To survive in our complex environment, we have to adapt to changing contexts. Prior research that investigated how contextual changes are processed in the human brain has demonstrated important modulatory influences on multiple cognitive processes underlying decision-making,
including perceptual judgments, working memory, as well as cognitive and attentional control.
However, in everyday life, the importance of context is even more obvious during economic and social interactions, which often have implicit rule sets that need to be recognized by a decisionmaker.
Here, we review recent evidence from an increasing number of studies in the fields of Neuroeconomics and Social Neuroscience that investigate the neurobiological basis of contextual effects on valuation and social choice. Contrary to the assumptions of rational choice theory, multiple contextual factors, such as the availability of alternative choice options, shifts in reference point, and social context, have been shown to modulate behavior, as well as signals in task-relevant neural networks. A consistent picture that emerges from neurobiological results is that valuationrelated activity in striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex is highly context dependent during
both social and nonsocial choice. Alternative approaches to model and explain choice behavior, such as comparison-based choice models, as well as implications for future research are discussed.
A number of OECD countries aim to encourage work integration of disabled persons using quota policies. For instance, Austrian firms must provide at least one job to a disabled worker per 25 nondisabled workers and are subject to a tax if they do not. This “threshold design” provides causal estimates of the noncompliance tax on disabled employment if firms do not manipulate nondisabled employment; a lower and upper bound on the causal effect can be constructed if they do. Results indicate that firms with 25 nondisabled workers employ about 0.04 (or 12%) more disabled workers than without the tax; firms do manipulate employment of nondisabled workers but the lower bound on the employment effect of the quota remains positive; employment effects are stronger in low-wage firms than in high-wage firms; and firms subject to the quota of two disabled workers or more hire 0.08 more disabled workers per additional quota job. Moreover, increasing the noncompliance tax increases excess disabled employment, whereas paying a bonus to overcomplying firms slightly dampens the employment effects of the tax.
Short-term training has recently become the largest active labor market program in Germany regarding the number of participants. Little is known about the effectiveness of different types of short-term training, particularly their long-run effects. This paper estimates the effects of short-term training programs in West Germany starting in the time periods 1980–1992 and 2000–2003 on the three outcomes employment, earnings, and participation in long-term training programs. We find that short-term training shows mostly persistently positive and often significant employment effects. Short-term training focusing on testing and monitoring search effort shows slightly smaller effects compared to the pure training variant. The lock-in periods lasted longer in the 1980s and 1990s compared to the early 2000s. Short-term training results in higher future participation in long-term training programs.
Reciprocity is common in economic and social domains, and it has been widely documented in the laboratory. While positive and negative reciprocity are observed in investment and ultimatum games, respectively, prior laboratory studies often neglect the effect of time delays that are common in real-world interactions. This research investigates the effect of time delays on reciprocity in the investment and ultimatum games. We manipulate the time delay after second movers have been informed about the first movers’ decisions. We find that a delay is correlated with fewer rejections in the ultimatum game, but we find no effect of delays in the investment game. A follow-up study explores some of the processes that occur during time delay in the ultimatum game. We find delays correlated to increased reported feelings of satisfaction and decreased reported feelings of disappointment. Increased satisfaction is correlated to an increased probability of rejection, while disappointment has a more complex relationship to the probability of rejection.
Value-based decisions optimize the relation of costs and benefits. Costs and benefits confer not only value but also salience, which may influence decision making through attentional mechanisms. However, the computational and neurobiological role of salience in value-based decisions remains elusive. Here we develop and contrast two formal concepts of salience for value-based choices involving costs and benefits. Specifically, global salience (GS) first integrates costs and benefits and then determines salience based on this overall sum, whereas elemental salience (ES) first determines the salience of costs and benefits before integrating them. We dissociate the behavioral and neural effects of GS and ES from those of value using a value-based decision-making task and fMRI in humans. Specifically, we show that value guides choices and correlates with neural signals in the striatum. In contrast, only ES but not GS impacts decision making by speeding up reaction times. Moreover, activity in the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) reflects only ES and correlates with its response-accelerating behavioral effects. Finally, we report an ES-dependent change in functional connectivity between the RTPJ and the locus ceruleus, suggesting noradrenergic processes underlying the response-facilitating effects of ES on decision making. Together, these results support a novel concept of salience in value-based decision making and suggest a computational, anatomical, and neurochemical dissociation of value- and salience-based factors supporting value-based choices.
Purpose To develop and test a novel method for coil placement in interleaved transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)/functional MRI (fMRI) studies.Materials and Methods Initially, a desired TMS coil position at the subject's head is recorded using a neuronavigation system. Subsequently, a custom-made holding device is used for coil placement inside the MR scanner. The parameters of the device corresponding to the prerecorded position are automatically determined from a fast structural image acquired directly before the experiment. The spatial accuracy of our method was verified on a phantom. Finally, in a study on five subjects, the coil was placed above the cortical representation of a hand muscle in M1 and the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses to short repetitive TMS (rTMS) trains were assessed using echo-planar imaging (EPI) recordings.Results The spatial accuracy of our method is in the range of 2.9 ± 1.3 (SD) mm. Motor cortex stimulation resulted in robust BOLD activations in motor- and auditoryrelated brain areas, with the activation in M1 being localized in the hand knob.Conclusion We present a user-friendly method for TMS coil positioning in the MR scanner that exhibits good spatial accuracy and speeds up the setup of the experiment. The motor-cortex study proves the viability of the approach and validates our interleaved TMS/fMRI setup.
Authority and power permeate political, social, and economic life, but empirical knowledge about the motivational origins and consequences of authority is limited. We study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authority delegation game. Individuals often retain authority even when its delegation is in their material interest—suggesting that authority has nonpecuniary consequences for utility. Authority also leads to over provision of effort by the controlling parties, while a large percentage of subordinates underprovide effort despite pecuniary incentives to the contrary. Authority thus has important motivational consequences that exacerbate the inefficiencies arising from suboptimal delegation choices. {JEL C92, D23, D82)
Das Geschehen auf den Finanzmärkten hängt vom individuellen Verhalten ab, wird aber auch wesentlich bestimmt durch die Ausgestaltung des Finanzsystems, das heisst durch die Rollen, die den einzelnen Akteure zugewiesen werden, und durch die Regeln für die Interaktion der verschiedenen Rollen. Diese Arbeit behandelt nach einleitenden methodischen Vorbemerkungen zunächst die Frage der Verantwortung im gesamtwirtschaftlichen System (Kapitel 2) und beschäftigt sich dann mit der Verantwortung von einflussreichen Rollen und Subsystemen der Wirtschaft. Insbesondere wird diskutiert, was Verantwortung für die Ökonomie und die Finance als wissenschaftliches Disziplin bedeutet (Kapitel 3). Kapitel 4 setzt sich mit dem Finanzsystem auseinander und argumentiert, dass eine Inflation an Finanzprodukten und Finanztransaktionen zu Konfusion und negativen externen Effekten führt, die das Marktgeschehen in der realen Wirtschaft und im Finanzsektor stören. Im abschliessenden fünften Kapitel werden politische Massnahmen zur Herstellung von Ordnung im Finanzsystem dargelegt.
