Potential variability of decisional skills in uncertain dichotomous choice situations

The main concern of this paper is the selection of optimal decision rules for groups of individuals with identical preferences but diverse and potentially variable independent decisional skills. Employing the uncertain dichotomous choice model the main results illustrate how optimality and sensitivity analysis can be pursued while explicitly recognizing decision-making costs associated with potential variability of decisional skills. For panels of experts consisting of three members our analysis focuses on three special cases of potential variability in individual skills. The extended optimality problem is analyzed resolving the dilemma which of the two common rules, the simple majority rule or the expert rule, is the better selection for the group. The sensitivity of the two rules to variability of decisional skills is also investigated.     

Regional Bell Operating Company entry into long‐distance and non‐price discrimination against rival interexchange carriers: empirical evidence from panel data

The incentive of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) to degrade the quality of interstate access services, an essential input provided to rival long‐distance carriers, once they begin offering long‐distance services has been a controversial issue in the academic literature. Using a panel of state‐level data over the years 1996–2001, this paper investigates whether the RBOCs engage in such ‘non‐price discrimination’ upon entering the long‐distance market. The results suggest the RBOCs improve the quality of some of their interstate access service offerings before entering the interexchange market, but begin degrading the quality of these services immediately afterward. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chaotic social interaction via endogenous reactivity

We propose a framework to analyse the dynamical process of decision and opinion formation of two economic homogeneous and boundedly rational agents that interact and learn from each other over time. The decisional process described in our model is an adaptive adjustment mechanism in which two agents take into account the difference between their own opinion and the opinion of the other agent. The smaller that difference, the larger the weight given to the comparison of the opinions. We assume that if the distance between the two opinions is larger than a given threshold, then there is no interaction and the agents do not change their opinion anymore. Introducing an auxiliary variable describing the distance between the opinions, we obtain a one-dimensional map for which we investigate, mainly via analytical tools, the stability of the steady states, their bifurcations, as well as the existence of chaotic dynamics and multistability phenomena.     

基于公平偏好的三阶段锦标激励模型研究

为解决多代理人激励及委托人道德风险问题,本文基于公平偏好理论,构建了三阶段锦标激励模型,通过数理推导研究委托人最大化目标下公平偏好与工资差距对代理人努力水平和拆台行为的影响,并对不同晋升过程下代理人各阶段的努力水平进行比较。结果表明,代理人的努力水平与拆台行为同升同降,公平偏好降低代理人的努力水平和拆台行为,而工资差距提高代理人的努力水平和拆台行为,且无论晋升过程如何,代理人在第一阶段的努力水平均大于其第三阶段的努力水平。本文拓展了行为经济学视角下基于委托代理框架的锦标赛激励研究。