1,721,185 research outputs found
Replication Data for Working Memory and Attention in Choice
No full textThese are the data necessary for replication of data analysis for the paper:
Working Memory and Attention in Choic
Group Payoffs as Public Signals
Full text linkWe study experimentally the effect on individual behavior of comparative, but payoff-irrelevant, information in a near-minimal group setting. Specifically, in each round, group members see the groups' cumulative payoffs, which consist of an aggregation of the earnings of each member of the group in the round. Our novel experimental design incorporates two games (the Trust game and the Dictator game) whose payoffs are carefully chosen to ensure cross-game comparability. In the baseline, no comparative information is displayed; the sessions are otherwise identical. Our first set of results shows that the display is sufficient to induce an in-group bias, which can neither be attributed to mere categorization of subjects into groups nor to a stronger sense of group identity as a result of the display. Moreover, we corroborate existing results, which find that, relative to the baseline, the display is welfare reducing in the Trust game. Our second set of results shows that when comparing the allocators' decisions across the two games, a first mover's trust is reciprocated by the second mover independently of group identity
Replication Data for: "Educational Attainment and Intergenerational Mobility: A Polygenic Score Analysis"
No full textThis is the replication package for "Educational Attainment and Intergenerational Mobility: A Polygenic Score Analysis," accepted in 2022 by the Journal of Political Economy
Social decision theory: choosing within and between groups
No full textWe study the behavioral foundation of interdependent preferences, where the outcomes of others affect the welfare of the decision maker. These preferences are taken as given, not derived from more primitive ones. Our aim is to establish an axiomatic foundation providing the link between observations of choices and a functional representation which is convenient, free of inconsistencies and can provide basis for measurement.
The dependence among preferences may take place in two conceptually different ways, expressing two different views of the nature of interdependent preferences. The first is Festinger's view that the evaluation of peers' outcomes is useful to improve individual choices by learning from the comparison. The second is Veblen's view that interdependent preferences keep track of social status derived from a social value attributed to the goods one consumes. Corresponding to these two different views, we have two different formulations. In the first the decision maker values his outcomes and those of others on the basis of his own utility. In the second, he ranks outcomes according to a social value function.
We give different axiomatic foundations to these two different, but complementary, views of the nature of the interdependence. On the basis of this axiomatic foundation we build a behavioral theory of comparative statics within subjects and across subjects. We characterize preferences according to the relative importance assigned to gains and losses in social domain, that is, pride
and envy. This parallels the standard analysis of private gains and losses (as well as that of regret and relief ). We give an axiomatic foundation of inter personal comparison of preferences, ordering individuals according to their sensitivity to social ranking. These characterizations provide the behavioral foundation for applied analysis of market and game equilibria with interdependent preferences
Pride and diversity in social economics
No full textWe study a two-period economy in which agents preferences take into account relative economic position. The study builds on a decision theoretic analysis of the social emotions that underlie these concerns, i.e., envy and pride, which respond to social losses and gains, respectively. The analysis allows individual di¤erences in their relative importance and summarizes these di¤erences in the geometric properties of the externality function that represents relative outcome concerns. Our main result is that envy leads to conformism in consumption behavior and pride to diversity. We thus establish a link between emotions that are object of study in psy- chology and neuroscience, and important features of economic variables, in the rst place the equilibrium distribution of consumption and income. This research provides a tool to relate experimental and empirical studies of individual preferences for relative position and important features of macro data
Experimental cost of informations
No full textWe relate two main representations of the cost of acquiring information: a cost that depends on the experiment performed, as in statistical decision theory, and a cost that depends on the distribution of posterior beliefs, as in applications of rational inattention. We show that in many cases of interest, posterior-based costs are inconsistent with a primitive model of costly experimentation. The inconsistency is at the core of known limits to the application of rational inattention in games and, more broadly, in equilibrium analyses where beliefs are endogenous; we show that an experiment-based approach helps to understand and overcome these difficulties
A Test of Stability in a Linear Altruism Model
Full text linkLinear altruism is a functional form used extensively in outcome-based models of social preferences: the underlying assumption is that individuals have a utility over monetary outcome profiles that depends on their and other players' payments. Behavior in strategic interactions is explained as a Nash equilibrium of the game, where final payoffs are paid in these utility units. Linear altruism and other theories of social preferences predict the estimated preferences to be independent of the subject's position in the game, if in the experiment the allocation to a role is randomly determined, because subjects, in each role, have the same preferences ex ante. We test and reject this hypothesis. We use the Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE) of McKelvey and Palfrey (1995) to study first mover behavior in the Trust game. As standard in this literature we assume that first mover beliefs are consistent with the observed probability distribution of actions of the second movers. On the other hand, second mover behavior can be extrapolated without any rational expectation assumptions. We find that the representative first mover is less altruistic in the QRE approach than the representative second mover in the second approach. This finding is inconsistent with the assumption that subjects approach a game with the same (that is, independent of the allocation to roles in the game) ex ante preferences over monetary outcome profiles
Dynamic variational preferences
No full textWe introduce and axiomatize dynamic variational preferences, the dynamic version of the variational preferences we axiomatized in [F. Maccheroni, M. Marinacci, A. Rustichini, Ambiguity aversion, robustness, and the variational representation of preferences, Mimeo, 2004], which generalize the multiple priors preferences of Gilboa and Schmeidler [Maxmin expected utility with a non-unique prior, J. Math. Econ. 18 (1989) 141–153], and include the Multiplier Preferences inspired by robust control and first used in macroeconomics by Hansen and Sargent (see [L.P. Hansen, T.J. Sargent, Robust control and model uncertainty, Amer. Econ. Rev. 91 (2001) 60–66]), as well as the classic Mean Variance Preferences of Markovitz and Tobin. We provide a condition that makes dynamic variational preferences time consistent, and their representation recursive. This gives them the analytical tractability needed in macroeconomic and financial applications. A corollary of our results is that Multiplier Preferences are time consistent, but MeanVariance Preferences are not
On the computation of optimal monotone mean-variance portfolios via truncated quadratic utility
No full textWe report a surprising link between optimal portfolios generated by a special type of variational preferences called divergence preferences and optimal portfolios generated by classical expected utility
Niveloids and their extensions: risk measures on small domains
No full textGiven a functional defined on a nonempty subset of an Archimedean Riesz space with unit, necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence of a (convex or concave) niveloid that extends the functional to the entire space. In the language of mathematical finance, this problem is equivalent to the one of verifying if the policy adopted by a regulator is consistent with monetary risk measurement, when only partial information is available
- …
