Health Effects on Children's Willingness to Compete

The formation of human capital is important for a society's welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children's human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze data from economic experiments with preschoolers and their mothers to investigate whether child health can explain developmental gaps in children's non-cognitive skills. Our measure for children's noncognitive skills is their willingness to compete with others. Our findings suggest that health problems arenegatively related to children's willingness to compete and that the effect of health on competitiveness differs with socio-economic background. Health has a strongly negative effect in our sub-sample with low socioeconomic background, whereas there is no effect in our sub-sample with high socio-economic background.willingness to compete, non-cognitive skills, human capital, health, household survey studies

Health Effects on Children's Willingness to Compete

The formation of human capital is important for a society's welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children's human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze data from economic experiments with preschoolers and their mothers to investigate whether child health can explain developmental gaps in children’s non-cognitive skills. Our measure for children's noncognitive skills is their willingness to compete with others. Our findings suggest that health problems are negatively related to children's willingness to compete and that the effect of health on competitiveness differs with socio-economic background. Health has a strongly negative effect in our sub-sample with low socioeconomic background, whereas there is no effect in our sub-sample with high socio-economic background.willingness to compete, non-cognitive skills, human capital, health, household survey studies

Self-Reinforcing Market Dominance

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms with an initial cost advantage are more likely to invest in cost reductions than firms with higher initial costs. Wefind that the initial competitive advantages are indeed self-reinforcing, but subjects in the role of firms overinvest relative to the Nash equilibrium. However, the pattern of overinvestment even strengthens the tendency towards self-reinforcing cost advantages relative to the theoretical prediction. Further, as predicted by the Nash equilibrium, aggregate investment is not affected by the initial efficiency distribution. Finally, investment spillovers reduce investment, and investment is higher than the joint-profit maximizing benchmark for the case without spillovers and lower for the case with spillovers.Cost-reducing Investment, Asymmetric Oligopoly, Increasing Dominance, Experimental Study

Health effects on children's willingness to compete

The formation of human capital is important for a society's welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children's human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze data from economic experiments with preschoolers and their mothers to investigate whether child health can explain developmental gaps in children's non-cognitive skills. Our measure for children's non-cognitive skills is their willingness to compete with others. Our findings suggest that health problems are negatively related to children's willingness to compete and that the effect of health on competitiveness differs with socio-economic background. Health has a strongly negative effect in our sub-sample with low socio-economic background, whereas there is no effect in our sub-sample with high socio-economic backgroun

Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril

Analyzes the causes of fiscal stress in nine states facing issues similar to California's: high foreclosure rates, increasing joblessness, loss of state revenues, large budget gaps, legal obstacles to balanced budgets, and poor money management practices

State of the States 2009

Highlights state election results and policy developments in 2008 and projects trends for 2009. Considers how the recession and the new administration's policies may affect states on energy, education, Medicaid, the social safety net, and other issues

Social Preferences and the Efficiency of Bilateral Exchange

Under what conditions do social preferences, such as altruism or a concern for fair outcomes, generate efficient trade? I analyze theoretically a simple bilateral exchange game: Each player sequentially takes an action that reduces his own material payoff but increases the other player’s. Each player’s preferences may depend on both his/her own material payoff and the other player’s. I identify necessary conditions and sufficient conditions on the players’ preferences for the outcome of their interaction to be Pareto efficient. The results have implications for interpreting the rotten kid theorem, gift exchange in the laboratory, and gift exchange in the field

Social preferences and agricultural innovation: An experimental case study from Ethiopia

We run an experiment in Ethiopia where farmers can use their own money to decrease the money of others (money burning). The data support the prediction from an inequality aversion model based on absolute income differences; but there is no support for an inequality aversion model based on comparison with mean payoff of others. Experimentally measured money burning on the village level is negatively correlated to real-life agricultural innovations. This result is robust even when data from another independent survey than the current research are used. This underscores the importance of social preferences in agricultural innovations in developing countries

On Fully-Secure Honest Majority MPC without n2n^2 Round Overhead

Fully secure multiparty computation (or guaranteed output delivery) among $n$ parties can be achieved with perfect security if the number of corruptions $t$ is less than $n/3$, or with statistical security with the help of a broadcast channel if $t<n/2$. In the case of $t<n/3$, it is known that it is possible to achieve linear communication complexity, but at a cost of having a round count of $\Omega(\mathsf{depth}(C) + n)$ in the worst case. The number of rounds can be reduced to $O(\mathsf{depth}(C))$ by either increasing communication, or assuming some correlated randomness (a setting also known as the preprocesing model). For $t<n/2$ it is also known that linear communication complexity is achievable, but at the cost of $\Omega(\mathsf{depth}(C) + n^2)$ rounds, due to the use of a technique called dispute control. However, in contrast to the $t<n/3$ setting, it is not known how to reduce this round count for $t<n/2$ to $O(\mathsf{depth}(C))$, neither allowing for larger communication, or by using correlated randomness. In this work we make progress in this direction by taking the second route above: we present a fully secure protocol for $t<n/2$ in the preprocessing model, that achieves linear communication complexity, and whose round complexity is only $O(\mathsf{depth}(C))$, without the additive $n^2$ term that appears from the use of dispute control. While on the $t<n/3$ such result requires circuits of width $\Omega(n)$, in our case circuits must be of width $\Omega(n^2)$, leaving it as an interesting future problem to reduce this gap. Our $O(\mathsf{depth}(C))$ round count is achieved by avoiding the use of dispute control entirely, relying on a different tool for guaranteeing output. In the $t<n/3$ setting when correlated randomness is available, this is done by using error correction to reconstruct secret-shared values, but in the $t<n/2$ case the equivalent is robust secret-sharing, which guarantees the reconstruction of a secret in spite of errors. However, we note that a direct use of such tool would lead to \emph{quadratic} communication, stemming from the fact that each party needs to authenticate their share towards each other party. At the crux of our techniques lies a novel method for reconstructing a batch of robustly secret-shared values while involving only a linear amount of communication per secret, which may also be of independent interest