1,721,094 research outputs found
Smiling is a Costly Signal of Cooperation Opportunities: Experimental Evidence from a Trust Game
Full text linkWe test the hypothesis that "genuine" or "convincing" smiling is a costly signal that has evolved to induce cooperation in situations requiring mutual trust. Potential trustees in a trust game made video clips for viewing by potential trusters before the latter decided whether to send them money. Ratings of the genuineness of smiles vary across clips; it is difficult to make convincing smiles to order. We argue that smiling convincingly is costly, because smiles from trustees playing for higher stakes are rated as significantly more convincing, so that rewards appear to induce effort. We show that it induces cooperation: smiles rated as more convincing strongly predict judgments about the trustworthiness of trustees, and willingness to send them money. Finally, we show that it is a honest signal: those smiling convincingly return more money on average to senders. Convincing smiles are to some extent a signal of the intrinsic character of trustees: less honest individuals find smiling convincingly more difficult. They are also informative about the greater amounts that trustees playing for higher stakes have available to share: it is harder to smile convincingly if you have less to offer.
Essays on correlation-sensitivity in economic decision-making : a theoretical and experimental exploration
No full textCe mémoire est consacré à l'étude de la sensibilité à la corrélation dans la prise de décision sous risque.Dans le premier chapitre, en collaboration avec Jiakun Zheng, nous étudions les préférences sensibles à la corrélation dans la prise de décision individuelle. Nous montrons que les préférences sensibles à la corrélation dans le cadre général deLanzani (2022) peuvent être classées en trois catégories. Nous proposons une tâche de choix pour classer les sujets expérimentaux en conséquence. Dans plusieurs expériences, nous constatons que les choix agrégés montrent une sensibilité à la corrélation mais dans la direction opposée à celle supposée dans la théorie du regret et de la saillance. L'analyse en grappes identifie une minorité cohérente de sujets sensibles à la corrélation qui influent sur les schémas agrégés, la majorité ne montrant aucune sensibilité à la corrélation. De manière cruciale, l'analyse ne produit pas un type de théorie du regret/saillance. Nous distinguons la sensibilité à la corrélation résultant de comparaisons délibérées au sein de l'état des comparaisons incidentelles des paiements dus à la formulation des problèmes de décision. Les deux produisent une sensibilité à la corrélation, les comparaisons délibérées exerçant une influence quelque peu plus grande.Dans le deuxième chapitre, également en collaboration avec Jiakun Zheng, nous réexaminons des expériences récentes qui semblent montrer des preuves de sensibilité à la corrélation comme supposé dans la théorie de la saillance. Cependant, ces études échouent à contrôler les effets de division d'événement (ESE). Nous cherchons à démêler le rôle de la corrélation et de la division d'événement dans deux contextes : 1) le paradoxe Allais des conséquences communes tel qu'étudié par Bordalo et al. (2012), Frydman and Mormann (2018), Bruhin et al. (2022) 2) les choix entre paires de Mao tels qu'étudiés parDertwinkel-Kalt and Köster (2019). Dans les deux contextes, nous trouvons des preuves suggérant que les résultats récents soutenant les effets de corrélation sont largement motivés par l'ESE. Une fois le contrôle de l'ESE effectué, nous ne trouvons aucune preuve cohérente d'effets de corrélation. Nous concluons que nos résultats remettent ainsi en question la validité de la théorie de la saillance dans la description du comportement risqué.Dans le troisième chapitre, je quitte le domaine de la prise de décision individuelle et considère un cadre de prise de décision déléguée. Dans une expérience guidée par la théorie, j'étudie comment le biais de résultat, une tendance des mandants à récompenser et punir les agents économiques comme s'ils pouvaient avoir anticipé un état aléatoire du monde, façonne les incitations et les choix des agents. Les agents choisissent entre deux loteries au nom de leur mandant. Une loterie est stochastiquement dominante du premier ordre, mais la loterie dominée a plus de chances de produire un payoff plus élevé état par état. Bien que les mandants observent parfaitement le choix de l'agent, ils ont tendance à récompenser les agents s'ils choisissent la loterie qui réalise un payoff plus élevé. En conséquence, ils incitent les agents à choisir la loterie dominée. Bien que la plupart des agents anticipent ces incitations, seuls les agents stratégiquement sophistiqués ont tendance à choisir la loterie dominée lorsqu'ils pensent avoir une incitation à le faire. L'estimation structurelle suggère que les mandants sont soit totalement biaisés par le résultat, soit totalement impartiaux, les mandants moins cognitivement sophistiqués présentant plus de biais de résultat. Les résultats impliquent que le biais de résultat pourrait être le plus pertinent dans des contextes où des agents sophistiqués rencontrent des mandants relativement peu sophistiqués.This thesis is dedicated to studying correlation sensitivity in decision-making under risk. Allowing risk preferences to be sensitive to the correlation between lottery outcomes can explain classical deviations from expected utility theory as well as phenomena in various real-world settings. However, experimental evidence on correlation sensitivity is limited and mixed. Moreover, the concept of correlation sensitivity has thus far been studied almost exclusively in the context of individual decision-making. Chapters 1 and 2 seek to contribute to our understanding of correlation-sensitive risk preferences, whereas Chapter 3 explores how choices can become correlation-sensitive in a setting of delegated decision-making, even when none of the involved parties has correlation-sensitive preferences.In the first chapter, together with Jiakun Zheng, we study correlation-sensitive preferences in individual decision-making. We show that correlation-sensitive preferences in the general framework of (Lanzani, 2022) can be classified into three categories. We propose a choice task to classify experimental subjects accordingly. In multiple experiments, we find that aggregate choices display correlation sensitivity but in the opposite direction as assumed in regret and salience theory. Clustering analysis identifies a consistently correlation-sensitive minority driving aggregate patterns, with the majority showing no correlation sensitivity. Crucially, the analysis does not produce a regret/salience theory type. We disentangle correlation sensitivity arising from deliberate within-state comparisons from incidental payoff comparisons due to the framing of decision problems. Both produce correlation sensitivity, with deliberate comparisons exerting a somewhat greater influence.In the second chapter, also together with Jiakun Zheng, we reconsider recent experiments that seem to show evidence for correlation sensitivity as assumed in salience theory. However, these studies fail to control for event-splitting effects (ESE). We seek to disentangle the role of correlation and event-splitting in two settings: 1) the common consequence Allais paradox as studied by Bordalo et al. (2012), Frydman and Mormann (2018), Bruhin et al. (2022) 2) choices between Mao pairs as studied by Dertwinkel-Kalt and Köster (2019). In both settings, we find evidence suggesting that recent findings supporting correlation effects are largely driven by ESE. Once controlling for ESE, we find no consistent evidence of correlation effects. We conclude that our results thus shed doubt on the validity of salience theory in describing risky behavior.In the third chapter, I leave the realm of individual decision-making and consider a setting of delegated decision-making. In a theory-guided experiment, I study how outcome bias, a tendency of principals to reward and punish economic agents as if they could have anticipated a random state of the world, shapes the incentives and choices of agents. Agents choose between two lotteries on behalf of their principal. One lottery is first-order stochastically dominant, but the dominated lottery is more likely to yield a higher payoff state-by-state. Despite perfectly observing the agent’s choice, principals tend to reward agents if they choose the lottery, which realizes a higher payoff. As a result, they incentivize agents to choose the dominated lottery. Although most agents anticipate these incentives, only strategically sophisticated agents tend to choose the dominated lottery when they believe they have an incentive to do so. Structural estimation suggests that principals are either fully outcome-biased or fully unbiased, with less cognitively sophisticated principals displaying more outcome bias. The results imply that outcome bias might be most relevant in settings where sophisticated agents meet relatively unsophisticated principals
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Previous Outcomes and Reference Dependence: A Meta Study of Repeated Investment Tasks with Restricted Feedback
Full text linkWhen investment is repeated, previous outcomes (winning/losing) as well as the current budget level (gain/loss domain) influence decisions. The first is related to the so-called "gamblers fallacy". The second to value function relative to some reference point. Both effects have been extensively studied, however not their interaction. We present a meta-study of five experiments initially conducted to investigate myopic-lossaversion. We observe that investment is related to the number of previous winning rounds as well as to the current budget position relative to a reference point. These effects persist when the analysis is extended to settings with restricted flexibility concerning investment
Essays on Behavioral Economics and Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty
No full textLe résumé en français n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur.Here, we study insurance decisions when the policyholder evaluates insurance with narrow framing. We show that due to aversion to risk on the net insurance payoff, narrow framing reduces insurance demand in the form of both coinsurance and deductible insurance. We also show that the optimal insurance contract involves a deductible and the coinsurance of losses above the deductible when transaction costs depend on the actuarial value of the policy. In an incentivized lab experiment, we document substantial effects of narrow framing on hedging. By estimating a structural model, we find that people give a weight of 43% to the utility from evaluating insurance in isolation and 57% to the hedging value of the contract. We also find that individuals with lower cognitive abilities and lower demand from insurance place a significantly higher weight on the evaluation of insurance in isolation. Risk is rarely an individual phenomenon and often shared in groups and households. In the case of informal insurance situations, individual risk preferences have to face the risk preferences of the group. We study for the case of spouses, how individual versus household risk preferences interact in an experimental paradigm. 202 cohabiting spouses (101 couples) participated in a controlled experimental risk-taking task. We focus on a household risk task, in which spouses face the choice between an option in which risk is correlated (high household risk, low inequality among spouses) and an option allowing for hedging (low household risk, high inequality among spouses). We show that spouses are mainly influenced by household risk and do not react to inequality as long as payoffs are symmetric. However when payoffs become asymmetric, because one of the spouses risk is reduced, we observe a change in preferences. Specifically our results suggest that households put a higher weight on men’s individual risks. We further observe that married couples put a higher weight on expected utilities from joint household payoffs. Prevention decisions that reduce individuals’ health risks are important, generally irreversible, and particularly difficult since they imply a trade-off between two important attributes: the safety and its cost. All those features make regret more likely to be anticipated. In this paper, we study the willingness to pay for reductions in health risks within a framework of anticipated regret. We show that with other things being equal, an individual who is disproportionately averse to large regrets has a higher willingness to pay than a standard expected utility individual. This notion of regret aversion has been shown to be able to explain many decision patterns which violate standard expected utility theory. Moreover, the effect of regret aversion on willingness to pay can be interpreted as if the regret averse individual overweighs risk reductions due to prevention, i.e., probability overweighting effect. We further discuss how the resolution of uncertainty may affect the regret averse individual’s willingness to pay
Signaling trustworthiness: experimental evidence on the signals used to infertrustworthiness in other
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