Quantum Penny Flip game with unawareness

Games with unawareness model strategic situations in which players' perceptions about the game are limited. They take into account the fact that the players may be unaware of some of the strategies available to them or their opponents as well as the players may have a restricted view about the number of players participating in the game. The aim of the research is to introduce this notion into theory of quantum games. We shall focus on PQ Penny Flip game introduced by D. Meyer. We shall formalize the previous results and consider other cases of unawareness in the game

Partial Awareness

We develop a modal logic to capture partial awareness. The logic has three building blocks: objects, properties, and concepts. Properties are unary predicates on objects; concepts are Boolean combinations of properties. We take an agent to be partially aware of a concept if she is aware of the concept without being aware of the properties that define it. The logic allows for quantification over objects and properties, so that the agent can reason about her own unawareness. We then apply the logic to contracts, which we view as syntactic objects that dictate outcomes based on the truth of formulas. We show that when agents are unaware of some relevant properties, referencing concepts that agents are only partially aware of can improve welfare.Comment: Appears in AAAI-1

Common priors for generalized type spaces

The notion of common prior is well-understood and widely-used in the incomplete information games literature. For ordinary type spaces the common prior is de�fined. Pint�er and Udvari (2011) introduce the notion of generalized type space. Generalized type spaces are models for various bonded rationality issues, for �nite belief hierarchies, unawareness among others. In this paper we de�ne the notion of common prior for generalized types spaces. Our results are as follows: the generalization (1) suggests a new form of common prior for ordinary type spaces, (2) shows some quantum game theoretic results (Brandenburger and La Mura, 2011) in new light

Common priors for generalized type spaces

The notion of common prior is well-understood and widely-used in the incomplete information games literature. For ordinary type spaces the common prior is defined. Pinter and Udvari (2011) introduce the notion of generalized type space. Generalized type spaces are models for various bonded rationality issues, for finite belief hierarchies, unawareness among others. In this paper we define the notion of common prior for generalized types spaces. Our results are as follows: the generalization (1) suggests a new form of common prior for ordinary type spaces, (2) shows some quantum game theoretic results (Brandenburger and La Mura, 2011) in new light.Type spaces; Generalized type spaces; Common prior; Harsányi Doctrine; Quantum games

Essays on Labor and Behavioral Economics

This dissertation includes three essays on topics in labor and behavioral economics. The first chapter studies a long-lasting question in labor, namely if public-sector workers are paid more than their counterfactual wages in the private sector. The second chapter experimentally studies the problem of adverse selection occurring over time. Finally, the third chapter examines decision-making when agents become aware of hitherto unknown contingencies, also using experimental methods

Invisible Hand in the Process of Making Economics or on the Method and Scope of Economics

As a social science, economics cannot be reduced to simply an a priori science or an ideology. In addition economics cannot be solely an empirical or a historical science. Economics is a research field which studies only one dimension of human behavior, with the four fields of mathematics, econometrics, ethics and history intersecting one another. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the two parts of the proposition above, in connection with the controversies surrounding the method and the scope of economics: economics as an applied mathematics and economics as a predictive/empirical science.Invisible hand, Scope and method in economics, Economics as an applied mathematics, Economics as an empirical science, Economics as ideology.

Decision Making and Trade without Probabilities

What is a rational decision-maker supposed to do when facing an unfamiliar problem, where there is uncertainty but no basis for making probabilistic assessments? One answer is to use a form of expected utility theory, and assume that agents assign their own subjective probabilities to each element of the (presumably known) state space. In contrast, this paper presents a model in which agents do not form subjective probabilities over the elements of the state space, but nonetheless use new information to update their beliefs about what the elements of the state space are. This model is shown to lead to different predictions about trading behavior in a simple asset market under uncertainty. A controlled laboratory experiment tests the predictions of this model against those of expected utility theory and against the hypothesis that subjects act na¨ıvely and non-strategically. The results suggest that a lack of subjective probabilities does not imply irrational or unpredictable behavior, but instead allows individuals to use both what they know and knowledge of what they do not know in their decision making. Comment un décideur rationnel est-il censé réagir face à un problème qui ne lui est pas familier lorsquâil existe une certaine incertitude, et en lâabsence dâune base sur laquelle effectuer des estimations probabilistes? Une solution consiste à utiliser une forme de la théorie de lâutilité espérée et de présumer que les agents attribuent leurs propres probabilités subjectives à chaque élément de la représentation dâétat (sans doute connue). Par contraste, notre article présente un modèle où les agents ne forment pas de probabilités subjectives sur les éléments de la représentation dâétat, mais utilisent de nouveaux renseignements afin de mettre à jour leurs croyances sur les éléments formant la représentation dâétat. Le comportement des échanges avec ce modèle dans un marché dâactifs simple et incertain nous mène à des prédictions différentes. En utilisant une expérience contrôlée en laboratoire, nous avons vérifié les prédictions de ce modèle contre celles de la théorie de lâutilité espérée et contre lâhypothèse que les sujets agissent avec naïveté et sans recourir à une stratégie. Les résultats suggèrent quâun manque de probabilités subjectives nâimplique pas un comportement irrationnel ou imprévisible, mais permet plutôt aux individus dâutiliser autant lâinformation quâils possèdent que la connaissance de lâinformation quâils ne possèdent pas dans leur prise de décision.Uncertainty; non-expected utility; incomplete preferences; ambiguity., Incertitude, utilité non espérée, préférences incomplètes, ambiguïté.