infonet-economy

The aim of the present paper is to assess the effects of altered dopamine (DA) transmission on the functional connectivity among brain regions mediating aversive conditioning in humans. To this aim, we analyzed a previous published data set from a double-blind design combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings in which healthy volunteers were randomly...

Abstract Previous research on the neural underpinnings of empathy has been limited to affective situations experienced in a similar way by an observer and a target individual. In daily life we also interact with people whose responses to affective stimuli can be very different from our own. How do we understand the affective states of these individuals? We used functional magnetic...

Currently, most studies that employ dynamic causal modeling (DCM) use random-effects (RFX) analysis to make group inferences, applying a second-level frequentist test to subjects' parameter estimates. In some instances, however, fixed-effects (FFX) analysis can be more appropriate. Such analyses can be implemented by combining the subjects' posterior densities according to...

Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. Here we study how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy – the caste system – affectsnindividuals’ willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although we control for individual...

Research on happiness has produced valuable insights into the sources of subjective well-being. A major finding from this literature is that people exhibit a 'baseline' happiness that shows persistent strength over time, and twin studies have shown that genes play a significant role in explaining the variance of baseline happiness between individuals. However, these studies...

The results of a new experimental study reveal highly systematic violations ofnexpected utility theory. The pattern of these violations is exactly the opposite of thenclassical common ratio effect discovered by Allais (1953). Two recent decision theories—nstochastic expected utility theory (Blavatskyy, 2007) and perceived relative argumentnmodel (Loomes, 2008)—predicted the existence...

Although dependence in financial data is pervasive, standard doctoral-level econometrics texts do not make clear that the common central limit theorems (CLTs) contained therein fail when applied to dependent data. More advanced books that are clear in their CLT assumptions do not contain any worked examples of CLTs that apply to dependent data. We address these pedagogical gaps by...

Der Bereich des Zivilgesetzbuches, namentlich das Eherecht - samt Scheidungsrecht - und das Erbrecht, gibt immer wieder Anlass zu höchstrichterlichen Grundsatzentscheiden. Während dies beim Eherecht und beim Scheidungsrecht mit Blick auf eine Vielzahl grösserer und kleinerer, sinnvoller und weniger sinnvoller Revisionen verständlich ist, erstaunt es im Erbrecht, dass zum Teil...