2018/2019

The first element of this project has been completed. It involves the matching of lottery winner data (provided by an anonymous Canadian lottery corporation), with Provincial Corporate Registry Data (provided by an Anonymous Canadian Provincial Government). This data has been used as the basis of a completed working paper (see details below).

The main new finding of this working paper concerns the length of time (in days) between the date of the lottery win and the date of the registration or incorporation of a new business by the lottery winner. Our data is unique in the literature in that we can observe the exact date (day/month/year) of both the lottery win as well as the exact date of the new business formation. Our main finding is that there is a very short time between these two dates (approximately three weeks in some of our specifications).

This finding of the very short length of time between the date of a lottery win and the date of a business formation is consistent with the hypothesis that potential entrepreneurs having well developed business plans in place, even though they do not yet have sufficient financing. As soon as they receive the financial boost from the lottery win, they proceed to form their new business. This finding is thus consistent with the hypothesis that potential entrepreneurs are financially constrained.

This finding, that there is a very short period of time between the lottery win and the subsequent business formation, is new in the literature and constitutes an important source of new evidence on the financial constraint hypothesis. This new evidence is only possible because of our unique lottery winner data, which allows us to observe the exact date of the lottery win.

This paper forms part of a much larger project (also funded by AGRI) which examines the same question of how lottery wins impact entrepreneurial business formation, but which attaches lottery winner data to two other sources of data. These other sources of data are; (1) Statistics Canada matched tax filer information of employees and employers, and (2) Credit Bureau data provided by an anonymous Canadian Credit Bureau, on credit files of entrepreneurs. Both of these projects are progressing well. It is envisaged that the results from the various projects will be included in different academic papers.

While the majority of research into gambling outcomes has examined individuals who lose from gambling activities, a growing literature has recognized the importance of academic research on individuals who win from gambling activities. The existing research into individuals who have won from gambling has documented that winning from gambling can have both positive as well as negative outcomes for both the individual, as well as society. This research project examines the link between an individual who wins from gambling (specifically winning the lottery) and that individual’s subsequent entrepreneurial decisions. This issue has very large socio-economic implications both for the individual herself, as well as for the individual’s community, and the economy as a whole.

Vyacheslav Mikhed, Sahil Raina, and Barry Scholnick “To Incorporate or Not? The Role of Financial Constraints” University of Alberta School of Business, Working paper (2022).

Presented at: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Indian School of Business CAF Summer Research Conference, Macquarie University, Queensland, University of Technology, University of New South Wales, and University of Sydney. Also presented at AGRI Annual Conference 2021.

The token exchange paradigm shows that a number of animal species are cognitively able to barter with humans: they can use objects as symbolic tools to request specific food rewards. Likewise, promising animal models of gambling have recently been developed with many important findings deriving from this research. Such studies provide insights into the mechanisms and evolution of economic behavior in humans, including bartering and gambling.

However, the ecological validity of these lab-based experimental situations tends to be limited. The present program of research is intended to rectify these weaknesses by adapting a unique and naturally occurring token-mediated bartering system in a large and free-ranging population of Balinese macaques. These monkeys spontaneously and routinely engage in token-mediated bartering interactions with humans. These interactions occur in two phases: after stealing inedible and more or less valuable objects from humans (i.e., the token-robbing phase), the macaques appear to use them as tokens, by returning them to humans in exchange for food (i.e., the token/food bartering phase). Our field research aims to adapt this emerging economic system into a series of controlled bartering and gambling tasks. By doing so, we are addressing the need for a more ecologically valid primate model of trading (i.e., bartering and gambling) systems in humans.

In 2021, we published a research article titled “Acquisition of object-robbing and object/food-bartering behaviors: A culturally maintained token economy in free-ranging long-tailed macaques” in the high-impact factor journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. It was published in a Special Issue titled “Existence and Prevalence of Economic Behaviours among Non-Human Primates”.

Since the summer of 2021, I have been co-supervising, along with Dr. Elsa Addessi (co-PI on the AGRI grant), a MSc student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge, Caleb Bunselmeyer, whose research project is financially supported by the AGRI grant. Even though the pandemic has limited our field-based research (in Bali, Indonesia, where our monkey subjects live) until the middle of 2022, Caleb was able to return to Bali and resume the gambling-like tasks as part of field experiments in November/December 2022. He is scheduled to go back there in August 2022 to collect more data. We hope this data collection will be sufficient to draft a manuscript on risky versus safe decision making in the context of randomly presented food reward.

Due to a number of methodological limitations (e.g., relatively small samples of individually trained/tested, and laboratory-bred subjects), the external and ecological validities of the currently available token exchange and gambling paradigms in non-human animals could be put into question. This is not to say that the results obtained from published studies suffer from a complete lack of validity, or that the results may not be informative about some contexts pertaining to real-world human economic behaviors. However, the actual impact of conducting these experiments in these artificial conditions is unknown, and needs to be investigated.

By conducting, for the first time, a variety of experimentally-induced token-mediated bartering interactions with free-ranging and socially-living monkeys, our research project aims to significantly enhance our understanding of the cognitive, social, and cultural mechanisms underlying the evolutionary origins, developmental acquisition, and daily expression of economic behavior and currency use (including bartering and gambling). We are the first research team (1) to adapt the token exchange paradigm to a culturally maintained trading system existing in a large and free-ranging non-human primate population, and (2) to assess the ecological validity of primate economic models of human trading/gambling systems by comparing theoretical and field-/lab-based empirical findings. Our final results will allow us to critically examine the generalizability of findings from token exchange and gambling paradigms under different environmental conditions, and provide a solid platform for conducting externally and ecologically valid cross-species comparative economics research. If our results are consistent with most findings currently available in the literature pertaining to captive non-human primates, further support and validation will be given to existing primate models of bartering and gambling. If not, the validity and generalizability of these models will come into question and further experimental investigation will be required. By extending our research focus to economic decision-making under risky conditions (i.e., non-human primate models of gambling, with experimental tasks involving preference for low-probability/high-payoff rewards over high-probability/low-payoff ones), our project may ultimately lead to better ways of preventing and treating problem gambling in humans.

Leca J. B., Gunst N., Gardiner M., & Wandia, I. N. (2021). Acquisition of object robbing and object/food bartering: A culturally maintained token economy in free-ranging long-tailed macaques. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376, 20190677 (Special Issue: “Existence and Prevalence of Economic Behaviours among Non-Human Primates”). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0677
 

Addessi A., Beran M., Bourgeois-Gironde S., Brosnan S.,& Leca J. B. (2020). Are the roots of human economic systems present in non-human primates? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 109, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.12.026
 

Brotcorne, F., Holzner, A., Jorge-Sales, L., Gunst, N., Hambuckers, A., Wandia, I. N. & Leca, J. B. (2020). Social influence on the expression of robbing and bartering behaviours in Balinese long-tailed macaques. Animal Cognition, 23, 311-326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-019-01335-5

Bunselmeyer C, Third B, Gunst N, Wandia IN, Addessi E, Leca JB. (2023-upcoming). The bottle game: Combinatory object manipulation in two populations of Balinese long-tailed macaques. 60th Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society, Portland, OR, USA.

Leca JB, Gunst N, Addessi E, Albanese V, Brotcorne F, Bunselmeyer C, Casarrubea M, Cenni C, Chertoff S, Christie J, Foroud A, Gardiner MS, Giraud G, Holzner A, Huffman MA, Jorge Sales L, Llorente M, Nahallage CAD, Neugebauer EL, Pelletier A, Pellis SM, Sciaky L, Sita S, Third B, Van der Bell O, Wandia IN, Wright CI. (2023-upcoming). The diverse cultural repertoire of Balinese long-tailed macaques and its implications for primate welfare and conservation. Joint Meeting of the International Primatological Society and the Malaysian Primatological Society. Symposium: “A Many-Splendored World, Part 1: Current Status and Conservation of the Long-Tailed Macaques”. Kuching, Malaysia.

Leca JB. (2023). Object play and tool use: an elusive connection. Research Workshop: “Play and the Evolution of Creative Societies”, International School of Ethology, The Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice, Sicily, Italy. Invitation: Dr. Elisabetta Palagi, Dr. Gordon Burghardt, Dr. Jeffrey Schank, Dr. Sergio Pellis.

Leca JB. (2022). Cultural behaviors in Balinese long-tailed macaques: Implications for animal welfare, management, and conservation. International Conference on Long Tailed Macaques: Getting to Know their Current Status and Roles in Environment and One Health – Virtual Talk. Invitation: Dr. Huda S. Darusman, Institut Pertanian Bogor, Indonesia.

Bunselmeyer C, Addessi E, Wandia IN, Leca JB. (2022). The “bottle game”: Object manipulation in Balinese long-tailed macaques. International Conference on Long Tailed Macaques: Getting to Know their Current Status and Roles in Environment and One Health, Institut Pertanian Bogor, Indonesia.

Bunselmeyer C, Addessi E, Leca JB. (2022). A novel form of object manipulation in Balinese long-tailed macaques. 16th Annual Meeting of the Minds – Multidisciplinary Research Conference, University of Lethbridge, Canada (People’s Choice Award).

Gumert MD, Luncz LV, Leca JB. (2021). Exploring macaque cultures: A population-level approach. Virtual talk at the “Long-Tailed Macaque Project Workshop”. Invitation: Dr. M. Friis Hansen.

Leca JB, Gunst N, Bunselmeyer C, Gardiner M, Williams R, Addessi, A. (2021). Development of an ecologically valid non-human primate model of gambling. Alberta Gambling Research Institute 20th Annual Conference – Gambling in Canada: Current Research & Future Directions (held virtually). [VIDEO]

Leca JB, Gunst N, Gardiner M, Bunselmeyer C, Dunn C, Williams R, Wandia IN, Addessi E. (2020). A culturally maintained token economy in free-ranging monkey. 57^th Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society – Virtual Meeting.  [VIDEO]

Aiempichitkijkarn N, McCowan B, Wandia IN, Leca JB. (2020). Trade-off in robbing behavior in free-ranging Balinese long-tailed macaques at the Uluwatu temple. 57^th Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society – Virtual Meeting.

Leca JB. (2018). Object/food bartering: A culturally-maintained token economy in free-ranging long-tailed macaques. Invited talk at International Workshop: Economic Behaviors in Non-Human Primates, Florence, Italy.

TV/Video

GeoBeats Animals, USA (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
SciShow, USA (Mar. 2019)  [LINK]

Radio/Audio

BBC Sounds, UK (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
CBC Radio, The Current, Canada (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
CBC Radio-One, The Homestretch, Canada (Jun. 2016)  [LINK]
Moncrieff Show on Newstalk, Ireland (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
Parsing Science, USA (Mar. 2021)  [LINK]

Press

CBC, Radio-Canada, ICI Alberta, Canada (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
CBC News, Calgary, Canada (Apr. 2019)  [LINK]
CNN Travel, USA (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
CTV News, Canada (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
Daily Mail, UK (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
Kodami, Italy (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
Nature Briefing, UK (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
The Economist, UK (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
The Guardian, UK (Jan. 2021)  [LINK]
University of Lethbridge Research News, Canada (Apr. 2019)  [LINK]

In August 2022, the BBC (Natural History Unit) will be filming a sequel at our field research site of a documentary they produced in 2016 [LINK]. Like in the first episode, I am a scientific advisor on this documentary and the AGRI will be acknowledged as a sponsor of our research.