A Theory of Optimal Sick Pay
By Andrew Tutt Illness significantly reduces worker productivity, yet how employers respond to the possibility of illness and its effects on work performance is not well understood. The 2003 American Productivity Audit pegged the cost to employers of lost productive time due to illness at 225.8 billion US dollars/year. More importantly, 71% of that loss […]
Multiparty Bargaining Strategies Comparing Nash Bargaining Payoffs of Bilateral and Multilateral Negotiation Strategies during Conflict Bargaining
by Alexander Crable 2003, the United States and North Korea have been at odds over the creation and continuation of a North Korean nuclear weapons program. While North Korea lobbies strongly for these differences to be sorted out through bilateral negotiations between the two nations, the United States refuses to partake in any negotiations other […]
Caught Red-Handed: Corporate Labor Practices and the Investigatory Media, a New Look at Corporate Social Responsibility
By Jessica Lohrman Firm self-regulation with regards to illegal and unethical labor practices has become a significant trend recently, as firms face possible negative exposure from the investigatory media. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the determinants corporate labor practices and the role played by the investigatory media in firm self-regulation. The model finds […]
A Bargaining Theory of the “Edwards’ Effect” in the 2007-8 Democratic Presidential Primary
By Alex Li 2008’s Democratic Presidential Primary will go down as one of the most competitive races in recent history. Two candidates, Senators Barack Obama (Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (New York), fought a see-saw battle to obtain enough delegates/vote-shares for the Democratic nomination. Although the race eventually dwelled down to these two players, for a […]
Individual Incentives within Team Competitions
By Lisa Lam This paper develops a theoretical model to show the effects of simultaneously having both a competition between groups and one among the individuals of a tournament. The players are divided up among teams and compete for a at bonus for winning the team competition. At the same time, their efforts also determine […]
Soft-Targets and Incentive Compensation in Non-Prot Organizations
By Helin Gai Monetary targets are highly prevalent in fundraising campaigns. Although some theoretical research has been conducted to explain why fundraising organizations set such targets when charities are raised to fulfill certain capital requirements, there has been no literature that can suitably answer why a target is still announced when such capital requirements are […]
Bundling Donations to Charity with Product Purchases: A Business Incentives Model
by Kassity Liu Abstract This paper focuses on developing a business model that explains why certain companies would bundle their products with donations to charity. The model assumes that consumers are individuals that maximize their utility subject to their income and companies are agents that maximize their profits subject to prices and costs. The type […]
The Thought That Counts: Towards a Rational Theory of Gift-Giving
by Lydia Yao Abstract From an economic perspective, the practice of gift-giving in social relationships makes little sense due to the inefficiencies that arise from commonly mismatched gifts and preferences. This paper addresses the frequency of non-monetary gifts compared to more efficient cash transfers. While there is a vast literature concentrated on this cultural phenomenon, […]
Building Quality in Wikipedia: A Theoretical Approach
by Guangyuan Zhu Abstract Wikipedia is known as a convenient source of user generated information for a wide range of topics, but is it able to compete in quality with a print encyclopedia? In this paper, I formulate a theoretical framework to investigate this topic. I begin with a two-step sequential case for both Wikipedia […]
The Rationale Behind P2P Network Users
by Brian Choi Abstract An online distribution of copyrighted materials through P2P network is one of major legal issues today. While several P2P users have been fined severely for a violation of a copyright law, an illegal file sharing within the P2P network still continues to thrive, and the effectiveness of the punishment against P2P […]
Questions?
Undergraduate Program Assistant
Matthew Eggleston
dus_asst@econ.duke.edu
Director of the Honors Program
Michelle P. Connolly
michelle.connolly@duke.edu
