Publications des institutions partenaires
The welfare effects of vertical integration in multichannel television markets
We investigate the welfare effects of vertical integration of regional sports networks (RSNs) with programming distributors in U.S. multichannel television markets. Vertical integration can enhance efficiency by reducing double marginalization and increasing carriage of channels, but can also harm welfare due to foreclosure and incentives to raise rivals' costs. We estimate a…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
Improving weighted least squares inference
These days, it is common practice to base inference about the coefficients in a hetoskedastic linear model on the ordinary least squares estimator in conjunction with using heteroskedasticity consistent standard errors. Even when the true form of heteroskedasticity is unknown, heteroskedasticity consistent standard errors can also used to base valid inference on a weighted least…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
The regulation of public service broadcasters: should there be more advertising on television?
Increased competition for viewers’ time is threatening the viability of public-service broadcasters (PSBs) around the world. Changing regulations regarding advertising minutes might increase revenues, but little is known about the structure of advertising demand. To address this problem, we collect a unique dataset on monthly impacts (quantities) and prices of UK television channels…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
The impact of peer personality on academic achievement
This paper provides evidence of a novel facet of peer effects by showing how peer personality affects educational achievement. We exploit random assignment of students to university sections and find that students perform better in the presence of more persistent peers and more risk-averse peers. In particular, low-persistence students benefit from highly-persistent peers without…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
The effect of peer gender on major choice
This paper investigates how the peer gender composition in university affects students' major choices and labor market outcomes. Women who are randomly assigned to more female peers become less likely to choose male-dominated majors, they end up in jobs where they work fewer hours and their wage grows at a slower rate. Men become more likely to choose male-dominated majors after…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
Do gender preference gaps impact policy outcomes?
Many studies document systematic gender differences in a variety of important economic preferences, such as risk-taking, competition and pro-sociality. One potential implication of this literature is that increased female representation in decision-making bodies may significantly alter organizational and policy outcomes. However, research has yet to establish a direct connection from…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
On the scope of externalities in experimental markets
We study how the scope of negative externalities from market activity affects the willingness of market actors to exhibit social responsibility. Using the laboratory experimental paradigm introduced by Bartling et al. (Q J Econ 130(1):219–266, 2015), we compare the voluntary internalization of negative social impacts by market actors in cases where the negative externality is…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
Food-predicting stimuli differentially influence eye movements and goal-directed behavior in normal-weight, overweight, and obese Individuals
Obese individuals have been shown to exhibit abnormal sensitivity to rewards and reward-predicting cues as for example food-associated cues frequently used in advertisements. It has also been shown that food-associated cues can increase goal-directed behavior but it is currently unknown, whether this effect differs between normal-weight, overweight, and obese individuals. Here, we…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
Brain stimulation over the frontopolar cortex enhances motivation to exert effort for reward
Background: Loss of motivation is a characteristic feature of several psychiatric and neurological disorders. However, the neural mechanisms underlying human motivation are far from being understood. Here, we investigate the role that the frontopolar cortex (FPC) plays in motivating cognitive and physical effort exertion by computing subjective effort equivalents.
Methods: We…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
The dopaminergic reward system underpins gender differences in social preferences
Women are known to have stronger prosocial preferences than men, but it remains an open question as to how these behavioural differences arise from differences in brain functioning. Here, we provide a neurobiological account for the hypothesized gender difference. In a pharmacological study and an independent neuroimaging study, we tested the hypothesis that the neural reward system…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
Estimating fixed effects: perfect prediction and bias in binary response panel models, with an application to the hospital readmissions reduction program
The maximum likelihood estimator for the regression coefficients, β, in a panel binary response model with fixed effects can be severely biased if N is large and T is small, a consequence of the incidental parameters problem. This has led to the development of conditional maximum likelihood estimators and, more recently, to estimators that remove the O(T–1) bias in β^. We add to this…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/2017
Persistent bias in advice-giving
We show that a one-off incentive to bias advice has persistent effects. In an experiment, advisers were paid a bonus to recommend a lottery which only risk-seeking individuals should choose to a less informed client. Afterwards, they had to choose for themselves and make a second recommendation to another client, without any bonus. These advisers choose the risky lottery and…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Ordinal potentials in smooth games
While smooth exact potential games are easily characterized in terms of the cross-derivatives of players' payoff functions, an analogous differentiable characterization of ordinal or generalized ordinal potential games has been elusive for a long time. In this paper, it is shown that the existence of a generalized ordinal potential in a smooth game with multi-dimensional…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Growing and slowing down like China
This article is based on the presidential address delivered at the EEA Annual Congress 2016. It discusses China’s institutional and economic transformation through the lens of the model of growth and convergence developed in Acemoglu, Aghion, and Zilibotti (JEEA 2006), which emphasizes the dichotomy between investment- and innovation-led growth. The economic reforms introduced in the…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Creating an efficient culture of cooperation
Throughout human history, informal sanctions by peers were ubiquitous and played a key role in the enforcement of social norms and the provision of public goods. However, a considerable body of evidence suggests that informal peer sanctions cause large collateral damage and efficiency costs. This raises the question whether peer sanctioning systems exist that avoid these costs and…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Culture, work attitudes, and job search: evidence from the Swiss language border
Unemployment varies across space and in time. Can attitudes toward work explain some of these differences? We study job search durations along the Swiss language border, sharply separating Romance language speakers from German speakers. According to surveys and voting results, the language border separates two social groups with different cultural background and attitudes toward work…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Delegating performance evaluation
We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance evaluation is delegated to a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of the bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal determines a set of prizes to be allocated to the agents, is optimal. By using a contest, the…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Trading down and the business cycle
We document two facts. First, during the Great Recession, consumers traded down in the quality of the goods and services they consumed. Second, the production of low-quality goods is less labor intensive than that of high-quality goods. When households traded down, labor demand fell, increasing the severity of the recession. We find that the trading-down phenomenon accounts for a…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
The Spanish or the German apartment? Study abroad and the acquisition of permanent skills
In Europe, more than 250,0 0 0 university students spend one or two semesters abroad every year. This study explores whether a short time abroad contributes to the acquisition of foreign language proficiency. We use a newly available dataset about almost the totality of Italian graduates and two alternative in- struments to address the endogeneity of studying abroad. Both instruments…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/2017
Contests with small noise and the robustness of the all-pay auction
This paper considers all-pay contests in which the relationship between bids and allocations reflects a small amount of noise. Prior work had focused on one particular equilibrium. However, there may be other equilibria. To address this issue, we introduce a new and intuitive measure for the proximity to the all-pay auction. This allows, in particular, to provide simple conditions…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/09/2017
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