IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iek/wpaper/1506.html

An Improvement to Jensen's Inequality and its Application to Mating Market Clearing when Paternity is Uncertain

Author

Listed:
  • Dirk Bethmann

    (Department of Economics, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea)

Abstract

Jensen's inequality can be tightened in the context of binomially distributed random variables. The suggested new inequality coincides with Jensen's inequality only when the expected value of the random variable is an integer, in all other cases the inequality is tighter than Jensen's. This improvement is used to derive a welfare result in the context of a mating market where male agents are exposed to paternal uncertainty. It is shown that social welfare is highest when paternity is certain, a result that can not be obtained when relying on Jensen's inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Dirk Bethmann, 2015. "An Improvement to Jensen's Inequality and its Application to Mating Market Clearing when Paternity is Uncertain," Discussion Paper Series 1506, Institute of Economic Research, Korea University.
    • Handle: RePEc:iek:wpaper:1506
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.korea.ac.kr/~ri/WorkingPapers/w1506.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    2. Lippman, Steven A & McCall, John J, 1976. "The Economics of Job Search: A Survey," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 14(3), pages 347-368, September.
    3. R. Kaas & J.M. Buhrman, 1980. "Mean, Median and Mode in Binomial Distributions," Statistica Neerlandica, Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research, vol. 34(1), pages 13-18, March.
    4. Rogerson, William P, 1985. "Repeated Moral Hazard," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 69-76, January.
    5. Eyal Baharad & Benjamin Eden, 2004. "Price Rigidity and Price Dispersion: Evidence from Micro Data," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(3), pages 613-641, July.
    6. Lippman, Steven A & McCall, John J, 1976. "The Economics of Job Search: A Survey: Part I," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 14(2), pages 155-189, June.
    7. John Rust & Christopher Phelan, 1997. "How Social Security and Medicare Affect Retirement Behavior in a World of Incomplete Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 781-832, July.
    8. Dirk Bethmann & Michael Kvasnicka, 2011. "The institution of marriage," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(3), pages 1005-1032, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    2. Henneberger, Fred & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2002. "Beweggründe und Determinanten zwischenbetrieblicher Mobilität: Die Schweiz in einer internationalen Perspektive (Motives and determinants of job-to-job mobility : Switzerland in an international persp," Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 35(2), pages 205-231.
    3. Chun, Young H. & Plante, Robert D. & Schneider, Helmut, 2002. "Buying and selling an asset over the finite time horizon: A non-parametric approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 106-120, January.
    4. Ballot, Gerard, 2002. "Modeling the labor market as an evolving institution: model ARTEMIS," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 51-77, September.
    5. Wolfgang Stadje, 1997. "An optimal stopping problem with two levels of incomplete information," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 45(1), pages 119-131, February.
    6. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:205-271 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Martial Maillard, 1997. "L'appariement des emplois vacants et du chômage en France," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 127(1), pages 157-163.
    8. Tan Wang & Tony S. Wirjanto, 2016. "Risk Aversion, Uncertainty, Unemployment Insurance Benefit and Duration of "Wait" Unemployment," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 17(1), pages 1-34, May.
    9. Hans Gottinger, 1991. "Stochastic models for capital growth," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 267-281, October.
    10. Valerio Filoso, 2009. "Divorce And The Option Value Of Marital Search," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 119-149, February.
    11. Franz Rothlauf & Daniel Schunk & Jella Pfeiffer, 2005. "Classification of Human Decision Behavior: Finding Modular Decision Rules with Genetic Algorithms," MEA discussion paper series 05079, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    12. Ichiishi, Tatsuro, 1985. "Management versus ownership, II," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 115-138, March.
    13. Rami Zwick & Amnon Rapoport & Alison King Chung Lo & A. V. Muthukrishnan, 2003. "Consumer Sequential Search: Not Enough or Too Much?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 503-519, October.
    14. Laura J. Kornish & Karl T. Ulrich, 2011. "Opportunity Spaces in Innovation: Empirical Analysis of Large Samples of Ideas," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 107-128, January.
    15. Michael A. Stoll, 2005. "Geographical Skills Mismatch, Job Search and Race," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(4), pages 695-717, April.
    16. Lester, Benjamin & Visschers, Ludo & Wolthoff, Ronald, 2017. "Competing with asking prices," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(2), May.
    17. Fay, Scott & Mitra, Deb & Wang, Qiong, 2009. "Ask or infer? Strategic implications of alternative learning approaches in customization," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 136-152.
    18. Cuéllar Martín, Jaime & Martín-Román, Ángel L. & Moral, Alfonso, 2017. "A composed error model decomposition and spatial analysis of local unemployment," MPRA Paper 79783, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Hubert Jayet, 1996. "L'analyse économique des migrations, une synthèse critique," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 47(2), pages 193-226.
    20. Sofronov, Georgy, 2013. "An optimal sequential procedure for a multiple selling problem with independent observations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 332-336.
    21. Klimm, Felix & Kocher, Martin G. & Opitz, Timm & Schudy, Simeon, 2023. "Time pressure and regret in sequential search," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 406-424.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C65 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Miscellaneous Mathematical Tools
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iek:wpaper:1506. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kim, Jisoo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ierkukr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.