Intertemporal dynamic choice under myopia for reward and different risk tolerances

This paper discusses the rationality in an intertemporal dynamic choice under human psychological biases through numerical experiments. A decision maker tries to find the optimal choice in a financial problem by maximizing the subjects?? expected utility for multiple periods, which is measured by the value function in the prospect theory. The subjects are assumed to be myopic for monetary reward and show time-inconsistent preference. Additionally, they have different risk tolerances for gains and losses, causing the framing effect. Under these conditions, a comparative analysis is carried out numerically to evaluate a combined effect of the two psychological factors on the intertemporal choice. The paper also presents a simple computational method for the numerical analysis and proves its validity.     

The separability axiom and equal-sharing methods

A quasi-linear social choice problem is defined as selecting one (among finitely many) indivisible public decision and a vector of monetary transfers among agents to cover the cost of this decision. This decision is based upon individual preferences, which are assumed to be additively separable and linear in money. The Separability axiom is a consistency property for choice methods on societies with variable size: the decision is not affected if we remove an arbitrary agent under the condition that he be guaranteed his original utility level and the cost to the remaining agents is modified accordingly. Thus the utility level assigned by the social choice function to agent i is the price at which the other agents are unanimously willing to buy agent is share of the decision power. A general characterization of choice methods satisfying this axiom is provided. Three subclasses of particular interest are characterized by additional milder axioms. Those are: (i) equal sharing of the surplus left over some reference utility (e.g., the utility at a status quo decision), (ii) utilitarian methods that merely select the efficient public decision and perform no monetary transfers, and (iii) equal allocation of nonseparable costs, which divides equally the surplus left over from the utility derived from the pivotal mechanism (also known as the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism).     

Nonparametric learning rules from bandit experiments: The eyes have it!

How do people learn? We assess, in a model-free manner, subjectsʼ belief dynamics in a two-armed bandit learning experiment. A novel feature of our approach is to supplement the choice and reward data with subjectsʼ eye movements during the experiment to pin down estimates of subjectsʼ beliefs. Estimates show that subjects are more reluctant to “update down” following unsuccessful choices, than “update up” following successful choices. The profits from following the estimated learning and decision rules are smaller (by about 25% of average earnings by subjects in this experiment) than what would be obtained from a fully-rational Bayesian learning model, but comparable to the profits from alternative non-Bayesian learning models, including reinforcement learning and a simple “win-stay” choice heuristic.     

After You Sir. Hold-Up,Direct Externalities,and Sequential Investment

We propose a solution to the hold-up problem: the parties in a contract can avoid the inefficiencies caused by the possibility of opportunistic behaviour and implement the first best level of investment if they make their investment decision sequentially, one party observing the choice made by the other party before making his own choice. Unlike the existing literature, the proposed solution leads to the efficient choice of investment even when there are two-sided direct externalities.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D23, D82.     

Decision-making Strategies and Performance among Seniors

Using paper and pencil experiments administered in senior centers, we examine decision-making performance in multi-attribute decision problems. We differentiate the effects of declining cognitive performance and changing cognitive process on decision-making performance of seniors as they age. We find a significant decline in performance with age due to reduced reliance on common heuristics and increased decision-making randomness among our oldest subjects. However, we find that increasing the number of options in a decision problem increases the number of heuristics brought to the task. This challenges the choice overload view that people give up when confronted with too much choice.     

A Laboratory Investigation of Multiperson Rationality and Presentation Effects

This paper reports the results of laboratory experiments in which subjects were presented with different two-person decision problems in both their extensive and normal forms. All games generated the same equilibrium outcomes. Our results indicate that the presentation of the decision problem significantly affects the strategy chosen. Surprisingly, these presentation effects were most prominent in the simplest games where differences in presentation would seem most transparent. It appears that subjects are much more likely to use (and fear) incredible threats when the problem is presented as a one-stage rather than as a multistage game. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: 026,215.     

Stochastic Choice and the Allocation of Cognitive Effort

Data from a risky choice experiment are used to estimate a fully parametric stochastic model of risky choice. As is usual with such analyses, Expected Utility Theory is rejected in favour of a form of Rank Dependent Theory. Then an estimate of the risk aversion parameter is deduced for each subject, and this is used to construct a measure of the “closeness to indifference' of each subject in each choice problem. This measure is then used as an explanatory variable in a random effects model of decision time, with other explanatory variables being the complexity of the problem, the financial incentives, and the amount of experience accumulated at the time of performing the task. The most interesting finding is that significantly more effort is allocated to problems in which subjects are close to indifference. This presents us with another reason (in addition to statistical information considerations) why such tasks should play a prominent role in experiments. JEL Classification: C23, C91, D81     

The high/low divide: Self-selection by values in auction choice

Most prior theoretical and experimental work involving auction choice has assumed bidders find out their value after making a choice of which auction to enter. We examine whether or not bidders knowing their value prior to making a choice of which among multiple alternative auction formats to enter impacts their choice decision and/or the outcome of the auctions. The results show a strong impact on auction choice. Subjects with low values choose the first price sealed bid auction more often while subjects with high values choose the ascending auction more often. The number of bidders in each auction, revenue, efficiency and average bidder surplus all end up equalized.     

A NOTE ON “A ONE‐SECTOR NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH MODEL WITH ENDOGENOUS RETIREMENT”: EXISTENCE OF MULTIPLE STEADY STATES*

This note extends Matsuyama's 0–1 endogenous retirement choice model to the framework with continuous endogenous retirement choice to study the consumption‐saving decision and capital accumulation in an overlapping generation model. The conditions for the existence of multiple steady states have been derived. In contrast to the 0 or 1 labour choice, the partial retirement may be a stable steady state under the continuous endogenous retirement choice in the second period. And this implies that partial retirement may be a stable optimal choice. Also, we find that the retirement choice depends on the initial capital stock when there are multiple steady states.     

Prospect theory and pricing decisions

Kahneman and Tversky's well-known prospect theory predicts that decision-makers will predominantly take the sure thing when choosing between a sure gain and a risky gain of equal or better expected value. We find that, when a price cut decision is presented in a form similar to the prospect theory gamble problems, the majority of respondents (both students and retailers) choose the risky price cut choice, even when the risky choice has a lower expected value. The explanation that perceived short term gains in volume (i.e., the customer base) dominated the price cut decision is examined in detail.     

Macroeconomic effects of family business inheritance tax reduction: Evidence from South Korea

This study examines the macroeconomic effects of family business inheritance tax reduction in South Korea using a theoretical model that addresses the problem of a family member's occupational choice decision between being a worker and being an entrepreneur. In contrast with previous studies, the model considers the distribution of firm size. The effect of the reduction in the family business inheritance tax rate on the macroeconomy is positive in this model, whereas it is negative in a model in the literature that does not consider the distribution of firm size when addressing the occupational choice decision. Calibrated results obtained using data for South Korea show that a 50% reduction in the family business inheritance tax rate increases the total labour demand, total real investment, and total sales by 0.13%, 1.88%, and 0.15%, respectively.     

On choosing which game to play when ignorant of the rules

This paper suggests a theory of choice among strategic situations when the rules of play are not properly specified. We take the view that a “strategic situation” is adequately described by a TU game since it specifies what is feasible for each coalition but is silent on the procedures that are used to allocate the surplus. We model the choice problem facing a decision maker (DM) as having to choose from finitely many “actions”. The known “consequence” of the ith action is a coalition from game f _i over a fixed set of players \(N_i\cup\{d\}\) (where d stands for the DM). Axioms are imposed on her choice as the list of consequences (f ₁,..., f _m ) from the m actions varies. We characterize choice rules that are based on marginal contributions of the DM in general and on the Shapley Value in particular.     

The Role of Environmental Management in Consumers Preferences for Corporate Social Responsibility

Consumers in modern societies are increasingly sensitive to environmental performance by large and small corporations, making it a crucial issue in the overall policy of corporate social responsibility. The objective of this paper is to study the role of environmental performance in the profile of corporate social responsibility as perceived by consumers. We utilize a stated preference approach to the study of consumer’s preferences. This approach allows for the evaluation in monetary terms of the trade-offs that individuals can make between various aspects of corporate policy decisions, including the extent of environmental performance. The data is modelled by means of a mixture heuristics approach that allows us to study the utilization of various decision rules in the choice of products with various degrees of environmental performance. The results show that the linear compensatory heuristic is the most extended across individuals and these subjects value most the policies concerned with environmental management. Those subjects opting for the non-compensatory decision rule tend to focus on the attribute of good labour relations as the most salient factor defining corporate social responsibility. In addition, policy measures are relatively more valued for some products rather than for others, suggesting that consumers discriminate between products when valuing companies’ environmental profiles.     

Speed and quality of collective decision making: Imperfect information processing

This paper studies efficient programmed hierarchies as introduced by Radner [The organization of decentralized information processing, Econometrica 61(5) (1993) 1109-1146] in which agents cannot process information perfectly. A group of P identical managers has to make a choice between n alternatives. In order to learn which is the best option, the alternatives have to be compared. The evaluation of an alternative takes time and managers are only able to identify the better one of two alternatives with a positive probability. The skip-level reporting tree proposed by Radner is found to be efficient in terms of the dimensions decision cost, decision delay, and decision quality.     

Endogenous property rights regimes, common-pool resources and trade

A model is developed where opening to trade affects a dynamic common-pool resource stock and welfare through a community's voting decision to institute a property rights regime regulating the stock. The model finds that resource stock levels can decline even when a Markov perfect equilibrium path for labor and property rights regimes are chosen to maximize welfare. Thus, opening to trade can be welfare maximizing even when resource stock declines. Experimental results show that under certain conditions, subjects briefly follow a Markov perfect equilibrium path for property rights regime choice but labor allocations are myopically chosen indicating that some resource dynamics may be considered by subjects.     

The minimum approval mechanism implements the efficient public good allocation theoretically and experimentally

We propose the minimum approval mechanism (MAM) for a standard linear public good environment with two players. Players simultaneously and privately choose their contributions to the public good in the first stage. In the second stage, they simultaneously decide whether to approve the otherʼs choice. Both contribute what they choose in the first stage if both players approve; otherwise, both contribute the minimum of the two choices in the first stage. The MAM implements the Pareto-efficient allocation in multiple solution concepts including backward elimination of weakly dominated strategies (BEWDS), limit logit agent quantal response equilibrium, subgame perfect minimax regret equilibrium, level-k thinking, and diagonalization heuristics. Moreover, the MAM is unique under plausible conditions. Overall, contributions in the MAM experiment averaged 94.9%. Quantifying subjectsʼ responses to the questionnaire reveal heterogeneous reasoning processes and highlight the importance of developing mechanisms that implement the desired social choice outcome in multiple solution concepts.     

Bank runs as coordination failures: An experimental study

We use experimental methods to investigate what factors contribute to breakdowns in coordination among a bank’s depositors. Subjects in our experiment decide whether to leave their money deposited in a bank or withdraw it early; a bank run occurs when there are too many early withdrawals. We explore the effects of adding uncertainty about fundamental withdrawal demand and of changing the number of opportunities subjects have to withdraw. Our results show that (i) bank runs are rare when fundamental withdrawal demand is known but occur frequently when it is stochastic, and (ii) subjects are more likely to withdraw when given multiple opportunities to do so than when presented with a single decision. For the multiple-opportunity case, we evaluate individual withdrawal decisions according to a set of simple cutoff rules. We find that the cutoff rule corresponding to the payoff-dominant equilibrium of the game, which involves Bayesian updating of probabilities, explains subject behavior better than other rules.     

Self-Selection Consistent Functions

This paper studies collective choice rules whose outcomes consist of a collection of simultaneous decisions, each one of which is the only concern of some group of individuals in society. The need for such rules arises in different contexts, including the establishment of jurisdictions, the location of multiple public facilities, or the election of representative committees. We define a notion of allocation consistency requiring that each partial aspect of the global decision taken by society as a whole should be ratified by the group of agents who are directly concerned with this particular aspect. We investigate the possibility of designing efficient allocation consistent rules. We also explore whether such rules may in addition respect the Condorcet criterion. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D7, D71.     

The necessity of imperfect decisions

I construct a general model which neither postulates decisions are always optimal, nor that decision errors necessarily arise when ‘real world’ agents are involved. Nevertheless, I show that agents always have a positive marginal incentive to use some information imperfectly, but never to use all potential information even if they have costless access to perfect information about how to select every action. These results imply that in order for a decision problem to be internally consistent without simply postulating the extreme limit of perfect decisions, it must explicitly incorporate the effects of both information and decision errors on behavior.     

Pricing policies for a two-part exhaustible resource cartel: The case of OPEC

This paper examines pricing policies for OPEC under the assumption that the cartel is composed of a block of spender countries with large cash needs and a block of saver countries with little immediate need for cash and a lower rate of discount. The decision problem for the two-part cartel is embodied in a game-theoretic framework and the optimal bargaining solution is computed using results from the theory of cooperative games developed by Nash. The set of feasible bargaining points—and the corresponding Nash solution—is computed under two assumptions on the behavior of output shares: that they are subject to choice and that they are fixed at historical values. Our results suggest that for fixed output shares, there is little room for bargaining, and the price path approximates the optimal monopoly price path. If the shares are subject to control, optimal paths depend significantly on the relative bargaining power of each block.