Mind the gap! A note on the income and the substitution effects

In this note, I study how the magnitude of the substitution and the income effects affects the change in the demand for a good following an own-price variation in a single consumer choice model with multiple goods.Own-Price Effect, Slutsky Equation, Elasticity of Substitution

POOLING AND REDISTRIBUTION WITH MORAL HAZARD

We study a model in which risk-averse consumers obtain mutual insurance by participating voluntarily in pools. More precisely, consumers commit to contributing a fraction of their future uncertain endowment to a common pool. In exchange, they gain the right to receive a share of the total return of the pool, in proportion to their promises. Consumers influence the likelihood of the good state of nature by undertaking a hidden action. We therefore provide a model of mutual insurance with moral hazard. We first analyze the equilibrium properties of the model and then illustrate how an aggregate pool of heterogenous consumers Pareto dominates the two segregated pools.moral hazard, pool of promises, heterogeneous consumers

Myopic, Naive, Resolute or Sophisticated? A study of how people take dynamic decisions

Potentially dynamically-inconsistent individuals create particular problems for economics, as their behaviour depends upon whether and how they attempt to resolve their potential inconsistency. This paper reports on the results of a new experiment designed to help us distinguish between the different types that may exist. We classify people into four types: myopic, naive, resolute and sophisticated. We implement a new and simple experimental design in which subjects are asked to take two sequential decisions (interspersed by a random move by Nature) concerning the allocation of a given sum of money. The resulting data enables us to classify the subjects. We find that the majority are resolute, a significant minority are sophisticated and rather few are naive or myopic.dynamic inconsistency, sequential choice, myopic, naive, resolute, sophisticated

A note on optimal commodity taxation with moral hazard and separable preferences

In this paper we show that differential commodity taxation is superfluous in an economy with moral hazard and separable preferences.Moral Hazard, Separable Preferences, Optimal Commodity Taxation

Inefficiency of competitive equilibrium with hidden action and financial markets

In this paper, we study a pure exchange economy with idiosyncratic uncertainty, hidden action and multiple consumption goods. We consider two different market structures : contingent markets on the one hand, and financial and spot markets on the other hand. We propose a competitive equilibrium concept for each market structure. We show that the equilibrium with contingent markets is efficient in an appropriate sense, while the equilibrium with financial and spot markets is inefficient, provided that assumptions on preferences more general than those usually considered in the literature hold.Hidden action, enforcement, constrained efficiency

Can asymmetric information undermine the markets for ethical goods? A model of signaling with advertising

In this paper, we investigate the possibility that a non-ethical firm may disguise itself as ethical in order to take advantage of the consumers’ higher willingness to pay for ethical goods. Using a signaling model ` a la Spence, we show that this outcome is pos- sible due to asymmetric information on the type of goods. We discuss the characteris- tics of this equilibrium outcome and we argue that it may jeopardize the functioning of the market for ethical goods. In this analytical framework, we consider the role of certification as a way to prevent such undesired outcome

Myopic, Naive, Resolute or Sophisticated? A study of how people take dynamic decisions

Potentially dynamically-inconsistent individuals create particular problems for economics, as their behaviour depends upon whether and how they attempt to resolve their potential inconsistency. This paper reports on the results of a new experiment designed to help us distinguish between the different types that may exist. We classify people into four types: myopic, naive, resolute and sophisticated. We implement a new and simple experimental design in which subjects are asked to take two sequential decisions (interspersed by a random move by Nature) concerning the allocation of a given sum of money. The resulting data enables us to classify the subjects. We find that the majority are resolute, a significant minority are sophisticated and rather few are naive or myopic.Potentially dynamically-inconsistent individuals create particular problems for economics, as their behaviour depends upon whether and how they attempt to resolve their potential inconsistency. This paper reports on the results of a new experiment designed to help us distinguish between the different types that may exist. We classify people into four types: myopic, naive, resolute and sophisticated. We implement a new and simple experimental design in which subjects are asked to take two sequential decisions (interspersed by a random move by Nature) concerning the allocation of a given sum of money. The resulting data enables us to classify the subjects. We find that the majority are resolute, a significant minority are sophisticated and rather few are naive or myopic.Non-Refereed Working Papers / of national relevance onl

Gender differences in yielding to social influence: An impunity experiment

In impunity games proposers, like allocators in dictator games, can take what they want; however, responders can refuse offers deemed unsatisfactory at own cost. We modify the impunity game via allowing offers to condition of another participant\u2019s counterfactual generosity intention. For a given pair of proposer candidates each states, via the strategy vector method, an intended and two adjusted offers: one (possibly) upward adjusted in case the intended offer of the other candidate is higher and one (possibly) downward adjusted in case it is lower. Additionally, each candidate determines an acceptance threshold for the responder role. Only one candidate in each pair is randomly selected and endowed as the actual proposer whose offer is either possibly upward or downward adjusted depending on the counterfactual offer of the other proposer candidate. The endowed proposer of one pair is matched with the non-endowed candidate of another pair in the responder role. The data confirm that counterfactual intentions of others often affect own generosity via substantial and significant average adjustments to the weakest social influence. Overall, offers seem correlated with acceptance thresholds. Furthermore, we find significant gender differences: female participants state lower intended and adjusted offers as well as acceptance thresholds and therefore appear to be less sensitive to social influence

Gender Differences in Yielding to Social Influence : An Impunity Experiment

In impunity games proposers, like allocators in dictator games, can take what they want; however, responders can refuse offers deemed unsatisfactory at own cost. We modify the impunity game via allowing offers to condition of another participant’s counterfactual generosity intention. For a given pair of proposer candidates each states, via the strategy vector method, an intended and two adjusted offers: one (possibly) upward adjusted in case the intended offer of the other candidate is higher and one (possibly) downward adjusted in case it is lower. Additionally, each candidate determines an acceptance threshold for the responder role. Only one candidate in each pair is randomly selected and endowed as the actual proposer whose offer is either possibly upward or downward adjusted depending on the counterfactual offer of the other proposer candidate. The endowed proposer of one pair is matched with the non-endowed candidate of another pair in the responder role. The data confirm that counterfactual intentions of others often affect own generosity via substantial and significant average adjustments to the weakest social influence. Overall, offers seem correlated with acceptance thresholds. Furthermore, we find significant gender differences: female participants state lower intended and adjusted offers as well as acceptance thresholds and therefore appear to be less sensitive to social influence

Experience and Gender Effects in an Acquiring-a Company Experiment Allowing for Value Messages

This paper focuses on a bargaining experiment in which the privately informed seller of a company sends a value message to the uninformed potential buyer who then proposes a price for acquiring the company. Participants are constantly in the role of either seller or buyer and interact over 30 rounds with randomly changing partners in the other role. We test how overstating the value of the company, underpricing the received value message and acceptance of price offers are affected by experience and gender (constellation). Like in our companion paper on single play (Di Cagno et al. 2015) we control via treatments for awareness of gender (constellation). One main hypothesis is that gender (constellation) matters but that the effects become weaker with more experience and that the main experience effects apply across gender (constellations)