This paper explores an issue that arises in the delegation process. The paper shows that a myopic central banker, one who treats expectations as constant in setting discretionary policy, can replicate the behavior of output and inflation under policy from a timeless perspective. For that to...

Many are interested in China’s energy situation, however, numerous energy related issues in China still remain unanswered, for example, what are the potential forces driving energy demand and supply? Previous reviews focused only on fossil fuel based energy and ignored other important elements...

In this paper we consider the forecasting performance of a range of semi- and non- parametric methods applied to high frequency electricity price data. Electricity price time-series data tend to be highly seasonal, mean reverting with price jumps/spikes and time- and price-dependent volatility....

A pastoral boom led to higher farm and manufacturing productivity and to New Zealand attaining the world’s highest HDI in 1913. Staple exports invigorated the land market, diffused rural land ownership, and fostered intensive growth. The gains from higher land prices spread widely, but land...

An empirical literature has found that neighborhood heterogeneity lowers people's likelihood of contributing to public goods. We show that the estimated effect of any concave neighborhood characteristic on behavior may be biased when “large” rather than “small” neighborhoods are used....

In this paper we present a rare empirical study on the determinants of tax filing compliance in the United States using county and state level data from 2000 to 2006. As well as including explanatory variables identified in the rational compliance framework such as audit and penalty rates, we...

New Zealand is becoming more socially diverse, in common with other Western countries. Primarily U.S. based-evidence suggests that growing diversity may lower people’s participation in society, and their contributions towards public goods. We test whether there is evidence of a similar...

In the event of an unanticipated disruption to normal life, universities tend to shift to an online environment in both delivery and assessment. Course instructors still need to assign grades despite not having the full set of planned assessments. This paper examines how grades are disrupted...

Previous research has suggested that communication and especially promises increase cooperation in laboratory experiments. This has been taken as evidence for internal motivations such as guilt aversion or preference for promise keeping. The original goal of this paper was to examine promises...

Groups, companies, and organizations identify themselves via symbols. Symbols have the potential to create group identity and at the same time create group boundaries, thus allowing for achieving the benefits of cooperation by ingroup members. We use a laboratory experiment to study the role of...