Can tournaments induce rational play in the centipede game? Exploring dominance vs. strategic uncertainty

We compare behavior in a one-shot Centipede game across several payoff structures including nonlinear payoff tournaments. Assuming Nash to be optimal, results suggest nonlinear tournament payoffs based on overall relative rewards are not sufficient to increase Nash results in the one-shot Centipede style setting. Evidence suggests that reducing strategic uncertainty is more important than increasing dominance in promoting Nash play.Centipede game, payoff tournaments, experiment, strategic uncertainty, dominance

Integration-Valuation Nexus in Invasive Species Policy

This paper reviews recent work examining two topics of economic research vital for invasive species policy-integration and valuation. Integration requires bioeconomic models that blend invasive biology with economic circumstances and the feedback loops between the two systems. Valuation requires nonmarket valuation associated with human and environmental damages posed by invasive species. We argue for a second-level of integration in invasive species economics-valuation based on integration models. Policy prescriptions based on integration models need valuation work; valuation surveys need integration models-the two are complements. Valuation could be enhanced with integration in mind; integration could be made better with valuation in mind. An example from blending the two research areas is presented and its merits demonstrated.invasive species, integrated economic-ecological modeling, nonmarket valuation, Environmental Economics and Policy,

CEEPES: An Evolving System for Agro-environmental Policy

Nonpoint source pollution from agricultural production is now front-and-center in the policy debate over potential sources of environmental degradation (see, for example, Shortie and Dunn 1986; Russell and Shogren 1993). Although partially related to scientific advances in measurement and detection, perceived risks due to chemical loading have intensified the pressure to more closely coordinate agricultural and environmental policy (Cohen, Eiden, and Lorber 1986; Johnson, Wolcott, and Aradhyula 1990). But strategies to coordinate these policies have been impeded by a serious information gap on the explicit environmental and economic trade-offs of various public and private actions. Although most decision makers would agree that securing this information is critical for more effective agro-environmental policy, the question remains as to the best course of action

CEEPES: An Overview of the Comprehensive Economic Environmental Policy Evaluation System

The Comprehensive Economic Pesticide Policy Evaluation System (CEPPES), as CEEPES was originally called, was developed in 1986 under a cooperative agreement between the Office of Policy Analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency (OPA/EPA) and the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University (CARD/ISU). CEPPES was designed to analyze agricultural and environmental policies. It was structured to accommodate the important interrelationships among environmental and agricultural policies in the United States. Integrated policy analysis can discern and demonstrate efficient strategies to attain targeted levels for the agricultural sector, human health, and environmental performance

Analysis of 1990 Farm Bill Conservation Options

This report summarizes the ARIMS analysis for the 1990 Farm Bill Conservation Initiatives Work Group. Three major tasks were completed. First, ARIMS was updated to reflect the short-run nature of possible 1990 farm bill policies. Specifically, ARIMS now incorporates a more differentiated set of land resources and crop production technology to match the requirements of the 1985 Food Security Act. Second, baseline solutions for 1990, 1995, and 2000 were estimated. The solutions included the conservation titles of the 1985 Food Security Act. The baselines differed in the specification of acres in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and in conservation compliance provisions. The 1990 baseline had a 40-million-acre CRP requirement; the 1995 baseline has a 40-million-CRP plus conservation compliance; and the 2000 baseline has an eight-million CRP with conservation compliance. Third, two alternative farm bill policy options were evaluated. The water quality option involved adding 10 million acres to the 40-million-acre CRP enrollment in the 1995 baseline. The selection of the 10 million acres was based on potential water quality impacts. The Trees for the U.S. program evaluated the conversion to tress of 37 million targeted acres of cropland and marginal pasture land

The 1989 Recommended Pesticide and Nitrogen Use Survey: Description and Policy Applications

The public and the agricultural community are concerned with the impact of agrichemical use on the environment. Of particular concern is the impact of pesticides and nitrogen on the quality of surface and ground waters (Nielson and Lee 1987). Although a national effort is under way to address agricultural contributions to water contamination, lack of data is hindering progress. Data are needed to characterize agrichemical use and its subsequent fate and transport throughout the ecosystem. Reliable data are vital for informed policy decisions weighing the potential risks and benefits (Delwiche 1970). In the absence of that data about total amounts of agrichemicals being used on crops and the rates and methods of application, it is difficult to describe the link between agricultural porduction practices and environmental quality, or to assess the impacts of programs and policies addressing water quality. This report documents the 1989 Recommended Pesticide and Nitrogen Use Survey. The survey was conducted to alleviate part of the data deficiency by collecting detailed information on recommended pesticide and nitrogen uses and application practices in 48 states. Information on usage was obtained by crop, tillage practice, and soil texture. Crops covered in the survey included alfalfa, barley, corn grain, corn silage, cotton oats, pasture, other hay, peanuts, sorghum grain, sorghum silage, soybeans, spring and winter wheat, and sunflowers. Tillage practices included spring and fall plow conventional tillage, conservation tillage, ridge tillage, and no tillage. By providing detailed information on the rate and total amount of agrichemicals applied to the soil surface, the survey provides data for investigating the behavioral and economic links between environmental quality and decision making within agricultural production. In addition, the data can be used in assesing the impacts of policies and porgrams addressing water quality

Distrusted disclosures: Deception drives anti-transgender but not anti-atheist prejudice

IntroductionTransgender individuals face high levels of prejudice in interpersonal relationships. However, limited experimental research has examined the role of identity disclosure on anti-transgender prejudice.MethodsDrawing upon research on distrust and identity disclosure, two between-participants experiments (total n = 802) examined the role of intentional and unintentional identity disclosure on negative attitudes (Studies 1 & 2), perceived deception (Studies 1 & 2) and distrust (Study 2) toward two potentially concealable and historically distrusted identities (transgender and atheist). Specifically, the current studies examine the impact of a target’s stigmatized identity (transgender or atheist) and method of disclosure (intentional or unintentional) on perceptions of the target, perceived deceptiveness, and distrust toward the target.ResultsOur findings demonstrated that compared to atheists, transgender targets elicited greater levels of prejudice and were viewed as more deceptive, and that this effect was amplified if the target did not intentionally reveal their identity. Study 2 demonstrated that perceived deception mediated the relationship between reveal type (i.e., intentional vs. unintentional) and prejudice toward participants who read about a transgender (but not atheist) target.DiscussionWe discuss the implications of these findings for reducing prejudice toward binary transgender individuals, particularly those who do not voluntarily disclose their identity

Preparing aquatic research for an extreme future: call for improved definitions and responsive, multidisciplinary approaches

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Aoki, L. R., Brisbin, M. M., Hounshell, A. G., Kincaid, D. W., Larson, E., Sansom, B. J., Shogren, A. J., Smith, R. S., & Sullivan-Stack, J. Preparing aquatic research for an extreme future: call for improved definitions and responsive, multidisciplinary approaches. Bioscience, 72(6), (2022): 508-520, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac020.Extreme events have increased in frequency globally, with a simultaneous surge in scientific interest about their ecological responses, particularly in sensitive freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems. We synthesized observational studies of extreme events in these aquatic ecosystems, finding that many studies do not use consistent definitions of extreme events. Furthermore, many studies do not capture ecological responses across the full spatial scale of the events. In contrast, sampling often extends across longer temporal scales than the event itself, highlighting the usefulness of long-term monitoring. Many ecological studies of extreme events measure biological responses but exclude chemical and physical responses, underscoring the need for integrative and multidisciplinary approaches. To advance extreme event research, we suggest prioritizing pre- and postevent data collection, including leveraging long-term monitoring; making intersite and cross-scale comparisons; adopting novel empirical and statistical approaches; and developing funding streams to support flexible and responsive data collection

Using Job Changes to Evaluate the Bias of the Value of a Statistical Life

This paper presents a new approach to obtain unbiased estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) with labor market data. Investigating job changes, we combine the advantages of recent panel studies, which allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity of workers, and conventional cross-sectional estimations, which primarily exploit the variation of wage and risk between different jobs. We find a VSL of 6.1 million euros from pooled cross-sectional estimation, 1.9 million euros from the static first-differences panel model and 3.5 million euros from the job-changer specification. Thus, ignoring individual heterogeneity causes overestimates of the VSL, whereas identifying the wage-risk tradeoff not only by means of between job variation (job-changer model) but also on the basis of noisy variation on the job (panel models) may lead to underestimates of the VSL. Our results can be used to perform cost-benefit analyses of public projects aimed at reducing fatality risks, e.g., in the domains of health, environmental or traffic policy