infonet-economy

An emerging economic literature has found evidence that wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is caused by unmet expectations that are felt painfully in midlife but beneficially abandoned and experienced with less regret during old age. This paper is the first to analyze age patterns in unmet expectations. Using the German Socio-Economic…

Background Cognitive biases and personality traits (aversion to risk or ambiguity) may lead to diagnostic inaccuracies and medical errors resulting in mismanagement or inadequate utilization of resources. We conducted a systematic review with four objectives: 1) to identify the most common cognitive biases, 2) to evaluate the influence of cognitive biases on diagnostic accuracy or…

The events of 9/11 released a million tons of toxic dust into lower Manhattan, an unparalleled environmental disaster. It is puzzling, then, that the literature has shown little effect of fetal exposure to the dust. However, inference is complicated by preexisting differences between the affected mothers and other NYC mothers as well as heterogeneity in effects on boys and girls.…

This chapter outlines the fundamental empirical challenges when studying media effects on conflict and discusses some recent methodological advances designed to overcome them. The evidence in this emerging literature indicates that mass media can be an effective tool for political elites to orchestrate mass violence. Both direct and indirect persuasion matter. The emerging evidence…

Path forecasts, defined as sequences of individual forecasts, generated by vector autoregressions are widely used in applied work. It has been recognized that a profound econometric analysis often requires, besides the path forecast, a joint prediction region that contains the whole future path with a prespecified coverage probability. The forecasting literature offers several…

We use experimental methods to investigate whether pledges of commitment can improve cooperation in endogenously formed partnerships facing a social dilemma. Treatments vary in terms of the individual’s (a) opportunity to commit to their partner, (b) the cost of dissolving committed partnerships, and (c) the distribution of these dissolution costs between partners. Our findings show…

This study investigates how well weekly Google search volumes track and predict bank failures in the United States between 2007 and 2012, contributing to the expanding literature that exploits internet data for the prediction of events. Different duration models with time-varying covariates are estimated. Higher Google search volumes go hand in hand with higher failure rates, and the…

Do populations grow as countries become richer? In this study we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change. For a panel of over 139 countries spanning the period 1960–2007, we interact changes in international oil prices with countries’ average net-export shares of oil in GDP.…

Are competitive mechanisms perceived as just sources of economic inequality? Perceptions of fairness violations can have severe economic consequences, as they may cause counterproductive behavior such as rulebook slowdowns or quality shading. To analyze fairness perceptions associated with competitive mechanisms, we run laboratory experiments where a single powerful buyer can trade…