BILATERAL TRADING AND THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE: AN EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS STUDY

This research investigates the impact of reporting different kinds of trade information to buyers and sellers in laboratory markets, for which exchange is made through bilateral bargaining. Results suggest that public information may improve the bargaining position of buyers relative to sellers when there is spot delivery. In some cases sellers earn less than in a no information baseline. There is evidence of a curse of knowledge for sellers in our information experiments when quantity traded for the entire market is known. The mandatory price reporting of all trades does not improve the income of sellers.International Relations/Trade,

AN EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS APPROACH TO ANALYZING PRICE DISCOVERY IN FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS

Laboratory experiments are used to generate data that facilitate investigation of pricing behavior in forward and spot markets. Results suggest a tendency for prices in a spot market to converge to levels higher than those in a forward market. The difference in these market environments is the supply schedule. Buyers in a spot market are aware that supply is inelastic and become relatively aggressive bidders. Forward markets have a relatively elastic supply schedule and buyers fare better. This may motivate firms to promote forward markets and/or vertically integrate in the procurement of inputs.Experimental economics, Forward market, Price discovery, Spot market, Marketing,

SUPPLY AND DEMAND RISKS IN LABORATORY FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

Laboratory experimental methods are used to investigate the impacts of supply and/or demand risks on prices, quantities traded, and earnings within forward and spot market institutions. Random demand and/or supply shifts can be as much as 25 percent of the expected equilibrium outcome. Nevertheless, results suggest that the spot or forward trading institution itself has a greater influence on market outcomes than the presence of risk within the trading institutions. Sellers tend to have relatively higher earnings in a spot market than buyers, regardless of the risk. Total surplus, however, generally is greater in a forward market.laboratory markets, forward market, spot market, supply and/or demand risks, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

SUPPLY AND DEMAND RISKS IN FORWARD AND SPOT MARKETS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURE

Laboratory methods are used to investigate the impacts of supply and/or demand risks on prices, quantities traded, and earnings within forward and spot market institutions. Results suggest that the spot or forward trading institution itself has a greater influence on market outcomes than supply/demand risks within the institution.Marketing,

The limits of soft safety regulation: Does successful work with safety culture require SMS implementation?

Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).The Swedish Transport Agency defined contributing to a high safety culture in transport companies as a key element in its regulatory strategy. This study examines how the safety culture strategy was received and enacted by regulators and companies within each transport sector, and factors influencing this. We discuss what a regulatory agency can accomplish through a safety culture strategy, and the extent to which it is bounded by the safety management maturity level in each sector. A key question is whether safety management requires a sequential, or evolutionary development, where companies must implement well-functioning safety management systems (SMS) before being organisationally mature enough to work successfully with safety culture. Our results seem to support this assertion, as we find that transport sectors with legal SMS requirements focus on safety culture, and work with safety culture elements (e.g. reporting/just culture, continuous improvement, involvement) to ensure that the SMS is a living system. Sectors without SMS requirements (i.e. road) do not focus on safety culture. Without SMS, it seems that safety culture work equals focusing on safety commitment among managers and employees. We identify additional factors influencing organisational maturity level and safety culture focus, limiting soft safety regulation, e.g. business structure, maintaining equal conditions for competition.The limits of soft safety regulation: Does successful work with safety culture require SMS implementation?publishedVersio

Phagocytosis in the brain: homeostasis and disease

Microglia are resident macrophages of the central nervous system and significantly contribute to overall brain function by participating in phagocytosis during development, homeostasis, and diseased states. Phagocytosis is a highly complex process that is specialized for the uptake and removal of opsonized and non-opsonized targets, such as pathogens, apoptotic cells, and cellular debris. While the role of phagocytosis in mediating classical innate and adaptive immune responses has been known for decades, it is now appreciated that phagocytosis is also critical throughout early neural development, homeostasis, and initiating repair mechanisms. As such, modulating phagocytic processes has provided unexplored avenues with the intent of developing novel therapeutics that promote repair and regeneration in the CNS. Here, we review the functional consequences that phagocytosis plays in both the healthy and diseased CNS, and summarize how phagocytosis contributes to overall pathophysiological mechanisms involved in brain injury and repair

Risky Investment Decisions: How Are Individuals Influenced by Their Groups?

We investigate the effect of group versus individual decision-making in the context of risky investment decisions in which all subjects are fully informed of the probabilities and payoffs. Although there is full information, the lottery choices pose cognitive challenges so that people may not be sure of their expected utility-maximizing choice. Making such decisions in a group context provides real-time information in which group members can observe others’ choices and revise their own decisions. Our experimental results show that simply observing what others in the group do has a significant impact on behavior. Coupling real-time information with group decisions based on the median value, i.e., majority rule, makes the median investment choice focal, leading people with low values to increase investments and those with high values decrease investments. Group decisions based on the minimum investment amount produce more asymmetric effects

COVID-19-related school closures and patterns of hospital admissions with stress-related presentations in secondary school-aged adolescents: weekly time series

This study examines health service indicators of stress-related presentations (relating to pain, mental illness, psychosomatic symptoms and self-harm) in adolescents of secondary school age, using Hospital Episode Statistics data for England. We examined weekly time series data for three academic years spanning the time before (2018-2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019-2020 and 2020-2021), including the first lockdown when schools were closed to the majority of pupils. For all secondary school children, weekly stress presentations dropped following school closures. However, patterns of elevated stress during school terms re-established after reopening, with girls aged 11-15 showing an overall increase compared with pre-pandemic rates

Education, income, and the distribution of happiness

We study happiness inequality in the United States using data from the 2005 to 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We aggregate individual level data to the state level and study how the average life satisfaction of various income, education, and life satisfaction groups changes with the average life satisfaction of the state. We find that the life satisfaction of the least happy does not increase in equal proportion with the average happiness of society, suggesting that increasing happiness levels are likely to lead to greater happiness inequality. However, the life satisfaction of the poorest and least educated does increase in equal proportions with average life satisfaction. Taken together, these results indicate that directed policies aimed at increasing the income of the poor or education levels of the least educated could result in less inequality in the distribution of welfare