In this book, Andrew Harvey sets out to provide a unified and comprehensive theory of structural time series models. Unlike the traditional ARIMA models, structural time series models consist explicitly of unobserved components, such as trends and seasonals, which have a direct interpretation. As a result the model selection methodology associated with structural models is much closer to econometric methodology. The link with econometrics is made even closer by the natural way in which the models can be extended to include explanatory variables and to cope with multivariate time series. From the technical point of view, state space models and the Kalman filter play a key role in the statistical treatment of structural time series models. The book includes a detailed treatment of the Kalman filter. This technique was originally developed in control engineering, but is becoming increasingly important in fields such as economics and operations research. This book is concerned primarily with modelling economic and social time series, and with addressing the special problems which the treatment of such series poses. The properties of the models and the methodological techniques used to select them are illustrated with various applications. These range from the modellling of trends and cycles in US macroeconomic time series to to an evaluation of the effects of seat belt legislation in the UK.

Forecasting, Structural Time Series Models and the Kalman Filter

I survey the literature post Ledyard (Handbook of Experimental Economics, ed. by J. Kagel, A. Roth, Chap. 2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995) on three related issues in linear public goods experiments: (1) conditional cooperation; (2) the role of costly monetary punishments in sustaining cooperation and (3) the sustenance of cooperation via means other than such punishments. Many participants in laboratory public goods experiments are “conditional cooperators” whose contributions to the public good are positively correlated with their beliefs about the average group contribution. Conditional cooperators are often able to sustain high contributions to the public good through costly monetary punishment of free-riders but also by other mechanisms such as expressions of disapproval, advice giving and assortative matching.

https://www.cepr.org/sites/default/files/events/papers/796_CHAUDHURI.pdf

Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature

Features of Financial Returns Modelling Price Volatility Forecasting Standard Deviations The Accuracy of Autocorrelation Estimates Testing the Random Walk Hypothesis Forecasting Trends in Prices Evidence Against the Efficiency of Futures Markets Valuing Options Appendix: A Computer Program for Modelling Financial Time Series.

Modelling Financial Time Series

https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/19169/1/gupea_2077_19169_1.pdf

Anonymity, reciprocity, and conformity: Evidence from voluntary contributions to a national park in Costa Rica

How can we change social norms, the standards describing typical or desirable behavior? Because individuals’ perceptions of norms guide their personal behavior, influencing these perceptions is one way to create social change. And yet individuals do not form perceptions of typical or desirable behavior in an unbiased manner. Individuals attend to select sources of normative information, and their resulting perceptions rarely match actual rates of behavior in their environment. Thus, changing social norms requires an understanding of how individuals perceive norms in the first place. We describe three sources of information that people use to understand norms—individual behavior, summary information about a group, and institutional signals. Social change interventions have used each source to influence perceived norms and behaviors, including recycling, intimate-partner violence, and peer harassment. We discuss conditions under which influence over perceived norms is likely to be stronger, based on the source of the normative information and individuals’ relationship to the source. Finally, we point to future research and suggest when it is most appropriate to use a norm change strategy in the interest of behavior and social change.

Norm Perception as a Vehicle for Social Change

This paper describes a natural field experiment investigating voluntary contributions to a public good The setting was an art gallery where admission was free, but donations could be deposited into a transparent box in the foyer We manipulated the social information available to patrons by altering what was visible in the donation box In particular, we investigated four treatments: one with primarily a few large denomination bills, one with several small denomination bills, one with a large amount of coinage, and one empty The social information provided had a significant impact on donation composition, frequency, and value

/pdf/how-is-donation-behaviour-affected-by-the-donations-of-3siuywvfs6.pdf

How is donation behaviour affected by the donations of others

We describe a natural field experiment investigating donation behaviour. The setting was an art gallery where donations could be deposited into a transparent box in the foyer. Two aspects of the donation environment were manipulated: signs on the donation box and the initial contents of the box. We used three sign treatments: a control with no sign, a sign that thanked donors, and a sign that indicated donations would be matched. We used two initial contents treatments: one with relatively little money ($50) and one with four times as much. The average donation per donor was significantly larger in the $200 treatments but this was offset by a decrease in the propensity to donate. In the matching treatments donations were significantly larger both at the per donor and per visitor level. A control variable turned out to have the largest influence on donation behaviour: the day of the week. The average donation per visitor was 51% higher on Sundays, when compared to every other day of the week.

How Sunday, price, and social norms influence donation behaviour

Purpose – This research aims to measure compliance in a tax experiment among students. The aim of the study is to investigate relationships between claimed behaviour in a questionnaire and actual behaviour in an experimental environment, together with different behaviours between males and females, and different age cohorts.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 630 undergraduate Commerce students at a New Zealand university completed a questionnaire on attitudes towards the tax system. The students subsequently participated in a simulation experiment requiring responses to hypothetical tax evasion decisions. Individual reward payments were contingent on the outcome of these tax evasion decisions. Questionnaire responses, which captured intended behaviour, were compared with actual behaviour in the experiment.Findings – The study finds more compliant behaviour among older students and students who have been at university longer. It also finds female students demonstrate more ethical responses in their b...

Ethics and experiments in accounting: A contribution to the debate on measuring ethical behaviour

A reinvestigation of robust scale estimation in finite samples

This paper describes the results of a natural field experiment that investigated voluntary contributions to a public good. The experiment took place at an art gallery where admission was free, but donations could be deposited into a transparent box in the foyer. We manipulated the social information available to patrons by altering what was visible in the donation box. In particular, we investigated four treatments: one with very few large denomination bills, one with several small denomination bills, one with a large amount of coinage, and one empty. The social information had a statistically significant impact on donation composition, the propensity to donate, and the amount donated. The data demonstrates a tradeoff associated with the manipulation of the social information.

John Randal

Papers

How is donation behaviour affected by the donations of others

How Sunday, price, and social norms influence donation behaviour

Ethics and experiments in accounting: A contribution to the debate on measuring ethical behaviour

A reinvestigation of robust scale estimation in finite samples

Voluntary contributions to a public good: A natural field experiment