The Effects of Market Practices in Oligopolistic Markets: An Experimental Examination of the Ethyl Case

This study reports on the performance of experimental markets characterized by industrial structure and practices similar to those at issue in the Ethyl case. The central question is whether price competition is affected by the practices of advanced notification of price changes and ''most-favored nation" contracts or is determined by industrial organization and concentration alone

Aging and decision making: a comparison between neurologically healthy elderly and young individuals

We report the results of experiments on economic decisions with two populations, one of healthy elderly individuals (average age 82) and one of younger students (average age 20). We examine confidence, decisions under uncertainty, differences between willingness to pay and willingness to accept and the theory of mind (strategic thinking). Our findings indicate that the older adults’ decision behavior is similar to that of young adults, contrary to the notion that economic decision making is impaired with age. Moreover, some of the demonstrated decision behaviors suggest that the elderly individuals are less biased than the younger individuals

Economic Theory of Choice and the Preference Reversal Phenomenon

A body of data and theory has been developing within psychology which should be of interest to economists. Taken at face value the data are simply inconsistent with preference theory and have broad implications about research priorities within economics. The inconsistency is deeper than the mere lack of transitivity or even stochastic transitivity. It suggests that no optimization principles of any sort lie behind even the simplest of human choices and that the uniformities in human choice behavior which lie behind market behavior may result from principles which are of a completely different sort from those generally accepted. This paper reports the results of a series of experiments designed to discredit the psychologists' works as applied to economics

Sequencing Strategies in Large, Competitive, Ascending Price Automobile Auctions: An experimental examination

This paper reports on a large scale field experiment testing strategies available to a seller participating in simultaneous competitive sequential, ascending price automobile auctions. Every other week, the seller offered approximately 120 vehicles for sale in an auction environment in which several competitive sellers offered on the order of 3,000 vehicles. The experiment tested various sequences in which the seller could offer the vehicles, such as high values first or low values first. Surprisingly, and contrary to intuition drawn from the theory of single item and single seller auctions, the worst performing sequence from those tested is for the seller to order vehicles from highest to lowest values. The best sequence is to group the vehicles by type and offer the low valued vehicles first and then move to offer the higher valued vehicles. Our conjecture is that this sequence reduces the competition with other sellers for the attention of specialized buyers

Alternative Methods of Allocating Airport Slots: Performance and Evaluation

This study analyzes alternative methods of allocating scarce airport capacity (slots) among competing airlines. The findings are as listed below. 1. The method of allocating slots at airports can substantially influence the competitive structure and the efficiency of the air transportation industry. 2. The current method of allocating slots at the four high-density airports (the slot committee process) is inadequate in almost all dimensions of economic efficiency. • The allocations are very sensitive to the regulatory political climate. The current climate is fostering the following tendencies. • The process places downward pressure on the carriers with the largest number of slots at a given airport. • The process prevents the growth of large and medium-sized firms even if the economics suggest growth. • Entry is allowed independent of the efficiency of the entering firms and possibly at the expense of more efficient firms. • The ability of committees to coordinate operations at the systems level (the multiairport level) is not good. • The committee allocations are generally unresponsive to changing economic conditions. • The committees provide a forum in which possible anticompetitive agreements can be forged and enforced. • The committees provide no vehicle for the economic expansion of airport capacity. 3. The study surveys several alternative methods of allocating slots. From these a process is recommended with the following features. • A primary market for slots organized as a sealed-bid one-price auction operating at regular, timely intervals, • a computerized aftermarket with "block transaction" capabilities, • special provisions for small communities, • special provisions for changes in the definition of a "slot," • provisions requiring that the funds be used for expanding airport capacity, • the possibility of "negative bids" for off-peak periods at airports for which a "zero-sum" feature is appropriate, • sanctions to prevent the "non use" and/or monopolization of slots, • a gradual introduction. While this process has never been used to allocate airport slots, various aspects of it have been used successfully to allocate critical resources in other industries. It meets the goals of the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act and all experiences with the process within controlled environments suggest that the process will operate at economic efficiency levels near 100 percent. 5. The above process is recommended on the assumption that some problems can be solved which are not addressed in this study. The problem of how slots are to be defined is left open even though some guidelines are suggested. The funds from the sale of slots should be used to provide additional airport capacity. The study makes no recommendations about how this will be guaranteed. While the study recommends a vehicle for the establishment and maintenance of service to major hubs for small communities, no attempt was made to define such areas. 6. Among the options considered, aside from the one recommended, the one with the second most favorable features is a slot lottery with an aftermarket. This process itself involves several problems which are referenced in the text

The Allocation of Landing Rights by Unanimity Among Competitors

During the late 1960's, air congestion often involving long delays or "stacks" was common at major airports. The right to land and take off was allocated on a first-come, first-served basis with little coordination among scheduled carriers. Since 1968, the four major airports in the United States, La Guardia, Washington National, John F. Kennedy International, and O'Hare International, have been operating under a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) high-density ruling which limits the number of slots (takeoffs and landings per hour) at each of these airports

Bose-Einstein Condensation in the Relativistic Ideal Bose Gas

The Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) critical temperature in a relativistic ideal Bose gas of identical bosons, with and without the antibosons expected to be pair-produced abundantly at sufficiently hot temperatures, is exactly calculated for all boson number-densities, all boson point rest masses, and all temperatures. The Helmholtz free energy at the critical BEC temperature is found to be lower, thus implying that the omission of antibosons always leads to the computation of a metastable state.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Environmental and genetic influences on mating strategies along a replicated food availability gradient in guppies (\u3cem\u3ePoecilia reticulata\u3c/em\u3e)

Food availability is expected to influence the relative cost of different mating tactics, but little attention has been paid to this potential source of adaptive geographic variation in behavior. Associations between the frequency of different mating tactics and resource availability could arise because tactic use responds directly to food intake (phenotypic plasticity), because populations exposed to different average levels of food availability have diverged genetically in tactic use, or both. Different populations of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in Trinidad experience different average levels of food availability. We combined field observations with laboratory “common garden” and diet experiments to examine how this environmental gradient has influenced the evolution of male mating tactics. Three independent components of variation in male behavior were found in the field: courtship versus foraging, dominance interactions, and interference competition versus searching for mates. Compared with low-food-availability sites, males at high-food-availability sites devoted more effort to interference competition. This difference disappeared in the common garden experiment, which suggests that it was caused by phenotypic plasticity and not genetic divergence. In the diet experiment, interference competition was more frequent and intense among males raised on the greater of two food levels, but this was only true for fish descended from sites with low food availability. Thus, the association between interference competition and food availability in the field can be attributed to a genetically variable norm of reaction. Genetically variable norms of reaction with respect to food intake were found for the other two behavioral components as well and are discussed in relation to the patterns observed in the field. Our results indicate that food availability gradients are an important, albeit complex, source of geographic variation in male mating strategies

Sex–specific effects of carotenoid intake on the immunological response to allografts in guppies (\u3cem\u3ePoecilia reticulata\u3c/em\u3e)

Rarely are the evolutionary origins of mate preferences known, but, recently, the preference of female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) for males with carotenoid‐based sexual coloration has been linked to a sensory bias that may have originally evolved for detecting carotenoid‐rich fruits. If carotenoids enhance the immune systems of these fishes, as has been suggested for other species, this could explain the origin of the attraction to orange fruits as well as the maintenance of the female preference for orange males. We used the classic immunological technique of tissue grafting to assay a component of the immune response of guppies raised on two different dietary levels of carotenoids. Individual scales were transplanted between pairs of unrelated fishes, creating reciprocal allografts. Transplanted scales were scored on a six‐point rejection scale every day for 10 days. Five days later, the same pairs of fishes received a second set of allografts and were scored again. Compared with low‐carotenoid‐diet males, high‐carotenoid‐diet males mounted a significantly stronger rejection response to the second allograft but not to the first allograft. High‐carotenoid‐diet females, however, showed no improvement in graft rejection compared with low‐carotenoid‐diet females. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence for sex‐specific effects of carotenoid consumption on the immune system of a species with carotenoid‐based sexual coloration. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the mate preference for carotenoid coloration is maintained by the benefits to females of choosing healthy mates, but they cast doubt on the idea that the benefits of carotenoid consumption, per se, could account for the origin of the preference. The sex‐specificity of carotenoid effects on allograft rejection in guppies provides indirect support for the general hypothesis that males pay an immunological cost for sexual ornamentation