Jochen Jungeilges

Economic welfare, civil liberty, and suicide: an empirical investigation

Abstract Performing an international cross-section study for 30 countries, this paper investigates the dependence of suicides rates on real income per capita, real income growth and civil liberty. Suicide rates are transformed into logits, and weighted seemingly unrelated Zellner–Aitken estimates are obtained for both sexes and seven age groups, where the weights correspond to the size of the population in each of the subgroups of the different countries. All three variables have significant effects on the suicide rate. The economic variables have a positive influence: the higher real per capita income and/or real economic growth, the higher the suicide rate is. But these results vary between age groups: income plays a more important role for the middle age group, whereas economic growth is more important for the older people. Moreover, older women react stronger to income growth than older men. With respect to civil liberty, we get ‘expected’ results: the more liberty, the lower the suicide rates.

State dependence in sequential equity judgements

We report the results from a questionnaire-type experiment designed to elicit whether individuals decide in accordance with the equity axiom constituent for Rawls’s second principle. The experiment is sequential in nature. Hence it generates panel data. We use recently developed panel data methods for studying the role that state dependence and unobservable individual-specific effects play for the observed equity judgements. The results indicate that a dominant share of our probants initially adhere to Hammond’s equity axiom, but that many of these leave the Rawlsian position at later stages of the experiment. Although state dependence plays a significant role it cannot alone explain the observed decision behavior. Individual-specific effects are also important.

Equity Judgements Elicited Through Experiments: An Econometric Examination

Utilitarianism and Rawisianism stand out as prominent schools of social welfare assessment. According to the utilitarian school, welfare judgements should be based on how policies affect the sum of individual utilities. By contrast, according to the maximin principle of Rawls (1971), the Rawlsian school claims that welfare judgements should be based on how policies affect the utility of the worst-off individual in society.

On Chaotic Consistent Expectations Equilibria

Abstract The notion of c̱onsistent e̱xpectations e̱quilibria (CEE) as propagated by Hommes/Sorger (1998) is reviewed. Focusing on their example of a chaotic CEE constructed in the context of a cobweb model, it is argued that such an equilibrium is a temporary one. Assuming that an agent-modeled as an individual, versatile in applying the basic tools of linear time-series econometrics-has learned the CEE, I analyze the duration of the time period over which the agent maintains her/his beliefs concerning the perceived law of motion (AR(1)). The analysis based on numerical simulations indicates that the use of techniques rooted in the linear paradigm is sufficient to generate convincing evidence against the underlying perceived law of motion.

Sensitivity analysis of consumption cycles

We study the special case of a nonlinear stochastic consumption model taking the form of a 2-dimensional, non-invertible map with an additive stochastic component. Applying the concept of the stochastic sensitivity function and the related technique of confidence domains, we establish the conditions under which the systems complex consumption attractor is likely to become observable. It is shown that the level of noise intensities beyond which the complex consumption attractor is likely to be observed depends on the weight given to past consumption in an individuals preference adjustment.