Detecting motives for cooperation in public goods experiments

This study clarifies the types of motives that are important as a source of cooperation in a linear public goods experiment. Our experimental design separates contributions into those due to confusion, one-shot motives (which includes altruism, warm-glow, inequality aversion, and conditional cooperation), and multi-round motives (which includes a strategic motive under incomplete information, a failure of backward induction, and reciprocity). The experiment reveals that multi-round motives plays an important role in driving cooperative behavior. Confusion and one-shot motives play a minor role.     

Productivity Shocks and Monetary Policy in a Two-Country Model

In this paper, we examine the effects of foreign productivity shocks on monetary policy in a symmetric open economy. Our two-country model incorporates the New Keynesian features of price stickiness and monopolistic competition based on the cost channel of Ravenna and Walsh (2006). In particular, in response to asymmetric productivity shocks, firms in one country achieve a more efficient level of production than those in another economy. Because the terms of trade are directly affected by changes in both economies’ output levels, international trade creates a transmission channel for inflation dynamics in which a deflationary spiral in foreign producer prices reduces domestic output. When there is a decline in economic activity, the monetary authority should react to this adverse situation by lowering the key interest rate. The impulse response function from the model shows that a productivity shock can cause a real depreciation of the exchange rate when economies are closely integrated through international trade.     

Re-examination of team’s play in a mixed-strategy game experiment

Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2008) found that the behaviour of professional soccer players in two-person zero-sum games is consistent with minimax play, while Wooders (2010) re-examined their data and found inconsistencies in several respects. This study applies a similar analysis of Wooders (2010) to the experimental data in Okano (2013), which found that the behaviour of teams of two-student subjects conforms closely to minimax play, and addresses whether teams exhibit the same inconsistencies as professionals. Teams were found to have consistency with minimax play, with no tendencies similar to those of professionals.     

Voluntary redistribution mechanism in asymmetric coordination games

Experimental Economics - An inequality game is an asymmetric 2 × 2 coordination game in which player 1 earns a substantially higher payoff than player 2 except in the inefficient Nash...