Managers and Students Playing Cournot: Experimental Evidence from Malaysia

We report results from a Cournot triopoly experiment with different subject pools: German students, Malaysian students, and Malaysian managers. While German students play Nash, we reject the hypothesis that both Malaysian students and managers select the Nash quantity. Moreover, Malaysian managers perform significantly less competitively than Malaysian students. Finally, the affect of gender is opposite for German and Malaysian subjects. --artefactual field experiment,subject pools,Cournot oligopoly,managers,non-cooperative behavior

Pre-play communication in Cournot competition: An experiment with students and managers

This study investigates the impact of pre-play communication on the outcomes in Cournot duopoly and triopoly experiments, using both students and managers as subjects. Communication is implemented by two different devices, a 'standardized-communication' and a free-communication device. We find that the effect of communication on collusion is larger in duopoly than in triopoly. Moreover, managers behave in a similar way under the two communication devices, while students are more influenced by the free-communication than by the standardized-communication device. In addition, managers select lower aggregate quantities than students, and communication enhances the difference between the subject pools in duopoly but reduces this difference in triopoly. Inspecting individual behavior, in all treatments the output adjustment is significantly correlated with the previous round's best response strategy. In the treatments with communication, the effect of imitation becomes larger and crowds out the effect of myopic best response. Finally, in all treatments duopoly results in more collusion than triopoly. --artefactual field experiment,subject pools,Cournot oligopoly,managers,cheap talk

Self-nudging is more ethical, but less efficient than social nudging

Manipulating choice architectures to achieve social ends (‘social nudges’) raises problems of ethicality. Giving individuals control over their default choice (‘selfnudges’) is a possible remedy, but the trade-offs with efficiency are poorly understood. We examine under four different information structures how subjects set own defaults in social dilemmas and whether outcomes differ between the self-nudge and two exogenous defaults, a social (full cooperation) and a selfish (perfect free-riding) nudge. Subjects recruited from the general population (n = 1,080) play a ten-round, ten-day voluntary contribution mechanism online, with defaults triggered by the absence of an active contribution on the day. We find that individuals’ own choice of defaults structurally differs from full cooperation, empirically affirming the ethicality problem of social nudges. Allowing for self-nudges instead of social nudges reduces efficiency at the group level, however. When individual control over nudges is non-negotiable, self-nudges need to be made public to minimize the ethicality-efficiency trade-off

Essays in experimental economics

This thesis consists of studies in the field of experimental economics. The first two chapters of the thesis deal with the issue of subject selection in Cournot Oligopoly experiments. In particular, chapter 1 presents a study which was designed to test whether a predominant personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) can account for differences in behavior between subjects in a Cournot Duopoly with random matching. Chapter 2 investigates whether Malaysian managers behave differently than Malaysian students (and German students) in a Cournot Triopoly. Chapter 3 presents a study in the field of environmental economics that investigates whether the initial allocation of emission permits and the auction design affect the adoption of advanced technology in a market with many small asymmetric firms, particularly, when the regulator commits himself ex-ante to the level of permits. Chapter 4 provides a natural investigation of a market sharing certain features with the ultimatum bargaining game. The introduction of the Schleswig-Holstein ticket (S-H ticket) by the German train company created a market which is characterized by ‘proposers’ who offer to take ‘responders’ with their ticket for a specified price. A deadline imposed by the trains’ departure time on the bargainers transforms the situation into an ultimatum bargaining situation. Chapter 4 thoroughly describes this market, which we refer to as the Kiel market for budget travel by train. Finally, Appendix A presents a bootstrap approach to determine critical values for the dynamic quintile test as a common diagnostic tool for model based Value-at-Risk estimates

The Creation of Social Norms under Weak Institutions

Preventing overfishing at Lake Victoria is a typical situation where policies have to rely on norm-based interventions to improve outcomes. Our lab-in-the-field experiment studies how information about high or low levels of previous cooperation affects the creation of social norms in a three-player prisoner’s dilemma game with/without a feedback mechanism. The provision of social information succeeds in creating norms of cooperation only if a feedback mechanism is available. Without feedback, social information cannot prevent the decline of cooperation rates. Exploring the role of the reference network, we find that the effect increases with social proximity among participants

Tiempo libre, libertad y educación

O artigo apresenta um enfoque denominado “recreação educativa” que propõe modelo de intervenção com o objetivo de construir novos modos de leitura da realidade, de compreensão dos outros, de participar da análise e tomada de decisões em grupos e de desenvolvimento consciente de democracia. O artigo distingue o conceito de “recreação educativa” do conceito “educação para o ócio” e afirma que a educação para o tempo livre pretende não apenas reduzir os efeitos de tédio e monotonia das rotinas diárias senão, a partir dela, gerar as condições para atingir uma participação qualitativamente distinta dos sujeitos

Comercio de derechos de emisión, adopción de tecnología y heterogeneidad de industrias: un enfoque experimental

The economic and environmental gains expected from particular environmental policies based on allowances trading programs depend on how they are specifically implemented in the field. In this paper we focus on a tradable permit program based on a double auction market combined with an industry structure that presents heterogeneity in conventional abatement cost functions across firms, and allows for the possibility of adopting a new low emissions technology. Our results show that there is a direct relationship between the technological heterogeneity within an industry and the efficiency of firms behavior when investing in cleaner technologies and the efficiency of the market when reaping the potential benefits from trade by way of permits reallocationLos beneficios económicos y ambientales esperados de una determinada política medioambiental basada en el comer comercio de derechos de emisisón dependen de cómo éstos son implementados en el campo. En este artículo, analizamos el comercio de derechos de emisión a través de un mecanismo de subasta doble combinado con una estructura de la industria que presenta heterogeneidad en los costes de reducción de emisiones de las empresas, donde se permite además la adopción de una nueva tecnología más limpia. Nuestros resultados muestran que existe una relación directa entre la heteroogeneidad de la tecnología dentro de una industria, la eficiencia del comportamiento inversor de las empresas, así como la eficiencia del mecanismo de mercado para extraer los beneficios potenciales derivados de una reasignación de los permisos de emisió

Is voting for a cartel a sign of cooperativeness?

This paper tests the hypothesis that a (partial) reason why cartels—collective but costly and non-binding price agreements—lead to higher prices in a Bertrand oligopoly could be because of a selection effect: decision-makers who are willing to form price agreements are more likely to be less competitive and pick higher prices in general. To test this hypothesis we run an experiment where participants play two consecutive Bertrand pricing games: first a standard version without the opportunity to form agreements; followed by a version where participants can vote whether to have a (costly) non-binding agreement as a group to pick the highest number. We find no statistically significant difference between the numbers picked in the first game by participants who vote for and against an agreement in the second game. We do confirm that having a non-binding agreement to cooperate leads to higher numbers being picked on average. Both participants who voted for and against the agreement increase the number they pick in situations with an agreement. However, this effect is bigger for participants who voted in favour