Economics Insights @ CBS

We empirically study the motivations of users to contribute content to social media in the context of the popular microblogging site Twitter. We focus on non-commercial users who do not benefit financially from their contributions. Previous literature suggests two main possible sources of motivation to post content for these users: intrinsic motivation and image-related motivation. We leverage the fact that these two types of motivation give rise to different predictions as to whether users should increase their contributions when their number of followers (audience size) increases.

This paper is devoted to the findings of a bibliometric analysis of 52 syllabi on economic sociology provided by the members of the American Sociological Association section "Economic Sociology" and scholars from the UK, France, Germany, and Russia. In addition, the initial collection was expanded to course syllabi submitted from outside of sociology, including management departments, policy programs and anthropology. The analysis aims at measuring to what extent economic sociologists are consensual and have an agreement upon a set of core texts.

We develop a liability driven investment framework that incorporates downside risk penalties for not meeting liabilities. The shortfall between the asset and liabilities can be valued as an option which swaps the value of the endogenously determined optimal portfolio for the value of the liabilities. The optimal portfolio selection exhibits endogenous risk aversion and as the funding ratio deviates from the fully funded case in both directions, effective risk aversion decreases.

In one laboratory study and one field study conducted with a large, representative sample of respondents, we show that seemingly innocuous questions that precede a conjoint task, such as demographic and usage-related screening questions can alter the price sensitivities recovered from the main conjoint task. The findings demonstrate that whether these prior questions use broad response categories (i.e., few scale points) or narrow response categories (i.e., many scale points) systematically influences consumers' price sensitivity in a CBC (Choice Based Conjoint) study.