Shiba Suzuki

Previous studies have revealed the role of relative performance information feedback on providing agent incentives under a relative rewarding scheme through laboratory experiments. This study examines the impact of relative performance information feedback of students’ performance on their examination score under the relative grading scheme in an actual educational environment. Conducting a randomized controlled trial in a compulsory subject at a Japanese university, we show that the relative performance information feedback has a significantly positive impact on the students’ examination score on average, but that the average positive impact is derived by the improvement of low-performing students.

This note demonstrates analytically that a persistent catastrophic shock on endowment growth, even if moderate, yields negative equity premiums when a representative agent is relatively prudent. In particular, it derives the minimum persistence necessary to have zero equity premiums.

In this note, we consider the effect on equity premiums of a representative household's subjective expectations during disasters. In particular, we focus on the effect of doubt during disasters. We derive analytical solutions of equity premiums in the model of power utility function and conduct numerical exercises of the model of the recursive utility function. Our contribution is to demonstrate that doubt during disasters even mild ones generates high equity premiums. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Some studies find that real equity prices in economies damaged during World War II tended to rise sharply at the beginning of actual damage taking place during the war. This paper introduces an empirically plausible degree of persistence from the impact of World War II and demonstrates that stock market booms in economies damaged during the war are consistent with an equilibrium model of asset pricing. © 2012 University of Venice.