Leadership and influence: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment on local public good provision

This paper studies the effect of leadership on the level and evolution of pro-social behavior using an artefactual field experiment on local public good provision. Participants decide how much to contribute to an actual conservation project. They can then revise their donations after being randomly matched in pairs on the basis of their authority and having observed each other’s contributions. Authority is measured through a social ranking exercise identifying formal and moral leaders within the community. I find that giving by a pair is higher and shows a lower tendency to decrease over time when a leader is part of a pair. This is because higher-ranked pair members in general, and leaders in particular, donate more and are less likely to revise contributions downwards after giving more than their counterparts. Leadership effects are stronger when moral authority is made salient within the experiment, in line with the ethical nature of the decision under study. These findings highlight the importance of identifying different forms of leadership and targeting the relevant leaders in projects aimed at local public good provision.Leadership, local public goods, experimental, Colombia

Norm elicitation in within-subject designs: testing for order effects

We investigate norms of corruption using the norm-elicitation procedure introduced by Krupka and Weber (2013). We use a within-subject design whereby the norms are elicited from the same subjects who are observed making choices in a bribery game. We test whether the order in which the norm-elicitation task and the bribery game are conducted affects elicited norms and behavior. We find little evidence of order effects in our experiment. We discuss how these results compare with those reported in the existing literature

Institutional quality, culture, and norms of cooperation: Evidence from behavioral field experiments

We examine the causal effect of legal institutional quality on informal norms of cooperation and study the interaction of institutions and culture in sustaining economic exchange. A total of 346 subjects in Italy and Kosovo played a market game under different and randomly allocated institutional treatments, which generated different incentives to behave honestly, preceded and followed by a noncontractible and nonenforceable trust game. Significant increases in individual trust and trustworthiness followed exposure to better institutions. A 1- percentage-point reduction in the probability of facing a dishonest partner in the market game, which is induced by the quality of legal institutions, increases trust by 7–11 percent and trustworthiness by 13–19 percent. This suggests that moral norms of cooperative behavior can follow improvements in formal institutional quality. Cultural origin, initial trust, and trustworthiness influence opportunistic behavior in markets, but only in the absence of strong formal institutions

Neuroendocrine Small Cell Carcinoma of the Cervix: A case report

Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV) has been found in patients with Merkel cell carcinoma and respiratory tract infections. Merkel cell carcinoma is a primary aggressive neuroendocrine carcinoma of the skin. It has been demonstrated that MCPyV can be transmitted during sexual activity and may be present in the oral and anogenital mucosa. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether MCPyV coexisted with HPV in three cases of neuroendocrine small cell carcinoma of the cervix using PCR and immunohistochemical analysis Three cases of NSC of the cervix were identified in the pathology archives of Parma University (Italy). Of these, two cases were associated with an adenocarcinomatous component. A set of general primers from the L1 region (forward, L1C1 and reverse, L1C2 or L1C2M) was PCR amplified to detect the broad‑spectrum DNA of genital HPV. The presence of MCPyV was investigated via immunohistochemistry using a mouse monoclonal antibody against the MCPyV LT antigen and through PCR analysis to separate viral DNA. HPV DNA was present in all three neuroendocrine carcinomas and in the adenocarcinoma component of the two mixed cases. None of the cases were immunoreactive to CM2B4 and did not contain viral DNA in either their neuroendocrine or adenocarcinomatous component. Whilst it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions from such a small sample size, these data suggested that MCPyV does not coexist with HPV in the cervix. However, in the present study, the absence of detectable MCPyV may have been due to the presence of a genotype that was not detected by the primers used in the PCR analysis or by the antibody used for the immunohistochemical study. MCPyV microRNA may also have been present, inhibiting LT expression. Additional studies with larger cohorts and more advanced molecular biology techniques are required to confirm the hypothesis of the current study

On the Use of Nudges to Affect Spillovers in Environmental Behaviors

Environmental self-identity is considered a promising lever to generate positive spillovers across pro-environmental behaviors: existing evidence shows that it is positively correlated with pro-environmental choices and that it can be easily manipulated, by reminding individuals of their past pro-environmental actions. However, it remains unclear whether it can be successfully used for environmental policy making. In two online, incentive-compatible experiments, we manipulate participants’ environmental self-identity and test whether this leads to increased donations to an environmental charity. Additionally, we investigate the interaction between self-identity priming and two commonly used behavioral policy tools: social information (Study 1, N = 400) and goal commitment (Study 2, N = 495). Our results suggest caution in leveraging environmental self-identity to promote pro-environmental behaviors, provide indications on how to target policies based on self-identity primes, and offer novel evidence on the interaction between different behavioral policy tools

E-campaigning on Twitter: The effectiveness of distributive promises and negative campaign in the 2013 Italian election

Recent studies investigated the effect of e-campaigning on the electoral performance. However, little attention has been paid to the content of e-campaigning. Given that political parties broadcast minute-by-minute the campaign messages on social media, this comprehensive and unmediated information can be useful to evaluate the impact of different electoral strategies. Accordingly, this article examines the electoral campaign for the 2013 Italian general election to assess the effectiveness of positive and negative campaigning messages, measured through content analysis of information published on the official Twitter accounts of Italian parties. We evaluate their impact on the share of unsolicited voting intentions expressed on Twitter, measured through an innovative technique of sentiment analysis. Our results show that negative campaign has positive effects and its impact is stronger when the attacker is meanwhile under attack. Conversely, we only find a circumstantial effect of positive campaign related to clientelistic and distributive appeals

Microsatellite analysis of rare serous tumours of the fallopian tubes comparison with serous ovarian neoplasms

Poste

The not so Gentle Push: Behavioral Spillovers and Policy Instruments

We examine whether spillovers of pro-social behavior depend on how behavioral changes are induced. We conduct a large experiment using economic games, with a Dictator Game (DG) followed by either an identical game or a Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). We influence initial behavior through widely used policy instruments, either behaviorally informed (default, social norms) or with an economic/regulatory rationale (incentives, regulation). Our results provide evidence of positive spillovers to subsequent economic games (which are not treated), but only for the traditional economic/regulatory interventions and within the same game type. Specifically, inducing higher giving in the first stage leads to subsequent higher altruism in the DG, but not to more cooperation in the PD. The carry over of pro-social behavior appears to be driven by an anchoring on the initial donation. We also measure observers’ beliefs and we find that these results are not correctly anticipated by third parties, who systematically overestimate both the direct effect of behaviorally informed interventions on initial donations and their spillover to subsequent donations

It’s So Hot in Here: Information Avoidance, Moral Wiggle Room, and High Air Conditioning

Environmental policies based on information provision are widespread, but have often proven ineffective. One possible explanation for information’s low effectiveness is that people actively avoid it. We conduct an online field experiment on air conditioning usage to test the theory of moral wiggle room, according to which people avoid information that would compel them to act morally, against the standard theory of information acquisition, and identify conditions under which each theory applies. In the experiment, we observe how exogenously imposing a feeling of moral obligation to reduce air conditioning usage and exploiting natural variation in the cost of doing so, given by outside temperature, influences subjects’ avoidance of information about their energy use impacts on the environment. Moral obligation increases information avoidance when it is hot outside, consistent with the moral wiggle room theory, but decreases it when outside temperature is low. Avoiding information positively correlates with air conditioning usage. These findings provide guidance about tailoring the use of nudges and informational tools to the decision environment