2,838 research outputs found
The Interaction of Legal and Social Norm Enforcement
Although legal sanctions are often non-deterrent, we frequently observe compliance with âmild lawsâ. A possible explanation is that the incentives to comply are shaped not only by legal, but also by social sanctions. This paper employs a novel experimental approach to study the link between legal and social norm enforcement. We analyze whether the two institutions are complements or substitutes. Our results show that legal sanctions partially crowd out social norm enforcement. The welfare effect from mild laws is positive, however, as a higher level of compliance is achieved at lower enforcement costs.social sanctions, legal sanctions, norm enforcement, mild laws, laboratory experiment, VCM, public goods
Choosing your object of benevolence: a field experiment on donation options
In a large natural field experiment, we explore the effect of providing donors with the opportunity to choose the target country for their donations. We find that only a small fraction of donors use the option, which might reflect a reluctance to consider tradeoffs when those concern important, 'protected', values. However, those donors who choose their object of benevolence give significantly more, even when controlling for their donation history. In view of the latest research on identifable-victim effects, our findings underline that less inclusive targets can evoke more intense feelings than more inclusive ones stressing that altruistic motivation seems to be mediated by aroused empathetic emotions. --charitable giving,identifiable victim,field experiment,altruism,contingent valuation
Convergence of statistical moments of particle density time series in scrape-off layer plasmas
Particle density fluctuations in the scrape-off layer of magnetically
confined plasmas, as measured by gas-puff imaging or Langmuir probes, are
modeled as the realization of a stochastic process in which a superposition of
pulses with a fixed shape, an exponential distribution of waiting times and
amplitudes represents the radial motion of blob-like structures. With an
analytic formulation of the process at hand, we derive expressions for the
mean-squared error on estimators of sample mean and sample variance as a
function of sample length, sampling frequency, and the parameters of the
stochastic process. % Employing that the probability distribution function of a
particularly relevant shot noise process is given by the gamma distribution, we
derive estimators for sample skewness and kurtosis, and expressions for the
mean-squared error on these estimators.
Numerically generated synthetic time series are used to verify the proposed
estimators, the sample length dependency of their mean-squared errors, and
their performance.
We find that estimators for sample skewness and kurtosis based on the gamma
distribution are more precise and more accurate than common estimators based on
the method of moments.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figure
Nominalist Heuristics and Economic Theory
This paper introduces a new theoretic entity, a nominalist heuristic, defined as a focus on prominent numbers, indices or ratios. Abstractions used in the evaluation stage of decision making typically involve nominalist heuristics that are incompatible with expected utility theory which excludes the evaluation stage, and are also incompatible with prospect theory which assumes that, while the evaluation procedure can involve systematic mistakes, the overall decision situation is nevertheless sufficiently simple: 1) for economists and psychologists to identify what is a mistake, and 2) to be compatible with maximisation. But in the typical complex situation giving rise to nominalist heuristics neither 1) nor 2) hold, and therefore what is required is a fundamentally different class of models that allow for the progressive anticipated changes in knowledge ahead faced under risk and uncertainty, namely models under the umbrella of SKAT, the Stages of Knowledge Ahead Theory. A sequel paper. Pope et al 2009b, shows field and laboratory evidence of heuristics in the form of prominent numbers entering exchange rate determination.nominalism, money illusion, heuristic, unpredictability, experiment, SKAT the Stages of Knowledge Ahead Theory, prominent numbers, prominent indices, prominent ratios, equality, historical benchmarks, complexity, decision costs, evaluation
Can we manage first impressions in cooperation problems? An experiment
We study how cooperative behavior reacts to selective (favorable or unfavorable) pre-play information about the cooperativeness of other, unrelated groups within an experimental framework that is sufficiently rich for conflicting behavioral norms to emerge. We find that cooperation crucially depends on pre-play information, coinciding with a change in initial beliefs. Over time, behavior within both types of groups becomes increasingly homogeneous, indicating the formation of two rather different social norms, depending on whether pre-play information was favorable or unfavorable. In addition, we find unfavorable information to substantially reduce the effectiveness of peer punishment. For these differences to emerge it is immaterial whether each member or only one member of a four-person group receives the pre-play information.experiment, information, Norms, cooperation, Effectiveness of Sanctions, Expectations
Non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq zonal flow generation
Novel mechanisms for zonal flow (ZF) generation for both large relative
density fluctuations and background density gradients are presented. In this
non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) regime ZFs are driven by the Favre stress, the
large fluctuation extension of the Reynolds stress, and by background density
gradient and radial particle flux dominated terms. Simulations of a nonlinear
full-F gyro-fluid model confirm the predicted mechanism for radial ZF
propagation and show the significance of the NOB ZF terms for either large
relative density fluctuation levels or steep background density gradients
CVcat: an interactive database on cataclysmic variables
CVcat is a database that contains published data on cataclysmic variables and
related objects. Unlike in the existing online sources, the users are allowed
to add data to the catalogue. The concept of an ``open catalogue'' approach is
reviewed together with the experience from one year of public usage of CVcat.
New concepts to be included in the upcoming AstroCat framework and the next
CVcat implementation are presented. CVcat can be found at http://www.cvcat.org.Comment: 5 pages A&A Latex, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Unified transport scaling laws for plasma blobs and depletions
We study the dynamics of seeded plasma blobs and depletions in an (effective)
gravitational field. For incompressible flows the radial center of mass
velocity of blobs and depletions is proportional to the square root of their
initial cross-field size and amplitude. If the flows are compressible, this
scaling holds only for ratios of amplitude to size larger than a critical
value. Otherwise, the maximum blob and depletion velocity depends linearly on
the initial amplitude and is independent of size. In both cases the
acceleration of blobs and depletions depends on their initial amplitude
relative to the background plasma density, is proportional to gravity and
independent of their cross-field size. Due to their reduced inertia plasma
depletions accelerate more quickly than the corresponding blobs. These scaling
laws are derived from the invariants of the governing drift-fluid equations and
agree excellently with numerical simulations over five orders of magnitude. We
suggest an empirical model that unifies and correctly captures the radial
acceleration and maximum velocities of both blobs and depletions
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