The Measurement of Intellectual Influence

We examine the problem of measuring influence based on the information contained in the data on the communications between scholarly publications, judicial decisions, patents, web pages, and other entities. The measurement of influence is useful to address several empirical questions such as reputation, prestige, aspects of the diffusion of knowledge, the markets for scientists and scientific publications, the dynamics of innovation, ranking algorithms of search engines in the World Wide Web, and others. In this paper we ask why any given methodology is reasonable and informative applying the axiomatic method. We find that a unique ranking method can be characterized by means of five axioms: anonymity, invariance to citation intensity, weak homogeneity, weak consistency, and invariance to splitting of journals. This method is easily implementable and turns out to be different from those regularly used in social and natural sciences, arts and humanities, and computer science.Intellectual Influence, Citations, Ranking Methods, Consistency.

EXPERIENTIA DOCET: PROFESSIONALS PLAY MINIMAX IN LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

We study how professional players and college students play zero-sum two-person strategic games in a laboratory setting. We first ask professionals to play a 2x2 game that is formally identical to a strategic interaction situation that they face in their natural environment. Consistent with their behavior in the field, they play very close to the equilibrium of the game. In particular, (i) they equate their strategies' payoffs to the equilibrium ones, and (ii) they generate sequences of choices that are serially independent. In sharp contrast, however, we find that college students play the game far from the equilibrium predictions. We then study the behavior of professional players and college students in the classic O'Neill's 4x4 zero-sum game, a game that none of the subjects have encountered previously, and find the same differences in the behavior of these two pools of subjects. The transfer of skills and experience from the familiar field to the unfamiliar laboratory observed for professional players is relevant to evaluate the circumstances under which behavior in a laboratory setting may be a reliable indicator of behavior in a naturally occurring setting. From a cognitive perspective, it is useful for research on recognition processes, intuition, and similarity as a basis for inductive reasoning.Laboratory Experiments, Minimax, Experience, Cognition.

Field Centipedes

We conduct a field experiment in which highly-ranked chess players play the centipede game in a natural setting. This game represents one of the main paradoxes of backward induction. In the experiment two players alternately are faced with the decision of either taking an exponentially growing pile of money and ending the game, or letting the other player make the decision. The player who decides to stop the game takes the larger portion of the pile, and the other player gets the remaining amount. All standard equilibrium concepts dictate that the player who decides first must stop the game immediately. There is vast experimental evidence, however, that this rarely occurs. Contrary to this evidence our results show that 69% of chess players stop the game immediately. When we restrict attention to chess Grandmasters this percentage escalates to 100%. We also conduct standard laboratory experiments where college students and chess players play ten repetitions of the game. We find that chess players playing versus other chess players rapidly converge to the equilibrium outcome, whereas students playing versus other students systematically depart from it. However, when students play against chess players the occurrence of the backward induction outcome increases tenfold.Rationality, centipede game, experiments, chess players.

Psychological pressure in competitive environments: Evidence from a randomized natural experiment

Much like cognitive abilities, emotional skills can have major effects on perfor mance and economic outcomes. This paper studies the behavior of professional subjects involved in a dynamic competition in their own natural environment. The setting is a penalty shoot-out in soccer where two teams compete in a tournament framework taking turns in a sequence of five penalty kicks each. As the kicking order is determined by the random outcome of a coin flip, the treatment and control groups are determined via explicit randomization. Therefore, absent any psychological effects, both teams should have the same probability of winning regardless of the kicking order. Yet, we find a systematic first-kicker advantage. Using data on 2,731 penalty kicks from 262 shoot-outs for a three decade period, we find that teams kicking first win the penalty shoot-out 60.5% of the time. A dynamic panel data analysis shows that the psychological mechanism underlying this result arises from the asymmetry in the partial score. As most kicks are scored, kicking first typically means having the opportunity to lead in the partial score, whereas kicking second typically means lagging in the score and having the opportunity to, at most, get even. Having a worse prospect than the opponent hinders subjects' performance. Further, we also find that professionals are self-aware of their own psychological effects. When a recent change in regulations gives winners of the coin toss the chance to choose the kicking order, they rationally react to it by systematically choosing to kick first. A survey of professional players reveals that when asked to explain why they prefer to kick first, they precisely identify the psychological mechanism for which we find empirical support in the data: they want “to lead in the score in order to put pressure on the opponent.”LeeX

Improving the odds of winning in professional football

Research by Professor Ignacio Palacios-Huerta has illustrated how penalty kicks in football can prove key concepts in game theory

Favouritism under social pressure in football and in life

Economics seeks to answer important questions about how people, industries, and countries can maximise their productivity, create wealth, and maintain financial stability. So is it possible that it can learn from the beautiful game of football? LSE’s Professor Ignacio Palacios-Huerta believes so and his latest book, Beautiful Game Theory: How Soccer Can Help Economics deals with this topic

Competitiveness among Nandi female husbands

SignificanceDifferences in competitiveness between men and women have been hypothesized as a potential explanation for important differences in education and labor market outcomes. Central to the literature is whether these differences are innate or learned. I take advantage of the distinct cultural institution of "female husbands" (biologically females but socially men) in the Nandi society in Kenya to study this question. By keeping biological sex constant, holding the society constant, but altering the social gender at an adult age, this unique setting advances our understanding of these differences. Specifically, the results support the hypothesis that competitive inclinations are channeled through social roles and the family. Social norms and social identity critically matter to tackle differences between men and women directly