Progress in Behavioral Game Theory

Is game theory meant to describe actual choices by people and institutions or not? It is remarkable how much game theory has been done while largely ignoring this question. The seminal book by von Neumann and Morgenstern, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, was clearly about how rational players would play against others they knew were rational. In more recent work, game theorists are not always explicit about what they aim to describe or advise. At one extreme, highly mathematical analyses have proposed rationality requirements that people and firms are probably not smart enough to satisfy in everyday decisions. At the other extreme, adaptive and evolutionary approaches use very simple models-mostly developed to describe nonhuman animals-in which players may not realize they are playing a game at all. When game theory does aim to describe behavior, it often proceeds with a disturbingly low ratio of careful observation to theorizing

Confronting Wartime Sexual Violence: Public Support for Survivors in Bosnia

Existing research on conflict-related sexual violence focuses on the motivations of perpetrators and effects on survivors. What remains less clear is how postconflict societies respond to the hardships survivors face. In survey experiments in Bosnia, we examine public support for financial aid, legal aid, and public recognition for survivors. First, we find a persistent ethnocentric view of sexual violence, where respondents are less supportive when the perpetrator is identified as co-ethnic and survivors are perceived as out-groups. Second, respondents are less supportive of male survivors than female survivors, which we attribute to social stigmas surrounding same-gender sexual activity. Consistent with our argument, those who are intolerant of homosexuality are especially averse to providing aid to male survivors. This study points to the long-term challenges survivors face due to ethnic divisions and social stigmatization from sexual violence

Choice over Time

In the last twenty years a growing body of experimental evidence has posed a challenge to the standard Exponential Discounting Model of choice over time. Attention has focused on some specific 'anomalies', notably preference reversal and declining discount rates, leading to the formulation of the model of hyperbolic discounting which is finding increasing favour in the literature. In this paper we provide a survey of both the theoretical modelling and the experimental evidence relating to choice over time. As we will show, a careful analysis of the mapping between theoretical models and experimental investigations raises questions as to whether some of the most focused upon anomalies should be indeed classified as such, or whether they are really the most challenging ones for conventional theory. New developments are emerging both at the theoretical and empirical level, opening up new exciting avenues for investigation.Time preference, Choice over time, Theory, Experiments

Persuasive discourse and language planning in Ireland

Colonial language discourse typically consists of evaluations concerning the respective merits of two or more languages, and the cultures they represent. This can serve as a warrant for imposing a ‘superior’ language. Although such discourse tends to be associated with the conquest of the New World and subsequent European expansion, there is evidence that in the case of Ireland – England’s first overseas colony – an adversarial relation between English and Irish languages existed even before the Elizabethan period. Referring to English legislation, chronicles and other documents, this paper examines the norms, arguments and rhetorical strategies that were used to exert the dominance of English language in Ireland during late-medieval and early-modern times. In the latter half of the paper, the focus will shift to attempts to create, especially from the seventeenth-century onwards, a ‘pro-Irish reversal’ that used similar arguments and rhetoric to reclaim this denigrated language. Our suggestion is that these pro- and anti-colonial language discourses anticipate those that were used later on in colonial and postcolonial environments

Food after deprivation rewards the earlier eating

Food intake can be increased by learning to anticipate the omission of subsequent meals. We present here a new theory that such anticipatory eating depends on an associative process of instrumental reinforcement by the nutritional repletion that occurs when access to food is restored. Our evidence over the last decade from a smooth-brained omnivore has been that food after deprivation rewards intake even when those reinforced ingestive responses occur long before the physiological signals from renewed assimilation. Effects of food consumed after self-deprivation might therefore reward extra eating in human beings, through brain mechanisms that could operate outside awareness. That would have implications for efforts to reduce body weight. This food reward mechanism could be contributing to the failure of the dietary component of interventions on obesity within controlled trials of the management or prevention of disorders such as hypertension, atherosclerosis and type 2 diabetes

Public Transit Capacity and Users' Choice: AnExperiment on Downs-Thomson Paradox

We study the Downs-Thomson paradox, a situation where an additional road capacitycan cause an overall increase in transport generalized cost and therefore a decrease in welfarefor transport users. To this end, we build an experiment based on a double market-entrygame (DMEG) where users have to choose between road and public transit after that the op-erator has choosen public transit capacity. The optimal strategy for operator is to minimizecapacity, and the equilibrium for users depend on the endogeneous public transit capacitycompared to exogeneous road capacity. The most important result is that we observe theDowns-Thomson paradox empirically in the laboratory: An increase in road capacity causesshift from road to rail and, at the end, increases total travel costs. But the contrary isnot true: A decrease in road capacity does not cause lower total travel costs, which is incontradiction with our theoretical model. Results also show that the capacity chosen byoperator di¤ers from Nash prediction, levels being signi…cantly higher than those predictedby our model. Moreover, users coordinate remarkably well on Nash equilibrium entry ratewhile capacity has been chosen by operator.traffic equilibrium, congestion, market entry game, coordination, experimental economics

Experimental Economics

This is the first comprehensive treatment of laboratory experiments designed to evaluate economic propositions under carefully controlled conditions. While it acknowledges that laboratory experiments are no panacea, it argues cogently for their effectiveness in selected situations. Covering methodological and procedural issues as well as theory, Experimental Economics is not only a textbook but also a useful introduction to laboratory methods for professional economists. The emphasis is on organizing and evaluating existing results. The book can be used as an anchoring device for a course at either the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. Applications include financial market experiments, oligopoly price competition, auctions, bargaining, provision of public goods, experimental games, and decision making under uncertainty. The book also contains instructions for a variety of laboratory experiments.laboratory experiments, financial markets, price competition, auctions, bargaining, games, decision making, uncertainty

Public Transit Capacity and Users Choice: AnExperiment on Downs-Thomson Paradox

We study the Downs-Thomson paradox, a situation where an additional road capacitycan cause an overall increase in transport generalized cost and therefore a decrease in welfarefor transport users. To this end, we build an experiment based on a double market-entrygame (DMEG) where users have to choose between road and public transit after that the op-erator has choosen public transit capacity. The optimal strategy for operator is to minimizecapacity, and the equilibrium for users depend on the endogeneous public transit capacitycompared to exogeneous road capacity. The most important result is that we observe theDowns-Thomson paradox empirically in the laboratory: An increase in road capacity causesshift from road to rail and, at the end, increases total travel costs. But the contrary isnot true: A decrease in road capacity does not cause lower total travel costs, which is incontradiction with our theoretical model. Results also show that the capacity chosen byoperator di¤ers from Nash prediction, levels being signi…cantly higher than those predictedby our model. Moreover, users coordinate remarkably well on Nash equilibrium entry ratewhile capacity has been chosen by operator.traffic equilibrium, public transit, congestion, experimental economics, market entry game

Why Does the Paper-Bill Spread Predict Real Economic Activity?

Evidence based on the past three decades of U.S. experience shows that the difference between the interest rates on commercial paper and Treasury bills has consistently borne a systematic relationship to subsequent fluctuations of nonfinancial economic activity. This interest rate spread typically widens in advance of recessions, and narrows again before recoveries. The relationship remains valid even after allowance for other financial variables that previous researchers have often advanced as potential business cycle predictors. This paper provides support for each of three different explanations for this predictive power of the paper?bill spread. First, changing perceptions of default risk exert a clearly recognizable influence on the spread. This influence is all the more discernable after allowance for effects associated with the changing volume of paper issuance when investors view commercial paper and Treasury bills as imperfect portfolio substitutes -- a key assumption for which the evidence introduced here provides support. Second, again under conditions of imperfect substitutability, a widening paper-bill spread is also a symptom of the contraction in bank lending due to tighter monetary policy. Third, there is also evidence of a further role for independent changes in the behavior of borrowers in the commercial paper market due to their changing cash requirements over the course of the business cycle.

Practicing Hope

In this essay, I consider how the theological virtue of hope might be practiced. I will first explain Thomas Aquinas’s account of this virtue, including its structural relation to the passion of hope, its opposing vices, and its relationship to the friendship of charity. Then, using narrative and character analysis from the film The Shawshank Redemption, I examine a range of hopeful and proto-hopeful practices concerning both the goods one hopes for and the power one relies on to attain those goods. In particular, I show how the film’s picture of the role friends and friendship play in catalyzing hope is a compelling metaphor for Christian hope’s reliance on Go