Search results

Every day businesses face investment decisions—and managers can now buy software packages that let the computer do the work. Or they can squeeze the extra work out of a standard package such as Lotus 1–2–3, which currently has more than a million users. Let's review what's involved in screening investment decisions and investigate how managers could use software with which they're already familiar to analyse investment alternatives.

Economics laboratories have become the primary locations of experimental economics research by the 1990s. They were a result of a decade long development from ad hoc opportune places to dedicated, purpose designed spaces. The distinctive feature of the economics laboratory and its key instrument became networked computers running custom-built software. However, the history of the economics laboratory is not just a history of evolving technology. I argue in this article that it is mainly a history of learning how to build an experimental economics community. Only a functioning community was able to change a physical place to a laboratory space. The distinction between place and space originates in the work of Michael de Certeau and I use it to analyze the evolution of economics laboratories. To this end, I analyze the case of Austin Hoggatt’s Management Science Laboratory at Berkeley in the 1960s as it illustrates the indispensability of creating a community centered on the laboratory. In contrast, the laboratories in Arizona and at Caltech since the 1980s, and in Amsterdam since the 1990s have become successful spaces, because, unlike Hoggatt, they focused equally on community building as on infrastructure and technology. This gave rise to social infrastructure and division of labor in the laboratory space.

This paper reports a new experimental test of the notion that behavior switches from risk averse to risk seeking when gains are “reflected” into the loss domain. We conduct a sequence of experiments that allows us to directly compare choices under reflected gains and losses where real and hypothetical payoffs range from several dollars to over $100. Lotteries with positive payoffs are transformed into lotteries over losses by multiplying all payoffs by –1, that is, by reflecting payoffs around zero. When we use hypothetical payments, more than half of the subjects who are risk averse for gains turn out to be risk seeking for losses. This reflection effect is diminished considerably with cash payoffs, where the modal choice pattern is to exhibit risk aversion for both gains and losses. However, we do observe a significant difference in risk attitudes between losses (where most subjects are approximately risk neutral) and gains (where most subjects are risk averse). Reflection rates are further reduced when payoffs are scaled up by a factor of 15 (for both real and hypothetical payoffs).

Objective – This chapter examines the performance of the market to discover efficient equilibrium under alternative auction designs.

Background – Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permits”) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management programs. These auctions create thick markets that can provide important information about changes in current market conditions.

Methodology – This chapter uses experimental methods to examine the extent to which the predicted increase in the Walrasian price due to a shift in willingness to pay (perhaps due to a shift in costs of pollution abatement) is reflected in observed sales prices under alternative auction formats.

Results – Price tracking is comparably good for uniform-price sealed-bid auctions and for multi-round clock auctions, with or without end-of-round information about excess demand. More price inertia is observed for “pay as bid” (discriminatory) auctions, especially for a continuous discriminatory format in which bids could be changed at will, in part because “sniping” in the final moments blocked the full effect of the demand shock.

Conclusion – Uniform-price auctions (clock and sealed-bid uniform-price, and continuous uniform-price) generate changes in purchase prices that are reasonably close to predicted changes. There is some evidence of tacit collusion causing prices to be too low relative to predictions in most cases. The worst price tracking was observed for discriminatory auctions.

Application – Uniform-price auctions appear to perform at least as well as other auction designs with respect to discovery of efficient market prices when there are unexpected and unannounced changes in willingness to pay for permits.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the time is ripe to establish a powerful tradition in Experimental International Business (IB). Probably due to what the Arjen van Witteloostuijn refers to as the external validity myth, experimental laboratory designs are underutilized in IB, which implies that the internal validity miracle of randomized experimentation goes largely unnoticed in this domain of the broader management discipline.

In the following pages, the author explains why the author believes this implies a missed opportunity, providing arguments and examples along the way.

Although an Experimental Management tradition has never really gained momentum, to the author, the lab experimental design has a very bright future in IB (and management at large). To facilitate the development of an Experimental IB tradition, initiating web-based tools would be highly instrumental. This will not only boost further progress in IB research, but will also increase the effectiveness and playfulness of IB teaching.

Given the high potential of an Experimental IB, the Cross-Cultural and Strategic Management journal will offer a platform for such exciting and intriguing laboratory work, cumulatively contributing to the establishment of an Experimental IB tradition.

BORN in 1780, one of twelve children of a successful Quaker banker, Elizabeth Gurney herself became converted to Quakerism at the age of 18 and eventually, after the death of her father, became a minister of the church. At the age of 20 she married the London businessman Joseph Fry, by whom between 1801 and 1816 she bore 10 children. In between the birth of the children she carried out her ministry, visiting Quaker groups throughout the country, and pursued philantrophic activities. In 1819–20 she became concerned by the conditions of the homeless in London and was responsible for establishing a night shelter providing food and a bed.

The article is an abbreviated form of the author's MA thesis, and comprises the results of an analysis of publication and citation of economics literature. The growth of the monograph literature of economics seems to be below average, but a high birthrate of economics journals together with a growth in their size gives a high growth rate of periodical literature. From the analysis of citations in nine journals for 1950, 1960, and 1968 a shortening of the active life of both journal and non‐journal literature is found. A high degree of concentration of journal use is shown, over 70% of journal citations being from 20 titles, and the concentration is shown to be increasing. A rise in the use of unpublished material, especially working papers is indicated. Comparisons are made of the research use, measured by citations, with undergraduate use, measured by an analysis of reading lists at three British universities. Some tentative implications of the results for library policy are suggested.