The importance of heritage on the overall perceived image of a place: Barcelona seen by its residents

Place branding literature generally defines heritage as a major attribute that composes place brands. Moreover, the concept of heritage is deeply connected to place identity, to the point that some authors describe it as its DNA. In this sense, the aim of this article is to test the importance of heritage on the overall perceived image of the city of Barcelona (Spain) by analyzing opinions and perceptions from its local residents. To do so, 300 citizens were surveyed from 10th December 2014 to 30th January 2015 by using a specialized questionnaire designed for studying overall place image perception. Results of the study showed that heritage was a highly valued attribute that clearly dominated above other key attributes in the minds of citizens. Finally, potential opportunities and advantages for Barcelona’s brand arising from those perceptions are discussed

Inefficiencies in bargaining - departing from Akerlof and Myerson-Satterthwaite

We consider bargaining problems in which parties have access to outside options. The size of the pie is commonly known and each party privately knows the realization of her outside option. Parties are assumed to have a veto right, which allows them to obtain at least their outside option payoff in any event. Besides, agents can receive no subsidy ex post. We show that inefficiencies are inevitable for virtually all distributions of outside options, as long as the size of the surplus generated by the agreement is uncertain and may be arbitrarily small for all realizations of either party’s outside option. Our inefficiency result holds true whatever the degree of correlation between the distributions of outside options, and even if it is known for sure that an agreement is beneficial. The same insights apply to the bargaining between a buyer and a seller privately informed of their valuations and to public good problems among agents privately informed of their willingness to pay

Effecting Cooperation

There is a large repeated games literature illustrating how future interactions provide incentives for cooperation. Much of this literature assumes public monitoring: players always observe precisely the same thing. Even slight deviations from public monitoring to private monitoring that incorporate differences in players’ observations dramatically complicate coordination. Equilibria with private monitoring often seem unrealistically complex. We set out a model in which players accomplish cooperation in an intuitively plausible fashion. Players process information via a mental system — a set of psychological states and a transition function between states depending on observations. Players restrict attention to a relatively small set of simple strategies, and consequently, might learn which perform well.Repeated games, private monitoring, bounded rationality, cooperation

Confidence-Enhanced Performance

There is ample evidence that emotions affect performance. Positive emotions can improve performance, while negative ones may diminish it. For example, the fears induced by the possibility of failure or of negative evaluations have physiological consequences (shaking, loss of concentration) that may impair performance in sports, on stage or at school. There is also ample evidence that individuals have distorted recollection of past events, and distorted attributions of the causes of successes of failures. Recollection of good events or successes is typically easier than recollection of bad ones or failures. Successes tend to be attributed to intrinsic aptitudes or own effort, while failures are attributed to bad luck. In addition, these attributions are often reversed when judging the performance of others. The objective of this paper is to incorporate the first phenomenon above into an otherwise standard decision theoretic model, and show that in a world where performance depends on emotions, biases in information processing enhance welfare.Confidence, Perception, Psychology

Confidence-Enhanced Performance

There is ample evidence that emotions affect performance. Positive emotions can improve performance, while negative ones may diminish it. For example, the fears induced by the possibility of failure or of negative evaluations have physiological consequences (shaking, loss of concentration) that may impair performance in sports, on stage or at school. There is also ample evidence that individuals have distorted recollection of past events, and distorted attributions of the causes of successes of failures. Recollection of good events or successes is typically easier than recollection of bad ones or failures. Successes tend to be attributed to intrinsic aptitudes or own effort, while failures are attributed to bad luck. In addition, these attributions are often reversed when judging the performance of others. The objective of this paper is to incorporate the first phenomenon above into an otherwise standard decision theoretic model, and show that in a world where performance depends on emotions, biases in information processing enhance welfare.confidence, perception, psychology