nep-evo New Economics Papers
on Evolutionary Economics
Issue of 2021‒08‒30
three papers chosen by
Matthew Baker
City University of New York

  1. Inequity Aversion and Limited Foresight in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma By Backhaus, Teresa; Breitmoser, Yves
  2. Slave Trades, Kinship Structures and Women Political Participation in Africa By Leone Walters; Carolyn Chisadza; Matthew Clance
  3. Identification of Incomplete Preferences By Luca Rigotti; Arie Beresteanu

  1. By: Backhaus, Teresa (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University); Breitmoser, Yves (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University)
    Abstract: Reanalyzing 12 experiments on the repeated prisoner’s dilemma (PD), we robustly observe three distinct subject types: defectors, cautious cooperators and strong cooperators. The strategies used by these types are surprisingly stable across experiments and uncorrelated with treatment parameters, but their population shares are highly correlated with treatment parameters. As the discount factor increases, the shares of defectors decrease and the relative shares of strong cooperators increase. Structurally analyzing behavior, we next find that subjects have limited foresight and assign values to all states of the supergame, which relate to the original stage-game payoffs in a manner compatible with inequity aversion. This induces the structure of coordination games and approximately explains the strategies played using Schelling’s focal points: after (*c;c*) subjects play according to the coordination game’s cooperative equilibrium, after (*d;d*) they play according to its defective equilibrium, and after (*c;d*) or (*d;c*) they play according to its mixed equilibrium.
    Keywords: Repeated game, Behavior, Tit-for-tat, Mixed strategy, Memory, Belief-free equilibrium, Laboratory experiment
    Date: 2021–08–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bie:wpaper:652&r=
  2. By: Leone Walters (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Carolyn Chisadza (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Matthew Clance (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa)
    Abstract: We study whether present-day women political participation in sub-Saharan Africa can be linked to the temporary gender ratio imbalances caused by the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, taking into account pre-existing gender norms influenced by kinship structures. Using individual-level data for 29 sub-Saharan African countries from the latest Afrobarometer surveys, ethnic region kinship and slave trade data, we find that a woman's ethnic region exposure to the transatlantic slave trade is associated with an increase in her likelihood to vote, however, only in non-patrilineal ethnic regions. This effect is mitigated in patrilineal ethnic regions, where women have less decision-making power. This paper contributes to the literature on the contemporary sub-national effects of the slave trades and the historical causes of gender gaps in political participation.
    Keywords: Slave Trade, Gender, Africa
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202156&r=
  3. By: Luca Rigotti; Arie Beresteanu
    Abstract: We provide a sharp identification region for discrete choice models in which consumers' preferences are not necessarily complete and only aggregate choice data is available to the analysts. Behavior with non complete preferences is modeled using an upper and a lower utility for each alternative so that non-comparability can arise. The identification region places intuitive bounds on the probability distribution of upper and lower utilities. We show that the existence of an instrumental variable can be used to reject the hypothesis that all consumers' preferences are complete, while attention sets can be used to rule out the hypothesis that all individuals cannot compare any two alternatives. We apply our methods to data from the 2018 mid-term elections in Ohio.
    Date: 2021–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2108.06282&r=

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