Messages Committing You to Reciprocate

Struggling with gift-giving obligations: when mobile messages are too laborious to reciprocate

Messaging with new media should be fun, but sometimes participating in conversations can become a burden for users due to the effort required. In this paper, examples of such situations are presented from a study on a multimedia program for mobile phones that can be used to create MMS-based comic strips. The examples show how the social system of gift-giving obligations, originally presented by...

Committing to mitosis

and colleagues. Although the bacteria may do it to gain access to tasty chemicals that leak out, the results for humans may include stomach ulcers and gastric cancer. The link from cell junctions to stomach ailments may, say the researchers, lie in tissue repair. Injury to the stomach triggers cell division and migration to plug the gap. The chiefs in charge of these processes may well lie in c...

Medicare & You: Consumer Research on Messages to Prevent Medical Errors

Committing to Transparency to Resist Corruption

to commit to transparent behavior in a competitive information beauty contest managed by a corrupt agent. In his contract, the agent has some discretion to favor a firm in commitment to transparency is never incentive compatible, but conditional commitment mechanism can eliminate discretion is strong and the market's profitability is small that a commit. In that situation, the high quality firm...

Credibly Committing to Property Rights

Economic theory predicts a positive relationship between property rights and economic growth. However, few developing countries have experienced better economic performance after improving their protection of property rights. The following manuscript addresses this puzzle by directly assessing where property rights reforms have been effective. I argue that multiple, reinforcing credibility mech...