8,445 research outputs found
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
Reducing Efficiency through Communication in Competitive Coordination Games
Costless pre-play communication has been found to effectively facilitate coordination and enhance efficiency by increasing individual payoffs in games with Pareto-ranked equilibria. We report an experiment in which two groups compete in a weakest-link contest by expending costly efforts. Allowing group members to communicate before choosing efforts leads to more aggressive competition and greater coordination, but also results in substantially lower payoffs than a control treatment without communication. Our experiment thus provides evidence that communication can reduce efficiency in competitive coordination games. This contrasts sharply with experimental findings from public goods and other coordination games, where communication enhances efficiency and often leads to socially optimal outcomes.Contest; Between-group Competition; Within-group Competition; Cooperation; Coordination; Free-riding; Experiments
Elementary approach to closed billiard trajectories in asymmetric normed spaces
We apply the technique of K\'aroly Bezdek and Daniel Bezdek to study billiard
trajectories in convex bodies, when the length is measured with a (possibly
asymmetric) norm. We prove a lower bound for the length of the shortest closed
billiard trajectory, related to the non-symmetric Mahler problem. With this
technique we are able to give short and elementary proofs to some known
results.Comment: 10 figures added. The title change
Entry into Winner-Take-All and Proportional-Prize Contests: An Experimental Study
This experiment compares the performance of two contest designs: a standard winnertake- all tournament with a single fixed prize, and a novel proportional-payment design in which that same prize is divided among contestants by their share of total achievement. We find that proportional prizes elicit more entry and more total achievement than the winner-take-all tournament. The proportional-prize contest performs better by limiting the degree to which heterogeneity among contestants discourages weaker entrants, without altering the performance of stronger entrants. These findings could inform the design of contests for technological and other improvements, which are widely used by governments and philanthropic donors to elicit more effort on targeted economic and technological development activities.performance pay, tournament, piece rate, tournament design, contest, experiments, risk aversion, feedback, gender
Wave packet evolution in non-Hermitian quantum systems
The quantum evolution of the Wigner function for Gaussian wave packets
generated by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is investigated. In the semiclassical
limit this yields the non-Hermitian analog of the Ehrenfest
theorem for the dynamics of observable expectation values. The lack of
Hermiticity reveals the importance of the complex structure on the classical
phase space: The resulting equations of motion are coupled to an equation of
motion for the phase space metric---a phenomenon having no analog in Hermitian
theories.Comment: Example added, references updated, 4 pages, 2 figure
Geometric Hamilton-Jacobi Theory
The Hamilton-Jacobi problem is revisited bearing in mind the consequences
arising from a possible bi-Hamiltonian structure. The problem is formulated on
the tangent bundle for Lagrangian systems in order to avoid the bias of the
existence of a natural symplectic structure on the cotangent bundle. First it
is developed for systems described by regular Lagrangians and then extended to
systems described by singular Lagrangians with no secondary constraints. We
also consider the example of the free relativistic particle, the rigid body and
the electron-monopole system.Comment: 40 page
Symmetry adapted ro-vibrational basis functions for variational nuclear motion calculations: TROVE approach
We present a general, numerically motivated approach to the construction of
symmetry adapted basis functions for solving ro-vibrational Schr\"{o}dinger
equations. The approach is based on the property of the Hamiltonian operator to
commute with the complete set of symmetry operators and hence to reflect the
symmetry of the system. The symmetry adapted ro-vibrational basis set is
constructed numerically by solving a set of reduced vibrational eigenvalue
problems. In order to assign the irreducible representations associated with
these eigenfunctions, their symmetry properties are probed on a grid of
molecular geometries with the corresponding symmetry operations. The
transformation matrices are re-constructed by solving over-determined systems
of linear equations related to the transformation properties of the
corresponding wavefunctions on the grid. Our method is implemented in the
variational approach TROVE and has been successfully applied to a number of
problems covering the most important molecular symmetry groups. Several
examples are used to illustrate the procedure, which can be easily applied to
different types of coordinates, basis sets, and molecular systems
Geometric Hamilton-Jacobi Theory for Nonholonomic Dynamical Systems
The geometric formulation of Hamilton--Jacobi theory for systems with
nonholonomic constraints is developed, following the ideas of the authors in
previous papers. The relation between the solutions of the Hamilton--Jacobi
problem with the symplectic structure defined from the Lagrangian function and
the constraints is studied. The concept of complete solutions and their
relationship with constants of motion, are also studied in detail. Local
expressions using quasivelocities are provided. As an example, the nonholonomic
free particle is considered.Comment: 22 p
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