Category archives: Economics

Markets for water

Markets for water

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

This is the English version of a section in Ferreira (2014) , a paper dedicated to overview the experiments in Industrial Organization, to appear in Revista de Economía Industrial, and is reproduced here with the permission of the journal. The great majority of water collection and distribution in the world rely on a central authority […]

The market for blood

The market for blood

EconomicsSociology

By José Luis Ferreira

Slonim et al . (2014) discuss the problems of blood allocation in different countries and suggest a mechanism that can improve it. The present article is a summary of their main ideas. In the wealthy countries blood is mostly supplied via voluntary donations. The way blood is collected varies from country to country. Some have […]

A field experiment on social preferences using Google Answers

A field experiment on social preferences using Google Answers

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

The literature of experimental economics has documented that individuals consistently make voluntary payments. Two methodological questions arise from this fact. First, which are the precise drivers of this pro-social behavior and, second, whether these findings can be extended to real life situations. Tobias Regner (2014) addresses these questions comparing theoretical and laboratory results with the […]

The Grand Bazaar of Wisdom (and 6): Mathematical models in the economics of science

The Grand Bazaar of Wisdom (and 6): Mathematical models in the economics of science

EconomicsPhilosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

The most distinctive feature of modern economics is probably its reliance on the methodology of mathematical model building. The final aim of scientific model building is illuminating real phenomena; furthermore, models are basically logical arguments, whose main virtue is that they allow us to see very clearly what follows, and also what does not follow […]