infonet-economy

Successful decision making in a social setting depends on our ability to understand the intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. The mirror system allows us to understand other people's motor actions and action intentions. ‘Empathy’ allows us to understand and share emotions and sensations with others. ‘Theory of mind’ allows us to understand more abstract concepts such as beliefs or wishes in others. In all these cases, evidence has accumulated that we use the specific neural networks engaged in processing mental states in ourselves to understand the same mental states in others. However, the magnitude of the brain activity in these shared networks is modulated by contextual appraisal of the situation or the other person. An important feature of decision making in a social setting concerns the interaction of reason and emotion. We consider four domains where such interactions occur: our sense of fairness, altruistic punishment, trust and framing effects. In these cases, social motivations and emotions compete with each other, while higher-level control processes modulate the interactions of these low-level biases.

The influence of the environment and genetics on individual biological characteristics such as body mass and stature is well known. Many studies of these relationships have been based on conscript data. These studies often suffer from the fact that their data cover only a part of the population. Characterized by prosperity, democratic stability and enormous micro-regional cultural diversity, Switzerland is in the unique situation of offering data covering more than 80% of annual male birth cohorts.
The aim of this study is to assess the impact of socio-economic success, cultural differences, month of birth and altitude (among other factors) on individual anthropometric characteristics of conscripts (N~28,000) in the 2005 census. Our result highlights in such a large male sample the relationship between economic environment, regional cultural diversity, climate and other factors such as individual month of birth on stature and weight. Socioeconomic status, culture (as reflected by mother tongue) and month of birth were found to have significant effects on height and weight, while altitude did not show such effects. In general, weight is more affected by all these variables than height. Taking weight-dependent mortality and morbidity into account, it is of foremost
public interest to know more about paired effects of living conditions on stature and weight in a highly developed society.

Question under study: Affected by individual life style, total cholesterol serum level is a major morbidity and mortality risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD). We present total cholesterol values and possible etiological factors of young Swiss conscripts. Particularly, we focus on the varying impact of such a component depending on different levels of individual cholesterol.

Methods: Male conscripts (n=19’272) of the 2005 census of the conscripts have been examined, reflecting ca. 59% of a total Swiss male citizen birth cohort. Quantile regression allows us to analyze the reagibility of arbitrary quantiles with respect to variables of interest.

Results: Eleven percent of all conscripts show an increased total cholesterol level. A major association of high individual cholesterol level is with French mother tongue. The largest socio-economic subsample – agricultural and construction sectors – show significantly higher individual cholesterol levels than employees in the industry sector and students, respectively.

Conclusions: We were able to find and exclude various as yet unstudied factors influencing individual total cholesterol levels. Such a screening programme offers a unique opportunity to target persons at high-risk for CVD morbidity and mortality already early in life.

Europe comprises a large number of large and small countries with varying internal rules and norms, and the differences are still remarkable.1 The literature on varieties of capitalism, for example, highlights common features for some of the European countries during specific periods of time, and even within the European Union not convergence, but instead uneasy rivalry, seems to have prevailed.2 Swiss firms had to take into account different national rules if they wanted to successfully do business with and in these countries. Furthermore, the cultural diversity and the federal structure of Switzerland led to the evolution of a variety of rules within the country itself. Firms were thus used to coping with different legal and cultural systems both at home and abroad.

The book provides a simple, intuitive introduction to regression models for qualitative and discrete dependent variables, to sample selection models, and to event history models, all in the context of maximum likelihood estimation. It presents a wide range of commonly used models. The book thereby enables the reader to become a critical consumer of current empirical social science research and to conduct own empirical analyses. The book includes numerous examples, illustrations, and exercises. It can be used as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate, a Master`s or a first-year Ph.D. course in microdata analysis, and as a reference for practitioners and researchers.

This book concentrates on how small European countries coped with economic integration and disintegration during the twentieth century. Small countries had to adapt flexibly to the drastically changing conditions outside their borders. They had to find ways of maintaining their political autonomy notwithstanding their economic dependence, and they have been quite successful in accomplishing this difficult balancing act. The authors analyse how small countries responded to the challenges of the international system and describe the different policies and strategies pursued by governments, industries and firms. Originating from the XIII. Congress of the International Economic History Association (IEHA), the contributions to this volume offer new perspectives on a widely debated topic and contribute to a better understanding of the current process of globalisation in small and large countries. The volume is divided into three sections: I. Coping with Different Regimes for International Trade and Changing Competitiveness; II. From an Open World Economy to Economic Disintegration and Protectionism; III. Trade Liberalisation, European Integration and Deregulation.

Most economic models are limited to analyzing the behavior of a representative agent and, consequently, make the implicit assumption that either individuals are homogeneous
or that individual heterogeneity does not matter for the aggregate outcome. However, recent empirical evidence in experimental economics indicates that under strategic complementarity a minority of irrational agents may, indeed, drive the market's outcome. To avoid potential aggregation bias, researchers in empirical economics should take individual heterogeneity into account, which results in the following trade-off: on the one hand, a representative agent approach, which is parsimonious and easy to interpret, completely neglects heterogeneity, but on the other hand, estimating economic behavior at the individual level, which requires a lot of parameters and results in a plethora of estimates, may demand too much from the data. To escape this dilemma, empirical economists may apply finite mixture models, which offer a compromise between completely ignoring individual heterogeneity and running into difficulties when estimating individual by individual. This thesis comprises four independent applications of finite mixture regression models. The first three experimental studies are part of a comprehensive research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and discuss the identification and stability of
two different behavioral types of decision makers in the domain of risk. The last essay applies a finite mixture model to the German Socio-Economic Panel to segregate the share of altruists from the rest of the population which is assumed to be selfish.

Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Die in der experimentellen Wirtschaftsforschung gängigen ökonometrischen Modelle schätzen häufig das Verhalten eines repräsentativen Individuums. Dem liegt die implizite Annahme
zu Grunde, dass sich die Individuen entweder homogen verhalten, oder aber individuelle Heterogenität keinen Einfluss auf das aggregierte Verhalten ausübt. Neuere empirische und theoretische Evidenz zeigt jedoch, dass in imperfekten Märkten - insbesondere unter strategischer Komplementarität - eine Minderheit irrationaler Agenten das Marktgleichgewicht stark beeinflussen kann. Um Verzerrungen bei der Aggregation zu vermeiden, sollten in solchen Situationen individuelle Unterschiede zwingend berücksichtigt werden. Typischerweise stehen aber bei Experimentaldaten zu wenige Beobachtungen pro Individuum
zur Verfügung, um komplexe Verhaltensmodelle auf individueller Ebene schätzen zu können. Finite Mixture Modelle bieten hier einen guten Kompromiss zwischen einem
Repräsentativen Agenten Modell und einer Schätzung auf individueller Ebene: Sie erlauben es eine bestimmte Anzahl Verhaltenstypen zu identifizieren und jedes einzelne
Individuum endogen einem dieser Verhaltenstypen zuzuordnen. Damit erfassen sie einerseits den entscheidenden Teil der individuellen Heterogenität, nämlich die Existenz verschiedener Verhaltenstypen, und benötigen andererseits deutliche weniger Parameter als eine Schätzung auf individueller Ebene.

Diese Arbeit umfasst vier unabhängige Anwendungen von Finite Mixture Modellen. Die ersten drei experimentellen Studien sind Teil eines vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds
unterstützten Forschungsprojekts zur Charakterisierung verschiedener Verhaltenstypen bei Entscheidungen unter Risiko. In der vierten Studie wird mit einem Finite Mixture
Modell der Anteil an Altruisten in einer Teilstichprobe des Deutschen Haushaltspanels identifiziert.