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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Martin G. Kocher (Department of Economics, University of Munich); Peter Martinsson (Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg); Kristian Ove R. Myrseth (ESMT European School of Management and Technology); Conny Wollbrant (Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg) |
| Abstract: | We develop a model relating self-control, risk preferences and conflict identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas. We subject our model to data from an experimental public goods game and a risk experiment, and we measure conflict identification and self-control. As predicted, we find a robust association between self-control and higher levels of cooperation, and the association is weaker for more risk-averse individuals. Free riders differ from other contributor types only in their tendency not to have identified a self-control conflict in the first place. Our model accounts for the data at least as well as do other models. |
| Keywords: | self-control, cooperation, public good, risk, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D03 H40 |
| Date: | 2012–01–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esm:wpaper:esmt-12-01&r=evo |
| By: | B. Arruñada; M. Casari; F. Pancotto |
| Abstract: | Through an experiment, we investigate how the level of rationality relates to concerns for equality and efficiency. Subjects perform dictator games and a guessing game. More rational subjects are not more frequently of the selfregarding type. When performing a comparison within the same degree of rationality, self-regarding subjects show more strategic sophistication than other subjects. |
| JEL: | C91 C92 D63 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp805&r=evo |
| By: | Charles R. Plott (CALTECH - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology - California Institute of Technology); Jean-Louis Rullière (GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - École Normale Supérieure de Lyon); Marie-Claire Villeval (GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - École Normale Supérieure de Lyon) |
| Abstract: | The workshop of the Association for Public Economic Theory on behavioral and experimental public economics was held at Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, Universite de Lyon, from June 24 to June 26, 2008. Thirty papers were presented in addition to keynotes by Charlie Plott and John List. The focus of the workshop was to test theoretical models using experimental methods to increase our understanding of the efficiency of mechanisms supporting the provision of public goods, social cooperation, and voting systems. This special issue aims at showing how lively and diversified the ongoing experimental research in public economics has come to be. We highlight three topics in particular: the power of voting and legal enforcement systems, the efficiency of various institutions to support cooperation in social dilemma games, and auctions. |
| Keywords: | Behavioral Public Economics |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00661261&r=evo |
| By: | Attema, Arthur; Brouwer, Werner |
| Abstract: | The numerous reports on preference reversals in preference elicitations pose a great challenge to empirical economics. Many studies have found that different procedures may generate substantially different preferences. However, little is known about whether one procedure is more susceptible to preference reversals than another. Therefore, taking the preference reversals as a robust behavioral pattern, guidelines are called for to provide directions regarding a preferred preference elicitation task. This paper puts forward a new test of the internal consistency of choice and matching tasks, based on “internal preference reversals”. We replicate the preference reversal phenomenon and find a significant higher consistency within choice tasks than within matching tasks. |
| Keywords: | preference reversal; internal consistency; scale compatibility; loss aversion; choice; matching |
| JEL: | C91 B41 I10 |
| Date: | 2012–01–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:36100&r=evo |
| By: | Elyès Jouini (CEREMADE - CEntre de REcherches en MAthématiques de la DEcision - CNRS : UMR7534 - Université Paris IX - Paris Dauphine); Clotilde Napp (CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - INSEE - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique, DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - CNRS : UMR7088 - Université Paris IX - Paris Dauphine); Yannick Viossat (CEREMADE - CEntre de REcherches en MAthématiques de la DEcision - CNRS : UMR7534 - Université Paris IX - Paris Dauphine) |
| Abstract: | We provide a discipline for belief formation through a model of subjective beliefs, in which agents hold strategic beliefs. More precisely, we consider beliefs as a strategic variable that agents can choose (consciously or not) in order to maximize their utility at the equilibrium. These strategic beliefs result from an evolutionary process. We find that evolutionary strategic behavior leads to belief subjectivity and heterogeneity. Optimism (resp. overconfidence) as well as pessimism (resp. doubt) both emerge from the evolution process. Furthermore, we obtain a positive correlation between pessimism (rep. doubt) and risk-tolerance. We analyse the equilibrium characteristics. Under reasonable assumptions, the consensus belief is pessimistic and, as a consequence, the risk premium is higher than in a standard setting. |
| Keywords: | Beliefs formation, strategic beliefs, optimal beliefs, distorded beliefs, pessimism, risk premium |
| Date: | 2012–01–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00556490&r=evo |
| By: | Costard, Jano; Bolle, Friedel |
| Abstract: | In the Solidarity Game (Selten and Ockenfels, 1998) lucky winners of a lottery can transfer part of their income to unlucky losers. Will losers get smaller transfers if they can be assumed to be (partly) responsible for their zero income because they have chosen riskier lotteries (Trhal and Radermacher, 2009)? Or will risk-lovers and risk-averters develop group identity feelings, leading to larger transfers within, rather than between, the groups (Chen and Li, 2009, for charitable transfers between and within otherwise defined groups)? In an experiment we find behavior to be guided by in-group favoritism. Responsibility for self-inflicted neediness does not seem to play an important role. In-group/out-group behavior is successfully described by a variant of a social utility function suggested by Cappelen et al. (2010). -- |
| Keywords: | risky behavior,group identity,solidarity |
| JEL: | D3 D8 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:euvwdp:309&r=evo |
| By: | Mathias Erlei; Heike Schenk-Mathes (Abteilung für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Clausthal (Department of Economics, Technical University Clausthal)) |
| Abstract: | We conducted six treatments of a standard moral hazard experiment with hidden action. All treatments had identical Nash equilibria. However, the behavior in all treatments and periods was inconsistent with established agency theory (Nash equilibrium). In the early periods of the experiment, behavior differed significantly between treatments. This difference largely vanished in the final periods. We used logit equilibrium (LE) as a device to grasp boundedly rational behavior and found the following: (1) LE predictions are much closer to subjects’ behavior in the laboratory; (2) LE probabilities of choosing between strategies and experimental behavior show remarkably similar patterns; and (3) profit‐maximizing contract offers according to the LE are close to those derived from regressions. |
| Keywords: | experiment, logit equilibrium, moral hazard, hidden action |
| JEL: | C72 C92 J31 L14 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuc:tucewp:0006&r=evo |
| By: | Duersch, Peter (University of Heidelberg); Oechssler, Jorg (University of Heidelberg); Schipper, Burkhard C. (University of CA, Davis) |
| Abstract: | We show that in symmetric two-player exact potential games, the simple decision rule "imitate-if-better" cannot be beaten by any strategy in a repeated game by more than the maximal payoff difference of the one-period game. Our results apply to many interesting games including examples like 2x2 games, Cournot duopoly, price competition, public goods games, common pool resource games, and minimum effort coordination games. |
| JEL: | C72 C73 D43 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:ucdeco:11-12&r=evo |
| By: | Talbot Page; Louis Putterman |
| Abstract: | In this working paper we report on two trust games: a BDM-like game which is interpreted through its use of the possibly suggestive words “show up fee,” “sends,” “tripled,” “send back”; and an uninterpreted spatial game that does not use these words suggestive or not. In the spatial game we found a considerable amount of reciprocity, which implies the words are not necessary for reciprocity. For further comparison we designed the two games to have a correspondence relation (the relation extends to the original BDM trust game). We focused on two “variables” – interpreted or uninterpreted and spatial or word-based. We also designed “constants” which were identical or near identical in the two games. We did this to reduce confounding in statistical comparisons. We found the frequency of reciprocity in the spatial game, without the suggestive words, was about the same as the frequency of reciprocity in the BDM-like game, with the suggestive words. We found iterated dominance in the spatial game was 5.5 times higher than in the BDM-like game. And we found sending the full endowment was significantly more frequent in the BDM-like game than in the spatial game. |
| Keywords: | # |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bro:econwp:2012-1&r=evo |
| By: | K. Vela Velupillai; Stefano Zambelli |
| Abstract: | This is an outline of the origins and development of the way computability theory and algorithmic complexity theory were incorporated into economic and finance theories. We try to place, in the context of the development of computable economics, some of the classics of the subject as well as those that have, from time to time, been credited with having contributed to the advancement of the field. Speculative thoughts on where the frontiers of computable economics are, and how to move towards them, conclude the paper. In a precise sense - both historically and analytically - it would not be an exaggeration to claim that both the origins of computable economics and its frontiers are defined by two classics, both by Banach and Mazur: that one page masterpiece by Banach and Mazur ([5]), built on the foundations of Turing’s own classic, and the unpublished Mazur conjecture of 1928, and its unpublished proof by Banach ([38], ch. 6 & [68], ch. 1, #6). For the undisputed original classic of computable economics is Rabinís effectivization of the Gale-Stewart game ([42];[16]); the frontiers, as I see them, are defined by recursive analysis and constructive mathematics, underpinning computability over the computable and constructive reals and providing computable foundations for the economist’s Marshallian penchant for curve-sketching ([9]; [19]; and, in general, the contents of Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 219, Issue 1-2). The former work has its roots in the Banach-Mazur game (cf. [38], especially p.30), at least in one reading of it; the latter in ([5]), as well as other, earlier, contributions, not least by Brouwer. |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpas:1202&r=evo |