Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
427,505
result(s) for
"Economic theory"
Sort by:
Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form
During a tumultuous period when financial speculation began rapidly to outpace industrial production and consumption, Victorian financial journalists commonly explained the instability of finance by criticizing its inherent artifice drawing persistent attention to what they called \"fictitious capital.\" In a shift that naturalized this artifice, this critique of fictitious capital virtually disappeared by the 1860s, being replaced by notions of fickle investor psychology and mental equilibrium encapsulated in the fascinating metaphor of \"psychic economy.\" In close rhetorical readings of financial journalism, political economy, and the works of Dickens, Eliot, and Trollope, Kornbluh examines the psychological framing of economics, one of the nineteenth century's most enduring legacies, reminding us that the current dominant paradigm for understanding financial crisis has a history of its own. She shows how novels illuminate this displacement and ironize ideological metaphors linking psychology and economics, thus demonstrating literature's unique facility for evaluating ideas in process. Inheritors of this novelistic project, Marx and Freud each advance a critique of psychic economy that refuses to naturalize capitalism.
eBook
Poverty and economic decision making: a review of scarcity theory
Poverty is associated with a wide range of counterproductive economic behaviors. Scarcity theory proposes that poverty itself induces a scarcity mindset, which subsequently forces the poor into suboptimal decisions and behaviors. The purpose of our work is to provide an integrated, up-to-date, critical review of this theory. To this end, we reviewed the empirical evidence for three fundamental propositions: (1) Poverty leads to attentional focus and neglect causing overborrowing, (2) poverty induces trade-off thinking resulting in more consistent consumption decisions, and (3) poverty reduces mental bandwidth and subsequently increases time discounting and risk aversion. Our findings indicate that the current literature predominantly confirms the first and second proposition, although methodological issues prevent a firm conclusion. Evidence for the third proposition was not conclusive. Additionally, we evaluated the overall status of scarcity theory. Although the theory provides an original, coherent, and parsimonious explanation for the relationship between financial scarcity and economic decision making, the theory does not fully accord with the data and lacks some precision. We conclude that both theoretical and empirical work are needed to build a stronger theory.
Journal Article
Multiple hypothesis testing in experimental economics
The analysis of data from experiments in economics routinely involves testing multiple null hypotheses simultaneously. These different null hypotheses arise naturally in this setting for at least three different reasons: when there are multiple outcomes of interest and it is desired to determine on which of these outcomes a treatment has an effect; when the effect of a treatment may be heterogeneous in that it varies across subgroups defined by observed characteristics and it is desired to determine for which of these subgroups a treatment has an effect; and finally when there are multiple treatments of interest and it is desired to determine which treatments have an effect relative to either the control or relative to each of the other treatments. In this paper, we provide a bootstrap-based procedure for testing these null hypotheses simultaneously using experimental data in which simple random sampling is used to assign treatment status to units. Using the general results in Romano and Wolf (Ann Stat 38:598–633,
2010
), we show under weak assumptions that our procedure (1) asymptotically controls the familywise error rate—the probability of one or more false rejections—and (2) is asymptotically balanced in that the marginal probability of rejecting any true null hypothesis is approximately equal in large samples. Importantly, by incorporating information about dependence ignored in classical multiple testing procedures, such as the Bonferroni and Holm corrections, our procedure has much greater ability to detect truly false null hypotheses. In the presence of multiple treatments, we additionally show how to exploit logical restrictions across null hypotheses to further improve power. We illustrate our methodology by revisiting the study by Karlan and List (Am Econ Rev 97(5):1774–1793,
2007
) of why people give to charitable causes.
Journal Article
General diagnostic tests for cross-sectional dependence in panels
This paper proposes simple tests of error cross-sectional dependence which are applicable to a variety of panel data models, including stationary and unit root dynamic heterogeneous panels with short T and large N. The proposed tests are based on the average of pair-wise correlation coefficients of the OLS residuals from the individual regressions in the panel and can be used to test for cross-sectional dependence of any fixed order p, as well as the case where no a priori ordering of the cross-sectional units is assumed, referred to as CD(p) and CD tests, respectively. Asymptotic distribution of these tests is derived and their power function analyzed under different alternatives. It is shown that these tests are correctly centred for fixed N and T and are robust to single or multiple breaks in the slope coefficients and/or error variances. The small sample properties of the tests are investigated and compared to the Lagrange multiplier test of Breusch and Pagan using Monte Carlo experiments. It is shown that the tests have the correct size in very small samples and satisfactory power, and, as predicted by the theory, they are quite robust to the presence of unit roots and structural breaks. The use of the CD test is illustrated by applying it to study the degree of dependence in per capita output innovations across countries within a given region and across countries in different regions. The results show significant evidence of cross-dependence in output innovations across many countries and regions in the World.
Journal Article
Handbook on the economics and theory of the firm
The title of the handbook makes reference to the economics of the firm and the theory of the firm, two areas which are traditionally treated separately in the literature. The novel idea of this authoritative volume is to demonstrate that these two areas closely interact.
Book
Conducting interactive experiments online
Online labor markets provide new opportunities for behavioral research, but conducting economic experiments online raises important methodological challenges. This particularly holds for interactive designs. In this paper, we provide a methodological discussion of the similarities and differences between interactive experiments conducted in the laboratory and online. To this end, we conduct a repeated public goods experiment with and without punishment using samples from the laboratory and the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk. We chose to replicate this experiment because it is long and logistically complex. It therefore provides a good case study for discussing the methodological and practical challenges of online interactive experimentation. We find that basic behavioral patterns of cooperation and punishment in the laboratory are replicable online. The most important challenge of online interactive experiments is participant dropout. We discuss measures for reducing dropout and show that, for our case study, dropouts are exogenous to the experiment. We conclude that data quality for interactive experiments via the Internet is adequate and reliable, making online interactive experimentation a potentially valuable complement to laboratory studies.
Journal Article