Evolutionary Concept, Genetic Algorithm and Exhibition Contract in Movie Industry

The paper is about application of evolutionary concept, particularly the application of natural selection process, to the study of movie industry. The importance of the application is that it allows for the heterogeneity and interdependency of market agents in analyzing the economic choice decision. This complexity always presents an obstacle to the study of market behavior, especially when one has to take into account the constant reinforcing effects among the variables, which often renders the problem elusive. The paper intends to explain the economic process, taking into account this complexity through the use of evolutionary concept.Evolutionary selection; opportunity costs; learning and sharing rule

Individual tradable permit market and traffic congestion: An experimental study

This paper investigates the potential of an individual tradable permit system in an experimental two-sided repeated double auction market to overcome over-consumption through road demand management. The evaluation of this system shows that traders exhibit strong dependence on reservation price and there are significant transfers of permit from low value users to high value users. During peak hours, the permit price increases owing to high demand, so the cost of using the road is high during congestion. This creates incentive for low value drivers to postpone their trips and resell permits in the peak hours to gain profit. The results show the delayer pays principle, in which drivers who value highly have to pay drivers who are willing to stay off the road during peak hours.: Individual tradable permit, Congestion, High value and low value drivers, Allocative efficiency

Evolutionary Concept, Genetic Algorithm and Exhibition Contract in Movie Industry

The paper is about application of evolutionary concept, particularly the application of natural selection process, to the study of movie industry. The importance of the application is that it allows for the heterogeneity and interdependency of market agents in analyzing the economic choice decision. This complexity always presents an obstacle to the study of market behavior, especially when one has to take into account the constant reinforcing effects among the variables, which often renders the problem elusive. The paper intends to explain the economic process, particularly the evolution of exhibition contract, taking into account this complexity through the use of evolutionary concept.Evolutionary selection; opportunity costs; learning and sharing rule

Punishment as a Price to Pay

Management meted out punishment to enforce rules and encourage adherence. However, the effectiveness depended on how the employees perceive and interpret the policy. Therefore, it was uncertain how to best achieve the target. The paper tested employees' behavioral responses in two conditions, 1) when employees had to pay fines to employer and 2) when employees had to pay fines to co-workers. Condition one was a typical deterrence policy implemented to punish misconduct in an organization, and condition two tested the behavioral responses to distributive outcomes. Questionnaire was distributed to these employees to investigate perception. The experimental results indicated that employees responded differently to the two conditions, misconduct was significantly reduced in condition two but not in condition one. While employees agreed that the implementation was fair in the two conditions, they did not agree on the punishment outcomes in condition two. The employees perceived paying fines to employer was more acceptable than paying fines to co-workers. Accounting for social norms in the implementation was more successful than formal deterrence

Learning to be Biased

We simulate societal opinion dynamics when there is confirmation bias in information gathering and spread. If decision making is influenced by confirmation bias, the agent puts more weight on positive information to confirm hypothesis or reservation in the learning process, which renders selectivity in information gathering. If the utility discovered post purchase is low, it is externalized rather than internalized (i.e., self blame) for the selectivity of information. This causes the agent to outweigh the negative information. These two mechanisms are simulated to investigate the societal opinion dynamics and explain behavioral patterns such as overconfidence, stickiness of response and ``success breeds success" phenomenon.Confirmation bias; Opinion percolation and convergence; Selectivity in information search; Hypothesis testing

Inconsistency of fairness evaluation in simulated labot market.

Reciprocal behavior was often explained by perception of fairness derived from either agents’ intention or distributional outcome. In this paper, we demonstrated that fairness perception depended on the evaluability of the partner’s type. We conducted experiments to investigate how workers formed fairness perception on the employers. We found inconsistency in fairness evaluation in the two simulated worker-employer relations; workers derived fairness by comparing own wage with market wage in a one shot interaction, but workers derived fairness based on current and previous wage when interacting with same employer. The reversal of fairness perception suggested the role of evaluability of partners’ attribute in effort decision among workers.Preference reversal; reciprocity; gift exchange; evaluability hypothesis;experiment.

Deterministic Adoption in Movie Industry

In this paper, we investigate the decision making process by movie goers. Under incomplete information environment, movie goers will have to learn the quality of the movie from the information relayed by predecessors. The hypothesis is formed by the movie goers when the movie is first released, and it is then compared to information received. In this environment, movie goers will constantly upgrade the belief system, or discard the weaker ones if found to be not consistent with the overall quality information received. Thus, positive news relayed in the initial stage will be magnified to greater importance; the movie becomes a hit. We model this deterministic adoption with first order difference equation. We find that the Hit movies exhibit higher deterministic adoption behavior and the relationship between current and previous adoptions can last longer, than if the movie is a flop. The time path or orbit of the dynamic growth also exhibits non-oscillatory behavior and converge to equilibrium level quickly; when the deterministic adoption mechanism loses its strength, the subsequent adoptions will eventually die off. In other words, the previous adoptions cannot determine the future adoptions. Although this behavior is present in both Hit and Non-hit movies, this diminishing mechanism is triggered in much earlier stage in Non-hit movies than it is in Hit movies.

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

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

Individual tradable permit market and traffic congestion: An experimental study

This paper investigates the potential of an individual tradable permit system in an experimental two-sided repeated double auction market to overcome over-consumption through road demand management. The evaluation of this system shows that traders exhibit strong dependence on reservation price and there are significant transfers of permit from low value users to high value users. During peak hours, the permit price increases owing to high demand, so the cost of using the road is high during congestion. This creates incentive for low value drivers to postpone their trips and resell permits in the peak hours to gain profit. The results show the delayer pays principle, in which drivers who value highly have to pay drivers who are willing to stay off the road during peak hours