How should central banks conduct and communicate their policies to serve the goal of stabilizing the macroeconomy? This thesis – consisting of three self-contained essays on dynamic macroeconomics – is mainly intended as a progress report on exploring the normative aspect of monetary policy. The main result of the first essay is, that in the presence of idiosyncratic risk, the public revelation...

Bilateral basal ganglia lesions have been reported to induce a particular form of apathy, termed auto-activation deficit (AAD), principally defined as a loss of self-driven behaviour that is reversible with external stimulation. We hypothesized that AAD reflects a dysfunction of incentive motivation, a process that translates an expected reward (or goal) into behavioural activation. To investig...

BACKGROUND Rewarding provider performance has been recommended by the Institute of Medicine as an approach to improve the quality of treatment, yet little empirical research currently exists that has examined the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of such approaches. The aim of this study is to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of providing monetary incentives directly to therapis...

A meta-analytic review of all adequately designed field and laboratory research on the use of incentives to motivate performance is reported. Of approximately 600 studies, 45 qualified. The overall average effect of all incentive programs in all work settings and on all work tasks was a 22% gain in performance. Team-directed incentives had a markedly superior effect on performance compared to i...

This paper investigate the stabilization bias that arises in a model of non-cooperative monetary and fiscal policy stabilisation of the economy, when monetary authority implements price level targeting but fiscal policy remains benevolent. We demonstrate the gain in welfare improvement depends on the level of steady state debt. If the steady state level of the government debt is low, then the m...

Online collaborative platforms have emerged as a complementary approach to traditional organizations for coordinating the collective efforts of creative workers. However, it is surprising that they result in any productive output as individuals often work without direct monetary incentives while collaborating with unknown others. In this paper, we distinguish the conditions necessary for elicit...

BACKGROUND Monetary incentives in survey research may provide important gains from a methodological perspective in the control and reduction of survey error associated with potential nonresponse of participants. However, few studies have systematically investigated the use of monetary incentives or other methods to improve the response rates in the nonphysician clinician population. OBJECTIVE...

BACKGROUND Postal questionnaires are an economical and simple method of data collection for research purposes but are subject to non-response bias. Several studies have explored the effect of monetary and non-monetary incentives on response. Recent meta-analyses conclude that financial incentives are an effective way of increasing response rates. However, large surveys rarely have the resources...

Preventing disease outbreaks has widespread benefits that are dependent on the actions of many agents but can be undermined by inaction others. This paper explores whether a voluntary biosecurity-related assurance scheme an effective mechanism for curbing risks animal and plant pests diseases. The decision to engage in such schemes is modelled using coalition game where consider both direct cos...

Data from developmental psychology suggests a link between the growth of socio-emotional competences and the infant's sensitivity to the salience of social stimuli. The aim of the present study was to find evidence for this relationship in healthy adults. Thirty-five participants were recruited based on their score above the 85th or below the 15th percentile of the empathy quotient questionnair...