infonet-economy

We explored potential contributing psychological factors in a patient (‘XF’) with focal retrograde amnesia, within the framework proposed by Kopelman (2000). In particular, we investigated the psychological trait of self-enhancement. We constructed a self-report questionnaire measure of self-enhancement and compared XF’s score on this measure with the scores of 61 control…

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. Rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using panel data covering more than 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce the probability of politicians being attacked or killed: extended institutional and…

This study applies financial portfolio theory to determine efficient electricity-generating technology portfolios for the United States and Switzerland, adopting an investor point of view. Expected returns are defined by the rate of decrease of power generation cost (with external costs included), their volatility, by its standard deviation. The 2003 portfolio contains Coal, Nuclear…

From the point of view of institutional economics, property rights are an instrument to shape individual incentives efficiently. For the case of a Tullock contest with endogenously determined rent, I analyze the circumstances under which perfectly secure property rights emerge in an economy where the security of property is endogenously determined. I analyze different sequential…

In this study, Markowitz mean-variance portfolio theory is applied to electricity-generating technologies of the United States and Switzerland. Both an investor (focused on changes in return) and a current user (focused on return in levels) view are adopted to determine efficient frontiers of electricity generation technologies in terms of expected return and risk as of 2003. Since…

Cultural boundaries have often been the basis for discrimination, nationalism, religious wars, and genocide. Little is known, however, about how cultural groups form or the evolutionary forces behind group affiliation and in-group favoritism. Hence, we examine these forces and show that arbitrary symbolic markers, though initially meaningless, evolve to play a key role in cultural…

This article uses basic facts from the psychology of attention to show how the limited attention of consumers affects economic competition. The article determines endogenously whether an economy is information rich or information poor. A conventional economic equilibrium results if subjects have spare attention capacity. At the positive level, the respective impacts of advances in…

In the heart of the Great Crisis, amidst great uncertainty and concerns surrounding the future of capitalism, John Maynard Keynes launched his optimistic prophecy that growth and technological change would allow mankind to solve its economic problem within a century. He envisioned a world where people would work much less and be less oppressed by the satisfaction of material needs.…

Recently, a number of authors have argued that the standard search model cannot generate the observed business-cycle-frequency fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies, given shocks of a plausible magnitude. We propose a new calibration strategy of the standard model that uses data on the cost of vacancy creation and cyclicality of wages to identify the two key parameters - the…