Matching Contributions and the Voluntary Provision of a Pure Public Good: Experimental Evidence

Laboratory experiments are used to study the voluntary provision of a pure public good in the presence of an anonymous external donor. The external funds are used in two different settings, lump-sum matching and one-to-one matching, to examine how allocations to the public good are affected. The experimental results reveal that allocations to the public good under lumpsum matching are significantly higher, and have significantly lower within-group dispersion, relative to one-to-one matching and a baseline setting without external matching funds.public goods, free riding, laboratory experiments

Comparing Small-Group and Individual Behavior in Lottery-Choice Experiments

Lottery-choice experiments are conducted to compare risk preferences revealed by three-person groups versus isolated individuals. A lottery-choice experiment consists of a menu of paired lottery choices structured so that the crossover point from a low-risk to a high-risk lottery can be used to infer the degree of risk aversion. A between-subjects experiment of group versus individual lottery-choice decisions reveal that there is not a significant difference in the average crossover point, but lottery choices are affected by a significant interaction between subject composition (individual or group) and lottery winning percentage. Also, a three-phased individual-group-individual sequenced experiment reveals that the count of safe lotteries chosen by groups is, on average, significantly greater than the mean of the individual members. Finally, making a phase-two group decision has a significant impact on subsequent phase-three individual decisions relative to the initial phase-one (individual) decisions.lab experiments, risk preferences, group decisions

Comparing Small-Group and Individual Behavior in Lottery-Choice Experiments

Lottery-choice experiments are conducted to compare risk preferences revealed by three-person groups versus isolated individuals. A lottery-choice experiment consists of a menu of paired lottery choices structured so that the crossover point from a low-risk to a high-risk lottery can be used to infer the degree of risk aversion. A between-subjects experiment of group versus individual lottery-choice decisions reveal that there is not a significant difference in the average crossover point, but lottery choices are affected by a significant interaction between subject composition (individual or group) and lottery winning percentage. Also, a three-phased individual-group-individual sequenced experiment reveals that the count of safe lotteries chosen by groups is, on average, significantly greater than the mean of the individual members. Finally, making a phase-two group decision has a significant impact on subsequent phase-three individual decisions relative to the initial phase-one (individual) decisions.lab experiments, risk preferences, group decisions

Matching Contributions and the Voluntary Provision of a Pure Public Good: Experimental Evidence

An updated version of this paper is available at http://www.iub.edu/~caepr/RePEc/PDF/CAEPR2006-007_updated.pdfLaboratory experiments are used to study the voluntary provision of a pure public good in the presence of an anonymous external donor. The external funds are used in two different settings, lump-sum matching and one-to-one matching, to examine how allocations to the public good are affected. The experimental results reveal that allocations to the public good under lumpsum matching are significantly higher, and have significantly lower within-group dispersion, relative to one-to-one matching and a baseline setting without external matching funds

Universal analytic properties of noise. Introducing the J-Matrix formalism

We propose a new method in the spectral analysis of noisy time-series data for damped oscillators. From the Jacobi three terms recursive relation for the denominators of the Pad\'e Approximations built on the well-known Z-transform of an infinite time-series, we build an Hilbert space operator, a J-Operator, where each bound state (inside the unit circle in the complex plane) is simply associated to one damped oscillator while the continuous spectrum of the J-Operator, which lies on the unit circle itself, is shown to represent the noise. Signal and noise are thus clearly separated in the complex plane. For a finite time series of length 2N, the J-operator is replaced by a finite order J-Matrix J_N, having N eigenvalues which are time reversal covariant. Different classes of input noise, such as blank (white and uniform), Gaussian and pink, are discussed in detail, the J-Matrix formalism allowing us to efficiently calculate hundreds of poles of the Z-transform. Evidence of a universal behaviour in the final statistical distribution of the associated poles and zeros of the Z-transform is shown. In particular the poles and zeros tend, when the length of the time series goes to infinity, to a uniform angular distribution on the unit circle. Therefore at finite order, the roots of unity in the complex plane appear to be noise attractors. We show that the Z-transform presents the exceptional feature of allowing lossless undersampling and how to make use of this property. A few basic examples are given to suggest the power of the proposed method.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Curves on Heisenberg invariant quartic surfaces in projective 3-space

This paper is about the family of smooth quartic surfaces $X \subset \mathbb{P}^3$ that are invariant under the Heisenberg group $H_{2,2}$. For a very general such surface $X$, we show that the Picard number of $X$ is 16 and determine its Picard group. It turns out that the general Heisenberg invariant quartic contains 320 smooth conics and that in the very general case, this collection of conics generates the Picard group.Comment: Updated references, corrected typo

Macromarketing Pedagogy:Empowering Students to Achieve a Sustainable World

The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are challenging the world to work towards a more sustainable future. Its 17 goals are ambitious, requiring concerted and system-based efforts driven by critical and socially aware thinking. However, marketing education is largely falling short of teaching students to think that way. Given macromarketing's unique perspective on the interactions among markets, marketing, and society, macromarketers are poised to contribute to marketing pedagogy and to commit students to realizing the SDGs. This article first looks back at the previous 40 years of macromarketing pedagogy, before offering contemporary approaches to teaching macromarketing through four illustrative case studies found in an online repository called Pedagogy Place. It then looks forward, setting an aspiring vision for macro-oriented classrooms in the coming years

Direct CP violation in charm and flavor mixing beyond the SM

We analyze possible interpretations of the recent LHCb evidence for CP violation in D meson decays in terms of physics beyond the Standard Model. On general grounds, models in which the primary source of flavor violation is linked to the breaking of chiral symmetry (left-right flavor mixing) are natural candidates to explain this effect, via enhanced chromomagnetic operators. In the case of supersymmetric models, we identify two motivated scenarios: disoriented A-terms and split families. These structures predict other non-standard signals, such as nuclear EDMs close to their present bounds and, possibly, tiny but visible deviations in K and B physics, or even sizable flavor-violating processes involving the top quark or the stops. Some of these connections, especially the one with nuclear EDMs, hold beyond supersymmetry, as illustrated with the help of prototype non-supersymmetric models.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figure

Movements and Population Structure of Humpback Whales in the North Pacific

Despite the extensive use of photographic identification methods to investigate humpback whales in the North Pacific, few quantitative analyses have been conducted. We report on a comprehensive analysis of interchange in the North Pacific among three wintering regions (Mexico, Hawaii, and Japan) each with two to three subareas, and feeding areas that extended from southern California to the Aleutian Islands. Of the 6,413 identification photographs of humpback whales obtained by 16 independent research groups between 1990 and 1993 and examined for this study, 3,650 photographs were determined to be of suitable quality. A total of 1,241 matches was found by two independent matching teams, identifying 2,712 unique whales in the sample (seen one to five times). Site fidelity was greatest at feeding areas where there was a high rate of resightings in the same area in different years and a low rate of interchange among different areas. Migrations between winter regions and feeding areas did not follow a simple pattern, although highest match rates were found for whales that moved between Hawaii and southeastern Alaska, and between mainland and Baja Mexico and California. Interchange among subareas of the three primary wintering regions was extensive for Hawaii, variable (depending on subareas) for Mexico, and low for Japan and reflected the relative distances among subareas. Interchange among these primary wintering regions was rare. This study provides the first quantitative assessment of the migratory structure of humpback whales in the entire North Pacific basin

Charged-Lepton Flavour Physics

This writeup of a talk at the 2011 Lepton-Photon symposium in Mumbai, India, summarises recent results in the charged-lepton flavour sector. I review searches for charged-lepton flavour violation, lepton electric dipole moments and flavour-conserving CP violation. I also discuss recent progress in tau-lepton physics and in the Standard Model prediction of the muon anomalous magnetic moment.Comment: Presented at Lepton-Photon 2011, Mumbai, India; 23 pages, 14 figure