Reciprocal Strategies and Aspiration Levels in a Cournot-Stackelberg Experiment

We examine behavior in Cournot and Stackelberg markets in a simple experiment where participants experience both market forms. Moreover, Stackelberg followers have to submit full response strategies. Our main finding is that Stackelberg followers employ rather flat, reciprocal response function, i.e., they punish leaders in who try to exploit their strategic adavantage and are willing to cooperate with cooperative leaders. Also, it turns out that prior exposure to a symmetric market makes followers more aggressive which hints at the role of aspiration levels in markets

Pensions in the laboratory: the role of commitment and reputation for deferred compensation in multi-period labor contracts

This paper examines the relationship between firms‘ wage offers and workers‘ supply of effort in a multi-period environment. If firms are able to commit to a schedule of wage payments, in equilibrium they will offer deferred compensation: first-period productivity is positive and wages are zero, while last-period productivity is zero and wages are positive. Workers respond to deferred compensation by supplying sufficient effort to avoid dismissal. In the absence of commitment, firms pay zero wages and workers supply low effort. The experiment produces strong evidence of these predictions. With commitment, we frequently observe deferred compensation and relatively high worker effort. In the absence of commitment, we observe no deferred compensation, much lower wages, and little worker effort. A third treatment where commitment is not possible, but firms are able to build a reputation, produces an intermediate result. Finally, we also find some evidence of gift exchange, in particular in the absence of commitment when deferred compensation does not work

Deferred compensation and gift exchange: an experimental investigation into multi-period labor markets

This paper examines the relationship between firms’ wage offers and workers’ supply of effort using a three-period experiment. In equilibrium, firms will offer deferred compensation: first period productivity is positive and wages are zero, while third period productivity is zero and wages are positive. The experiment produces strong evidence that deferred compensation increases worker effort; in about 70 percent of cases subjects supplied the optimal effort given the wage offer, and there was a strong effort response to future-period wages. We also find some evidence of gift exchange; worker players increased the effort levels in response to above equilibrium wage offers by a human, but not in response to similar offers by a computer. Finally, we find that firm players who are initially hesitant to defer compensation learn over time that it is beneficial to do so

Status of major southern California marine sport fish species with management recommendations, based on analyses of catch and size composition data collected on board commercial passenger fishing vessels from 1985 through 1987

This report on the status of major southern California marine sport fish species, together with management recommendations, is based on analyses of catch and size composition data, which were collected on board Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessels (CPFV) from 1985 through 1987. The project was designed to determine the status of those fishes that support the CPFV industry, and to make management recommendations when deemed necessary. We collected and analyzed data based on random, stratified, on-board sampling of weekday (excluding holidays), open CPFV's on a year-round basis. We sampled 1/2-day, 3/4-day, and full-day type trips at a level of 5%. The survey area extended from below the United States-Mexican border to Point Arguello. Catch estimates were extrapolated to include weekday as well as weekend and holiday, open and chartered CPFV's. We sampled 736 CPFV trips in 1985, 650 in 1986, and 631 in 1987. We encountered 180 species of fishes, including 49 species of rockfishes. We performed detailed analyses on 14 non-rockfish species and 12 rockfish species, as well as all fishes as a group and all rockfishes as a group. We found a moderate increase in total catch of combined fish species between this study and one in the mid-1970's, due primarily to sizeable increases in catches of Pacific mackerel, kelp bass, barred sand bass, and barracuda. However, we also found that there has been more than a 50% decline in the CPFV rockfish catches, due primarily to substantial decreases in catches of bocaccio, chilipepper, and olive rockfish. We have recommended that the current 15-rockfish bag limit regulation be reduced to a 10-rockfish bag limit, and that additional and equitable conservation measures also be implemented on the commercial rockfish fishery. (385pp.

Low-energy interaction of composite spin-half systems with scalar and vector fields

We consider a composite spin-half particle moving in spatially-varying scalar and vector fields. The vector field is assumed to couple to a conserved charge, but no assumption is made about either the structure of the composite or its coupling to the scalar field. A general form for the piece of the spin-orbit interaction of the composite with the scalar and vector fields which is first-order in momentum transfer ${\bf Q}$ and second-order in the fields is derived.Comment: 10 pages, RevTe

Efficient Universal Noiseless Source Codes

Although the existence of universal noiseless variable-rate codes for the class of discrete stationary ergodic sources has previously been established, very few practical universal encoding methods are available. Efficient implementable universal source coding techniques are discussed in this paper. Results are presented on source codes for which a small value of the maximum redundancy is achieved with a relatively short block length. A constructive proof of the existence of universal noiseless codes for discrete stationary sources is first presented. The proof is shown to provide a method for obtaining efficient universal noiseless variable-rate codes for various classes of sources. For memoryless sources, upper and lower bounds are obtained for the minimax redundancy as a function of the block length of the code. Several techniques for constructing universal noiseless source codes for memoryless sources are presented and their redundancies are compared with the bounds. Consideration is given to possible applications to data compression for certain nonstationary sources

Pump linewidth requirement for optical parametric oscillators

Pumping laser bandwidth requirement for optical parametric oscillator