1. Emily Oster and Rebecca Thorton have an interesting new paper that uses individual-level randomization to understand, among other things, how peers affect a woman's decision to utilize newly introduced menstrual cups in Nepal.
2. Enrico Moretti looks at the importance of social learning from peers in consumption decisions - particularly the decision to see different movies. I really like this paper: Moretti starts with a theoretical model and uses the uniqueness of the film industry to test it. It's great stuff. And he goes on to find that social learning is non-trivial:
Overall, social learning appears to be an important determinant of sales in the movie industry, accounting for 32% of sales for the typical movie with positive surprise. This implies the existence of a large “social multiplier” such that the elasticity of aggregate demand to movie quality is larger than the elasticity of individual demand to movie quality.
3. Behavioral economics strikes again! Apparently a good way to save money is to carry around Benjamins over Abes and Georges.
4. The Economist is right on about the decision to move the Indian Premier League cricket matches to South Africa because of the upcoming election in India. What kind of aspiring superpower justifies moving a thriving capitalist enterprise by claiming that they cannot guarantee the safety of the players and spectators? Isn't this exactly what terrorists want to happen?
2 comments:
(3) is interesting and just goes to shows that behavioral theories are not well fleshed out. When I took behavioral decision theory last semester we were taught that partitions decrease consumption. For example, that if you put cookies into many smaller jars, less people will consume them. I think what the paper you point out to is saying is that it is the opposite of this. The "heuristics" in behavioral econ seem no better than any of the neoclassical theories.
3. Interesting. I actually just read Predictably Irrational last weekend and I'm just beginning to learn about this area.
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