Analysis of Behavior in Housing, Charity and Education

Abstract

Chapter 1:Data from Washoe County between 2006 and 2013 provides evidence for the loss aversion hypothesis. Homes that experienced a loss tend to have a higher asking price, a higher selling price and tend to stay on the market longer. Assembly Bill 284, a policy intervention intended to reduce the number of foreclosed homes, played an important role in how sellers responded to the loss in value of their homes. The bill magnified the effect of loss aversion, causing homes to stay on the market longer, exacerbating housing lock.Chapter 2:The standard public goods model for the financing of charity assumes voluntary private funding and tax financed public funding are equivalent. Here, the standard model is extended, so public financed charity can be discounted relative to private financing, capturing the possibility that publically financed charity is less efficient. When “public giving” is less efficient, “private giving” can be socially useful even when it does not generate a warm glow for the giver. Combining the discounting with the warm-glow further enhances the social usefulness of private giving.Chapter 3:This study reports the results of an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that segmenting a video will improve student performance. Two intermediate macroeconomic course sections were each provided 27 minutes of video instruction. One section was given the 27 minutes in one whole segment, while the other section was given the same video in three segments, each roughly nine minutes long. The nine minute segmenting, for the content delivered, did not enhance or detract from student performance based on short-term and long-term measures. Those who watched the videos more did better on average, with diminishing returns.