Documents de travail

We consider public goods games played on a potentially non-symmetric network and provide comparative statics results on individual and aggregate contributions, as well as on the effect of transfers between players. We show that, contrary to the case of the complete and symmetric network, a positive shock on a player can have adverse consequences. First, it could actually decrease this player's contribution, unless the interaction matrix is a P-matrix. Second, a positive shock on a contributing player increases aggregate contributions, but a positive shock on a non-contributing player will decrease aggregate contributions, even if the player who benefited from the positive shock increases his own contribution. In each case we provide simple conditions to determine whether a positive shock will have positive or negative consequences on contributions, by looking at the unconstrained solution of an alternative, associated game. The sign of the coordinates of this solution determines the effect of a shock. With this in hand, we further show that the aggregate neutrality result of Andreoni [1990] regarding transfers between players generally does not hold on non-symmetric networks and provide conditions for it to hold. Finally, as an application of previous results, we consider introducing agents that follow Kantian moral principles and show that, depending on their position in the network, the presence of Kantian agents can, counter-intuitively, lead to a decrease in aggregate contributions.

Several representativeness issues affect the available data sources in studying populations' income distributions. High-income under-reporting and non-response issues have been evidenced to be particularly significant in the literature, due to their consequence in underestimating income growth and inequality. This paper bridges several past parametric modelling attempts to account for high-income data issues in making parametric inference on income distributions at the population level. A unified parametric framework integrating parametric income distribution models and popular data replacing and reweighting corrections is developped. To exploit this framework for empirical analysis, an Approximate Bayesian Computation approach is developped. This approach updates prior beliefs on the population income distribution and the high-income data issues pressumably affecting the available data by attempting to reproduce the observed income distribution under simulations from the parametric model. Applications on simulated and EU-SILC data illustrate the performance of the approach in studying population-level mean incomes and inequality from data potentially affected by these high-income issues.

As physics provides the equations of motion of a body, this paper formulates, for the first time, at the conceptual and mathematical levels, the inequations of motion of an individual seeking to meet his needs and quasi needs in an adaptive (not myopic) way. Successful (failed) dynamics perform a succession of moves, which are, at once, satisficing and worthwhile (free from too many sacrifices), or not. They approach or reach desires (fall in traps). They balance the desired speed of approach to a desired end (a distal promotion goal) with the size of the required immediate sacrifices to go fast (a proximal prevention goal). Therefore, each period, need/quasi need satisfaction success requires enough self control to be able to make, in the long run, sufficient progress in need/quasi need satisfaction without enduring, in the short run, too big sacrifices. A simple example (lose or gain weight) shows that the size of successful moves must be not too small and not too long. A second paper will solve this problem, using variational principles and inexact optimizing algorithms in mathematics. This strong multidisciplinary perspective refers to a recent mathematical model to psychology: the variational rationality theory of human life stay and change dynamics.

This paper provides a general and formalized theory of self-regulation success and failures as an application of the recent Variational rationality approach of stay and change human dynamics (Soubeyran, 2009, 2010, 2021.a,b,c,d). For concreteness purposes, it starts with an example in psychology: how to gain or to loose weight ? It ends with a general, conceptual, dynamical and computable formulation of self-regulation and goal pursuit in the context of variational principles and adaptive optimizing algorithms in mathematics.

We develop a model of incomplete employment contracts such that employees have some discretion over effort, which depends on their work morale. Nominal wage cuts have a strong negative effect on morale, while employee involvement in workplace decision-making tends to increase morale. We derive predictions on how these two mechanisms affect the decisions of firms to cut nominal wages. Using matched employer-employee and manager survey data from Great Britain, we find support for our model: nominal wage cuts are only half as likely when managers think that employees have some discretion over how they perform their work, but this reduced likelihood recovers partially when employees are involved in the decision-making process at their workplace.