infonet-economy

Humans and other primates have evolved the ability to represent their status in the group's social hierarchy, which is essential for avoiding harm and accessing resources. Yet it remains unclear how the human brain learns dominance status and adjusts behavior accordingly during dynamic social interactions. Here we address this issue with a combination of fMRI and transcranial...

Considered are imperfectly discriminating contests in which players may possess private information about the primitives of the confiict, such as the contest technology, valuations of the prize, cost functions, and budget constraints. We find general conditions under which a given contest of this sort admits a unique pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. In particular, provided that all...

This paper studies fictitious play in networks of noncooperative two-player games. We show that continuous-time fictitious play converges to Nash equilibrium provided that the overall game is zero-sum. Moreover, the rate of convergence is 1/T , regardless of the size of the network. In contrast, arbitrary n-player zero-sum games do not possess the fictitious-play property. As an...

The gains from insurance arise from the transfer of income across states. Yet, by requiring that the premium be paid upfront, standard insurance products also transfer income across time. We show that this intertemporal transfer can help explain low insurance demand, especially among the poor, and in a randomized control trial in Kenya we test a crop insurance product which removes...

Werden bald Roboter den Menschen ersetzen? Der renommierte Schweizer Ökonom David Dorn über die Angst um den Arbeitsplatz, die Abneigung gegen den Freihandel und zur Frage, ob Computer die Wirtschaft wirklich produktiver machen.

Multi-echo fMRI data acquisition has been widely investigated and suggested to optimize sensitivity for detecting the BOLD signal. Several methods have also been proposed for the combination of data with different echo times. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether these advanced echo combination methods provide advantages over the simple averaging of echoes when...

Gamma and beta oscillations are routinely observed in motor-related brain circuits during movement preparation and execution. Entrainment of gamma or beta oscillations via transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over primary motor cortex (M1) has opposite effects on motor performance, suggesting a causal role of these brain rhythms for motor control. However, it is...

Trump droht Ländern, die im Handel mit den USA Überschüsse erzielen, mit Strafzöllen. Das könnte auch die Schweiz treffen, so Wirtschaftsprofessor David Dorn.

In this a paper a non-linear macro stress testing methodology with focus on early warning is developed. The methodology builds on a variant of Random Forests and its proximity measures. It is embedded in a framework, in which naturally defined contagion and feedback effects transfer the impact of stressing a relatively small part of the observations on the whole dataset, allowing to...