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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Sircar, Neelanjan; Turley, Ty; van der Windt, Peter Cornelis; Voors, Maarten (Wageningen University) |
| Abstract: | Laboratory experiments offer an opportunity to isolate human behaviors with a level of precision that is often difficult to obtain using other (survey-based) methods. Yet, experimental tasks are often stripped of any social context, implying that inferences may not directly map to real world contexts. We randomly allocate 632 individuals (grouped randomly into 316 dyads) from small villages in Sierra Leone to four versions of the ultimatum game. In addition to the classic ultimatum game, where both the sender and receiver are anonymous, we reveal the identity of the sender, the receiver or both. This design allows us to explore how fairness behavior is affected by social context in a natural setting where players are drawn from populations that are well-acquainted. We find that average offers increase when the receiver's identity is revealed, suggesting that anonymous ultimatum games underestimate expected fair offers. This study suggest that researchers wishing to relate laboratory behavior to contexts in which the participants are well-acquainted should consider revealing the identities of the players during game play. |
| Date: | 2020–01–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:j54ar&r=all |
| By: | Oren Bar-Gill (Harvard Law School); Christoph Engel (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Abstract: | Law is for humans. Humans suffer from cognitive limitations. Legal institutions can help humans by making these limitations irrelevant. This experiment shows that strong property rights serve this function. In theory, efficient outcomes obtain even without strong property rights. In a hypothetical world where cognitive ability is perfect, individuals would not engage in wasteful taking wars. A party would not take another’s good, if she expects that the good will ultimately be taken back. By contrast, the large majority of experimental subjects takes a token good when interacting with a computer they know to maximize profit, and that has a symmetric ability to take the good back. Experience mitigates the inefficiency, but does not eliminate it; and in the real world relevant experience is often lacking. We show that cognitive limitations prevent weak property rights – imperfectly enforced property rules and liability rules with low damages – from securing efficient outcomes. Strong property rights should be preferred, because they are dummy proof. |
| Keywords: | Property, Liability, Cost of Appropriation, Cognitive Limitations, Sophistication, Descriptive and Normative Beliefs |
| JEL: | C91 D02 D47 D61 K11 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2020_02&r=all |
| By: | Jurajda, Štěpán; Kovač, Dejan |
| Abstract: | We implement a novel empirical strategy for measuring and studying a strong form of nationalism - the willingness to fight and die in a war for national independence - using name choices corresponding to previous war leaders. Based on data on almost half a million soldiers, we first show that having been given a first name that is synonymous with the leader(s) of the Croatian state during World War II predicts volunteering for service in the 1991-1995 Croatian war of independence and dying during the conflict. Next, we use the universe of Croatian birth certificates and the information about nationalism conveyed by first names to suggests that in ex-Yugoslav Croatia, nationalism was on a continuous rise starting in the 1970s and that its rise was curbed in areas where concentration camps were located during WWII. Our evidence on intergener- ational transmission of nationalism is consistent with nationalist fathers purposefully reflecting the trade-o¤ between within-family and society-wide transmission channels of political values. We also link the nationalist values we proxy using first name choices to right-wing voting behavior in 2015, 20 years after the war. |
| Keywords: | Nationalism,Names,Intergenerational Transmission |
| JEL: | D64 D74 Z1 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:450&r=all |
| By: | Benjamin Enke; Frederik Schwerter; Florian Zimmermann |
| Abstract: | Information is often embedded in memorable contexts, which may cue the asymmetric recall of similar past news through associative memory. We design a theory-driven experiment, in which participants observe signals about hypothetical companies. Here, identical signal realizations are communicated with identical contexts: stories and images. Because participants asymmetrically remember those past signals that get cued by the current context, beliefs systematically overreact. This overreaction depends in predictable ways on the signal history; the correlation between signals and contexts; and the scope for forgetting and associative memory. We quantify these results by structurally estimating a model of associative recall. |
| JEL: | D03 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26664&r=all |
| By: | Franz Dietrich (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Kai Spiekermann (LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science) |
| Abstract: | Social epistemology studies knowledge in social contexts. Knowledge is 'social' when its holder communicates with or learns from others (Epistemology in groups), or when its holder is a group as a whole, literally or metaphorically (Epistemology of groups). Group knowledge can emerge explicitly, through aggregation procedures like voting, or implicitly, through institutions like deliberation or prediction markets. In the truth-tracking paradigm, group beliefs aim at truth, and group decisions at 'correctness', in virtue of external facts that are empirical or normative, real or constructed, universal or relativistic, etc. Procedures and institutions are evaluated by epistemic performance: Are they truth-conducive? Do groups become 'wiser' than their members? We review several procedures and institutions, discussing epistemic successes and failures. Jury theorems provide formal arguments for epistemic success. Some jury theorems misleadingly conclude that 'huge groups are infallible', an artifact of inappropriate premises. Others have defensible premises, and still conclude that groups outperform individuals, without being infallible. |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02431971&r=all |