161 research outputs found

    Dynamic Behavior in Minimum Effort Coordination Games - Some Theory of Group Size and Inter-Group Competition as Coordination Devices

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    This paper presents a model of individual behavior in minimum effort coordination games, focusing primarily on the effects of the number of players and the introduction of inter-group competition. It is shown that independent of the number of players and the number of competing groups, the most inefficient equilibrium is always the stochastically stable one. Yet, it turns out that the `security' of more efficient equilibria increases with a decrease of the number of players and with an increase of the number of competing groups.Minimum Effort Coordination, Group Competition, Stochastic Stability, Dynamic Games

    A Model of Boundedly Rational Consumer Choice

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    The paper presents an extended version of the standard textbook problem of consumer choice. As usual, agents have to decide about their desired quantities of various consumption goods, at the same time taking into account their limited budget. Prices for the goods are not fixed but arise from a Walrasian interaction of total demand and a stylized supply function for each of the goods. After showing that this type of model cannot be solved analytically, three different types of evolutionary algorithms are set up to answer the question whether agents' behavior according to the rules of these algorithms can solve the problem of extended consumer choice. There are two important answers to this question: a) The quality of the results learned crucially depends on the elasticity of supply, which in turn is shown to be a measure of the degree of state dependency of the economic problem. b) Statistical tests suggest that for the agents in the model it is relatively easy to adhere to the budget constraint, but that it is relatively difficult to reach an optimum with marginal utility per Dollar being equal for each good.

    Mixed motives in a Cournot game

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    The paper analyzes a Cournot model with two types of firms: Maximizers of profits and maximizers of relative payoffs. It is shown that the equilibrium is located somewhere between the regular Cournot-Nash equilibrium and the competitive Walrasian (or Bertrand-) equilibrium.Bertrand Equilibrium

    Competition as a Coordination Device. Experimental Evidence from a Minimum Effort Coordination Game

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    The problem of coordination failure, particularly in 'team production' situations, is central to a large number of mircroeconomic as well as macroeconomic models. As this type of inefficient coordination poses a severe economic problem, there is a need for institutions that foster efficient coordination of individual economic plans. In this paper, we introduce such a rather classical economic institution: competition. In a series of laboratory experiments, we reveal that the true reason for coordination failure is strategic uncertainty, which can be reduced almost completely by introducing a appropriately designed mechanism of (inter-group) competition.coordination failure, team production, competition

    Relative payoffs and evolutionary spite: Evolutionary equilibria in games with finitely many players

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    Evolutionary dynamics in games imply de-facto spiteful behavior of the players: In order to 'survive' the evolutionary process, players must perform better than their opponents. This means they maximize relative rather than absolute payoffs. The paper shows that there is a class of games resulting in different equilibria if played by maximizers of absolute or of relative pay-offs, respectively. It is demonstrated that evolutionary equilibria (general ESS) can be found by formally maximizing relative payoffs. This method is analytically deduced and demonstrated at the examples of four well known games: the Cournot oligopoly game, the public goods game, the Tullock game of rent seeking and the Van Huyck et al. (1990) coordination game

    A Model of Boundedly Rational Consumer Choice - An Agent Based Appraoch

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    The paper presents an extended version of the consumer choice problem. Different from the standard model, prices are not fixed but arise from Walrasian interactions of total demand and a stylized supply function for each of the goods. Three different types of evolutionary algorithms are set up to answer the question whether agents can learn to solve the problem of extended consumer choice. There are three important answers to this question: a) The quality of the results learned crucially depends on the elasticity of supply, which in turn is shown to be a measure of the degree of state dependency of the economic problem. b) It seems to be relatively easy to adhere to the budget constraint, but relatively difficult to reach an optimum with marginal utility per Dollar being equal for each good. c) Agents equipped with some memory are found to perform notably better than agents without memory

    MöglichkeitsrĂ€ume und Sagbarkeitsgrenzen –: Konsum als politisches Motiv in Reiseberichten des 16. Jahrhunderts

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    Spaces of possibilities and limits of speaking – Consumption as a political motif of travel reports of the 16th century In this essay French and Spanish travel reports from the 16th century are used as sources of history of consumption. The travel reports all dealt with a new continent named “America” which was equated with visions of a new society. The article identifies three patterns of interpretation which show different variations of acquirement. The first model is orientated on a Christian prototype of man, the native without needs. The second model depicts the organisation of complex Indian societies in Middle- and South-America. The last model contains an economic founded dream of a cultivated landscape. All models show an intention to verify traditional systems of social life in Europe and are by this means typically “political”

    Two notes on replication in evolutionary modeling

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    Replicator dynamics and replication as used in evolutionary algorithms are, due to their most basic forms, structurally the same. This short note will prove this thesis. Although this finding is clear cut and easy to show, it is of great importance for the not yet united families of game theorists on the one hand and evolutionary programmers on the other, meaning that it is perfectly legal and correct to mutually use the tools and findings of each other

    Selfish in the End?:An Investigation of Consistency and Stability of individual Behavior

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    This paper puts three of the most prominent specifications of ‘other-regarding’ preferences to the experimental test, namely the theories developed by Charness and Rabin, by Fehr and Schmidt, and by Andreoni and Miller. In a series of experiments based on various dictator and prisoner’s dilemma games, we try to uncover which of these concepts, or the classical selfishapproach, is able to explain most of our experimental findings. The experiments are special with regard to two aspects: First, we investigate the consistency of individual behavior within and across different classes of games. Second, we analyze the stability of individual behavior over time by running the same experiments on the same subjects at several points in time. Our results demonstrate that in the first wave of experiments, all theories of other-regarding preferences explain a high share of individual decisions. Other-regarding preferences seem to wash out over time, however. In the final wave, it is the classical theory of selfish behaviorthat delivers the best explanation. Stable behavior over time is observed only for subjects, who behave strictly selfish. Most subjects behave consistently with regard to at least one of the theories within the same class of games, but are much less consistent across games.individual preferences; consistency; stability; experimental economics

    The Monotonicity Puzzle. An Experimental Investigation of Incentives Structures

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    Non–monotone incentive structures, which — according to theory — are able to induce optimal behavior, are often regarded as empirically less relevant for labor relationships. Scientific attention is (therefore) confined to monotone if not linear contracts. This paper reports on experimental tests comparing non–monotone vs. monotone contracts in a simple dynamic agency model. The results demonstrate that selecting the non–monotone contract over of the monotone one is not only optimal from a theoretical point of view, but also remains preferable given the agents’ observed behavior. However, roughly 50 per cent of the principals prefer the monotone contract.experimental agency, non–monotone contracts
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