Information, Matching and Outcome Selection

We consider a finite population of agents who exchange information and are paired every period to play a game with tension between risk dominance and Pareto efficiency. Agents sample past plays and corresponding payoffs from their information neighborhood, and choose one of two possible actions using either best response or imitation. Information exchanges and possible matchings each constitutes a network. We first provide a complete description of the medium run outcomes and show that in the medium run only information matters. We then identify the conditions whereby either the risk dominant or the Pareto efficient convention is stochastically stable, and show how efficiency in the long run depends on the matching network.Contagion, networks, coordination games, best response, imitation

Negative effects of loyalty programs : An empirical investigation on the French Mobile Phone sector.

Loyalty programs have been the object of a growing interest in the area of marketing. However, it is quite surprising that there is no generally accepted theoretical or empirical research that study how these programs could elicit negative effects on consumer behavior. Using a two-step method, qualitative and quantitative, conducted in the mobile phone sector in 2007, the research explores the potential negative effects of loyalty programs. Results indicate that loyalty programs can generate negative emotions, resulting in extreme behaviors, such as shunning the operator a direct competitor. This demonstrated that loyalty programs are apt to encourage behaviors that oppose the ones they actually should.Loyalty programs; negative emotions; churn; mobile communications;

The French Biodiesel Production: An Assessment of the Impacts and Interaction Effects of Policy Instruments

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/18/10.biofuels, blend mandate, subsidy, social costs, Agricultural and Food Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, H23, Q41, Q42, Q48,

Siblings and Educational Attainment in West Germany

Individual decisions on education are still an important topic in social sciences research. Our goal is an analysis of the impact of siblings on educational attainment in West Germany. Theories of educational decisions in a family context suggest several possible effects of siblings. During the 1990s, several authors analyzed this relationship for the United States and came up with contradictory results on the relative importance of different factors. Consequently, an empirical analysis is required, which is provided in this paper based on data from the GSOEP. In order to control for unobservable heterogeneity in educational decisions, several empirical specifications including propensity score matching are tested. The results suggest that boys are favored by their parents relative to girls. Furthermore, the gender of their siblings shows no significant impact on the educational attainment of boys, while a significant effect is found for girls. Finally, the educational attainment of an elder sibling shows a significant and positive effect on education decisions of the second child. --Unobservable heterogeneity,matching,ordered-probit