Agency, Benevolence and Justice

We test for social norms regarding how Agents should select between risky prospects for Principals, including norms consistent with observations by Adam Smith. We elicit norms from subjects serving as ``impartial spectator[s] about the choice of risky prospects selected by the Agents. We find strong evidence for the existence of norms, consistent with Smith\u27s observations. Furthermore, we find that Agents are more likely to select more normative options. In contrast, we find that Principals\u27 allocation for bonuses depends on the realization of the risky prospect rather than whether the Agents\u27 choice was consistent with the norm

Keeping a Clean Reputation: More Evidence on the Perverse Effects of Disclosure

When a principal relies on an agent, a conflict of interest can encourage the agent to provide biased advice. Conventional wisdom suggests that such behavior can be reduced through disclosure requirements. However, disclosure has been shown to exacerbate self-serving bias and can actually lead to greater harm for the principal in one-shot interactions. But in many naturally occurring settings, agents form reputations, a mechanism that could diminish the incentive to provide biased advice. We test for bias in the advice agents provide when faced with reputation concerns, and examine the impact of disclosure in such an environment. In controlled laboratory experiments, we find little evidence of self-serving bias in the absence of disclosure when (3) agents form reputations and (4) principals use that information in selecting agents. However, we find the introduction of disclosure leads to self-serving biased advice that is difficult for principals to detect. When the conflict of interest is endogenous, we find that agents overwhelmingly put themselves in the position of having a conflict of interest, but principals neither avoid conflicted agents nor differentially discount the advice such agents provide

A Reassessment of the Potential for Loss-framed Incentive Contracts to Increase Productivity: A Meta-analysis and a Real-effort Experiment

Substantial productivity increases have been reported when incentives are framed as losses rather than gains. Loss-framed contracts have also been reported to be preferred by workers. The results from our meta-analysis and real-effort experiment challenge these claims. The meta-analysis\u27 summary effect size of loss framing is a 0.16 SD increase in productivity. Whereas the summary effect size in laboratory experiments is a 0.33 SD, the summary effect size from field experiments is 0.02 SD. We detect evidence of publication biases among laboratory experiments. In a new laboratory experiment that addresses prior design weaknesses, we estimate an effect size of 0.12 SD. This result, in combination with the meta-analysis, suggests that the difference between the effect size estimates in laboratory and field experiments does not stem from the limited external validity of laboratory experiments, but may instead stem from a mix of underpowered laboratory designs and publication biases. More- over, in our experiment, most workers preferred the gain-framed contract and the increase in average productivity is only detectable in the subgroup of workers (20%) who preferred the loss-framed contracts. Based on the results from our experiment and meta-analysis, we believe that behavioral scientists should better assess preferences for loss-framed contracts and the magnitude of their effects on productivity before advocating for greater use of such contracts among private and public sector actors

Uncertainty and Reputation Effects in Credence Goods Markets

We introduce two sources of uncertainty into credence-goods experiments: 1) diagnostic uncertainty; experts receive a noisy signal of buyer type; 2) service uncertainty; the services do not always work. Both make detection of dishonesty more difficult. In contrast to hypotheses, we find that uncertainty decreases dishonesty and increases trust; additionally, ratings do not improve efficiency of the transactions under uncertainty. Buyers tended to \u27shoot the messenger\u27 (give low ratings) when the high-need option does not work due to bad luck, and to give experts the \u27benefit of the doubt\u27 (high ratings) when the high-need option may have been intentionally overprovided

An Experimental Investigation of Health Insurance Policy and Behavior

We introduce a new experimental approach to measuring the effects of health insurance policy alternatives on behavior and health outcomes over the life course. Cash-motivated subjects are placed in a virtual environment where they earn income and allocate it across multi-period lives. We compare behavior across age, income and insurance plans—one priced according to an individual’s expected cost and the other uniformly priced through employer-implemented cost sharing. We find that 1) subjects in the employer-implemented plan purchased insurance at higher rates; 2) the employer-based plan reduced differences due to income and age; 3) subjects in the actuarial plan engaged in more health-promoting behaviors, but still below optimal levels, and did save at the level required, so did realize the full benefits of the plan. Subjects had more difficulty optimizing choices in the Actuarial treatment, because it required more long term planning and evaluating benefits that compounded over time. Contrary, to model predictions, the actuarial priced insurance plan did not increase utility relative to the employer-based plan

An Investigation of Health Insurance Policy and Behavior in a Virtual Environment

We introduce a new experimental approach to measuring the effects of health insurance policy alternatives on behavior and health outcomes over the life course. In a virtual environment with multi-period lives, subjects earn virtual income and allocate spending, to maximize utility, which is converted into cash payment. We compare behavior across age, income and insurance plans—one priced according to an individual’s expected cost and the other uniformly priced through employer-implemented cost sharing. We find that 1) subjects in the employer-implemented plan purchased insurance at higher rates; 2) the employer-based plan reduced differences due to income and age; 3) subjects in the actuarial plan engaged in more health-promoting behaviors, but still below optimal levels, and did save at the level required, so did realize the full benefits of the plan. Subjects had more difficulty optimizing choices in the Actuarial treatment, because it required more long term planning and evaluating benefits that compounded over time. Contrary, to model predictions, the actuarial priced insurance plan did not increase utility relative to the employer-based plan

Identifying Bedrest Using Waist-worn Triaxial Accelerometers in Preschool Children

Purpose To adapt and validate a previously developed decision tree for youth to identify bedrest for use in preschool children. Methods Parents of healthy preschool (3-6-year-old) children (n = 610; 294 males) were asked to help them to wear an accelerometer for 7 to 10 days and 24 hours/day on their waist. Children with ≥3 nights of valid recordings were randomly allocated to the development (n = 200) and validation (n = 200) groups. Wear periods from accelerometer recordings were identified minute-by-minute as bedrest or wake using visual identification by two independent raters. To automate visual identification, chosen decision tree (DT) parameters (block length, threshold, bedrest-start trigger, and bedrest-end trigger) were optimized in the development group using a Nelder-Mead simplex optimization method, which maximized the accuracy of DT-identified bedrest in 1-min epochs against synchronized visually identified bedrest (n = 4,730,734). DT\u27s performance with optimized parameters was compared with the visual identification, commonly used Sadeh’s sleep detection algorithm, DT for youth (10-18-years-old), and parental survey of sleep duration in the validation group. Results On average, children wore an accelerometer for 8.3 days and 20.8 hours/day. Comparing the DT-identified bedrest with visual identification in the validation group yielded sensitivity = 0.941, specificity = 0.974, and accuracy = 0.956. The optimal block length was 36 min, the threshold 230 counts/min, the bedrest-start trigger 305 counts/min, and the bedrest-end trigger 1,129 counts/min. In the validation group, DT identified bedrest with greater accuracy than Sadeh’s algorithm (0.956 and 0.902) and DT for youth (0.956 and 0.861) (both P\u3c0.001). Both DT (564±77 min/day) and Sadeh’s algorithm (604±80 min/day) identified significantly less bedrest/sleep than parental survey (650±81 min/day) (both P\u3c0.001). Conclusions The DT-based algorithm initially developed for youth was adapted for preschool children to identify time spent in bedrest with high accuracy. The DT is available as a package for the R open-source software environment (“PhysActBedRest”)

The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version

Erratum: “The eighth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: first data from SDSS-III” (2011, ApJS, 193, 29)

Section 3.5 of Aihara et al. (2011) described various sources of systematic error in the astrometry of the imaging data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). In addition to these sources of error, there is an additional and more serious error, which introduces a large systematic shift in the astrometry over a large area around the north celestial pole. The region has irregular boundaries but in places extends as far south as declination δ ≈ 41◦. The sense of the shift is that the positions of all sources in the affected area are offset by roughly 250 mas in a northwest direction. We have updated the SDSS online documentation to reflect these errors, and to provide detailed quality information for each SDSS field

SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems

Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I and II), SDSS-III is a program of four spectroscopic surveys on three scientific themes: dark energy and cosmological parameters, the history and structure of the Milky Way, and the population of giant planets around other stars. In keeping with SDSS tradition, SDSS-III will provide regular public releases of all its data, beginning with SDSS DR8 (which occurred in Jan 2011). This paper presents an overview of the four SDSS-III surveys. BOSS will measure redshifts of 1.5 million massive galaxies and Lya forest spectra of 150,000 quasars, using the BAO feature of large scale structure to obtain percent-level determinations of the distance scale and Hubble expansion rate at z<0.7 and at z~2.5. SEGUE-2, which is now completed, measured medium-resolution (R=1800) optical spectra of 118,000 stars in a variety of target categories, probing chemical evolution, stellar kinematics and substructure, and the mass profile of the dark matter halo from the solar neighborhood to distances of 100 kpc. APOGEE will obtain high-resolution (R~30,000), high signal-to-noise (S/N>100 per resolution element), H-band (1.51-1.70 micron) spectra of 10^5 evolved, late-type stars, measuring separate abundances for ~15 elements per star and creating the first high-precision spectroscopic survey of all Galactic stellar populations (bulge, bar, disks, halo) with a uniform set of stellar tracers and spectral diagnostics. MARVELS will monitor radial velocities of more than 8000 FGK stars with the sensitivity and cadence (10-40 m/s, ~24 visits per star) needed to detect giant planets with periods up to two years, providing an unprecedented data set for understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of giant planet systems. (Abridged)Comment: Revised to version published in The Astronomical Journa