Spousal Dictator Game: Household Decisions and Other-Regarding Preferences

Using a laboratory experiment, we collected data on dictator giving among student strangers and married couples in a suburban area in the United States. Confirming common belief and prior empirical evidence, we find that giving among spouses is greater than giving among anonymous students. We further investigated factors associated with spousal giving which may provide insight for the development of future theories, or into explaining other-regarding preferences. Our data shows that giving is positively associated with who manages household money and controls household income. This result is robust after controlling for each spouse’s personal income and using various econometric specifications. The results suggest that spousal giving may be due to household economic roles in addition to other-regarding preferences

Collaboration Versus Cheating

We outline how we detected programming plagiarism in an introductory online course for a master's of science in computer science program, how we achieved a statistically significant reduction in programming plagiarism by combining a clear explanation of university and class policy on academic honesty reinforced with a short but formal assessment, and how we evaluated plagiarism rates before SIGand after implementing our policy and assessment.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, 5 tables, SIGCSE 201

Bembix : Rundbrief für alle Freunde der akuleaten Hymenopteren

We compare the research productivity of faculties housed in departments offering doctoral degrees in agricultural economics (AgEcon) with faculties housed in departments offering doctoral degrees in economics (Econ) that specialize in environmental and resource economics. Rankings are based on faculty publications in EconLit between 1985 and 2010. We find that AgEcon departments publish more papers and rate higher overall on productivity measures than Econ departments but that average productivity is greater for Econ departments. AgEcon publications dominate the Journal of Economic Literature’s (JEL’s) agriculture (Q1) subdiscipline while Econ and AgEcon departments publish evenly in the other Q subdisciplines

Valuing the Loss of Rock Climbing Access in Wilderness Areas: A National-Level, Random-Utility Model

Given potential growth in outdoor rock climbing and its concentration on public lands, the management of climbing access in wilderness areas is an issue of considerable national controversy in the United States. A proposed rule change by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) would prohibit the use of fixed climbing protection in wilderness areas—effectively eliminating safe access to many sites. Using a unique data set on rock climbing trips, a repeated-nested logit, random-utility model is used to analyze economic losses to climbers resulting from the USFS proposal. Results indicate that the USFS proposal may constitute a major regulatory change. (