Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150101032
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$378,000.00
Summary
Economic analysis of peer effects in adolescence and adulthood. Although healthier, stronger and better at reasoning than young children, adolescents' morbidity and mortality rates are double those of young children. Unintentional injury, mostly avoidable and attributed to wrong decisions, is the biggest cause of death and hospitalisation among adolescents in Australia. Peer presence is likely to be a major cause of adolescents' inferior decision-making. This project aims to use experimental eco ....Economic analysis of peer effects in adolescence and adulthood. Although healthier, stronger and better at reasoning than young children, adolescents' morbidity and mortality rates are double those of young children. Unintentional injury, mostly avoidable and attributed to wrong decisions, is the biggest cause of death and hospitalisation among adolescents in Australia. Peer presence is likely to be a major cause of adolescents' inferior decision-making. This project aims to use experimental economics methods to study how peer presence affects the parameters of the economic decision model, specifically risk tolerance, discounting, and propensity to make errors. The project aims to advance the understanding of decision-making across the lifespan, inform theoretical modelling and advise policy-makers how to reduce the risks to adolescents.Read moreRead less
Time Delay, Externalities and Attitudes Toward Taxation. Public attitudes toward a policy have a significant impact on its effectiveness. The aim of this project is to investigate the determinants of public attitudes for incentive-based institutions, particularly taxes, by highlighting the importance of considering the intertemporal properties of taxation: when costs and benefits of taxation occur at different times. This project is designed to be a controlled study of how and why public attitud ....Time Delay, Externalities and Attitudes Toward Taxation. Public attitudes toward a policy have a significant impact on its effectiveness. The aim of this project is to investigate the determinants of public attitudes for incentive-based institutions, particularly taxes, by highlighting the importance of considering the intertemporal properties of taxation: when costs and benefits of taxation occur at different times. This project is designed to be a controlled study of how and why public attitudes towards taxation are influenced by the temporal structure of the externalities that the taxes are meant to control. The anticipated goal is to inform the design of institutions that the public will accept and, more generally, improve the understanding of intertemporal decision-making in environments with delayed externalities.Read moreRead less
Strategic Behaviour in Games. John von Neumann’s minimax solution (1928) and its generalisation to mixed-strategy Nash (1950) equilibrium are the cornerstones of modern game theory, the mathematical framework for the study of decision making when the actions of different decision makers interact. This project studies human behaviour in situations where decision makers have an incentive to be unpredictable. The proposed research will shed light on the sources of the failure of the theory in the l ....Strategic Behaviour in Games. John von Neumann’s minimax solution (1928) and its generalisation to mixed-strategy Nash (1950) equilibrium are the cornerstones of modern game theory, the mathematical framework for the study of decision making when the actions of different decision makers interact. This project studies human behaviour in situations where decision makers have an incentive to be unpredictable. The proposed research will shed light on the sources of the failure of the theory in the lab, and assesses the practical significance of the statistical tests used to evaluate laboratory data on mixed-strategy play.Read moreRead less
Nobody knows anything? Applying pari-mutuel prediction markets to the motion picture industry. This project will explore the predictability of unreleased motion pictures' theatrical box office revenues using incentive rich pari-mutuel prediction markets. The mechanism will promote price discovery and associated probability estimates that will benefit those already investing in the industry as well as encouraging new investment.
The rate of time preference in choice experiments: A systematic re-analysis. This project intends to re-analyse data from over 20 years of past research to understand when and why people sometimes make short-sighted choices. Time preference is a core concept in both theoretical and applied economics and a key input in public policy, yet empirical understanding of it is poor. Almost all important decisions of households, businesses and government involve benefits and costs that unfold over time. ....The rate of time preference in choice experiments: A systematic re-analysis. This project intends to re-analyse data from over 20 years of past research to understand when and why people sometimes make short-sighted choices. Time preference is a core concept in both theoretical and applied economics and a key input in public policy, yet empirical understanding of it is poor. Almost all important decisions of households, businesses and government involve benefits and costs that unfold over time. Many economists have used decision-making experiments to study how people value the future and make trade-offs over time, but these have not reached any clear consensus. This project plans to systematically re-analyse primary data using state-of-the-art estimation techniques to generate new estimates of the discount rate for each study. These will then be analysed in a meta-regression analysis to identify the factors that cause discount rates to vary between studies.Read moreRead less
Posted prices, bargaining and auctions: an experimental examination. This project uses economic methods to investigate how trading institutions affect prices and efficiency. It examines markets with directed search: buyers visit sellers based on any information they have. Simultaneous buyer choices and sellers’ capacity constraints lead to “frictions” where not all profitable exchanges occur - more realistic than the usual “frictionless” assumption. The project will vary: whether sellers can pos ....Posted prices, bargaining and auctions: an experimental examination. This project uses economic methods to investigate how trading institutions affect prices and efficiency. It examines markets with directed search: buyers visit sellers based on any information they have. Simultaneous buyer choices and sellers’ capacity constraints lead to “frictions” where not all profitable exchanges occur - more realistic than the usual “frictionless” assumption. The project will vary: whether sellers can post prices in advance; and, whether and how negotiation occurs based on how many buyers (one vs two or more) visit a seller. The project will use results from auction, bargaining, game and search theories, and new analysis, to form predictions, which will be tested using experiments. The results should have implications for labour and competition policies.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101014
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$349,785.00
Summary
Extending economic design to non-market settings: An experimental study of mechanism design with intention-based preferences. Mechanism design is the engineering side of economic theory, which starts with assumptions regarding human nature and builds economic systems to best maximise efficiency according to these assumptions. This project studies mechanism design in experimental settings where individuals exhibit a desire to be kind to those who have been kind to them and unkind to those who ha ....Extending economic design to non-market settings: An experimental study of mechanism design with intention-based preferences. Mechanism design is the engineering side of economic theory, which starts with assumptions regarding human nature and builds economic systems to best maximise efficiency according to these assumptions. This project studies mechanism design in experimental settings where individuals exhibit a desire to be kind to those who have been kind to them and unkind to those who have not. Such preferences are common in many non-market settings and can have dramatic effects on the efficiency of potential mechanisms. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop applied mechanisms that are robust to heterogeneity in such intention-based preferences and which can be used in bilateral exchange, contract design and many other non-market settings.Read moreRead less
Information Quality in Auctions of Multiple Objects. This project aims at using both theory and laboratory experiments to analyse the formation of prices and the buyers' behaviour at auctions of multiple objects. The study focusses on the comparison of simultaneous auction procedures (in which the objects are sold at once) to sequential auction procedures (in which the objects are sold one after the other) and attention is drawn on the effects of the quality of the buyers' information about the ....Information Quality in Auctions of Multiple Objects. This project aims at using both theory and laboratory experiments to analyse the formation of prices and the buyers' behaviour at auctions of multiple objects. The study focusses on the comparison of simultaneous auction procedures (in which the objects are sold at once) to sequential auction procedures (in which the objects are sold one after the other) and attention is drawn on the effects of the quality of the buyers' information about the assets to be sold on their bidding behaviour and on the seller's revenues. The conduct of laboratory experiments will provide a useful assessment of the theoretical predictions and valuable insights into the effects of buyers' information quality on their bidding behaviour at such markets.Read moreRead less
Applying behavioural insights to the tax system in Australia. Applying behavioural insights to the tax system in Australia. This project aims to improve compliance and payment in the Australian tax system. It aims to tackle debts of individuals and businesses, the most challenging aspect of tax systems, by applying behavioural insights to design innovative payment interventions and conducting rigorous randomised controlled trials to evaluate their effects. An empirical analysis will account for ....Applying behavioural insights to the tax system in Australia. Applying behavioural insights to the tax system in Australia. This project aims to improve compliance and payment in the Australian tax system. It aims to tackle debts of individuals and businesses, the most challenging aspect of tax systems, by applying behavioural insights to design innovative payment interventions and conducting rigorous randomised controlled trials to evaluate their effects. An empirical analysis will account for heterogeneity in treatment responses, and the findings will be combined with a study of regulatory and administrative processes to support the ultimate goal of a legitimate, fair, cost-effective and responsive tax system.Read moreRead less
Using behavioural economic insights to overcome student procrastination. This project aims to study the relations between present-biased time preference, procrastination, and achievement at school, using economic experiments. Investment in human capital generates economic benefits for students, families, employers, and society, but its benefits are realised far into the future. Because of these immediate costs and delayed benefits, behavioural economic theory predicts that students will procrast ....Using behavioural economic insights to overcome student procrastination. This project aims to study the relations between present-biased time preference, procrastination, and achievement at school, using economic experiments. Investment in human capital generates economic benefits for students, families, employers, and society, but its benefits are realised far into the future. Because of these immediate costs and delayed benefits, behavioural economic theory predicts that students will procrastinate. This project will identify the characteristics of students at greatest risk of procrastination, evaluate practical strategies to overcome it, and examine whether it is associated with poorer outcomes. This should help schools and policy makers reduce educational inequalities, and yield long-term benefits over students’ lives.Read moreRead less