2008 SEP 8 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "I develop an agent-based computational economics (ACE) model with which I evaluate the aggregate impact of labor market policies," investigators in Bolzano, Italy report.

  "The findings are that govemment-financed training measures increase the outflow rate from unemployment to employment. Although the overall effect is positive, this effect is achieved by reducing the outflow rate for those who do not receive subsidies," wrote M. Neugart and colleagues, Free University ...read more

  2008 SEP 8 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "Criminals impose costs on society that go beyond the direct losses suffered by their victims; crime casts a shadow of uncertainty over our daily economic and social activities. Consequently, individuals and society as a whole choose to direct resources to crime prevention," researchers in the United States report.

  "In this study we analyze a virtual society facing such choices. Individuals, neighborhoods, and cities make crime prevention decisions and adjust their decisions over time as they attempt to balance the cost of crime with the cost of fighting it. The society that ultimately emerges exhibits aggregate criminal characteristics that mimic patterns of crime observable in the natural world. We then use this virtual society to conduct a series of anti-crime policy experiments, the results of which illustrate how different approaches to crime protection and incarceration can vary in their efficiency at reducing crime. As expected, more effective anti-crime measures tend to reduce crime, but the impact of prison is less clear," wrote A. Wilhite and colleagues, University of Alabama ...read more

  2008 SEP 8 - (VerticalNews.com) -- According to recent research from the United States, "Every year around Christmas there are shortages of the ''hot toy.'' Why don't sellers raise the price? The hot-toy problem is puzzling if we assume that a ''big'' shortage implies that a $500 bill is being left on the ground."

  "I show that a big shortage does not necessarily imply large losses in profits. Indeed, the bigger the shortage as conventionally measured the smaller the loss in profit from underpricing," wrote A. Tabarrok and colleagues, George Mason University ...read more