1,721,000 research outputs found

    Risky choices in strategic environments: An experimental investigation of a real options game

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    Managers frequently make decisions under conditions of fundamental uncertainty due the stochastic nature of the outcomes and competitive rivalry. In this study, we experimentally test a theoretical model under fundamental uncertainty and competitive rivalry by designing a sequential interaction game between two players. The first mover can decide either to choose a sure outcome that assigns a risky outcome to the second mover or to pass the decision to the second mover. If the second player gets the chance to decide, she can choose between a sure outcome, conditioned by the assignment of a risky payoff to the first mover, or the sharing of the risky outcome with the first mover. We then introduce the following experimental treatments: (i) relegating second-mover participants to a purely passive role and substituting them with a random device (absence of strategic uncertainty - that is, when the source of uncertainty is a human subject); (ii) providing information about the behaviour of second-mover counterparts; and (iii) completely removing the second-mover participant.We find that decision makers are sensitive to the presence or absence of strategic uncertainty; indeed, in the presence of strategic uncertainty, first movers more often diverge from the behaviour predicted by the model. Given our experimental results, the theoretical model needs to be revisited. The standard model of monetary payoff-maximizing agents should be substituted by one of decision makers who maximize a utility function which includes the psychological cost induced by strategic uncertainty. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V

    The Circulation of Worthless Tokens Aids Cooperation: An Experiment Inspired by the Kula

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    Many anthropological records exist of seemingly worthless tokens exchanged in traditional societies. The most famous instances of such tokens are probably the Kula necklaces and armbands first described by B. Malinowski. In our experiment, each participant can send a token to another participant before each round of a repeated public good game. We use as examples of tokens a bracelet built by the participants in the lab, a simple piece of cardboard provided by the experimenter, and an object brought from home by the participants. Notwithstanding the cheap-talk nature of the decision to send the token, both sending and receiving the token are associated with a significant increase in contributions to the public good. Regression analysis shows that contributions to the public good in the treatments featuring a bracelet and a cardboard piece are higher than in a control study. The home object appears not to have been equally useful in increasing contributions

    Trust and trustworthiness in organizations: the role of monitoring and moral suasion

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    We ask whether the corporate law provisions establishing that the conduct of the manager is subject to review by the investors (monitoring) and that managers are held to an honorable behavior (moral suasion) can increase trust and trustworthiness in organizations. We answer this question through a laboratory experiment. We find that moral suasion increases the investors' trust. Monitoring also increases trust but only when the manager is not aware of the experimental identity of the monitor. The manager returns more to those investors who trust more but appropriates around 50% of the available resources. The trustworthiness of the manager is, however, unaffected by monitoring or moral suasion. We discuss possible causes of the difference between the investors' expectations regarding the behavior of the manager and the observed behavior of the manager.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Color and abundance: Influencing children's food choices

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    Packaging color and product availability are factors influencing consumer preferences. However, their impact on children's choices is scarce. The current research examines whether the size of the set of items and the packaging color might shape children's choices. In three experiments (N = 887), we investigated the effect of these two variables on children's choices of food items in a laboratory setting. The results showed that food items provided in larger piles of identical products were preferred to those provided in smaller piles of identical products, even though children could only choose one item to take away, showing evidence of an "abundance bias". In addition, food products packaged in red were preferred to those packaged in green. A moderation effect was also observed whereby children preferred red-packaged items more when offered within a larger group of identical items (abundance) and less when offered within a smaller group of identical items. The findings provide insight into the psychology of color and abundance as choice attractors in children's consumer preferences for food products

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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