. PCD makes up the southern portion of an important landscape conservation area – Chico Basin – and monitoring data collected here can be useful to PCD land managers as well as regional land managers. The PCD monitoring program was established to detect vegetation changes in shortgrass prairie, sandsage shrubland, and greasewood shrubland as a result of the removal of cattle grazing in 1998. Each vegetation type included areas with four different historic cattle grazing regimes: 1) grazed year‐round until 1998, 2) grazed, but not year‐round, until 1998, 3) grazed lightly (several times/year) since 1942, and 4) ungrazed since 1942. For the purpose of this study the first two regimes are considered "grazed" and the latter two regimes "ungrazed." All further reference to the "grazed" regime refers to its historical use prior to 1998. During the 1999‐2015 years of monitoring neither grazed nor ungrazed study plots discussed in this report received any livestock grazing

Natural heritage inventory of Jefferson County, Colorado

Prepared for: Jefferson County Open Space.18 March 1993

The information systems environment of time-based competitors

Time-based competitors create product development and manufacturing practices that reduce response-time and enhance customization capabilities. These practices require an information-rich, internal environment capable of flexible resource deployment and direct and continuous feedback. These firms should have enhanced information systems planning capabilities, cross-functional involvement in information systems related activities, responsiveness to organizational computing demands, high levels of end-user development, and high levels of information systems performance. Data were collected from 265 manufacturers to develop measures for these information systems variables and to determine if there are relationships between the use of time-based practices and the levels of these variables. Results indicate that firms with high levels of time-based product development practices and time-based manufacturing practices have significantly higher scores across these information systems variables than firms with low levels of these time-based practices

Multiresidue determination of 256 pesticides in lavandin essential oil by LC/ESI/sSRM: advantages and drawbacks of a sampling method involving evaporation under nitrogen

The determination of 256 multiclass pesticides in lavandin essential oil has been performed by liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry using the scheduled selected reaction monitoring mode available on a quadrupole-linear ion trap mass spectrometer. With the aim of improving the limits of quantification (LOQs) of the target molecules, a sampling step based on evaporation of the essential oil under a nitrogen flow assisted by controlled heating was tested. The LOQs determined in this case were compared with the values obtained with the classic dilution preparation method. With sampling by dilution, 247 pesticides were detected and quantified at low concentration, with 74 % of the pesticides having LOQs of 10 μg L-1 or less. With the evaporation method, a global improvement of the LOQs was observed, with lower LOQs for 92 active substances and LOQs of 10 μg L-1 or less for 82.8 % of the pesticides. Almost twice as many active substances had an LOQ of 1 μg L-1 or less when the evaporation method was used. Some pesticides exhibited poor recovery or high variance caused by volatilization or degradation during the evaporation step. This behavior was evidenced by the case of thiophanate-methyl, which is degraded to carbendazim. Figure Sampling method by dilution or evaporation in the multiresidue determination of pesticides in essential oils by LC/M

Securing ZigBee Commercial Communications Using Constellation Based Distinct Native Attribute Fingerprinting

This work provides development of Constellation Based DNA (CB-DNA) Fingerprinting for use in systems employing quadrature modulations and includes network protection demonstrations for ZigBee offset quadrature phase shift keying modulation. Results are based on 120 unique networks comprised of seven authorized ZigBee RZSUBSTICK devices, with three additional like-model devices serving as unauthorized rogue devices. Authorized network device fingerprints are used to train a Multiple Discriminant Analysis (MDA) classifier and Rogue Rejection Rate (RRR) estimated for 2520 attacks involving rogue devices presenting themselves as authorized devices. With MDA training thresholds set to achieve a True Verification Rate (TVR) of TVR = 95% for authorized network devices, the collective rogue device detection results for SNR ≥ 12 dB include average burst-by-burst RRR ≈ 94% across all 2520 attack scenarios with individual rogue device attack performance spanning 83.32% \u3c RRR \u3c 99.81%