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To identify the factors that influence educational assortment in an online dating setting, we analyse 219,013 participant contacts by 41,936 members of the Australian online dating web site RSVP over a four-month period. Consistent with prior research, we find that more educated online daters are consistently likely to assort positively (homogamy) meaning that they are more likely to contact potential mates with the same level of education. However, as the more educated cohort gets older they care less about homogamy while less educated daters become more interested in homogamy which leads to an increase in similarity towards caring for the same educational level. On the other hand, older and more educated online daters are less likely to contact those with lower educational levels compared to their own while women are more likely to contact a potential mate with higher educational levels relative to their own (hypergamy). Our interaction analysis also reveals fewer differences in educational hypergamy among older online participants but a greater likelihood of online daters contacting mates with lower levels of education among younger males and older females. Further research is therefore warranted on technology's impact on human mating behaviour; in particular, the psychology employed by humans using the Internet to maximize their chances of matching their educational preferences in a mate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To theoretically and empirically explore whether social interaction, either local and global, influences the incidence of corruption, we first present an interaction-based model which predicts that the level of corruption is positively associated with social interaction. We then empirically verify this theoretical prediction using within-country evidence at the province-level in China from 1998 to 2007. The panel data evidence clearly indicates that social interaction has a statistically significantly positive effect on the corruption rate in China. Our findings therefore underscore the relevance of social interaction in understanding corruption and point to important policy implications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We connect HFACS to the public health literature and introduce HFACS-PH. • We overlay causal error and latent failure chains from the cited literature. • Leveraging HFACS-PH proactively, we can more effectively address systemic issues. • Interventions can be targeted across tertiary, secondary, and primary health. • We also present the HFACS-PH nanocode schema in Supplementary Material. In this article, we argue for a novel adaptation of the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) to proactive incidence prevention in the public health and in particular, during and in response to COVID-19. HFACS is a framework of causal categories of human errors typically applied for systematic retrospective incident analysis in high-risk domains. By leveraging this approach proactively, appropriate, and targeted measures can be quickly identified and established to mitigate potential errors at different levels within the public health system (from tertiary and secondary healthcare workers to primary public health officials, regulators, and policymakers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Although superstition is a common phenomenon in our modern society, only a few studies have explored empirically on what it depends. This paper investigates the factors which determine superstition, reporting some preliminary empirical results. The findings indicate that socio-demographic and socio-economic conditions matter. There seems to be a certain concurrence between churches and superstitious beliefs, the correlation between superstition and attendance of church and other religious activities being mostly negative. On the other hand, an overall greater religiosity increases superstition. The results also indicate that there is a strong variance in superstition in different countries. People from formerly Communist countries show a particularly high degree of superstition. It could therefore be concluded that superstition substituted the religious beliefs and activities eradicated during the Communist era. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates empirically the determinants of individuals'' attitudes towards preventing environmental damage in Spain using data from the World Values Survey and European Values Survey for the periods 1990, 1995 and 1999/2000. Compared to many previous studies, we present a richer set of independent variables and found that strongly neglected variables such as political interest and social capital have a strong impact on individuals'' preferences to prevent environmental damage. An interesting aspect in our study is the ability to investigate environmental preferences over time. The results show strong differences over time. Finally, using disaggregated data for Spanish regions, we also find significant regional differences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The intention of this paper is to analyze religiosity as a factor that potentially affects tax morale. For this purpose, a multivariate analysis has been done with data from the World Values Survey 1995–1997, covering more than 30 countries at the individual level. Several variables, such as church attendance, religious education, active membership in a church or a religious organization, perceived religiosity, religious guidance and trust in the church have been analyzed. The results suggest that religiosity raises tax morale. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyses the impact of direct democracy on tax morale in Switzerland, a country where participation rights strongly vary across different cantons, using survey data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 1998. The findings suggest that direct democratic rights have a significantly positive effect on tax morale. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Tax evasion seems to be a growing problem in almost all countries. The paper analyses the possibilities and limitations of game-theoretical aspects to analyse tax evasion. However, empirical findings indicate that most people pay more taxes than the traditional economic approach would predict. Thus, it might be important to go a step back and analyse tax morale, the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, as endogenous variable. With data from the World Values Survey (WVS), choosing Canada, strong evidence has been found that trust in government, pride, and religiosity have a systematic positive influence on tax morale. This effect tends to persist even after controlling for age, income, education, gender, marital status, employment status. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In 2009, Indonesia introduced a specialised tax office focused on High Wealth Individuals (HWIs), increasing the audit probability and monitoring of around 1200 wealthy taxpayers in Jakarta. Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment and analysing 141,097 de-identified individual tax return records between 2006 and 2012, we developed a set of counterfactuals to evaluate the post- and pre-treatment tax declarations of the monitored taxpayers relative to their synthetic control groups. Our results indicate that although post-treatment declaration of taxable and earned income, as well as income tax, increased, the effect was short-lived. The increase in reported earned income was larger relative to taxable income, suggesting that monitored individuals exerted efforts to reduce tax payments. Furthermore, we identified a comparable positive spillover effect on income declaration for non-treated taxpayers in Jakarta who met the HWI criteria. We also demonstrated that the spillover effect drastically decreased as financial characteristics (such as income and wealth) diverged from those of the targeted population. Overall, the additional tax revenue generated from this program is small in comparison to the total tax revenue collected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many prior studies suggest that default alphabetical ordering of coauthors in economics confers disproportionate professional advantages on those with an early surname initial because of the greater prominence it gives to the first author. However, these studies do not consider that authors select into coauthorships according to the incentives identified. We develop a model of endogenous selection into single and coauthorships around the principle that no one wants to be second author when they expect to provide the larger contribution (i.e., are of higher “quality”). We test it with authorship data from economics, with management (which does not use default alphabetical ordering) as a benchmark. We predict for economics that lower quality authors with an early surname initial would be less desirable coauthors, whereas higher quality authors with a late initial would have a lower desire to coauthor. Most desired are early initial authors of high quality, who are therefore advantaged in forming high-quality collaborations. The combined effect predicts citation rank increases with surname initial for single-authored papers and decreases for coauthored. We find both effects for economics when compared to management and absolutely. Our findings indicate that part of the advantage enjoyed by early surname initial authors in economics could be due to the higher ability among them having more incentive-compatible collaborators, rather than merely to greater prominence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As informal sperm donation becomes more prevalent worldwide, understanding donor psychology and interactions is critical in providing effective policy, equitable legislative frameworks and frontline health support to an ever-growing number of global participants. We analyse data of informal sperm donors who were members of the connection website PrideAngel to identify the role and effect of several factors, e.g. kinship, social networks, personality, and risk perception, on behaviour. A key strength of the study is the ability to analyse various factors, such as the level and history of informal donation, risk concerns, number of women to whom donations are informally made and the number of offspring. Our results indicate donors who have also been active in formal clinical settings (compared with those who exclusively donate informally), donate to more women in the informal market and realise more offspring. Donor's sexual orientation also affects activity. From a personality perspective, conscientiousness provides comparative advantage. It is possible this characteristic provides positive externalities, as more conscientious men may be more efficient or organised in a market that requires increased cooperation and communication. The importance of kin and social networks seems to affect frequency of donation only, possibly representing a time constraint (or opportunity cost). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an extensive body of research indicating multifaceted advantages for employees deemed physically attractive, factors that limit or even negate the attractiveness premium have not been sufficiently investigated. In this paper, we are interested in whether a rich set of physical appearance factors matter when performance information is transparently available, rather than – as is mostly the case in the labor force – imperfect or costly to obtain. To this end, we explore the labor market of professional football players in one of the world's most prestigious football leagues, namely the German Bundesliga. We investigate whether a rich set of physical appearance factors (including subjective attractiveness, facial symmetry, facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), and body gestalt) affect players' chances of being nominated or receiving the prestigious Player of the Month award. This study offers a unique opportunity to explore selection heuristics among team captains who are responsible for the nomination of the players, and the public who votes on the three top selections by captains. Our results indicate that individual performance tends to be a stronger driver of award success than physical appearance. Interestingly, performance can moderate some physical appearance factors (e.g., beauty matters more for lower performing players) and some positive assortative effects between captains and players along physical appearance are observed (captains with higher fWHR scores are more likely to nominate players who also have higher fWHR scores). In general, heuristics for captains are easier to identify empirically than for the public. We also find some differences; for example, only the public demonstrates a bias towards domestic players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the spirit of previous work in the compliance literature (e.g., tax, littering), we investigate whether environmental social norms affect volunteering in environmental organizations. Using two ‘environmental morale’ variables as indirect measures, we analyze the impact of social norms on the incidence of unpaid work in environmental organizations. In addition, we test whether violation of a specific environmental norm initiates a conditional cooperation response. We explore a large individual data set covering 32 countries from both Western and Eastern Europe, and extend the number of countries investigated to test the robustness of the relationship at the macro level. Our results indicate a strong positive relationship between the proxies for environmental social norms and volunteering in environmental organizations. The relationship persists despite our various robustness checks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper explores what determines the survival of people in a life-and-death situation. The sinking of the Titanic allows us to inquire whether pro-social behavior matters in such extreme situations. This event can be considered a quasi-natural experiment. The empirical results suggest that social norms such as ‘women and children first’ persevered during such an event. Women of reproductive age and crew members had a higher probability of survival. Passenger class, fitness, group size, and cultural background also mattered. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract This study uses the BIG 5 personality traits to quantitatively explore correlates of sexual frequency and reproductive success of a large sample (N Male = 2998; N Female = 1480) of heterosexuals advertised to on an Australian dating website. Consistent with previous research we find that for both sexes, extraversion has a positive linear relationship with sexual frequency. The same is also observable for males that are more conscientious, more emotionally stable, and less agreeable; indicating that for men, a greater number of personality factors matter in explaining the variation in sexual activity. Higher extraversion or lower openness in males correlates with more offspring. Conversely, only more agreeable females have more offspring. Our non-parametric thin-plate spline analysis suggests certain combinations of the traits extraversion & agreeableness, extraversion & conscientiousness, and agreeableness & conscientiousness provide select males a mating market competitive advantage in relation to sexual frequency, compared to other males. Our findings suggest that greater variance in male traits and their particular combinations thereof may provide a fitness comparative advantage for males, but not necessarily for females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We find an inverse S-shape in stated subjective probabilities in a novel experiment. • Prelec's (1998) conditional invariant model provides the best fit. • We find a large degree of individual heterogeneity. Abstract We examine the nature of stated subjective probabilities in a complex, evolving context in which participants are not told what the actual probability is: we collect information on subjective expectations in a computerized car race game wherein participants must bet on a particular car but cannot influence the odds of winning once the race begins. In our setup, the actual probability of the good outcome (a win) can be determined based on computer simulations from any point in the process. We compare this actual probability to the subjective probability stated by participants at three different points in each of six races. In line with previous research in which participants have direct access to actual probabilities, we find that the inverse S-shaped curve relating subjective to actual probabilities is also evident in our far more complex situation, and that there is only a limited degree of learning through repeated play. We show that the model in the inverse S-shaped function family that provides the best fit to our data is Prelec's 1998 conditional invariant model. We also find that individuals who report a greater degree of ambiguity are more pessimistic and less responsive to actual changes in real probabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Our working hypothesis is that cross-cultural differences in tax compliance behavior have foundations in the institutions of tax administration and citizen assessment of the quality of governance. Tax compliance being a complex behavioral issue, its investigation requires use of a variety of methods and data sources. Results from artefactual field experiments conducted in countries with substantially different political histories and records of governance quality demonstrate that observed differences in tax compliance levels persist over alternative levels of enforcement. The experimental results are shown to be robust by replicating them for the same countries using survey response measures of tax compliance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

To measure the importance of personality and individual characteristics in such extreme environments as high-altitude mountaineering, this study investigated how physical, physiological, and/or hormonal markers provide insights into individual predilections for competitive and risk-taking behaviours. Because climbing outcomes depend on the ability to overcome adverse environmental conditions, avoid unnecessary risks, and exert sufficient self-regulation to handle extreme physiological and psychological stressors, it focused particularly on the relation between the successful scaling among Mount Everest climbers and risk attitudes, personality factors (from the Big Five Inventory) or traits associated with prenatal androgen exposure (2D:4D ratio). The results indicate not only that the 2D:4D ratio positively predicts lifetime mountaineering success but that the more risk averse open-minded and emotionally stable the climbers, the more active and successful compared to their peers. These findings, in addition to suggesting that human biological and psychological traits substantially influence success and long-term performance in extreme situations, offer valuable insights into how humans with different tendencies are likely to behave under such stressful conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]