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Essays in Applied Microeconomics

其他書名	Risk, Conflict, and Charity
出版	University of Wyoming, 2016
ISBN	13690943299781369094329
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=tumEAQAACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Contributing to the work of behavioral economics, this dissertation incorporates behavioral insights into the economics of risk, conflict, and charity in three independent chapters. The first chapter formalizes peoples attempts to eliminate worst-case scenarios using an expected utility framework. This is done by incorporating a new risk reduction techniquestate-protectioninto the endogenous risk framework. State-protection adds endogeneity over outcomes to risk-reduction decisions, and it can substitute or complement self-protection depending on how is incorporated; this creates a more general framework that nests previous models of self-protection. In the model, state-protection is shown to follow standard marginal conditions under expected utility, and allows for perceived risk to be modeled. The existence of state-protection can decrease peoples willingness to participate in aggregategovernment-sponsoredprotection programs, such as flood protection or climate change mitigation. The second chapter studies the effect of polarization in conflicts betweenand withinalliances. The problem of polarized alliances is analyzed using a computer-based game in which subjects participate in sequential between- and within-alliance contests, and polarization is imposed as asymmetric income among alliance members. The experiment consisted of three stages: in the first stage subjects were asked to earn points by performing a task in the computer. In the second stage subjects were paired and asked to contest against another pairfor the rights to a prizeusing the points earned. In the third stage subjects had to contest against their partner for the prize. Results from the experiment suggest induced income inequality (polarization) affects conflict between alliancesdecreasing contributions to the allianceand within alliancesincreasing spending in internal fightswhen sharing agreements do not exist and prizes are exogenous. The third chapter studies the relationship between productivity and charitable giving using a computer-based economic laboratory experiment. The experiment consisted of two games; in the first game subjects were grouped and asked to perform a real-effort task. Later, subjects were ranked according to their relative effort and paid depending on their ranks; at the same time subjects were given the option to transfer earnings to other group members. In the second game the option of giving was separated into giving outcomes (transfer money) and giving opportunities (transfer lottery tickets). The results indicate no direct relationship between productivity and charitable giving in terms of outcomes (money), contradicting results from previous works. However, a relationship is found between productivity and the giving of opportunities (tickets); subjects with higher productivity tend to give fewer opportunities than subjects with lower productivity.