US Foster Care is already known to be an under researched and complex topic, and the literature that is done tends to focus on the need for more investigation to improve this ineffective system. Foster care has even been described as “one huge experiment that has been conducted on children”, at a “cost of untold billions of dollars” (Courtney, 2000). This comment doesn’t seem too far off—there is a consensus that more work needs to be done in the realm of child welfare services, and some studies have even questioned whether removals and placements by foster care are beneficial at all (Doyle, 2006). In order to improve foster care and decisions in treatment (as these decisions have significant impact on children’s safety and well-being), we need to be more effective in using our resources and understanding the needs of the population, and the trends that might be influencing foster care. On that note, research by the US Department of Health and Human Services has shown a clear relationship between parental substance abuse and child abuse, and a study reported by Economic Inquiry (Cunningham, 2013), investigates this in terms of foster care. Cunningham’s study investigates the impact of methamphetamine abuse on admissions in foster care, and reports a significant causal relationship. This interesting report motivated me to investigate this further, and in terms of the recent opioid epidemic in the US. In this study, I adapt Cunningham’s strategies to investigate the effect of the opioid epidemic on US Foster Care, at a more recent time period. Surprisingly, I find different results for the opioid epidemic than the meth shocks, despite many variations of the model to proxy opioid use. My results show a negative relationship from opioid use on foster care admissions, while also confirming Cunningham’s study with a positive relationship with methamphetamine use and foster care at a more recent time period. This study will explain the methods that attain these results, as well as the reasons driving the results in the discussion. While contributing to Cunningham’s study, this study also contributes new research to a topic (the opioid epidemic) frequently mentioned in recent news. This study also considers the impact of this epidemic on individuals it might impact most, and addresses the gap in literature that exists regarding US Foster Care.

Using two experiments, where children either rolled dice or solved a matrix task, we examined whether scouts are more honest than non-scouts. In the first experiment, participants completed a matrix task. The papers were then shredded, and participants self-reported the number they had correctly solved. After analysing the results, we found that 10.81 % of scouts and 13.04 % of non-scouts lied. This difference, between the honesty of scouts and non-scouts, was not statistically significant. There was no perceived effect from being scout on the individual's honesty, as well as from taking the scout promise, or years of experience in a scout organization on the scout's honesty. In the second experiment, participants rolled the dice privately. According to value rolled, participants could either take (1, 2, 3), or leave (4, 5, 6), a Kinder chocolate reward. Statistically, participants would be expected to take the reward 50 % of the time. This was the case for the scouts group, the results did not differ statistically from 50:50, but not for the non-scouts. However, the difference between scouts and non-scouts was not statistically significant, indicating that there is no significant difference in honesty between scouts and non-scouts. Thus, our hypothesis that scouts are more honest than non-scouts was not supported.

Le constat d'un volume de déchets en augmentation constante en France et dans le monde appelle des études permettant de comprendre les comportements de tri des ménages. Cette thèse s'inscrit dans cette perspective et a pour ambition de comprendre comment modifier le comportement des consommateurs afin que ces derniers réduisent leurs déchets. Nous présentons d'abord une revue de la littérature analysant les différentes politiques publiques en matière de gestion des déchets. L'approche traditionelle consistant à dire que les individus répondent avant tout à un comportement rationnel, la recherche de gain, a ses limites. Nous soutenons l'idée que des politiques spécifiques prenant en compte les facteurs comportementaux sont nécessaires dans l'élaboration des politiques publiques en faveur du recyclage. Dans un second temps, nous nous intéressons aux déterminants du tri sélectif à partir de données issues d'une enquête originale auprès de 694 habitants de la région PACA. Nous estimons avec un modèle Probit la probabilité d'adopter un comportement de tri sélectif. Ce modèle teste les hypothèses étudiées jusqu'ici principalement par les sociologues et psychologues. Notre analyse empirique démontre que l'influence sociale impacte négativement le recyclage. Enfin, nous complétons cette étude avec un modèle mutli-agent qui cherche à expliquer le tri des déchets et l'impact des politiques publiques. Notre modèle considère des ménages hétérogènes choisissant de recycler selon quatre caractéristiques: leurs préférences environnementales, le coût d'opportunité de la taxe, le coût du tri et leur image de soi. Trois politiques sont testées : l'information, la taxe, et les "nudges". / The observation of a positive trend in the amount of waste in France and in the world has called for studies explaining household sorting behavior. This thesis lies in this perspective and aims at determining how to lead consumers to reduce their waste. We first present a review of the literature analyzing the portfolio of waste management public policies. We discuss the limits of the traditional approach stating that individuals adopt a rational behavior, seeking utility gains. Instead we support the idea that addressing behavioral factors is required for public policies supporting recycling behavior to succeed. In a second step, we investigate the the determinants of sorting behavior by building an original survey on 694 individuals in the PACA region. Our study combines and tests hypotheses first developed by sociologists and psychologists with concepts from behavioral economics. We use a probit model to estimate the probability to adopt a selective sorting behavior. Our empirical analysis shows that social influence negatively impacts recycling. Finally, we complete this study with an agent-based model which seeks to explain the sorting of waste as well as how such behavior is impacted by public policies. Our model considers heterogeneous households whose recycling decision is affected by four elements: individual environmental preferences and self-image, the opportunity cost of a tax on sorting, and the cost of sorting. Three public policies are tested: information, tax and "nudges".

This diploma thesis researches model of economic man, its historical background, and also modern critics of this concept and alternative approach to economic man, especially in behavioral economics. Human (im)perfection leads to the discussion about a range of liberty man should get eventually to which extent should a man be led by paternalism. Therefore this thesis introduces and tests concept of libertarian paternalism which is applied to drug issues. The thesis demonstrates that model of economic man is in many ways too simplified and insufficient. Thus, extention of this model with findings of psychology, biology and other sciences seems beneficial. Libertarian paternalism, despite few shortcomings, shows potential to be realisable and viable in certain situations.

Cette thèse appartient au domaine de la théorie de la décision en situation d'incertitude. Elle vise à comprendre, décrire, et représenter les choix individuels dans différents contextes de décision. Notre travail se concentre sur le fait que le comportement économique est souvent influencé par la structure et le déroulement de la résolution de l'incertitude. Dans une première expérience nous avons confronté nos sujets à différents types d'incertitude – à savoir du risque (probabilités connues), de l'incertain (probabilités inconnues), du risque composé et de l'incertain composé – en utilisant des mécanismes aléatoires particuliers. Le chapitre 1 analyse l'hétérogénéité des attitudes individuelles face à l'ambiguïté, au risque composé et à l'incertain composé alors que dans le chapitre 2, le modèle d'espérance d'utilité à dépendance du rang est utilisé comme outil de mesure afin d'étudier en détails ces attitudes au niveau individuel. Le chapitre 3 confronte à l'expérience l'interprétation de l'ambiguïté en terme de croyances de second ordre et propose une méthode d'élicitation de la fonction qui caractérise l'attitude face à l'ambiguïté dans les modèles « récursifs » de décision face à l'incertain. La seconde partie de la thèse s'intéresse aux comportements de décision individuelle dans un contexte dynamique et est composée de deux études expérimentales indépendantes. Néanmoins, elles reposent toutes deux sur la décomposition de l'axiome d'indépendance en trois axiomes dynamiques: conséquentialisme, cohérence dynamique et réduction des loteries composées. Le chapitre 4 rapporte les résultats d'une expérience de décision individuelle sur les facteurs de violations de chacun de ces axiomes. Le chapitre 5 présente une catégorisation conceptuelle des comportements individuels dans des problèmes de décision séquentiels face au risque. Le cas des agents ne se conformant pas à l'axiome d'indépendance y est étudié de façon systématique et les résultats d'une expérience spécialement conçue pour tester cette catégorisation sont présentés. / This thesis belongs to the domain of decision theory under uncertainty and aims to understand, describe and represent individual choices in various decision contexts. Our work focuses on the fact that economic behavior is often influenced by the structure and the timing of resolution of uncertainty. In a first experimental part, we confronted subjects with different types of uncertainty, namely risk (known probabilities), uncertainty (unknown probabilities), compound risk and compound uncertainty, which were generated using special random devices. In chapter 1 we analyze the heterogeneity of attitudes towards ambiguity, compound risk and compound uncertainty whereas in chapter 2, we use rank dependent expected utility as a measuring tool in order to individually investigate these attitudes. Chapter 3 confronts the interpretation of ambiguity in term of second order beliefs with the experimental data and proposes a method for eliciting the function that encapsulates attitudes toward ambiguity in the “recursive” or multistage models of decision under uncertainty. The second part of the thesis deals with individual decision making under risk in a dynamic context and is composed of two independent experimental studies. Both of them rely on the decomposition of the independence axiom into three dynamic axioms: consequentialism, dynamic consistency and reduction of compound lotteries. Chapter 4 reports experimental data about violations of each of the three axioms. Chapter 5 presents a conceptual categorization of individual behavior in sequential decision problems under risk, especially those which do not conform to the independence axiom. We propose an experiment specially designed to test the predictions of this categorization.

Although response effort is considered a dimension of the cost to obtain reinforcement, little research has examined the economic impact of effort on demand for food. The goal of the present study was to explore the relationship between effort and demand. Three Sprague Dawley rats were trained to press a force transducer under a series of fixed-ratio schedules (1, 10, 18, 32, 56, 100, 180, 320, and 560) under different force requirements (5.6 g and 56 g). Thus, nominal unit price (responses / food) remained constant while minimal response force requirements varied. Using a force transducer allowed the measurement of responses failing to meet the minimal force requirement (i.e. “subcriterion responses”), an advantage over prior approaches using weighted levers to manipulate effort. Consistent with prior research, increasing the unit price decreased food consumption, and raising minimum force requirements further reduced demand for food. Additionally, increasing the force requirement produced subcriterion responses. Analysis indicated that subcriterion responses did not create incidental changes in unit price. Obtained force data revealed that including obtained forces in unit price calculations provided better predictions of consumption when compared to using criterion force requirements.

One policy reaction of the Federal Reserve to the 2008 financial crisis was the extension of currency swap lines to various foreign central banks; this constituted the global transfer of billions of US dollars of wealth and exhibited the role of the US as a global lender of last resorts. Some have attempted to explain the supply of these lines as a function of risk mitigation for domestic US banks with foreign holdings, but no one has yet investigated the social dynamics of this phenomenon. In recognizing that the global demand for emergency liquidity was greater than the Federal Reserve’s supply, this paper investigates how the similarity of foreign central banks affected the selection of which banks would receive liquidity extensions. I calculate similarity scores to the US Federal Reserve for foreign banks which applied for liquidity extensions during the crisis. These scores measure the textual similarity of foreign central bankers’ speeches to those of the Fed, the institutional design similarity to that of the Fed, and the similarity of foreign central banks’ governors’ educational and professional backgrounds to those of the 2008 Federal Open Markets Commission members. I find that the similarity of foreign central banks to the US with regard to these three criteria offers a significantly stronger and statistically more robust answer to the question of what drove this decision process, and offer implications for international regulatory mechanisms to ameliorate this tendency toward social homophily.

Numerous studies have shown that consumers react imperfectly to changes in health insurance coverage. To justify consumer valuation in health insurance decision-making, I use Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data and conduct three studies to examine consumer’s private information in health insurance decision-making under a conceptual framework of consumer perception, which potentially is informative about Affordable Care Act (ACA) Health Insurance Marketplace consumer behavior. In the first study, I examine the joint role of individual preferences and health risk in two types of insurance decision-making: the probability of being insured and the probability of employment-based insurance if insured. Using logistic regression, I find that the healthier and wealthier consumers tend to have more positive attitudes towards health insurance and thus are more likely to be insured. The effects of health risk measures vary largely in insurance decisions conditional on different preference measures and preference levels. In the second study, I investigate insurance coverage bundle choices with multi-dimensional private information in an artificially created market setting. I adapt the approach developed by Lokshin and Ravallion (2005) and conduct logistic regression modeling to estimate the reduced forms for coverage bundle choice and consumer attitude respectively. Predicted linear indices for consumer attitude and coverage bundle choices are calculated separately, then their correlation coefficients are compared. In this study I find that consumer attitude plays a dominating role in health insurance decision-making, suggesting that risk preferences may internalize health risks and influence insurance purchasing decisions. To further explore consumer perceptions within an individual’s personal system of decision rules, in the third study, I construct coverage bundle choices in an order from the least complete to the most complete, and examine the effect of consumer perceived plan quality to coverage bundle choice decisions. I use the generalized ordered logit method and a Bayesian learning process for the analysis. I find that coverage bundle choice decisions are value-based, for which perceived plan quality plays a significant and persistent role. The study results also have important policy implications to enhancing consumer engagement and optimizing health insurance management to provide high quality care to health insurance beneficiaries.

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Lo studio presenta un analisi dettagliata sul comportamento dei giocatori d'azzardo. I dati sono stati raccolti tramite un esperimento condotto “sul campo” che ha osservato i giocatori durante la loro attività di gioco in un agenzia di scommesse. L'esperimento ha permesso di ottenere il grado di severità del disordine da gioco d’azzardo e i principali tratti comportamentali dei partecipanti. La misurazione di tali tratti ha permesso di comprendere quali tra questi, meglio prediceva l’insorgere del disordine da gioco d’azzardo. La seconda parte del lavoro è stata rivolta a studiare la possibile relazione causale tra attività di gioco e una possibile modifica dei tratti comportamentali. Inoltre la diretta osservazione dei giocatori durante l’attività di gioco ha permesso di avere una traccia dettagliata del loro comportamento di gioco. I risultati sottolineano importanti differenze tra i comportamenti dei giocatori osservati usando procedure sperimentali e i comportamenti osservati durante l’attività di gioco. Nel primo caso non è stato rilevato nessun impatto significativo sulle preferenze individuali dovuto all’attività di gioco. Nel secondo caso, invece, si trova conferma del fenomeno conosciuto come “diminishing sensitivity”. In altre parole, all’aumentare delle perdite subite durante l’attività di gioco aumenta la propensione al rischio dei giocatori. / The thesis presents a lab-in-the-field experiment collecting data on gamblers’ behaviour. The study provides an estimate of the incidence of Problematic Gambling (PG) among the usual customers of a large betting agency in Milan. We elicit in an incentivized manner a large battery of behavioural traits in order to investigate which of them are mostly characterizing PG. Moreover, we investigate a causal relationship between gambling activity and behavioural traits. We also keep detailed track of the gambling activity during the day of the interview to see which are the more interest patterns of the gambling activity. The results underline important differences between real and experimental observation. When we use experimental task to investigate a possible variation in risk preferences due to gambling activity we do not observe any significant impact on risk preferences. When we inspect risk preferences using data coming from the real gambling activity we find evidence of the diminishing sensitivity phenomenon. The more losses they have collected during gambling, the more is the risk that gamblers are likely to take in the subsequent bets. These results indicate that gamblers are not risk-seekers in general, but their risk propensity seems to rise when they are involved in gambling.