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Behavioral Economics Commons™

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Selected Works

Carlos Oyarzun

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics

Imitation In Heterogeneous Populations, Jonas Hedlund, Carlos Oyarzun Apr 2018

Imitation In Heterogeneous Populations, Jonas Hedlund, Carlos Oyarzun

Carlos Oyarzun

Abstract We study a boundedly rational model of imitation when payoff distributions of actions differ across types of individuals. Individuals observe others' actions and payoffs, and a comparison signal. Two possible inefficiencies may arise: (i) uniform adoption, i.e., all individuals choose the action that is optimal for one type but sub-optimal for the other, or (ii) dual incomplete learning, i.e., only a fraction of each type chooses its optimal action. Which one occurs depends on the composition of the population and how critical the choice is for different types of individuals. In an application, we show that a monopolist serving …

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Response Functions, Carlos Oyarzun, Adam Sanjurjo, Hien Nguyen Aug 2017

Response Functions, Carlos Oyarzun, Adam Sanjurjo, Hien Nguyen

Carlos Oyarzun

We introduce a simple two-period adaptive-learning model to analyze how “primitive” choice behavior affects payoffs in minimal information settings, and then we conduct an experiment to observe how this behavior (thus payoffs) varies across people. Individuals choose between two uncertain payoff distributions, only knowing the support. In the first round they choose one alternative and receive a payoff. In the second round they probabilistically decide whether to choose the same alternative, or to switch. When analyzing the response function, i.e., a mapping from obtained payoffs to the probability of choosing the same alternative in the second round, we find that …

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Convergence In Models With Bounded Expected Relative Hazard Rates, Carlos Oyarzun, Johannes Ruf Nov 2014

Convergence In Models With Bounded Expected Relative Hazard Rates, Carlos Oyarzun, Johannes Ruf

Carlos Oyarzun

We provide a general framework to study stochastic sequences related to an array of models in different literatures, including models of individual learning in economics, learning automata in computer sciences, social learning in marketing, and many others. In this setup, we study the asymptotic properties of a class of stochastic sequences that take values in [0,1] and satisfy a property that we call “bounded expected relative hazard rates.” We provide sufficient conditions for related sequences, which, compared to the original sequence, either move slowly or slow down over time, that yield con- vergence to one with high probability or almost …

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Monotone Imitation, Carlos Oyarzun, Johannes Ruf Dec 2008

Monotone Imitation, Carlos Oyarzun, Johannes Ruf

Carlos Oyarzun

We analyze the social learning process of a group of individuals who have limited information about the payoff distributions of each action. We say that a behavioral rule is first-order monotone (FOM) if the number of individuals who play actions with first-order stochastic dominant payoff distributions is expected to increase in any environment. We provide a characterization of FOM rules. Both Imitate if Better and Schlag’s (J Econ Theory 78:130-156, 1998) Proportional Imitation rule are FOM. No FOM rule is dominant in the sense of having the best performance in every environment.

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