Tinbergen Institute

About: Tinbergen Institute is a education organization based out in Rotterdam, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Volatility (finance) & Competition (economics). The organization has 565 authors who have published 3157 publications receiving 82800 citations.

Ecodesign — Carbon Footprint — Life Cycle Assessment — Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis. A Flexible Framework for a Continuum of Tools

Abstract: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for answering questions related to environmental impacts of products. It is a comprehensive tool, addressing the entire life cycle, and addressing the full spectrum of environmental impacts. There are two opposite movements occurring: LCA is getting smaller, and it is getting broader. This presentation presents the general framework for a broader life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA), and shows how the practical work related to doing an LCA, a carbon footprint, or an analysis for ecodesign, can be seen as special cases.

Critical factors for achieving multiple goals with water tariff systems: Combining limited data sources and expert testimony

Abstract: [1] Price instruments are well-known policy handles to influence effectively residential water demand. Prices used to be set by water authorities in such a way that the principle of cost coverage was respected; they acted as prominent instruments in residential water policies in the past decades. More recently, however, price instruments are increasingly used to meet simultaneously financial, environmental, and social goals. This paper addresses four conditions for an appropriate tariff system for residential water use which are often found in the recent literature on the economics of water use. The paper analyzes the importance of background factors (e.g., low water availability) of these four principles as well as the extent to which actual tariff systems are employed in five mutually contrasting cities (Amsterdam, Athens, London, Seville, and Tel Aviv). Meta-analytic techniques, in particular, rough set analysis stemming from artificial intelligence, are applied to identify the common underlying relations between background factors and success of achieving multiple goals in these five urban case studies. The paper concludes with policy recommendations.

The Design of (De)centralized Punishment Institutions for Sustaining Cooperation

Abstract: In this paper we discuss experimental evidence for two different institutional approaches to a possible resolution of the fundamental conflict between social welfare maximization and individual utility maximization. The basic workhorse for modelling this conflict is the voluntary contribution of a group of individuals to a public good. The common element of the investigated mechanisms is that both are based on the imposition of sanctions for free-riding behavior. The main difference between them concerns the question of "who punishes". In the first approach, punishment is executed by the group members themselves individually, i.e., punishment is decentral in nature. The second approach is based on the idea that individuals may be willing to delegate the punishment to a central, external authority. The key questions to answer are, whether individuals are willing and able to implement such punishment institution, how successfully implemented institutions look like, and whether they can increase the cooperation level of individuals in the group.

Measuring Responsiveness to Feedback as a Personal Trait

Abstract: People typically update their beliefs about their own abilities too little in response to feed- back, a phenomenon known as “conservatism”, and some studies suggest that they overweight good relative to bad signals (“asymmetry”). We measure individual conservatism and asymmetry in three tasks that test different cognitive skills, and study entry into a winner-takes-all competition based on similar skills. We show that individual differences in feedback responsiveness explain an important part of the variation in confidence and competition entry decisions. Conservatism is correlated across tasks and predicts competition entry both by influencing beliefs and independently of beliefs, suggesting it can be considered a personal trait. Subjects tend to be more conservative in tasks that they see as more ego-relevant and women are more conservative than men. Asymmetry is less stable across tasks, but predicts competition entry by increasing self-confidence.