We test the turnout predictions of the canonical costly voting model through a large-scale, real effort experiment. We recruit 1,200 participants through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and employ a 2 x 2 between subjects design encompassing small ( N = 30) and large ( N = 300) elections, as well as close and lopsided. As predicted,…
Business Angels are private individuals who invest their personal financial resources in new and growing small firms. To study Business Angels’decisions we design an experiment based on the Trust Game (Berg et al., 1995) and add a third party, the Business Angel, who decides whether and how much to invest in a firm that is…
Abstract: We explore the role of public funds sharing in the framework of laboratory federalism, viewed as a learning process of policy innovation and imitation. In a model of decentralized, rich-to-poor redistribution with labor mobility, such a learning dynamics leads to the complete erosion of the welfare state. We show that suitably designed funds sharing schemes can correct this…
Abstract: When measuring multidimensional poverty it is reasonable to expect that the trade-offs between variable pairs can differ depending on whether the concerned pairs are complements or substitutes. Yet, currently existing approaches based on deprivation count distributions unrealistically assume that all pairs of variables are related in the same way, an unfortunate circumstance that undermines…
We study the problem of dividing a budget among the districts of a city taking into account their population and wealth. We focus on order preservation properties that ensure higher transfers to those districts with larger populations and, at the same time, introduce a policy redistribution so that districts with lower wealth per capita obtain…
In view of the urgency and challenges of mitigating climate change, it should be noted that Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emitted from the supply chains of the 2,500 largest global corporations accounts for about 18% of global GHG emissions. Therefore, rationalizing emissions in supply chains could make a significant contribution to achieving the CO2 emission reduction…
En el análisis de la exclusión social, se ha constatado la importancia de la dimensión trabajo. La persistencia del paro, la temporalidad en el empleo o los bajos salarios, inciden de forma importante sobre los niveles de pobreza y exclusión social. En este trabajo se ha recopilado información sobre distintas variables relacionadas con el mercado…
Optimization problems involving polynomial functions are of great importance in applied mathematics and engineering, and they are intrinsically hard problems. They arise in important engineering applications such as the sensor network localization problem, and provide a rich and fruitful interaction between algebraic-geometric concepts and modern convex programming. In this talk, we will discuss some recent…
Abstract During the last years, interest on hybrid metaheuristics has risen considerably in the field of optimization and machine learning. The best results found for many optimization problems in science and industry are obtained by hybrid optimization algorithms. Combinations of optimization tools such as metaheuristics, mathematical programming, constraint programming and machine learning, have provided very…
Abstract Much biodiversity is found in farm land. However, there is usually a trade-off between farm land productivity and sustainability of natural resources. Biodiversity conservation in agricultural land usually requires to carry on a series of conservationist practices that are costly. Therefore, farmer’s participation in conservationist programs requires economic incentives. Our goal is to identify…
