Essays in Experimental Economics

This dissertation comprises three essays in experimental economics. The first investigates the extent of strategic behaviour in jury voting models. Existing experimental evidence in jury voting models shows subjects largely act in accordance with theoretical predictions, implying that they have the insight to condition their votes upon their own pivotality. The experiment presented here tests the extent of these abilities, finding that a large portion of subjects behave consistently with such insight in the face of several variations on the basic jury voting game, but largely fail to do so in another, perhaps due to the difficulty of extracting informational implications from counterintuitive strategies. The second investigates the extent to which hypothetical thinking - the ability to condition upon and extract information from hypothetical events - persists across different strategic environments. Two games of considerable interest in the experimental literature - jury voting games and common value auctions - each contain the feature that a sophisticated player can simplify the problem by conditioning upon a hypothetical event - pivotality and winning the auction, respectively - and extract from it information about the state of the world that might affect their own behaviour. This common element suggests that the capability that leads to sophisticated play in one should lead to the same in the other. This paper tests this connection through a within-subject experiment in which subjects each play both games. Little evidence is found that play in one relates to play in the other in any meaningful way. Finally, the third, co-authored with Evan Friedman, investigates the nature of errors relative to Nash equilibrium play in a family of two-by-two games. Using data on one- shot games, we study the mapping from the distribution of player j’s actions to the distribution of player i’s beliefs (over player j’s actions) and the mapping from player i’s payoffs (given beliefs) to the distribution over player i’s actions. In our laboratory experiment, subjects play a set of fully mixed 2 × 2 games without feedback and state their beliefs about which actions they expect their opponents to play. We find that (i) belief distributions tend to shift in the same direction as changes in opponents’ actions, (ii) beliefs are systematically biased–“conservative” for one player role and “extreme” for the other, (iii) rates of best response vary systematically across games, and (iv) systematic failures to maximize expected payoffs (given beliefs) are well explained by risk aversion. To better understand the belief formation process, we collect subject-level measures of strategic sophistication based on dominance solvable games. We find that (v) the player role itself has a strong effect on sophistication, (vi) sophistication measured in dominance solvable games strongly predicts behavior in fully mixed games, and (vii) belief elicitation significantly effects actions in a direction consistent with increasing sophistication

The Lintheads\u27 Demise: A Study in Economic Dependency for the Piedmont Region of South Carolina

The decline of the Southern textile and apparel industries represent a unique and rich case study in rapid economic change. It is unique because of the speed and uniformity of collapse; rich, because of the geographic differences that exist even within the concentrated Piedmont textile cluster. Truly, globalization has hit this economic cluster with a brutal punch. And yet, not all cities and counties within the region have been equally harmed by the change. This report concentrates on examining the socioeconomic variations that have taken place in the thirteen foremost textile-producing counties in South Carolina since the collapse, as well as a sample dataset of forty-seven other Southern counties. The history of the industry is briefly traced in order to provide a background for the historical assumptions made in the analysis. A defined set of indicator factors are then compiled into an economic vigor score for each county, tracking both their socioeconomic change since the apogee of the textile industry and their current situation. This score is then regressed against their job dependency on the industry in 1960. The results indicate that historical hyper-dependency on textiles has no bearing on the health of Southern Piedmont counties, although a strong correlation does exist for the South Carolina data. Three factors are identified as having a positive effect on the changing industrial environment of counties, both urban and rural: distance from a regional metropolis, population, and a concerted effort at economic diversification. Relative economic performance of these counties has thus been lopsided, often depending on these three factors, providing both a warning and encouragement for economic development elsewhere

Number theoretic techniques applied to algorithms and architectures for digital signal processing

Many of the techniques for the computation of a two-dimensional convolution of a small fixed window with a picture are reviewed. It is demonstrated that Winograd's cyclic convolution and Fourier Transform Algorithms, together with Nussbaumer's two-dimensional cyclic convolution algorithms, have a common general form. Many of these algorithms use the theoretical minimum number of general multiplications. A novel implementation of these algorithms is proposed which is based upon one-bit systolic arrays. These systolic arrays are networks of identical cells with each cell sharing a common control and timing function. Each cell is only connected to its nearest neighbours. These are all attractive features for implementation using Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). The throughput rate is only limited by the time to perform a one-bit full addition. In order to assess the usefulness to these systolic arrays a 'cost function' is developed to compare them with more conventional techniques, such as the Cooley-Tukey radix-2 Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The cost function shows that these systolic arrays offer a good way of implementing the Discrete Fourier Transform for transforms up to about 30 points in length. The cost function is a general tool and allows comparisons to be made between different implementations of the same algorithm and between dissimilar algorithms. Finally a technique is developed for the derivation of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) algorithms from the Winograd Fourier Transform Algorithm. These DCT algorithms may be implemented by modified versions of the systolic arrays proposed earlier, but requiring half the number of cells

L(d,j,s) Minimal and Surjective Graph Labeling

Interference between radio signals can be modeled using distance labeling where the vertices on the graph represent the radio towers and the edges represent the interference between the towers. The distance between vertices affects the labeling of the vertices to account for the strength of interference. In this paper we consider three levels of interference between signals on a given graph, G. Define D(x,y) to represent the distance between vertex x and vertex y. An L(d,j,s) labeling of graph G is a function f from the vertex set of a graph to the set of positive integers, where |f(x)-f(y)| ³ d if D(x,y)=1, |f(x)-f(y)|³ j if D(x,y)=2, and |f(x)-f(y)|³ s if D(x,y)=3 for positive integers m and d where d\u3ej\u3es. In this paper we will examine surjective and minimal labeling of different families of graphs including paths, cycles, caterpillars, complete graphs, and complete bipartite graphs

Comparative analysis of the kinomes of three pathogenic trypanosomatids: Leishmania major, Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi

BACKGROUND: The trypanosomatids Leishmania major, Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi cause some of the most debilitating diseases of humankind: cutaneous leishmaniasis, African sleeping sickness, and Chagas disease. These protozoa possess complex life cycles that involve development in mammalian and insect hosts, and a tightly coordinated cell cycle ensures propagation of the highly polarized cells. However, the ways in which the parasites respond to their environment and coordinate intracellular processes are poorly understood. As a part of an effort to understand parasite signaling functions, we report the results of a genome-wide analysis of protein kinases (PKs) of these three trypanosomatids. RESULTS: Bioinformatic searches of the trypanosomatid genomes for eukaryotic PKs (ePKs) and atypical PKs (aPKs) revealed a total of 176 PKs in T. brucei, 190 in T. cruzi and 199 in L. major, most of which are orthologous across the three species. This is approximately 30% of the number in the human host and double that of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. The representation of various groups of ePKs differs significantly as compared to humans: trypanosomatids lack receptor-linked tyrosine and tyrosine kinase-like kinases, although they do possess dual-specificity kinases. A relative expansion of the CMGC, STE and NEK groups has occurred. A large number of unique ePKs show no strong affinity to any known group. The trypanosomatids possess few ePKs with predicted transmembrane domains, suggesting that receptor ePKs are rare. Accessory Pfam domains, which are frequently present in human ePKs, are uncommon in trypanosomatid ePKs. CONCLUSION: Trypanosomatids possess a large set of PKs, comprising approximately 2% of each genome, suggesting a key role for phosphorylation in parasite biology. Whilst it was possible to place most of the trypanosomatid ePKs into the seven established groups using bioinformatic analyses, it has not been possible to ascribe function based solely on sequence similarity. Hence the connection of stimuli to protein phosphorylation networks remains enigmatic. The presence of numerous PKs with significant sequence similarity to known drug targets, as well as a large number of unusual kinases that might represent novel targets, strongly argue for functional analysis of these molecules

Asymmetric participation of defenders and critics of vaccines to debates on French-speaking Twitter

For more than a decade, doubt about vaccines has become an increasingly important global issue. Polarization of opinions on this matter, especially through social media, has been repeatedly observed, but details about the balance of forces are left unclear. In this paper, we analyse the flow of information on vaccines on the French-speaking realm of Twitter between 2016 and 2017. Two major asymmetries appear. Rather than opposing themselves on each vaccine-related controversy, pro and anti-vaccine accounts focus on different vaccines and vaccine-related topics. Pro-vaccine accounts focus on hopes for new groundbreaking vaccines and on ongoing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses. Vaccine critics concentrate their posts on a limited number of controversial vaccines and adjuvants. Furthermore, vaccine-critical accounts display greater craft and energy, using a wider variety of sources, and a more coordinated set of hashtags. This double asymmetry can have serious consequences. Despite the presence of a large number of pro-vaccine accounts, some arguments raised by efficiently organized and very active vaccine-critical activists are left unanswered