Against simplicity and cognitive individualism: Nathaniel T. Wilcox

Neuroeconomics illustrates our deepening descent into the details of individual cognition. This descent is guided by the implicit assumption that “individual human” is the important “agent” of neoclassical economics. I argue here that this assumption is neither obviously correct, nor of primary importance to human economies. In particular I suggest that the main genius of the human species lies with its ability to distribute cognition across individuals, and to incrementally accumulate physical and social cognitive artifacts that largely obviate the innate biological limitations of individuals. If this is largely why our economies grow, then we should be much more interested in distributed cognition in human groups, and correspondingly less interested in individual cognition. We should also be much more interested in the cultural accumulation of cognitive artefacts: computational devices and media, social structures and economic institutions

What Students Expect and What They See: Ideology, Identity and the Double Auction Classroom Experiment

Many economists find that classroom experiments using the Double Auction (DA) trading institution are an effective pedagogical tool in introductory economics classes. Results of such experiments reliably illustrate the concepts and descriptive relevance of the theory of competitive equilibrium (or CE). However, we have noticed that the degree to which students are "surprised" by the CE theory's ability to predict DA outcomes seems to vary from class to class, and especially across classes at markedly different universities. We speculate that this is due to differences in students' ideological leanings and that these, in turn, are related to various socioeconomic or "identity" variables, such as class and race, that may vary systematically across universities. This paper reports some initial experimental results that explore this hypothesis. We find that only a few socioeconomic variables significantly predict students' ideology, and that at least one measure of ideology is a robust predictor of students' prior expectations and posterior evaluations of the predictive performance of CE theory. Several other variables, including sex, union status and work experience, also help predict students' expectations or evaluations; but none of these is as strong or robust as ideology itself.

Commentary: Reflections on Decision Research and Its Empiricism: Four Comments Inspired by Harrison

Generally I find Harrison\u27s chapter cogent, interesting, and well-informed in details and particulars, and so do not speak of them. Instead, I reflect on four larger matters Harrison brings to my mind. These four matters are presented below as four separate sections, to be read as four separate and short comments (though the four sections do share a few threads)

Distribution and Dynamics in a Simple Tax Regime Transition

We examine transitions between excise tax and license fee regimes in the laboratory. The regimes have matched equilibrium Marshallian surplus, but license fees generate more tax revenue. The license fees are large “avoidable costs,” known to hamper competitive equilibrium convergence. With moderately experienced subjects, the prolonged transition to the license fee equilibrium has these features: (1) Prices below equilibrium levels, resulting in firm losses; (2) Marshallian surplus above equilibrium levels; and (3) transitional windfalls for the tax authority. With highly experienced subjects, license fees lead to the instability and lower seller profits and efficiency observed in past avoidable cost markets.Tax Regime Transitions, Avoidable Costs, Double Auctions, Experimental Methods.

Younger Federal District Court Judges Favor Presidential Power

From 1960 to 2015, Federal District Court opinions involving challenges to Executive Branch authority show that U.S. Federal District Court judges (trial judges) support such authority less as they age, with a sharp decline beginning near age 57. We argue that District judges know that elevation to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals becomes increasingly improbable, and hence have less reason to ‘cooperate’ with the Executive, with advancing age. Political variables (and other variables) introduced as extra regressors do not reverse our main results. When there are contemporaneous vacancies on their Circuit courts, District judges in the eleven State Circuits (but not the District of Columbia circuit) are also more likely to favor the Executiv

Are Participants Good Evaluators?

Managers of workforce training programs are often unable to afford costly, full-fledged experimental or nonexperimental evaluations to determine their programs’ impacts. Therefore, many rely on the survey responses of program participants to gauge program impacts. Smith, Whalley, and Wilcox present the first attempt to assess such measures despite their already widespread use in program evaluations. They develop a multidisciplinary framework for addressing the issue and apply it to three case studies: the National Job Training Partnership Act Study, the U.S. National Supported Work Demonstration, and the Connecticut Jobs First Program. Each of these studies were subjected to experimental evaluations that included a survey-based participant evaluation measure. The authors apply econometric methods specifically developed to obtain estimates of program impacts among individuals in the studies and then compare these estimates with survey-based participant evaluation measures to obtain an assessment of the surveys’ efficacy. The authors also discuss how their findings fit into the broader literatures in economics, psychology, and survey research.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1285/thumbnail.jp

Information Transmission and the Oral Tradition: Evidence of a Late-Life Service Niche for Tsimane Amerindians

Storytelling can affect wellbeing and fitness by transmitting information and reinforcing cultural codes of conduct. Despite their potential importance, the development and timing of storytelling skills, and the transmission of story knowledge have received minimal attention in studies of subsistence societies that more often focus on food production skills. Here we examine how storytelling and patterns of information transmission among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists are predicted by the changing age profiles of storytellers’ abilities and accumulated experience. We find that storytelling skills are most developed among older adults who demonstrate superior knowledge of traditional stories and who report telling stories most. We find that the important information transmitted via storytelling typically flows from older to younger generations, and stories are primarily learned from older same-sex relatives, especially grandparents. Our findings suggest that the oral tradition provides a specialized late-life service niche for Tsimane adults who have accumulated important experience and knowledge relevant to foraging and sociality, but have lost comparative advantage in other productive domains. These findings may help extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital predict the development of information transmission services in a forager-horticulturalist economy