Simulations, theory, and experiments. Notes from an Historical Perspective

This paper aims at presenting the methodological approach to simulations, proposed at the beginning of the sixties by a group of scholars of the Carnegie Mellon University. This approach can be defined cognitive and behavioural, because of the attention to real perception and decision-making and to the role assigned to learning processes. One of the main points of departure is constituted by the wish to relay on more realistic assumptions, as a condition for better an understanding and forecast of the reality. Simulations are seen as the most important, even if not unique, way to model the resulting complexity.experiment, simulations, Herbert Simon,

Toward a Cognitive Experimental Economics

This paper aims to analyze and exemplify some methodological implications on the way to conduct experiments related to the adoption of a cognitive approach in Economics. Many differences arise in relation to a more traditional way. In fact cognitive economics has strong descriptive attention and aims at beeing closer to reality than the mainstream. Besides the idea of representative agents is questioned. Different kind of experiments, differents analysis and new tools are so required. The paper proposes also some notes on the relation between experimental economics and simulation with artificial agents.cognitive economics, experimental economics, learning

Firms' demand for occupational profiles: a theoretical and empirical study

This paper aims at analysing, both theoretically and empirically, possible determinants of firm's demand of occupations. Even if traditionally neglected within economics literature, this issue can, in fact, be very useful for Economics, as this paper tries to shows. The theoretical analysis devotes a particular attention to find a preliminary link between the need for occupations and the theory of the firm. The empirical analysis is based on a dataset built using data from the 1996 "Analisi Excelsior", a survey on Italian firms occupational needs. This information have been merged with the balance sheet individual data of the same sample of firms. The dataset so built allow then to look for eventual relations between demand of occupations and some firms characteristics (like vertical integration, tangible and intangible assets equipment, productivity)occupations skills firms

Firms' Demand for Occupational Profiles: a Theoretical and Empirical Study

This paper aims at analysing, both theoretically and empirically, possible determinants of firm's demand of occupations. Even if traditionally neglected within economics literature, this issue can, in fact, be very useful for Economics, as this paper tries to shows. The theoretical analysis devotes a particular attention to find a preliminary link between the need for occupations and the theory of the firm. The empirical analysis is based on a dataset built using data from the 1996 "Analisi Excelsior", a survey on Italian firms occupational needs. This information have been merged with the balance sheet individual data of the same sample of firms. The dataset so built allow then to look for eventual relations between demand of occupations and some firms characteristics (like vertical integration, tangible and intangible assets equipment, productivity) Acknowledgments. This work continues a study on the demand of professions started with Bruno Contini and Giovanna Garrone. A preliminary analysis based on the same data (whose source is the "Analisi Excelsior") has been published in Contini, Garrone and Novarese (2000). A previous version of the present paper was presented at the Conference "Understanding Skills Obsolescence: Theoretical Innovations and Empirical Applications", ROA/SKOPE, Maastricht, May, 11-12, 2001.

Is bounded rationality a capacity, enabling learning?

This papers contributes to the stream of research on rule based behavior, and rationality. A bounded rational agent can deal just with a reduced number of variables, neglecting part of the overall complexity. This is usually taken as just a limitation: agents cannot deal with all relevant information and use biased decisional shortcuts. The stream of research on Ecological rationality, yet, evidences the possible advantage of using a limited amount of information. The present paper takes a similar, but not identical, point of view. I propose an idea based on some contributions on the ecology of the mind by Gregory Bateson. Learning requires to recognize a series of situations as identical and then to observe the effect of given variables in specific fixed contexts. Two situations can be considered identical only limiting considering part of the overall information and taking as unchanged a series of factors. This process determines an individual representation which have just to be coherent with the world. Only in abstract world contexts are objective situations. In the real world, they are just hypothesis to be continuously tested. This vision of bounds and learning has many implications for the debate on rationality and rule following.Bounded rationality, ecological rationality, cognition, Gregory Bateson, contexts, learning, rules

Neuroeconomics: infeasible and underdetermined

Advocates of neuroeconomics claim to offer the prospect of creating a “unified behavioral theory” by drawing upon the techniques of neuroscience and psychology and combining them with economic theory. Ostensibly, through the “direct measurement” of our thoughts, economics and social science will be “revolutionized.” Such claims have been subject to critique from mainstream and non-mainstream economists alike. Many of these criticisms relate to measurability, relevance, and coherence. In this article, we seek to contribute to this critical examination by investigating the potential of underdetermination, such as the statement that testing involves the conjunction of auxiliary assumptions, and that consequently it may not be possible to isolate the effect of any given hypothesis. We argue that neuroeconomics is especially sensitive to issues of underdetermination. Institutional economists should be cautious of neuroeconomists’ zeal as they appear to over-interpret experimental findings and, therefore, neuroeconomics may provide a false prospectus seeking to reinforce the nostrums of homo economicus

Trust, communication and equlibrium behaviour in public goods

This paper reports a novel cross-cultural public goods game experiment played in real time through Internet. Web-based software was used to compare the contributions to public good of different groups of participants: mixed, consisting of both Italians (students in law and economics) and Russians (students in economics), as well as all-Italian and all-Russian groups. This setup allows for testing for a number of effects, including participants’ awareness of the group composition in terms of nationality and gender of group members; possibility of coordination of one’s strategy during a cheap talk session organized before some of the games was used as an additional control. Our results show that the degree of cooperation is rather high, but does not vary significantly with nationalities of the group members, while communication tends to enhance contributions to public goods. A notable difference between the subjects representing the two nations is an overly strong and increasing cooperativeness of the Russian female participants in contrast to that of the Russian men, as well as the Italians.PUBLIC GOODS GAME, CROSS-CULTURAL EXPERIMENT, COOPERATION

The beauty of the contest: A novel approach to experimental beauty contests.

We introduce a novel beauty contest experiment to study the gap between individual preferences and beliefs about collective preferences of physical attractiveness. In the first round, participants vote their 3 favorite ladies in the second round they vote the 3 ladies they believe were the most voted in the first round.Unlike other beauty contest experiments, our setup does not investigate depth of reasoning in a cognitively intense task. Instead, it is meant to investigate the existence of shared definitions of physical attractiveness, and whether these may be successfully employed as focal points.Our results show that most participants hold mistaken beliefs about collective preferences and overestimate and underestimate how well liked certain ladies are. Regardless of these mistakes, the winning portraits win by a wide margin in both rounds. Moreover, our participants are better at predicting the portraits which will not be the most voted than those which will.Beauty

Individual learning: theory formation, and feedback in a complex task

We present an experiment for the study of learning in a complex task which requires both memorisation and the ability to process several pieces of information. The outcome of an action, for which immediate feedback is given, depends on the context (i.e. one of thirty-two sequences of three features) which is know and visible to the subjects. Subjects develop some theories of the experimental world, which result in the stable repetition of some actions in response to certain conditions. These theories are modified after feedback, however mistaken answers are repeated and correct answers abandoned. During the game, theories become more effective (i.e. they afford more correct answers and a higher score), yet the improvements slow down. The theories follow from only a portion of the available information and when they become successful (i.e. towards the end of the experiment) the subjects start refining them to include a larger subset of the information, this causes more stable mistakes.cognitive economics; complexity; experiments; feedback; learning; theory formation; Heiner