世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

In this paper, we document a violation of normative and descriptive models of decision making under risk. In contrast to uncertainty effects found by Gneezy, List and Wu (2006), some subjects in our experiments valued certain lotteries more than the best possible outcome. We show that the likelihood of observing this effect is positively related to the probability of winning the lottery and negatively related to the value of the maximum outcome. We also demonstrate that this effect can be partially attributed to subjects competitiveness and level of comprehension of the lottery mechanism; the competitiveness effects far outweighing comprehension effects.

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When a risky prospect is valued more than its best possible outcome

Economists typically assume that more choice is better, and consumers are more likely to purchase from a larger choice set. However, marketing and psychological studies show this is not always the case. This paper reports results from experiments designed to further investigate the so-called excessive-choice effect. First, we investigate whether people would voluntarily reduce their choice set size. Second, we investigate whether the excessive-choice effect, found in previous studies, is robust to changes in experimental design. Third, we explore how personality influences preferences for choice set size. Results show that the excessive-choice effect indeed exists for some people, but on average people prefer greater choice.

The Dual Nature of Choice: When Consumers Prefer Less to More

Are sugar-sweetened beverage taxes a cost-effective means of reducing weight?

Consumers see retail beef products labeled as produced with no added hormones (NAH), but also see similar labels on pork and chicken products on market shelves despite the fact that added hormones are not used in production. This may mislead consumers to think hormones are used in meat production as a whole. This research examines the impact of hormone use perception on consumer preference for meat products. Specifically, we assess consumer perception of hormone use in different livestock species as compared to actual use in production. We then assess whether hormone use perception affects consumer choice for unlabeled meat products. Finally, we identify whether consumer perception of hormone use affects willingness to pay (WTP) premiums for meat products labeled as produced with NAH. Choice experiment data was collected using Oklahoma State University monthly Food Demand Survey. Results indicate that consumers underestimate the rate of hormone use in cattle production, but overestimate the rate of hormone use in pork and chicken production. Results from a conditional logit model suggest that consumer perception of hormone use can affect food preferences for unlabeled meat products. Using a Tobit model, we also found WTP premiums for the NAH label are affected by consumer perception of hormone use and by demographic characteristics.

The Impact of Hormone Use Perception on Consumer Meat Preference

Although several studies have estimated the costs of implementing and maintaining country of origin labeling (COOL), no previous study has documented how increased costs imposed by COOL will be distributed throughout the livestock sector and how producer and consumer welfare will ultimately be affected. This paper develops an equilibrium displacement model of the farm, wholesale, and retail markets for beef, pork, and poultry that is able to document how producers and consumers will be affected by added costs of COOL. In addition the model is able to determine the level of increased consumer demand needed to make producers welfare neutral to the policy. Empirical results indicate that as COOL costs are shifted from the producer to the processor and retailer, producers are made increasingly better off while consumers are made increasingly worse off. Empirical model results also indicate that an increase in aggregate consumer demand (willingness-to-pay) on the magnitude of 2% to 3% is likely sufficient to offset lost producer welfare due to increased costs imposed by COOL.

Jayson L. Lusk

Papers

When a risky prospect is valued more than its best possible outcome

The Dual Nature of Choice: When Consumers Prefer Less to More

Are sugar-sweetened beverage taxes a cost-effective means of reducing weight?

The Impact of Hormone Use Perception on Consumer Meat Preference

Modeling the effects of country of origin labeling on meat producers and consumers