SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Stark, Oded; Behrens, Doris A..

Consider a population of farmers who live around a lake. Each farmer engages in trade with his two adjacent neighbors. The trade is governed by a prisoner’s dilemma “rule of engagement.” A farmer’s payoff is the sum of the payoffs from the two prisoner’s dilemma games played with his two neighbors. When a farmer dies, his son takes over. The son decides whether to cooperate or defect by considering the actions taken and the payoffs received by the most prosperous members of the group comprising his own father and a set of his father’s neighbors. The size of this set, which can vary, is termed the “span of information.” It is shown that a larger span of information can be detrimental to the stable coexistence of cooperation and defection, and that in...

Applications and Interviews. A Structural Analysis of Two-Sided Simultaneous Search

Palavras-chave: Span of interaction; Span of information; Imitation; Social welfare; Community/Rural/Urban Development; D83; R12; O4.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/49924

Asymmetric Search and Loss Aversion: Choice Experiment on Consumer Willingness to Search in the Gasoline Retail Market

Wolthoff, Ronald P..

Much of the job search literature assumes bilateral meetings between workers and firms. This ignores the frictions that arise when meetings are actually multilateral. I analyze the magnitude of these frictions by presenting an equilibrium job search model with an endogenous number of contacts. Workers contact firms by applying to vacancies, whereas firms contact applicants by interviewing them. Sending applications and interviewing applicants are costly activities but increase the probability to match. In equilibrium, contract dispersion arises and workers spread their applications over the different contract types. Estimation of the model on the Employment Opportunities Pilot Projects data set provides values for the cost of an application, the cost of an...

Tipo: Working Paper

Palavras-chave: Directed Search; Recruitment; Stable Matching; Labor Market Frictions; Structural Estimation; Efficiency; Policy Analysis; Labor and Human Capital; J64; J31; D83.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/119114

Castilla, Carolina; Haab, Timothy C..

Price search enables consumers to overcome information asymmetries, it can lead to a reduction in price dispersion and it can increase consumer surplus, but search is costly. In this paper, an internet survey is conducted among a random sample of 490 drivers in the State of Ohio to answer the question, when are consumers more likely to search? The internet survey affords us the opportunity to impose exogenous price changes in a random sample of gasoline consumers to examine the decision-making process behind intended search decisions. Results indicate that among the respondents who faced prices below their expected price, only 12% chose to search, whereas 45% searched when prices were above. Results suggest that asymmetric search can be explained by...

Auction Markets for Specialty Food Products with Geographical Indications

Palavras-chave: Price search; Choice experiment; Search cost; Gasoline market; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; D83; D03.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/61672

Schamel, Guenter.

We present a first analysis of auction markets for specialty food products. We identify auction prices, trade volume and value for domestic and foreign origin specialty ham with geographical indications (GIs) which were actually sold in online auctions in Germany within a one-month period. Applying hedonic modeling, we examine potential factors that may influence online bidding behavior and final auction prices. We estimate positive auction price effects for weight, bidding activity, and auction length, that the domestic product is sold at a discount, that higher shipping cost have a negative impact on final prices, and that auctions ending on Fridays and Saturdays yield lower prices. The model may be used to estimate the value of GIs. In our example, we...

Bilingualism and Communicative Benefits

Palavras-chave: Consumer economics; Geographical indications; Auctions; Information; Marketing; D12; D44; D83.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25606

Gabszewicz, Jean; Ginsburgh, Victor; Weber, Shlomo.

We examine patterns of acquiring non-native languages in a model with two languages and two populations with heterogeneous learning skills, where every individual faces a binary choice of learning the foreign language or refraining from doing so. We show that both interior and corner linguistic equilibria can emerge in our framework, and that the fraction of learners of the foreign language is higher in the country with a higher gross cost adjusted communicative benefit. It turns out that this observation is consistent with the data on language proficiency in bilingual countries such as Belgium and Canada. We also point out that linguistic equilibria can exhibit insufficient learning which opens the door for government policies that are beneficial for both...

CAN INCOME EQUALITY INCREASE COMPETITIVENESS?

Palavras-chave: Communicative Benefits; Linguistic Equilibrium; Learning Costs; Labor and Human Capital; C72; D83; O52; Z13.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6380

Fishman, Arthur; Simhon, Avi.

This paper explores the relationship between income distribution, prices, production efficiency and aggregate output in a decentralized search economy. We show that income distribution determines how competitive the market is, and thereby affects production efficiency and aggregate output. It is shown that it is generally possible to engineer a judicious transfer of income from high to low income individuals which simultaneously increases income equality, competitiveness, and aggregate output.

Can Information Costs Affect Consumer Choice?—Nutritional Labels in a Supermarket Experiment—

Palavras-chave: Search; Price Dispersion; Income Inequality; Consumer/Household Economics; D83.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/14983

Kiesel, Kristin; Villas-Boas, Sofia Berto.

This paper investigates whether information costs under currently regulated nutritional labeling prevent consumers from making healthier food choices. We implement five nutritional shelf label treatments in a market-level experiment. These labels reduce information costs by highlighting and summarizing information available on the Nutritional Facts Panel. Following a difference-in-differences and synthetic control method approach, we analyze weekly store-level scanner data for microwave popcorn purchases from treatment and control stores. Our results suggest that consumer purchases are affected by information costs. Implemented low calorie and no trans fat labels increase sales. In contrast, implemented low fat labels decrease sales, suggesting that...

Carbon Labeling for Consumer Food Goods

Palavras-chave: Nutritional labeling; Information cost; Scanner data; Market-level experiment; Difference-in-differences; Synthetic control method; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; C93; D01; D18; D83; L51.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/116433

Shewmake, Sharon; Okrent, Abigail M.; Thabrew, Lanka; Vandenbergh, Michael.

We construct a model to predict how consumers will respond to better information about the carbon content of 42 foods and a nonfood composite as well as product categories through a label, and provide guidance as to what kinds of goods would provide the highest CO¬2eq emission reductions through a labeling scheme. Our model assumes that consumers value their individual carbon footprint, allowing us to utilize estimates of own- and cross-price elasticities of demand from the literature on demand analysis. We make three different assumptions about how consumers currently value their carbon footprint and find that when a label informs consumers, their baseline perception matters. We also find that carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest...

Tipo: Presentation

Palavras-chave: Carbon emissions; Food labeling; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; Q53; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/124369

Confirmatory Bias under Food-Borne Risk: A Lab Experiment

Cao, Ying; Just, David R.; Wansink, Brian.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the interaction between consumers’ past eating behaviors, risk perceptions and future information processing procedure. In the study, participants were required to choose whether or not to eat chicken that was potentially be tainted with Avian Influenza (AI). Results showed that people decreased the consumption when facing ambiguous signals regarding the food quality, but would not cease to eat altogether. Due to a taste of consistency, participants updated their risk perceptions and judgments based on their eating behaviors. The more chicken individuals ate the more favorably they tended to rate the food, suggesting confirmatory bias. Even though consumers with previous experience could pick up signals faster,...

Crime and Education in a Model of Information Transmission

Palavras-chave: Cognitive Dissonance; Confirmation Bias; Self-compliance; Justification; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Marketing; Risk and Uncertainty; D03; D12; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/61312

Cortes, Darwin; Friebel, Guido; Maldonado, Dario.

We model the decisions of young individuals to stay in school or drop-out and engage in criminal activities. We build on the literature on human capital and crime engagement and use the framework of Banerjee (1993) that assumes that the information needed to engage in crime arrives in the form of a rumor and that individuals update their beliefs about the profitability of crime relative to education. These assumptions allow us to study the effect of social interactions on crime. We first show that a society with fully rational students is less vulnerable to crime than an otherwise identical society with boundedly rational students. We also investigate the spillovers from the actions of talented students to less talented students and show that policies that...

Definitions of Biodiversity and Measures of Its Value

Palavras-chave: Human Capital; The Economics of Rumors; Social Interactions; Urban Economics; Labor and Human Capital; D82; D83; I28.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/96845

Simpson, R. David.

The destruction of natural habitats has prompted concerns about the loss of biological diversity. Regrettably, however, there is no consensus among either biologists or economists on the most meaningful measures of biodiversity. Fundamentally different definitions are useful in asking fundamentally different questions. Considerable attention has been given to the value of diversity in search models. A measure of "aggregate variability" is appropriate to such models. Values derived from search models tend to be well behaved; they exhibit diminishing returns in diversity. In contrast, a definition of diversity as "relative abundance" is more appropriate to more complex objective functions. Values derived in these models are not necessarily well behaved. The...

Dynamic Processes in Contingent Valuation: A Case Study Involving the Mahogany Glider

Palavras-chave: Biological diversity; Biodiversity; Diversity index; Abundance; Search; Variability; Consistency; Contingent valuation; Diminishing returns; Increasing returns; Environmental Economics and Policy; D43; D83; Q20.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10551

Tisdell, Clement A.; Wilson, Clevo; Swarna Nantha, Hemanath.

This paper reports the results of an experiment involving a sample of 204 members of the public who were assessed on three occasions about their willingness to pay for the conservation of the mahogany glider. They were asked this question prior to information being provided to them about the glider and other focal wildlife species; after such information was provided, and finally after participants had had an opportunity to see live specimens of this glider. The mean willingness to pay of the relevant samples are compared and found to show significant variations. Theories are considered that help explain the dynamics of these variations. Serious concerns are raised about the capacity of information provision to reveal ‘true’ contingent valuations of public...

Dynamic Quotas with Learning

Palavras-chave: Awareness; Contingent valuation; Dynamic processes; Experiential learning; Information; Wildlife; Willingness to pay; Environmental Economics and Policy; D83; D84; Q51; Q57.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/51414

Karp, Larry S.; Costello, Christopher.

We study the optimal quota sequence, in a stationary environment, where a regulator and a non-strategic firm have asymmetric information, The regulator is able to learn about the unknown cost parameter by using a quota that is slack with positive probability, It is never optimal for the regulator to learn gradually, In the first period, he either ignores the possibility of learning, or he tries to improve his information, Regardless of the outcome in the first period, he never experiments in subsequent periods.

Palavras-chave: Quotas; Asymmetric information; Searching; International Relations/Trade; D83; L50.

Ano: 2000

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6245

Filtering with Search

Taub, Bart.

A firm monopsonistically hires labor from a pool containing both skilled and unskilled workers. The marginal value of a worker depends on the match between the job and the worker's skill level. Unskilled workers can have negative productivity if they are placed in a skilled job. The firm cannot distinguish the two types. The workers are initially dispersed and search for the high wage jobs from the firm. The workers' skill levels are correlated with their patience; equivalently, they obtain indirect benefits, such as non-firm-specific career capital, from jobs that use their skill appropriately. By judiciously choosing different wages for different types of jobs, the firm can partially filter the appropriate worker types and match them with the appropriate...

Financial and Risk Management Assistance: Decision Support for Agriculture

Palavras-chave: Labor and Human Capital; C73; D83; E24; J64.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/26256

Klose, Steven L.; Outlaw, Joe L..

The Financial and Risk Management (FARM) Assistance program created by Texas Cooperative Extension is a strategic analysis service offered to farmers and ranchers in Texas. The program serves as an example of large-scale, focused programming by extension agencies, as well as the implementation of technical stochastic simulation methods for use on the farm.

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Decision information; Decision support system; Extension programming; Farm level analysis; Outreach; Simulation; Q16; Q12; C15; D83.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/43516

Focussing on Consumer Attention: Price-Quality Relationships and Reputation Indicators

Schamel, Guenter.

In Germany, the focus of agricultural policy is now "the consumer". In the aftermath of the BSE crisis, farmers are encouraged to produce higher quality "ecological" food for which consumers are willing to pay more. Food is an experience good and quality signals are becoming a more important determinant of the prices received. However, given consumers' cognitive limitations, all signals can not receive equal attention. We argue that consumer attention to product quality signals increases with its producer's quality performance, and given attention spillovers (collective reputation), with the expertise of associated producers. Over time, collective reputations should have an effect on price when attention (or quality performance) is low, but should lose...

Global Warming and Hyperbolic Discounting

Palavras-chave: Food and beverages; Consumer economics; Regional and producer reputation; Consumer/Household Economics; L66; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24933

Karp, Larry S..

The use of a constant discount rate to study long-lived environmental problems such as global warming has two disadvantages: the prescribed policy is sensitive to the discount rate, and with moderate discount rates, large future damages have almost no effect on current decisions. Time-consistent quasi-hyperbolic discounting alleviates both of these modeling problems, and is a plausible description of how people think about the future. We analyze the time-consistent Markov Perfect equilibrium in a general model with a stock pollutant. The solution to the linear-quadratic specialization illustrates the role of hyperbolic discounting in a model of global warming.

Hog Producers' Risk Management Attitudes and Desire for Additional Risk Management Education

Palavras-chave: Stock pollutant; Hyperbolic discounting; Global warming; Time consistency; Environmental Economics and Policy; D83; L50.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25069

Patrick, George F.; Peiter, Amy J.; Knight, Thomas O.; Coble, Keith H.; Baquet, Alan E..

Hog producers in Indiana and Nebraska were surveyed about sources of risk, effectiveness of risk management strategies, and prior participation in and desire for additional risk management education. Ownership of hogs by the producer, size of the operation, and age did have significant effects on ratings of both sources of risk and effectiveness of risk management strategies. Probit analysis found age, prior attendance, knowledge and prior use of the tool, level of integration, and concern about price and performance risk have significant effects on interest in further education about production contracts, futures and options, packer marketing contracts, and financial management.

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Financial management; Futures and options; Packer marketing contracts; Production contracts; Risk attitudes; Risk management; D81; D83; Q12; Q16.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/37110

How Homophily Affects Learning and Diffusion in Networks

Golub, Benjamin; Jackson, Matthew O..

We examine how three different communication processes operating through social networks are affected by homophily - the tendency of individuals to associate with others similar to themselves. Homophily has no effect if messages are broadcast or sent via shortest paths; only connection density matters. In contrast, homophily substantially slows learning based on repeated averaging of neighbors' information and Markovian diffusion processes such as the Google random surfer model. Indeed, the latter processes are strongly affected by homophily but completely independent of connection density, provided this density exceeds a low threshold. We obtain these results by establishing new results on the spectra of large random graphs and relating the spectra to...

How to Win Schumpeterian Competition. Technological Transfers in the German Plastics Industry from the 1930s to the 1970s

Palavras-chave: Networks; Learning; Diffusion; Homophily; Friendships; Social Networks; Random Graphs; Mixing Time; Convergence; Speed of Learning; Speed of Convergence; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; D83; D85; I21; J15; Z13.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50718

Streb, Jochen.

Introducing the concept of innovation capital we will analyse conditions under which a national industry is able to succeed in international Schumpeterian competition. Then we will discuss the significance of this concept for the economic development of the German plastics industry from the 1930s to the 1970s. Using a repeated game model of technological cooperation we will especially focus on technological transfers from chemical firms to plastics fabricators. We will deploy both a microeconomic approach when viewing product innovations transferred by the so-called Kunststoffrohstoffabteilung (KURO) of chemical firm BASF, and a macroeconomic approach when looking at the development of total factor productivity in the German plastics fabricating industry....