Cooperation Spillovers in Coordination Games

Motivated by problems of coordination failure observed in weak-link games, we experimentally investigate behavioral spillovers for order-statistic coordination games. Subjects play the minimum- and median-effort coordination games simultaneously and sequentially. The results show the precedent for cooperative behavior spills over from the median game to the minimum game when the games are played sequentially. Moreover, spillover occurs even when group composition changes, although the effect is not as strong. We also find that the precedent for uncooperative behavior does not spill over from the minimum game to the median game. These findings suggest guidelines for increasing cooperative behavior within organizations.coordination, order-statistic games, experiments, cooperation, minimum game, behavioral spillover

Does the market kill bad ideas? An institutional comparision of committees and markets in network industries

The paper analyzes the problem of protocol coordination between two firms, where one firm has private information about its own protocol. The institutional characteristics of the market and the class of strategies adopted by the firms admit multiple equilibria in the market. Of these, one particular equilibrium has an interior information revelation cutoff for the firm with private information. This demonstrates that the market might not be able to "kill bad ideas", but it does "reward good ideas". In contrast, the institutional design of the committee ensures that the same class of strategies gives rise to a unique equilibrium in the committee, with the informed firm revealing all private information. The committee game results generalize easily to multiple periods as well as to multiple firms and is robust to an exit option. The market game result holds for a certain range of parameter values for multiple firms.Networks, standardization, coordination, asymmetric information, institutional design

Sensory Measurements: Coordination and Standardization

Do sensory measurements deserve the label of “measurement”? We argue that they do. They fit with an epistemological view of measurement held in current philosophy of science, and they face the same kinds of epistemological challenges as physical measurements do: the problem of coordination and the problem of standardization. These problems are addressed through the process of “epistemic iteration,” for all measurements. We also argue for distinguishing the problem of standardization from the problem of coordination. To exemplify our claims, we draw on olfactory performance tests, especially studies linking olfactory decline to neurodegenerative disorders

Effort Provision and Communication in Teams Competing over the Commons

Schott et al. (2007) have shown that the “tragedy of the commons” can be overcome when individuals share their output equally in groups of optimal size and there is no communication. In this paper we investigate the impact of introducing communication in groups that may or may not be linked to output sharing groups. Communication reduces shirking, increases aggregate effort and reduces aggregate rents, but only when communication groups and output-sharing groups are linked. The effect is stronger for fixed groups (partners treatment) than for randomly reassigned groups (strangers treatment). Performance is not distinguishable from the no-communication treatments when communication is permitted but subjects share output within groups different from the groups within which they communicate. Communication also tends to enhance the negative effect of the partnered group assignment on the equality of individual payoffs. We use detailed content analysis to evaluate the impact of communication messages on behavior across treatments.common pool resources; communication; coordination; cooperation; free-riding; behavior in teams; partners and strangers; experiments

Reflections on Modern Macroeconomics: Can We Travel Along a Safer Road?

In this paper we sketch some reflections on the pitfalls and inconsistencies of the research program - currently dominant among the profession - aimed at providing microfoundations to macroeconomics along a Walrasian perspective. We argue that such a methodological approach constitutes an unsatisfactory answer to a well-posed research question, and that alternative promising routes have been long mapped out but only recently explored. In particular, we discuss a recent agent-based, truly non-Walrasian macroeconomic model, and we use it to envisage new challenges for future research.Comment: Latex2e v1.6; 17 pages with 4 figures; for inclusion in the APFA5 Proceeding

WP 10 - Chances and limitations of "benchmarking" in the reform of welfare state structures - the case of pension policy

The concept of benchmarking, originally developed as a tool to improve the performance of business enterprises by learning from others' "best practice", is now increasingly applied in the areas of employment and social policy. Rising internal and external pressures on national welfare states, sometimes reinforced by supra-national institutions, a rapid growth of modern communication technologies and an ongoing process of ideological liberalization drive this development. Just as benchmarking between companies benchmarking between national social policies is seen as an instrument to reduce the costs of pure trial and error. However, learning from abroad is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for successful welfare state adjustment. First, it is only one possible factor for welfare state change next to many others. Second, it does not necessarily lead to policy change because policy makers may be unable or unwilling to implement what they have learned. Third, even if cross-national policy transfer takes place it may fail to yield the expected benefits. For a number of reasons the transferability of welfare policies across countries may be restricted. Most importantly, policy transfer may be inappropriate if policymakers do not pay sufficient attention to the different economic, social, political or ideological context in the importing country. This is especially true when it comes to the great institutional diversity of national retirement systems, which are based on highly country-specific policy mixes and which display strong interdependencies with other policy areas. Therefore, a large-scale adoption of onesize-fits-all solutions such as the World Bank's three-pillar pension model appears to be problematic. The costs of establishing new institutional arrangements form another impediment to policy transfer. The extraordinarily high cost of financing the transition from a pay-as-you-go to a fully funded pension system is a case in point. Moreover, the benchmarking of social policies is faced with the difficulty that policy goals tend to be ambiguous or even characterized by harsh trade-offs. Pension reformers, for instance, are invariably confronted with the problem of containing rising pension costs while ensuring a decent level of social security for the elderly population. Therefore, the notion of "best practice" appears to be problematic with respect to social policy reform. Finally, policy makers must be concerned with the political risks associated with policy transfer, especially in a political minefield such as pensions. For these reasons, policy transfer between welfare states appears to be qualitatively different from transfer of "best practice" between companies. Under these conditions, the probability of (appropriate) policy transfer will hinge on two factors. First, the more the local conditions and especially the welfare arrangements differ from one country to another the more difficult and the less likely policy transfer will be. Second, exchange of information will be easier than the transfer of ideas and goals, which on their part will diffuse more easily across national borders than concrete policy instruments and institutions. In particular, the import of institutions incompatible to existing policy structures may interfere with the balance of power between societal actors and therefore meet with political resistance.

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc