Service provision on a network with endogenous consumption capacity

We present a model in which the consumers' capacity to access a service provided on a network depends negatively on the price charged by the network owner per capacity unit. Several scenarios concerning the structure of the downstream service provision market are studied. First, a monopolist operates in both the network and the service provision stage. Second, we assume duopolistic competition between the network owner and the entrant. Third, we allow for endogenous differentiation of the services provided by the two competitors. Generally speaking, the duopolistic structure does not necessarily enhance consumer surplus. Furthermore, competition in the service provision market may reduce social welfare, either due to excessive differentiation or due to a low network density.telecommunications markets, regulation, endogenous consumption.

How do markets manage water resources?. An experiment on resource market (de) centralization with endogenous quality.

We test how a monopoly, a duopoly and a public monopoly manage and allocate water resources. Stock depletion for the public monopoly is fastest. However, it reaches the optimal stock level towards the end of the experimental sessions. The private monopoly and duopoly maintain inefficiently high levels of stock throughout the sessions. The average quality to price ratio offered by the public monopoly is substantially higher than that offered by the private monopoly or duopoly. A clear result from the experiments is that a public monopoly offers the highest (average) quality to price ratio and has the fastest rate of stock depletion compared to a private monopoly or duopoly

Are dangerous jobs paid better? European evidence

This article tests whether workers are indifferent between risky and safe jobs provided that, in labour market equilibrium, wages should serve as a utility equalizing device. Workers’ preferences are elicited through a partial measure of overall job satisfaction: satisfaction with job-related risk. Given that selectivity turns out to be important, we use selectivity corrected models. Results show that wage differentials do not exclusively compensate workers for being in dangerous jobs. However, as job characteristics are substitutable in workers’ utility, they could feel satisfied, even if they were not fully compensated financially for working in dangerous jobs

HOW DO MARKETS MANAGE WATER RESOURCES? AN EXPERIMENT ON RESOURCE MARKET (DE) CENTRALIZATION WITH ENDOGENOUS QUALITY.

We test how a monopoly, a duopoly and a public monopoly manage and allocate water resources. Stock depletion for the public monopoly is fastest. However, it reaches the optimal stock level towards the end of the experimental sessions. The private monopoly and duopoly maintain inefficiently high levels of stock throughout the sessions. The average quality to price ratio offered by the public monopoly is substantially higher than that offered by the private monopoly or duopoly. A clear result from the experiments is that a public monopoly offers the highest (average) quality to price ratio and has the fastest rate of stock depletion compared to a private monopoly or duopoly.

Does revealing personality data affect prosocial behaviour?

Many modern organisations collect data on individuals’ personality traits as part of their human resource selection processes. We test experimentally whether revealing information on personality data impacts on pro-social behaviour as measured in a one-shot modified dictator game and a public goods game. Our focus is on the personality trait of agreeableness which has been shown to be a significant determinant of pro-sociality. We provide new evidence that revealing personality information for disagreeable individuals has detrimental effects on their pro-social behaviour as compared to the baseline no-information benchmark. This is not the case, however, for agreeable individuals when they are matched with agreeable individuals. Agreeable individuals become less pro-social when matched with disagreeable individuals and are aware of this. Our results suggest that information cues about personality significantly affect economic behaviour and have implications for employees’ personality assessments as part of standard hiring processes

Psychopathy and Economic Behavior Among Prison Inmates: An Experiment

This paper investigates whether there is a connection between psychopathy and certain manifestations of social and economic behavior, measured in a lab-in-thefield experiment with prison inmates. In order to test this main hypothesis, we let inmates play four games that have often been used to measure prosocial and antisocial behavior in previous experimental economics literature. Specifically, they play a prisoner’s dilemma, a trust game, the equality equivalence test that elicits distributional preferences, and a corruption game. Psychopathy is measured by means of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP) questionnaire, which inmates filled out after having made their decisions in the four games. We find that higher scores in the LSRP are significantly correlated with anti-social behavior in the form of weaker reciprocity, lower cooperation, lower benevolence and more bribe-oriented decisions in the corruption game. In particular, not cooperating and bribe-maximizing decisions are associated with significantly higher LSRP primary and LSRP secondary scores. Not reciprocating is associated with higher LSRP primary and being spiteful with higher LSRP secondary score

Sobre la toma de decisiones economicas bajo incertidumbre

In this article we review the evolution of economic theory on decision making under uncertainty. After a brief reference to Expected Utility Theory, we refer to behavioural paradoxes, forcing the theorists to adopt less restrictive approaches, allowing us to explain a broader spectrum of phenomena. The complexity entailed in the new theories requires a multidimensional description of human attitudes towards risk. Nevertheless, measurement of this attitudes has not followed the desired path, with most elicitation methods remaining uni-dimensional

Good and bad increases in ecological awareness: environmental differentiation revisited

We analyze a vertically differentiated market, assuming that conventional and green firms’ products have different impacts on the environment. Heterogeneous consumers choose to be supplied by a conventional or a green firm, depending on their extra willingness to pay for a green product and the relative prices of the products in the market. We show that environmental awareness campaigns may have a negative impact on total welfare. This possibility is shown to exist without consumer misperceptions about the quality of green products and ruling out changes in the coverage and the structure of the market. Surprisingly, both conventional and green firms may benefit from heterogeneity-enhancing awareness campaigns, while social welfare is more likely to be enhanced by heterogeneity-reducing ones