Pompeu Fabra University

About: Pompeu Fabra University is a education organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Gene. The organization has 8093 authors who have published 23570 publications receiving 858431 citations. The organization is also known as: Universitat Pompeu Fabra & UPF.

The theory of global games on test: experimental analysis of coordination games with public and private information

Abstract: The theory of global games has shown that coordination games with multiple equilibria may have a unique equilibrium if certain parameters of the payoff function are private information instead of common knowledge. We report the results of an experiment designed to test the predictions of this theory. Comparing sessions with common and private information, we observe only small differences in behavior. For common information, subjects coordinate on threshold strategies that deviate from the global game solution towards the payoff-dominant equilibrium. For private information, thresholds are closer to the global game solution than for common information. Variations in the payoff function affect behavior as predicted by comparative statics of the global game solution. Predictability of coordination points is about the same for both information conditions.

Trusting the Bankers: A New Look at the Credit Channel of Monetary Policy

Abstract: Credit supply and demand changes are mostly unobserved, thus identifying completely the transmission of monetary policy through the credit channel is unfeasible. Bank lending surveys by central banks, however, contain reliable quarterly information on changes in loan conditions due to bank, firm and household balance sheet strength and on changes in loan demand. Using the U.S. and the unique Euro area surveys, we find that the credit channel amplifies a monetary policy shock on GDP and prices, through the balance-sheets of households, firms and banks. For corporate loans, amplification is highest through the bank lending and the borrower's balance sheet channel; for households, demand is the strongest channel.

Yeast Cdc42 GTPase and Ste20 PAK‐like kinase regulate Sho1‐dependent activation of the Hog1 MAPK pathway

Abstract: The adaptive response to hyperosmotic stress in yeast, termed the high osmolarity glycerol (HOG) response, is mediated by two independent upstream pathways that converge on the Pbs2 MAP kinase kinase (MAPKK), leading to the activation of the Hog1 MAP kinase. One branch is dependent on the Sho1 transmembrane protein, whose primary role was found to be the binding and translocation of the Pbs2 MAPKK to the plasma membrane, and specifically to sites of polarized growth. The yeast PAK homolog Ste20 is essential for the Sho1-dependent activation of the Hog1 MAP kinase in response to severe osmotic stress. This function of Ste20 in the HOG pathway requires binding of the small GTPase Cdc42. Overexpression of Cdc42 partially complements the osmosensitivity of ste20Δ mutants, perhaps by activating another PAK-like kinase, while a dominant-negative Cdc42 mutant inhibited signaling through the SHO1 branch of the HOG pathway. Since activated Cdc42 translocates Ste20 to sites of polarized growth, the upstream and downstream elements of the HOG pathway are brought together through the membrane targeting function of Sho1 and Cdc42.

Reference-Point Formation and Updating

Abstract: Reference-dependent preferences have been well accepted in decision sciences, experimental economics, behavioral finance, and marketing. However, we still know very little about how decision makers form and update their reference points given a sequence of information. Our paper provides some novel experiments in a financial context to advance the understanding of reference-point formation over time. Our subjects' reference price is best described as a combination of the first and the last price of the time series, with intermediate prices receiving smaller and nondecaying weights. Hence, reference prices are not recursive. We provide a parsimonious formula to predict the reference points, which we test out-of-sample. The fit of the model is reasonably good. This paper was accepted by George Wu, decision analysis.

Pure Reasoning in 12-Month-Old Infants as Probabilistic Inference

Abstract: Many organisms can predict future events from the statistics of past experience, but humans also excel at making predictions by pure reasoning: integrating multiple sources of information, guided by abstract knowledge, to form rational expectations about novel situations, never directly experienced. Here, we show that this reasoning is surprisingly rich, powerful, and coherent even in preverbal infants. When 12-month-old infants view complex displays of multiple moving objects, they form time-varying expectations about future events that are a systematic and rational function of several stimulus variables. Infants' looking times are consistent with a Bayesian ideal observer embodying abstract principles of object motion. The model explains infants' statistical expectations and classic qualitative findings about object cognition in younger babies, not originally viewed as probabilistic inferences.