Behavioral Economics Commons^™

A Theory Of Regular Markov Perfect Equilibria In Dynamic Stochastic Games: Genericity, Stability, And Purification, Ulrich Doraszelski, Juan F. Escobar

Marketing Papers

This paper studies generic properties of Markov perfect equilibria in dynamic stochastic games. We show that almost all dynamic stochastic games have a finite number of locally isolated Markov perfect equilibria. These equilibria are essential and strongly stable. Moreover, they all admit purification. To establish these results, we introduce a notion of regularity for dynamic stochastic games and exploit a simple connection between normal form and dynamic stochastic games.

China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Brazil is an increasingly important actor in global governance and for China specifically. Sino-Brazilian relations have deepened considerably but they remain concentrated in areas of trade and investment. There is also considerable overlap in interests between the two countries in other areas, such as diplomatic and political relations. At the same time, China must manage carefully important differences that exist over the enlargement of the UN and the potential challenge to the Brazilian industry.

Illusions Of Market Paradise: State, Business, And Economic Reform In Post-Socialist Russia And Post-1980s Crisis Argentina, Jeffrey K. Hass, Gastón J. Beltrán

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by sweeping, radical neoliberal, monetarist-inspired economic reforms designed to correct financial or structural crises. Latin American countries initiated the wave, followed by Eastern Europe and the former USSR, although the timing, scope, and policies varied. Often one reads accounts of friends and foes of reform lined up to do battle in domestic and international alliances. However, reform processes and outcomes do not always follow the formula of reformers versus conservatives; there is more to the balance of power than these all-too-common accounts would suggest. Industrial managers in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia …

Route Choice Behavior In Risky Networks With Real-Time Information, Michael D. Razo

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This research investigates route choice behavior in networks with risky travel times and real-time information. A stated preference survey is conducted in which subjects use a PC-based interactive maps to choose routes link-by-link in various scenarios. The scenarios include two types of maps: the first presenting a choice between one stochastic route and one deterministic route, and the second with real-time information and an available detour. The first type measures the basic risk attitude of the subject. The second type allows for strategic planning, and measures the effect of this opportunity on subjects' choice behavior.

Results from each subject are …

Did I Do That? Group Positioning And Asymmetry In Attributional Bias, Brian Gunia, Brice Corgnet

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A laboratory experiment examined whether one structural feature of groups—members’ physical positioning—may produce asymmetry in their perceived contribution to a task. In particular, we investigated asymmetry in group members’ (often excessive) claims of credit for collective tasks ("the self-serving attributional bias"). Consistent with the availability account of this bias, group members located in the middle of a group, with easy visual access to their partners’ contributions, demonstrated less bias than outside members (who demonstrated bias consistent with prior research)—but no less satisfaction. Further analyses suggested that these results reflected bias reduction among middle members and did stem from visual availability. …

Do Ugly Criminals Receive Harsher Sentences? An Analysis Of Lookism In The Criminal Justice System, Kelly Beck

Business and Economics Honors Papers

For many years, researchers have attempted to find a link between beauty and labor market outcomes. Although many important findings have been noted in these studies, the beauty analysis utilized was a subjective measurement. This subjective method, while important, may have external factors creating bias in the rating itself. In this study, the impact of beauty is applied to criminals and their sentences. Using a computer based symmetry measurement tool, an objective beauty measurement will be utilized. This study will seek to uncover whether or not criminals who are less attractive, measured through facial symmetry, receive harsher prison sentences than …

Some Professionals Play Minimax: A Reexamination Of The Minimax Theory In Major League Baseball, Jeffrey Park

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores the behavior of Major League Baseball pitchers. We analyze the pitching data from 2007-2010 in order to determine whether their actions follow minimax play. We also examine what the OPS statistic tells us about a pitcher's value.

Price And Pretense In The Baby Market, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout the world, baby selling is formally prohibited. And throughout the world babies are bought and sold each day. As demonstrated in this Essay, the legal baby trade is a global market in which prospective parents pay, scores of intermediaries profit, and the demand for children is clearly differentiated by age, race, special needs, and other consumer preferences, with prices ranging from zero to over one hundred thousand dollars. Yet legal regimes and policymakers around the world pretend that the baby market does not exist, most notably through prohibitions against “baby selling” – typically defined as a prohibition against the …

The Ethic Of High Expectations, Jean Galbraith

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

No abstract provided.

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …

Obedience, Schooling, And Political Participation, Davin Chor, Filipe R. Campante

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the joint evolution of cultural norms and human capital investment, and how these affect patterns of political participation. We first present some empirical evidence that cultural attitudes towards obedience systematically influence an individual's propensity to engage in different political activities: obedience discourages more confrontational modes of political activity (such as public demonstrations), while raising participation in non-confrontational civic acts (such as voting). These cultural attitudes further appear to be determined in part by cultural transmission across generations. Motivated by this evidence, we develop a dynamic model in which human capital and obedience are …

Valuing Intellectual Property: An Experiment, Christopher Buccafusco, Christopher Sprigman

Faculty Scholarship

In this article we report on the results of an experiment we performed to determine whether transactions in intellectual property (IP) are subject to the valuation anomalies commonly referred to as “endowment effects”. Traditional conceptions of the value of IP rely on assumptions about human rationality derived from classical economics. The law assumes that when people make decisions about buying, selling, and licensing IP they do so with fixed, context-independent preferences. Over the past several decades, this rational actor model of classical economics has come under attack by behavioral data showing that people do not always make strictly rational decisions. …

Contingent Valuation Studies And Health Policy, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Multi-Player Bargaining With Endogenous Capacity, Gabriele Camera, Cemil Selcuk

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We study equilibrium prices and trade volume in a market with several identical buyers and a seller who commits to an inventory and then offers goods sequentially. Prices are determined by a strategic costly bargaining process with a random sequence of proponents. A unique subgame perfect equilibrium exists, characterized by no costly delays and heterogeneous sale prices. In equilibrium constraining capacity is a bargaining tactic the seller uses to improve a weak bargaining position. With capacity constraints, sale prices approach the outcome of an auction as bargaining costs vanish. The framework provides a building block for price formation in models …

Team Formation And Self‐Serving Biases, Brice Corgnet

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

There is extensive evidence which indicates that people learn positively about themselves. We build on this finding to develop a model of team formation. We show that under complete information learning positively about oneself prevents efficient team formation. Agents becoming overconfident tend to ask for an excessive share of the group outcome. Positive learning generates divergence in workers' beliefs and hampers efficient team formation. Interestingly, in a context of incomplete information regarding the partner's ability, extensive learning biases may reduce the divergence in agents' beliefs and facilitate efficient team formation as a result. We apply our model to coauthorship and …

Do Liquidated Damages Encourage Breach? A Psychological Experiment, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

No abstract provided.

Breach Is For Suckers, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, David A. Hoffman

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

This paper presents results from three experiments offering evidence that parties see breach of contract as a form of exploitation, making disappointed promisees into “suckers.” In psychology, being a sucker turns on a three-part definition: betrayal, inequity, and intention. We used web-based questionnaires to test the effect of each of the three factors separately. Our results support the hypothesis that when breach of contract cues an exploitation schema, people become angry, offended, and inclined to retaliate even when retaliation is costly. This theory offers a useful advance insofar it explains why victims of breach demand more than similarly situated tort …

Shin-Gate: Misunderstanding The Power Of Shame In South Korea, Koushik Ghosh

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

Shame is not perceived the same way in different cultures, nor is it used the same way. How does that difference across cultures influence our interactions in public space? How does it affect our business interactions? It has been argued, especially in the wake of Asia’s financial crisis in 1997, that there was a lack of shame in Asian cultures aft er the economic crash. The same kind of argument has been presented in the United States following the financial crisis which began in 2008. President Obama has tried to shame the Wall Street crowd. Economic commentators have spoken of …

Building Sustainable Societies: A Swedish Case Study On The Limits Of Reflexive Modernization., Cindy Isenhour

Cindy Isenhour

No abstract provided.

On Conflicted Swedish Consumers, The Effort To “Stop Shopping” & Neoliberal Environmental Governance, Cindy Isenhour

Cindy Isenhour

No abstract provided.