1988 Turbo Thunderbirdfor Sale

PPDA The case: On the plagiarism to the economy to the economy of plagiarism

Recently, the great writer, journalist incidental (unless it is otherwise), pass-me-the-pepper-first (Sorry, it's the nickname Desproges that gave him and admit him to prefer the original) was found entangled in a murky affair plagiarism of an existing work during the production of its "own" biography of Hemingway. In fact, it is not always well today if he himself has plagiarized or if the person in charge of writing in its place the so-called biography by his negro-term spent - that is guilty plagiarism. For, in a sort of abyss into fun and maddening at the same time - as Nietzsche wrote, "When you look at the abyss, the abyss also looks into you"-the question is: Does the copier copied the work or he copied copier copier's work?

[player, I feel that headache coming and that you are planning to zap already on Regis blog, much less headlock]

teachers, including myself, have all faced this problem of plagiarism when he is asked students to provide a written personal conduct outside of class. In the best case, a file contains three clear evidence of plagiarism, sometimes a little unconscious, which is the growing of "cut and paste chunks of text, sometimes not even proofread.

[ In such great classic anthology of dunces, a record written in 2010 that "the policy of our company ..." after being pumped back a wave file of presentation of a strategy, or "Beyond the year 1995, future prospects are promising ... "]

What is plagiarism? I use the definition in Black's Law Dictionary, as "t he act of literary Appropriating the composition of Another, gold shares or passages of historical writings, gold gold The Ideas Of The Sami language, and passing 'em off As The product of one's "own mind. "

Plagiarism is not just a copy paste, but also the act of stealing the idea from someone and to attribute it with a generosity so that commands respect. I only speak of the strict form of plagiarism mentioned in the first part of this quotation, namely the "cut and paste" seem to work in the case PPDA.

[I burst out laughing also about defending the individual against the prosecution, which says in all seriousness this: "'I am naturally documented from the many existing biographies, among them that of Griffin - biography copied (NDLA) - I think the best on the young Hemingway. But I was not going to reinvent a life! ". I plan also to me personally" document "blogs frequently on French economy because, well eh! I'm not going to reinvent the economic analysis. ]

Plagiarism is a recent phenomenon but apparently not in full blast. It does not, unfortunately, as students, but journalists and possibly academic economists. This investigation Wooders Hoover in 2005 and established on the basis of 1200 responses from academic economists surveyed, 25% felt they had been plagiarized at least once. Moreover, a significant proportion of academic economists surveyed (35%) tends to define plagiarism fairly strict, of copying a quotation without assigning it, using the ideas of others not listed n ' is probably not strictly or plagiarism, as opposed to the definition a little higher.

most disturbing is that for other populations, the results are comparable, if one relies on quick review of the literature conducted by Collins for example, Judge and Rickman in 2007 in the E uropean Journal of Law and Economics : about one quarter of English students said they had plagiarized at least once during their studies and 16% more than once. This proportion is even higher in North America, where 38% of students admit to plagiarism.

This attitude is even more curious by the students as sanctions for discovery of plagiarism are not small, and that teachers easily detect (But not often enough) plagiarism when they bother to look. From a social standpoint, the cost of student plagiarism may not be negligible, because it implies a potential challenge to the value of a degree (that is to say that ultimately , plagiarism is a negative externality suffered by the students themselves) first, and secondly, it takes up valuable time for teachers and researchers concerned with detecting fraud, which diverts business more productive, such as research and teaching.

The saving works or behavioral psychology that bear on the subject are relatively rare, if we stay on the problem of plagiarism and no fraud or cheating in very general terms.
However, I just give a result on the behavior of cheating in general as they are observed in the laboratory because it is also a way to reflect on the reasons for the behavior of plagiarism and so on mechanisms to fight that. The study Schwieren Weichselbaumer and published in 2010 in the Journal of Economic Psychology particular shows that over the economic environment of experimental subjects is competitive, the more they tend to cheat more generally. According to their findings, women are more affected by this reaction to competitive pressure than men.

A study by Dan Ariely amusing and (see this link ) specifically addresses the use of plagiarism "industrial" by the students, through the order that they may go to specialized sites involving tests or dissertations on different topics for a fee.
The outcome of the story returns I find so troubling to the mishap of PPDA. Ariely and his colleague Aline Grüneisen pass editorial control trials from four different sites on the topic of cheating (typically at Ariely humor!). They compile and evaluate studies and essays that are essentially paying are a jumble of nonsense rambling, with little value to a final academic point of view, which reassures the ability of students using in this scheme to deceive their teachers. However, the story does not end there and the drop is even more interesting: They then take these four essays to website specialized in detecting plagiarism. The result is instructive: two of these essays, from 35 to 40% of the content is directly plagiarized!

[ From there to think, reader, that PPDA has ordered her next book about the life of Hemingway on the site OTURBIN.COM there that I do not ever allow myself to do ...]

What to do when faced with this behavior. A recent study by Dee and Jacob published as NBER working paper in 2010 uses the method of experience in the field ("field experiment") to assess the impact of different policies on the behavior of plagiarism. Experimenters randomly placed half of a pool of 1200 students who achieve an essay in a group where they have previously used (ie before writing) to an online tutorial that allows self-evaluate their own behavior and perceptions of plagiarism (if you're interested reader will see there), it order to make students aware of this problem. Other students have no special training and are therefore the control group.
The authors observe that particular group of students who have used this tutorial plagiarizes significantly less than other (more precisely the likelihood of resorting to plagiarism is even lower than their test score of understanding of the tutorial Plagiarism is high), and that this effect can not be attributed to greater awareness of the risks arising from plagiarism, but rather to increased knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism really for these students.

To conclude this small review a bit anecdotal, a recent study Ariely and Norton published in 2010 in Psychological Science shows that to consume counterfeit items (ie Copies of consumer goods, wearing fake Rayban into their experience) is usually done by individuals who are themselves prone to cheating personally. Moreover, the wearing of counterfeit items encourages others (those who do not necessarily counterfeit) to cheat more frequently.

Well, if a reader knows personally PPDA, the whole question now is if he wears Rayban counterfeit Lacoste polos Made in Syldavia or sweaters made in Armor Lux Borduria ...

Butal_apap_325-caff Tab

End of scrapping behavior and climbing

During the Christmas holidays, being asked to get around on our beautiful roads of France to enjoy the various feasts usual in this period (called the truce confectioners, but the said confectionery is far from being a period of peace I think), I saw firsthand how the French fleet was renewed. Indeed, luck probably pretty rare, time of the scrapping incentive introduced by the French government has coincided with a change in the registration system cars, first priority applied to new vehicles. This enables consumers to easily see the explosion in the number of new vehicles in the park, the new plates replacing the old high speed

In France, the end of the scrappage caused the stampede at dealerships. Apparently, car dealers have been totally overrun with customers eager to buy a new vehicle through the resumption of their old jalopy, that before the fateful date of 31 December. Dealers, says the newspaper Le Monde , have seen increased orders by 30% over the same period of 2009, a total of 370,000 vehicles have been ordered. This is reminiscent of this mediocre film starring Arnold "Gobernator" Schwarzenegger a few years ago, the "Jingle" in which two fathers not very farsighted, even a little outrageous, and have promised their respective son the same toy in vogue, are competing to get the day of the December 24 one of the last copies available for sale. Self
Incidentally, I fail to see the positive impact of this price premium paid by the customer for a vehicle from the time of this deadline results in an increase apparently very strong demand, which puts the seller in a strong position. Moreover, the simple consequence of this is probably a drop in demand after 1 January, what dealers expect. I hope that a serious economist will have the idea of studying this closely, but my hunch would be that those who waited to buy their vehicle will be in an interesting position by February in March 2011 to negotiate volume discounts with vendors after a few weeks of concessions deserted by customers sated in their primary needs automobilistiques. The rest of the ticket will show that this intuition is not completely off base.

In Spain, the end of the baby bonus of 2,500 euros on 1 January 2011, introduced in 2007 by the Zapatero government, caused a similar race, but this time for childbirth parents urging medical personnel to help induce labor. Clinics and hospitals were swamped as ever this Christmas, just like the French auto dealers mentioned above.
Economist Has something to say about these behaviors caused by race dates irrevocable? From a general standpoint, I do not know, but from the perspective of behavioral economics certainly.

[ At best, reader, I say a general point of view, to do a bit of provocation at the beginning of the year, it always amuses me to see how many people are a more rational economic point of view that many academic economists are willing to acknowledge. I remember the critical final approach Becker Economic Analysis behaviors that have nothing, not really anything economic, such as marriage, substance abuse, crime ... and the birth rate. So, Gary, respect! ]

Regarding experimental economics, this kind of problem has been studied in the context of auctions, which is easily understood, since the bidders competing for the same property may be ready to overbid to win, the deadline approaching end of the auction, putting themselves at risk of well-known curse of the winner (I will not longer here, if this problem interests you, reader, I refer you to this post and the Friends of Mafeco ).
He who, from time to time as me, bidding on E-Bay and was led to propose a price beyond its initial threshold at the sight of the clock down mercilessly the remaining time, I understand very well.
course, a skeptical reader objected that the problem is quite different since, for vehicles, the price is fixed in advance and that competition among buyers is not regulated by a price system, as in the auction , but by a system queue. However, this objection I reply that I am to myself that the potential size of the refund, so the final price of the vehicle depends on the willingness to pay of the buyer, which I think is enhanced by the premium case.

The impact of the rules of time limits on the behavior of bidders, the net has been particularly studied in a series of articles by Alvin Roth & Axel Ockenfels (2002, 2006) and (Dan) Ariely, Ockenfels and Roth in 2005. These papers are both theoretical and empirical, empirical evidence is based on either laboratory experiments or on data from Internet auctions (Ebay and Amazon).
They look especially to study the behavior of bidders in a second bid price (that is to say when the buyer who wins is the one who proposed the highest price but ultimately pays the price offered by the next lower losing the first buyer, also called Vickrey auction), and this by changing the rules of auction end. In a first institution
auction, similar to E-Bay auction ends on a firm date specified in advance, usually after a week and known to all. The bidders offer their maximum price sequentially, it is not known to other bidders, but helping to increase the price by one increment, for example, 1 dollar, if the maximum price proposed is higher than the lowest price offered so far. An example, taken from Wilcox, 2000, in an article published in Marketing Letters, may be more telling. In this example, the first bidder offers a price of $ 20, knowing that the seller required a reserve price of $ 10, the second bidder offers $ 15, $ 30 the third, etc. :

Source: Wilcox, 2000

In the example above, the No. 3 bidder wins the auction and pays $ 26 after the regulatory end of the auction process.
Now it happens that the auction system to e-Bay auction causes a lot of last minute. From a factual standpoint, we observe that 80% of the auction conducted on E-Bay are made during the last hour before the end of the auction regulations. These behaviors bidding the last minute, well known, are called "sniping." The risk of this behavior is that if there is an auction at the last minute, there is a small but significant probability that the offer can not be taken into account with E-Bay, which is the result of congestion deals the system can not handle if they are too numerous.
Moreover, other rules of auction end can be imagined, as in the Amazon system. In this system, the deadline is extended to advance automatically, unless during the last ten minutes before the deadline, no bid was made. We understand intuitively that this system discourages buyers with offers at the last minute.
On Empirically, this intuition is confirmed. The chart below shows the cumulative distribution of bids on the hour before the deadline, for Amazon and eBay:

Source: Ockenfels and Roth 2002, American Economic Review

curves that are more uniform than on Amazon, while we see that for eBay, more than half of tenders the last time are made in the last 15 minutes.
This empirical study is complemented by a series of laboratory experiments in which the authors compare four designs for auction. The experiences of bidding a basic principle quite simple. Typically, subjects are assigned a random value between minimum and maximum terminal, this value is their own and actually representing their willingness to pay. The subject will therefore gain is zero if he loses the auction is the difference between this value and the final price if the winner of the auction. This is exactly so that the experiments Ariely, Ockenfels and Roth are organized. In their experiments
, there are four treatments that will be compared. The design is quite complex, I leave interested readers to go read the paper as published in the Rand Journal of Economics. The first treatment, which treatment benchmark, is simultaneous sealed bid second price (all bidders make their offers at the same time, their offer is not known to others and the winner is the one who made the strongest proposal paying the second highest price). The second is the Amazon system, a time of bid is given to subjects, and the auction stops only if no one made any proposal for 10 minutes. It is also a second-price auction. The third and fourth correspond to the eBay system, with a deadline of all known and irrevocable, eBay is also equivalent to a second bid price. The third treatment simply consider the fact that if the offer is made at the last minute, there are only 80% chance that it be considered, while in the fourth treatment, there is a 100% chance that it is actually transmitted (so there is no failure of the type considered above). The results are very rich, but compared to my original question on the end of the scrapping, I'll put a special emphasis on the final income of the winners of the auction, is to tell the difference from baseline for each subject privately and the price he actually paid.

source: Ariely, Ockenfels and Roth, 2005

It is quite clear that the median income earned by the winning buyer is more important in the treatment than in treatments Amazon eBay themselves being best in terms of the buyer that classic second-price auction Sealed. Clearly, an empirical perspective, we see that to establish a deadline irrevocable mainly benefits the seller.

Moral: Beware of deadlines that make you throw you in the act of purchase, because quite often there is more to lose than to win!

that, I wish you, dear reader, an excellent year 2011 and hope to see you continue on this blog that just celebrated its two year existence at the end of the year last! Anyway, thank you for your faithfulness.