Taking the Lab to the Field: Experimental Tests of Alternative Mechanisms to Procure Multiple Contracts

The first part of the paper reports the results from a sequence of laboratory experiments comparing the bidding behavior for multiple contracts in three different sealed bid auction mechanisms; first-price simultaneous, first-price sequential and first-price combinatorial bidding. The design of the experiment is based on experiences from a public procurement auction of road markings in Sweden. Bidders are asymmetric in their cost functions; some exhibit decreasing average costs of winning more than one contract, whereas other bidders have increasing average cost functions. The combinatorial bidding mechanism is demonstrated to be most efficient. The second part of the paper describes how the lab experiment was followed up by a field test of a combinatorial procurement auction of road markings.Multiple units, non-constant costs, asymmetric redemption values, alternative procurement mechanisms

Modelling the Foreign Sector in a Macroeconometric Model of Sweden

The purpose of this paper is to estimate a rudimentary model of the “rest of the world", which may serve as the foreign sector in a model of the Swedish economy. The “rest of the world" is here represented by the US and the euro zone which together cover some two thirds of the Swedish foreign trade. The underlying theoretical model is the so-called Svensson model as of Svensson (1997). This model has the advantage that it is small and simple, but still allows for both supply and demand shocks with realistic responses. The Svensson model is estimated (OLS) for the US and the euro zone separately using quarterly data. Furthermore, following Smeets and Peersman (1999), alternative models with the outputgap treated as an unobserved component are estimated as well. Impulse response analyses indicate that all individual models react reasonably well to both supply and demand shocks. The models for the US and the euro zone are aggregated temporally to annual data (since the model of the Swedish economy uses annual data) and are subsequently aggregated into one model of the foreign sector.

Experimental studies of components in the treatment for social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (social phobia) is a debilitating and common anxiety disorder, with a lifetime prevalence ranging from 6 % to 12 %. The condition has its onset in childhood and early adolescence, affects females more often than males, and if untreated is associated with high risk of developing comorbid anxiety and mood disorders, as well as substance abuse. The increasingly growing body of research during the last decades has helped to understand the mechanisms of social anxiety disorder, and has made possible the development of efficacious cognitive behavioural treatment (CBT) methods for the disorder. However, all clients do not improve as much as desired, and there is room for improvement. To explore the relative effectiveness of separate treatment interventions in isolation, or in interaction, may be critical in attempting to enhance the efficacy of current treatment methods. The present thesis is based on three studies investigating the effects of relatively novel contributions to the treatment repertoire for social anxiety disorder: audio-feedback, imagery rescripting, and experiential self-focused attention. Study I concerned an analogue experimental study showing that cognitive preparation (CP) enhanced the beneficial effects of audio feedback (A-F) in modifying participants` negative self-evaluation. The effects generalised to a second social task and the changes were associated with concomitant reductions on social anxiety measured by explicit self-reports and by an implicit method. Study II was designed to experimentally investigate the effects of imagery rescripting (IR) of early adverse memories in social anxiety disorder. Results indicated that IR reduced the distress associated with memory and recurrent catastrophe images in clients with social anxiety disorder. Also, the intervention led to significant improvements on fear of negative evaluation and fear of social interaction. The content of client’s negative self-judgements was radically improved as reflected in increased positivity, empowerment and attraction. Furthermore, in contrast to previous research, results were obtained without the use of a preceding cognitive restructuring. Study III was an attempt to experimentally explore the effects of two distinct attentional modes on post-event processing: the analytical and the experiential self-focus modes. Using a cross-over design with a sample of socially phobic clients it was demonstrated that the two self-focus modes affected cognitions differently: the experiential mode led to a decreased proportion of negative thoughts and the analytical mode to a reduction on neutral thoughts. Also, negative self-evaluation following an initial performance situation strongly predicted the degree of subsequent negative thinking but only if participants had been subject to an analytical self-focus induction. Supporting previous findings, results showed that an experiential self-focus may have beneficial effects on rumination in social anxiety disorder. Of special interest in this thesis is the emphasis on imagery in the cognitive behavioural treatment for social anxiety disorder. It is suggested that imagery, as opposed to verbal interventions, plays a key role in the access of emotion and promotion of emotional change. The treatment techniques presented here, do all to some extent involve imagery as important elements of the treatment procedures. Clearly, audio feedback with cognitive preparation, and in particular imagery rescripting, relies heavily on imagery to access fear structures and to provide corrective information for the purpose of emotional processing. Similarly, in the experiential ‘mindful’ self-focused attention, images provide an important link to the immediate experience in the moment-to-moment of the social situation. Thus, it is concluded that in the attempts to elaborate current treatment methods, the role of imagery should be given special consideration

Urban Ecosystem Services and Tourism

Urban tourism depends on the place specific qualities of destinations. In many cities, climate change poses a threat to these qualities, through increasing risk of excessive heat, draught and flooding. Cities need to adapt to reduce these risks. One way of doing this is to improve their green infrastructure. Urban forests, parks, rivers and wetlands may help reduce the effects of climate change in cities. At the same time, green infrastructure provide a variety of ecosystem services to the community. In particular, cultural ecosystem services such as recreation, andesthetical values take place in urban green infrastructure; they provide value in the form of improved experiences. These mainly benefit the locals but they may also be important for tourism. Such relations between ecosystem services and tourism have in earlier literature been recognized in rural contexts but very seldom in urban. This paper reports preliminary findings from qualitative case studies in the South of Sweden and Berlin, Germany. They focus on how urban planning projects (primarily aimed at mitigating GHG emissions and adapting to climatechange) can be extended to develop places where experience values for both residents and visitors are created alongside other kinds of ecosystem services. We suggest that the need for climate change adaptation in a city may be used as a means to improve its place specific qualities as a tourist destination. By developing green infrastructure in innovative and environmentally friendly ways, the quality of ecosystem services improves, including those relevant for both visitors and residents. Protecting and building green infrastructure, therebyenhancing a city´s visible qualities and its reputation as a sustainable destination, may also be valuable in marketing the city

Pay-as-you-speed: Two Field Experiments on Controlling Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Traffic Insurance

Around one million people are killed world wide every year in road-traffic accidents. The risks and consequences of accidents increase progressively with speed, which ultimately is determined by the individual driver. The behaviour of the motorist thus affects both her own and other peoples safety. Internalisation of external costs of road transport has hitherto been focused on distance-based taxes or insurance premiums. While these means, as they are designed today, may affect driven distance, they have no influence on driving behaviour. This paper argues that by linking on-board positioning systems to insurance premiums it is possible to reward careful driving and get drivers to self select into different risk categories depending on their compliance to speed limits. We report two economic field experiments that have tested ways to induce car-owners to have technical platforms installed in their vehicle in order to affect the extent of speeding. It is demonstrated that a bonus to remunerate those that have the device installed, tantamount to a lower insurance premium, increases drivers?propensity to accept the technical devices. In a second experiment the size of the bonus is made dependent on the actual frequency of speeding. We find that this is a second way to discipline users to drive at legal speeds.Traffic safety, impure public goods, moral hazard, adverse selection, self selection

Polymonad programming in Haskell

Polymonads were recently introduced by Hicks et al. as a unified approach to programming with different notions of monads. Their work was mainly focussed on foundational aspects of the approach. In this article, we show how to incorporate the notion of polymonads into Haskell, which is the first time this has been done in a full-scale language. In particular, we show how polymonads can be represented in Haskell, give a justification of the representation through proofs in Agda, and provide a plugin for the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) that enables their use in practice. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our system by means of examples concerned with session types and the parameterized effect monad. This work provides a common representation of a number of existing approaches to generalized monads in Haskell