CESifo Working Paper no. 3652

Abstract There is substantial consensus in the literature that positive uncertainty shocks predict a slowdown of economic activity. However, using U.S. data since 1950 we show that the macroeconomic response pattern to stock market volatility shocks has changed substantially over time. The negative response of GDP growth to such shocks has become smaller over time. Further, while during earlier parts of our sample both a slowdown in consumption and investment growth contribute to a reduction of GDP growth, during later parts, only the investment reaction contributes to the GDP slowdown. A variance decomposition for consumption growth shows that the contribution of stock market volatility becomes negligible as we go from earlier to later parts of the sample, while the corresponding decomposition for investment growth reveals an increase in the role of stock market volatility. JEL-Code: E200, E310, E400

Split or Steal? Cooperative Behavior When the Stakes Are Large

We examine cooperative behavior when large sums of money are at stake, using data from the television game show Golden Balls. At the end of each episode, contestants play a variant on the classic prisoner's dilemma for large and widely ranging stakes averaging over $20,000. Cooperation is surprisingly high for amounts that would normally be considered consequential but look tiny in their current context, what we call a “big peanuts” phenomenon. Utilizing the prior interaction among contestants, we find evidence that people have reciprocal preferences. Surprisingly, there is little support for conditional cooperation in our sample. That is, players do not seem to be more likely to cooperate if their opponent might be expected to cooperate. Further, we replicate earlier findings that males are less cooperative than females, but this gender effect reverses for older contestants because men become increasingly cooperative as their age increases