Author archives: José Luis Ferreira

Crime deterrence

Crime deterrence

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

Gary Becker presented a first economic approach to criminal behavior. In a very standard neoclassical framework he studied this apparently non-economic problem. In particular, Becker assumed rational criminals responding to variables such as the probability of being caught, the severity of the punishment and the labor-market opportunity cost. After this seminal work, a large empirical […]

An experiment on confirmation bias

An experiment on confirmation bias

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

This post summarizes the article “Confirmation bias with motivated beliefs”, by Charness and Dave, published in Games and Economic Behavior in 2017. Confirmation bias (CB) can be defined as an agent’s tendency to seek, interpret and use evidence in a manner biased toward confirming her existing beliefs or hypotheses. This constitutes a misjudgment that limits […]

Is China a Socialist country?

Is China a Socialist country?

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

The last issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives published the article Is China Socialist? by Barry Naughton , which I summarize here. In order to address the question, the first thing Naughton does is to provide a working definition of socialism. Under a broad conception, a plausible socialist system would be judged on four […]

Government spending and income inequality in developing countries

Government spending and income inequality in developing countries

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

The two biggest questions in Economics are, no doubt, efficiency and equality. The first means no dilapidation of resources, the second means…, well, it may mean many things: equality of opportunities, resources, access to basic goods, or equality of results, among many others. Whatever we understand by equality, there are two major problems with its […]