149 research outputs found
«Man schubst immer in eine Richtung», sagt der Verhaltensökonom Nick Netzer. «Es gibt kein Nicht-Nudging.»
No full textZur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels auf Nudging zu setzen, sei der falsche Ansatz, sagt der Verhaltensökonom Nick Netzer im Interview. Bei diesem Thema seien direkte Staatseingriffe notwendig
Lydia Netzer, 36th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textLydia Netzer is the author of Shine, Shine, Shine. She was born in Detroit and educated in the Midwest. She lives in Virginia with her two home-schooled children and math -making husband. When she isn\u27t working as a book doctor, blogging, or drafting her second novel, she writes songs and plays guitar in a rock band called The Virginia Janes
Optimal contest design: tuning the heat
No full textWe consider the design of contests when the principal can choose both the prize profile and how the prizes are allocated as a function of a possibly noisy signal about the agents' efforts. We provide sufficient conditions that guarantee optimality of a contest. Optimal contests have a minimally competitive prize profile and an intermediate degree of competitiveness in the contest success function. Whenever observation is not too noisy, the optimum can be achieved by an all-pay contest with a cap. When observation is perfect, the optimum can also be achieved by a nested Tullock contest. We relate our results to a recent literature which has asked similar questions but has typically focused on the design of either the prize profile or the contest success function
Delegating performance evaluation
No full textWe study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance is evaluated by a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal fixes a set of prizes to be allocated to the agents, is optimal. By using a contest, the principal can commit to sustaining incentives despite the reviewer’s potential leniency bias. The optimal effort profile can be uniquely implemented by an all-pay auction with a cap. Our analysis has implications for various applications, such as the design of worker compensation or the allocation of research grants
Competitive Screening in Insurance Markets with Endogenous Wealth Heterogeneity
No full textWe examine equilibria in competitive insurance markets with adverse selection when wealth differences arise endogenously from unobservable savings or labor supply decisions. The endogeneity of wealth implies that high risk individuals may ceteris paribus exhibit the lower marginal willingness to pay for insurance than low risks, a phenomenon that we refer to as irregular-crossing preferences. In our model, both risk and patience (or productivity) are privately observable. In contrast to the models in the existing literature, where wealth heterogeneity is exogenously assumed, equilibria in our model no longer exhibit a monotone relation between risk and coverage. Individuals who purchase larger coverage are no longer higher risks, a phenomenon frequently observed in empirical studies.Insurance Markets, Adverse Selection, Multidimensional Screening
Lobbying and the Power of Multinational Firms
No full textAre national or multinational firms better lobbyists? This paper analyzes the extent of national environmental regulation when policy is determined in a lobbying game between a government and firm. We compare the resulting regulation levels for national and multinational firms. We identify three countervailing forces, the easier-to-shut-down effect, the easier-to-curb-exports effect and the multiple-plant effect. The interplay of these three forces determines whether national or multinational firms produce more, depending on such parameters as the potential environmental damages, transportation costs and the in uence of the firm. We also show that welfare levels are higher with multinational firms than with national firms when there is no lobbying, but that lobbying can reverse the welfare ordering.Multinational enterprises, regulation, policy formation, lobbying, interest groups, foreign direct investment
Competitive Screening in Insurance Markets with Endogenous Labor Supply
No full textWe examine equilibria in competitive insurance markets when individuals take unobservable labor supply decisions. Precautionary labor motives intro-duce countervailing incentives in the insurance market, and equilibria with positive profits can occur even in the standard case in which individuals exogenously differ in risk only. We then extend the model to allow for both privately known risks and labor productivities. This endogenously introduces two-dimensional heterogeneity in the insurance market since precautionary labor effects lead to differences in income and hence risk aversion. Under these circumstances, separating and pooling equilibria exist, which generally differ from those with exogenous two-dimensional heterogeneity considered by the existing literature. Notably, in contrast to standard screening models, profits may be increasing with insurance coverage, and the correlation between risk and coverage can be zero or negative in equilibrium, a phenomenon frequently observed in empirical studies.Insurance markets, adverse selection, precautionary labor
The outlook for the metropolitan area
No full textThe author assesses the region's future and identifies policies that might improve the local outlook. He acknowledges that substantial cuts in the local tax burden could increase growth but doubts whether local governments could afford such widespread reductions. Instead, he argues, it would be more beneficial for authorities to seek ways to lower the cost of doing business in the region, possibly by reducing taxes levied on intermediate goods and services purchased by businesses.New York (N.Y.) ; Federal Reserve District, 2nd
Clinical commentary by Antje Netzer-Stein, child and adolescent psychotherapist and psychoanalyst
No full textThe author reflects on the case of a 16-year-old girl with psychosomatic symptoms and underwent psychotherapy and specifically teenagers' tendency to struggle between regressive tendencies and be more independent. A background of the girl is provided who is an only child of separated parents and suffered several traumatic separations as a child. Also examined are the mental health of her mother and the dynamics between mother and daughter
Optimal Contest Design: A General Approach
No full textWe consider the design of contests for n agents when the principal can choose both the prize profile and the contest success function. Our framework includes Tullock contests, Lazear-Rosen tournaments and all-pay contests as special cases, among others. We show that the optimal contest has an intermediate degree of competitiveness in the contest success function, and a minimally competitive prize profile with n−1 identical prizes. The optimum can be achieved with a nested Tullock contest. We extend the model to allow for imperfect performance measurement and
for heterogeneous agents. We relate our results to a recent literature which has asked similar questions but has typically focused on the design of either the prize profile or the contest success functio
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