I analyse a model that explicitly incorporates local interactions and allows agents to exchange information about job openings within their social networks. Agents are more likely to be employed if their social contacts are also employed. The model generates a stationary distribution of unemployment that exhibits positive spatial correlations. I estimate the model via an indirect inference procedure, using Census Tract data for Chicago. I find a significantly positive amount of social interactions across neighbouring tracts. The local spillovers are stronger for areas with less educated workers and higher fractions of minorities. Furthermore, they are shaped by ethnic dividing lines and neighbourhood boundaries.

this paper "ergodic" is used in a very weak sense, as it is not proposed, theoretically or practically, that all states of the system are actually to be visited

Abstract We provide a practical method to estimate the payoff functions of players in complete information, static, discrete games. With respect to the empirical literature on entry games originated by We apply this methodology to investigate the empirical importance of different types of firm heterogeneity as determinants of market structure in the U.S. airline industry. We find that the competitive effects of large airlines (American, Delta, United) are different from those of low cost carriers and Southwest. We also find that the competitive effect of an airline is increasing in its airport presence, which is an important measure of observable heterogeneity in the airline industry. Then, we develop a policy experiment to estimate the effect of repealing the Wright Amendment on competition in markets out of the Dallas airports. We find that repealing the Wright Amendment would increase the number of markets served out of Dallas Love by 20 percent, and that most of them would be served by Southwest. * We thank the editor and three referees for comments that greatly improved the paper. We also thank T. Bresnahan, A. Cohen, B. Honoré, C. Manski, M. Mazzeo, A. Pakes, J. Panzar, A. Paula, R. Porter, W. Thurman, and seminar participants at many institutions and meetings for comments. We especially thank K. Hendricks for insightful suggestions. We also thank S. Sakata for help with a version of his genetic algorithm and T. Whalen at the Department of Justice for useful insights on airlines' entry decisions. B. Karali provided excellent research assistance. The usual disclaimer applies.

In 2004 all publications will carry a motif taken from the €100 banknote. This paper can be downloaded without charge from

s: Jan. 1992 -- Dec. 1994 ffl CTI: Current Technology Index Jan./Feb. 1993 -- Jan./Feb. 1994 ffl DAI: Dissertation Abstracts International: Vol. 53 No. 1 -- Vol. 55 No. 4 (1994) ffl EEA: Electrical & Electronics Abstracts: Jan. 1991 -- Dec. 1994 ffl P: Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings: Jan. 1986 -- Feb. 1995 (except Nov. 1994) ffl EI A: The Engineering Index Annual: 1987 -- 1992 ffl EI M: The Engineering Index Monthly: Jan. 1993 -- Dec. 1994 The following GA researchers have already kindly supplied their complete autobibliographies and/or proofread references to their papers: Dan Adler, Patrick Argos, Jarmo T. Alander, James E. Baker, Wolfgang Banzhaf, Ralf Bruns, I. L. Bukatova, Thomas Back, Yuval Davidor, Dipankar Dasgupta, Marco Dorigo, Bogdan Filipic, Terence C. Fogarty, David B. Fogel, Toshio Fukuda, Hugo de Garis, Robert C. Glen, David E. Goldberg, Martina Gorges-Schleuter, Jeffrey Horn, Aristides T. Hatjimihail, Mark J. Jakiela, Richard S. Judson, Akihiko Konaga...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of a choice-theoretic model of cultural transmission. In particular, we use data from the General Social Survey to estimate the structural parameters of a model of marriage and child socialization along religious lines in the United States. The observed intermarriage and socialization rates are consistent with Protestants, Catholics, and Jews having a strong preference for children who identify with their own religious beliefs and making costly decisions to influence their children’s religious beliefs. Our estimates imply dynamics of the shares of religious traits in the population that are in sharp contrast with the predictions obtained by linear extrapolations from current intermarriage rates. The paper has benefited substantially from a spirited discussion during the presentation of some preliminary results at Minnesota. Many thanks go to M. Arellano, G. Becker,

We develop a novel computerized real effort task, based on moving sliders across a screen, to test experimentally whether agents are disappointment averse when they compete in a real effort sequential-move tournament. We predict that a disappointment averse agent, who is loss averse around her endogenous choice-acclimating expectations-based reference point, responds negatively to her rival’s effort. We find significant evidence for this discouragement effect, and use the Method of Simulated Moments to estimate the strength of disappointment aversion on average and the heterogeneity in disappointment aversion across the population.

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A model of population rule learning is formulated and estimated using experimental data. When predicting the population distribution of choices and accounting for the number of parameters, the population rule learning model is much better than aggregation of individually estimated rule learning models. Further, rule learning is a statistically significant and important phenomena even when focusing on population statistics, and is much better than one-rule learning dynamics. 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C15; C52; C72 Keywords: Rules; Learning; Games; Experimental; Testing 1. Introduction Recent learning research in one-shot games can be divided into two domains: (i) population learning or evolutionary dynamics as typified by replicator dynamics, 1 and (ii) individual learning. 23 The first domain focuses on how the population distribution of play changes over time, while the second domain focuses on how an individual's behavior changes over...

INTRODUCTION In this paper we consider Simulated Annealing algorithms (SA in what follows) applied to continuous global optimization problems, i.e. problems with the following form f = min x2X f(x); (1.1) where X ` ! n is a continuous domain, often assumed to be compact, which, combined with the continuity or lower semicontinuity of f , guarantees the existence of the minimum value f . SA algorithms are based on an analogy with a physical phenomenon: while at high temperatures the molecules in a liquid move freely, if the temperature is slowly decreased the thermal mobility of the molecules is lost and they form a pure crystal which also corresponds to a state of minimum energy. If the temperature is decreased too quickly (the so called quenching) a liquid metal rather ends up in a polycrystalline or amorphous state with