Identities, selection, and contributions in a public-goods game

The notions of one's social identity and group membership have recently become topics for economic theory and experiments, and recent research has shown the importance of identity in a wide array of economic environments. But predictions are unclear when there is some trade-off between one's identity (e.g., race, gender, handedness) and potential monetary considerations. We conduct a public-goods experiment in which we permit endogenous group-formation. In a 2x2 design, we vary whether people participate in a team-building exercise and whether some people receive an endowment twice as much as others receive. We find that when both identity and financial considerations are present, high-endowment participants are strongly attracted to each other, with one's word-task-group affiliation eclipsed by the opportunity to earn more. Nevertheless, the team-building exercise greatly increases the level of contribution whether or not one is linked to people from one's team-building exercise

The hidden advantage of delegation: pareto-improvements in a gift-exchange game

This paper analyzes the effect on performance and earnings of delegating the wage choice to employees. Our results how that such delegation significantly increases effort levels. Moreover, we observe a Pareto-improvement, as the earnings of both employers and employees increase when employers delegate than when they do not. Interestingly, we also find that the employees’ performance under delegation is higher than under non-delegation, even for similar wages. While there is strong evidence that behavior reflects strategic considerations, this result also holds for one-shot interactions. A possible non-strategic motivation explaining the positive reaction to delegation is a sense of enhanced responsibility

Job security and long-term investment: an experimental analysis

We investigate an experimental labor market setting in which we introduce the novel aspect that workers have the chance of investing money in a long-term project in order to increase their income. We find a strong relationship between what happens inside the labor market (worker's performance) and what happens outside the labor market (long-term investment). Contrary to the theoretical predictions with selfish preferences, we find that the mere presence of long-term projects acts as an effort-enforcement device; this effect seems to be driven by an increase in long-term employment relationships. In the other direction, long-term labor relationships seem to provide a safer environment for undertaking successful long-term projects. This article also considers three different types of experimental labor contracts. We find that performance-based dismissal barriers, whereby firms are required to retain workers if they have satisfied the effort level required by firms, lead to more long-term employment relationships and higher overall productivity. As theory predicts, the presence of renewable dismissal barriers makes it likely that workers will provide the desired effort level. Firms appear to correctly anticipate this, leading to greater social efficiency

The impact of relative position and returns on sacrifice and reciprocity: an experimental study using individual decisions

We present a comprehensive experimental design that makes it possible to characterize other-regarding preferences and their relationship to the decision maker’s relative position. Participants are faced with a large number of decisions involving variations in the trade-offs between own and other’s payoffs, as well as in other potentially important factors like the decision maker’s relative position. We find that: (1) choices are responsive to the cost of helping and hurting others; (2) The weight a decision maker places on others’ monetary payoffs depends on whether the decision maker is in an advantageous or disadvantageous relative position; and (3) We find no evidence of reciprocity of the type linked to menu-dependence. The results of a mixture-model estimation show considerable heterogeneity in subjects’ motivations and confirm the absence of reciprocal motives. Pure selfish behavior is the most frequently observed behavior. Among the subjects exhibiting social preferences, social-welfare maximization is the most frequent, followed by inequality-aversion and by competitiveness

Incomplete Punishment Networks in Public Goods Games: Experimental Evidence

Abundant evidence suggests that high levels of contributions to public goods can be sustained through self-governed monitoring and sanctioning. This experimental study investigates the effectiveness of decentralized sanctioning institutions in alternative punishment networks. Our results show that the structure of punishment network significantly affects allocations to the public good. In addition, we observe that network configurations are more important than punishment capacities for the levels of public good provision, imposed sanctions and economic efficiency. Lastly, we show that targeted revenge is a major driver of anti-social punishment

A pattern-recognition theory of search in expert problem solving

Understanding how look-ahead search and pattern recognition interact is one of the important research questions in the study of expert problem-solving. This paper examines the implications of the template theory (Gobet & Simon, 1996a), a recent theory of expert memory, on the theory of problem solving in chess. Templates are "chunks" (Chase & Simon, 1973) that have evolved into more complex data structures and that possess slots allowing values to be encoded rapidly. Templates may facilitate search in three ways: (a) by allowing information to be stored into LTM rapidly; (b) by allowing a search in the template space in addition to a search in the move space; and (c) by compensating loss in the "mind's eye" due to interference and decay. A computer model implementing the main ideas of the theory is presented, and simulations of its search behaviour are discussed. The template theory accounts for the slight skill difference in average depth of search found in chess players, as well as for other empirical data

The UN in the lab

We consider two alternatives to inaction for governments combating terrorism, which we term Defense and Prevention. Defense consists of investing in resources that reduce the impact of an attack, and generates a negative externality to other governments, making their countries a more attractive objective for terrorists. In contrast, Prevention, which consists of investing in resources that reduce the ability of the terrorist organization to mount an attack, creates a positive externality by reducing the overall threat of terrorism for all. This interaction is captured using a simple 3×3 “Nested Prisoner’s Dilemma” game, with a single Nash equilibrium where both countries choose Defense. Due to the structure of this interaction, countries can benefit from coordination of policy choices, and international institutions (such as the UN) can be utilized to facilitate coordination by implementing agreements to share the burden of Prevention. We introduce an institution that implements a burden-sharing policy for Prevention, and investigate experimentally whether subjects coordinate on a cooperative strategy more frequently under different levels of cost sharing. In all treatments, burden sharing leaves the Prisoner’s Dilemma structure and Nash equilibrium of the game unchanged. We compare three levels of burden sharing to a baseline in a between-subjects design, and find that burden sharing generates a non-linear effect on the choice of the efficient Prevention strategy and overall performance. Only an institution supporting a high level of mandatory burden sharing generates a significant improvement in the use of the Prevention strategy

An intelligent multi-agent memory assistant

World population is ageing and increasingly scarce resources are required to cover the needs of everyone adequately. Medical conditions, especially memory problems, restrict the daily life of a broad slice of the elderly population, affect their independence. To prevent this, providing the right care and assistance while having in mind the costs implicated is essential. One possible path is to work with resources that we already have today and create innovative solutions to achieve the required level of support. There are not many solution either technological or not to prevent memory loss. In this work we present a possible solution aimed at restoring or maintaining the independence of elderly people, through the use of so-called Memory Assistants. We thus present an Intelligent Multi-Agent Memory Assistant designed to help people with memory problems remember their events and activities. The implementation of an event manager, free time manger, medication remainder and a sensory system, to manage and monitor the user, we aim to improve their quality of life and increase their independence

Expert chess memory: Revisiting the chunking hypothesis

After reviewing the relevant theory on chess expertise, this paper re-examines experimentally the finding of Chase and Simon (1973a) that the differences in ability of chess players at different skill levels to copy and to recall positions are attributable to the experts' storage of thousands of chunks (patterned clusters of pieces) in long-term memory. Despite important differences in the experimental apparatus, the data of the present experiments regarding latencies and chess relations between successively placed pieces are highly correlated with those of Chase and Simon. We conclude that the 2-second inter-chunk interval used to define chunk boundaries is robust, and that chunks have psychological reality. We discuss the possible reasons why Masters in our new study used substantially larger chunks than the Master of the 1973 study, and extend the chunking theory to take account of the evidence for large retrieval structures (templates) in long-term memory