Government Procurement is an important measure by which the government can guide economic development direction, protect and support national (or local) industry and implement macro-economic control. This paper analyzes corruption and collusive behaviors in government procurement practice in a Game Theory perspective. First, using Willenbrock’s bidding model to analyze the rent-seeking behavior...

Economics and Religion This paper provides an overview of the relationship between economics and religion. It first considers the effects of economic incentives in the religious marketplace on consumers’ demand for “religion.” It then shows how this demand affects religious institutions and generates a supply of religious goods and services. Other topics include the structure of this religious ...

This study attempted to examine the relationship between poverty and adolescent developmental outcomes in the family and personal domains in 3,328 Chinese secondary school students in Hong Kong. Developmental outcomes included positive youth development constructs, problem behaviors, perceived family interaction, and parental parenting. Results showed that adolescents experiencing poverty did n...

In this paper, we further develop the idea of combining pervasive computing techniques with electronic payment systems to create activity-based micro-incentives. Economic incentives are an effective way to influence consumer behavior, and are used in e.g. marketing and resource coordination. Our approach allows marketers and regulators to induce consumers to perform particular actions in new ap...

The standard economic model of decision making assumes a decision maker makes her choices to maximize her utility or happiness. Her current emotional state is not explicitly considered. Yet there is a large psychological literature that shows that current emotional state, in particular positive affect, has a significant effect on decision making, problem solving, and behavior. This paper offers...

Classical economic models often place emphasis on the aggregate interactions of suppliers and consumers in a marketplace, and many assume market actors have easy access to shared, trustworthy information. While these models have been widely effective in describing economic phenomena, they neglect an inherent and important property of economies: that they are networks of independent firms, inter...

Outside of economics, researchers have recently identified genetic predictors of “sensation-seeking” that have been linked to risky and impulsive behaviors. We examine the implications of these genetic polymorphisms for economic behavior. Our analysis indicates that the 7-repeat allele of the DRD4 gene that regulates dopamine uptake in the brain predicts risk-taking and time preferences in econ...

In order to study the motivation of consumers’ interactive participation in virtual brand community, software AMOS18.0 and SPSS21.0 is separately used to conduct the exploratory factor analysis and the confirmatory factor analysis with two independent samples. The research results shows that customers’ interactive behaviors in virtual brand community are mainly motivated by contribution motivat...

Existing correlative evidence suggests that sex hormones may affect economic behavior such as risk taking and reciprocal fairness. To test this hypothesis we conducted a double-blind randomized study. Two-hundred healthy postmenopausal women aged 50-65 years were randomly allocated to 4 weeks of treatment with estrogen, testosterone, or placebo. At the end of the treatment period, the subjects ...